alt Hacker NewsHow I Left YouTube
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> The strain comes from context switching. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, I had to care deeply about our quarterly goals and production stability. Then, from 6:00 PM to midnight, I had to care about inverting binary trees and system architecture design.
We really need to stop the tech interview nonsense.
Here is an experienced, practicing software engineer, who can't get a job without drilling for and performing frat hazing rituals.
I'm in a similar situation but I also have a direct report who is clearly displeased at the lack of leveling available to us. All I can do is empathize with them.
Anyone have ideas on how to improve morale when decisions are out of your control?
I have seen this from the manager side at these kinds of companies, explaining to your manager that you are quitting because your level does not match your work is a waste of energy. Their hands are usually tied.
Promotion decisions are made by committees which are 1-2 levels above your manager, your manager presents the candidates. They round up a pot of multiple teams which are discussed at once and there are usually hard quotas (like 5%) of promotions to give out to this pot of employees. These hard quotas make it impossible to "do the right thing" because even if a lot of people deserve the promotion, only x% can get it. The composition of the pot of people can easily cause the problem which is described in the blog post, for example if you have a high number of juniors or a high number of employees who joined at the same time or employees with incorrect levelling from the start. If 20%+ deserve a promotion then it simply turns into a game of luck.
As a manager you try as hard as possible to get these promotions but the system of these big companies is just too rigid. Its like a pit fight instead of objectively looking at output. I have seen a lot of people leave for the same reason but I haven't seen a single change to the system in 5+ years.
Next we could talk about layoff mechanics, its equally disturbing.
Google is a somewhat widely known place where promo is a huge problem, but the problem isn’t particular to Google. Generally companies will require you to repeatedly “prove” you are worth the additional compensation before agreeing to it. The friction varies, but the structural incentives are always there. Therefore if the goal is to maximize earnings, and assuming you are a high performer, it’s in your best interest to job hop once in a while.
To not play this made-up game, you either decide to stop caring about compensation, or be your own boss. Of course these are not always realistic depending on one’s life situation.
Multiple denied promo applications. Warm, caring language but no attempt at retention on resignation. Other companies unsure of hiring candidate even after 10+ interviews.
The simplest explanation of these datapoints is simply that this person is not operating at the staff level in a way that is fairly obvious to others, yet hard to articulate in a way that this person can emotionally receive and accept.
None of this means they aren’t or can’t be a highly valuable and skilled engineer. Higher levels are more about capacity for high-level responsibility and accountability in a way that makes executives feel comfortable and at ease. “Not enough impact” means that even if this person is involved in high-impact projects, executives do not ascribe the results or responsibility for those results entirely to them.
While this is painful, it is not a bad thing, and it is not a disfavor. People who aren’t ready for great responsibility often underestimate the size of the gap. Watching a talented engineer get eaten alive because they were given executive-adjacent accountability that they weren’t ready for is not fun for anybody. Anyone who has operated in true staff+ or director+ roles at huge companies here knows just how brutal the step up in expectations is. It is far from trivial, and it simply isn’t for everyone.
Youtube is getting problematic. I write this as someone who basically has some videos running in the background all the time, mostly just DJ music in the background.
First, searching for videos sucks. Yes, the first few results can be useful, then more and more crap shows up. This just wastes my time. But, more importantly - more and more AI videos means I am being bombarded with more time wasters. I have about zero interest in AI videos; I am not saying 100% of it is crap, but I am getting more and more tired wasting any time in this regard here. Then the addiction by Google to have us watch ads - they killed ublock origin too on chrome. Even aside from this, I am noticing a drop of quality lately; many of the channels seem much more boring. I guess this kind of fatigue kicks in over time in general, but it seems to me as if some youtube "content creators" are running out of real ideas. They seem to be desperately addicted to "get the likes" and "get subscribers". I stopped being logged in to youtube years ago already and I also, oddly enough, want to completely decouple myself from Google too (too much Evil in this company now) - youtube is unfortunately something I still need and use right now, but many things suck more and more. Also that "swipe shorts down" - that activity is IMO a mental problem. After some 30 swipe downs, I ask myself why I am doing this. Google tries to want to commit me to this swipe action. It is like psychological manipulation. Click click drag drag click click click.
> The results of that meeting? The same from the previous promotion decisions; “it’s unfortunately a no. You don’t have enough impact.”
Promotion at Google, as in many places, is tough. Status is allocated partially on level, so it sucks to not see that growth.
Sometimes lack of promotion can be not having the right opportunities.
It's fair to leave a company for whatever reason.
For any other L4->L5s, or anyone wanting to become a senior engineer, it's worth self reflecting on whether there's improvement that can be made from failed promotion attempts.
> people all across the org knew me and said I was indispensable to the company and were surprised that I wasn't already at an L5/6 level.
No one in a large org is indispensable, but many are very valuable. Many L4s are very valuable, but at doing L4 work. It's not a value judgement.
L4->L5 is a step of responsibility: can you be trusted to handle a multi quarter project, without much supervision.
> I helped launch/lead features on YouTube, I led teams, I designed and implemented systems that were still in use to that day by many people
The details aren't clear here, but sometimes an engineer can be leading projects, and need supervision: poor delivery, poor communication, poor outcomes.
"Too little impact" in this context can mean "you needed too much supervision" or "too little impact per $TIME_PERIOD" meaning you can have delivered great technical solutions, but not at the rate or level of independence needed to meet the mark.
Again, not meeting this mark isn't a value statement. It's a different type of work, but it happens to be incentivized with more $$$.
> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.
That bubble is not the world, I exist outside the ladder and I am legion.
This is why it's honestly not worth working that hard. Work hard enough to get noticed, spend the rest of the time making sure the right people know what you're doing. After a certain point it just doesn't matter anymore. The company has quarterlies to hit, and they aren't going to budge from whatever they have allowed for salary. And they're going to take the money they won't pay you and put it in an exec bonus package.
If you're that passionate focus the excess energy into your own projects, technical or otherwise. But don't give your life to a corporation that couldn't give less of a shit about you.
And this is also why you should be applying and interviewing along the way. Always keep your options open. The corporation is only looking out for itself, you need to be doing the same.
> I was leaving because I had outgrown the pot I was planted in
I wonder if the author had attempted to transfer to a different part of the company first, since a different organization might have more room to grow. It might not be possible to do a transfer plus a promotion simultaneously, but it's likely a less stressful option than leaving the company.
When I read about the culture at Google, and similarly YouTube, I am constantly reminded of how (and probably why) their products have stagnated/gotten worse over time despite having top engineers. I believe Google has the talent to build anything in their wildest dreams. So why do their products suck? YouTube sucks from the user POV, Google classroom sucks, the user experience in their office suite leaves a tremendous amount to be desired for even a basic user like me, Android never improves, their voice recognition and assistant are trash. There's so much room for competition, I wonder where it is? What are they spending their money and talent on (besides AI)? I feel like it must primarily be on reliability, speed, and delivering more ads.
Reading this I feel like I live on another planet.
I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile.
I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L).
I am assuming he left the job this year? If so, more disconnect. I am working but looking, and this job search is the hardest I have faced in over 30 years. Just talking to a human is almost impossible. This guy went on a zillion in person interviews? Is he maybe talking about the distant past of two years ago?
The NDA minefield? Maybe I am naive or sheltered, but it’s never came up in interviews and was not something I ever sweated. For the simple reason that there is no secret sauce so magic that I could tell someone in ten minutes in an interview and spill all the beans. But what do I know, maybe YouTube has some secret variable this dude invented I am just too dumb to understand.
I could go on. But the entitlement coming off of this post as I stress about paying bills and keeping my kids in school and fed as I read this on Xmas eve is a lot to take.
Am I that much of an outlier that I need to get with the program? Or is this as out of touch with the current reality as I feel?
The levels are very similar to all those hierarchy used in big corporations outside of the tech. Classic selection and grooming techniques. We all get to decide if we want to play that game or not.
Levels in big tech are just a way to keep you motivated. You'll work harder to get a promo.
In the end it doesn't matter, you'll make more money by either leaving or getting a retention offer.
I guess lying on your linkedin "senior swe" is also helpful for getting a staff engineer position?
Two questions:
1. Is it normal for someone who graduated in 2018 tell “with over 13 years” of experience?
2. He quit Google but not got hired anywhere else?
> And I had to highlight the incredibly talented team I worked with and the amazing managers that taught me so much.
I wonder what it was that the amazing managers taught him. I've never had an experience with managers that would leave such an impression on me. Fellow developers, sure; but not managers.
> Do say: "I optimized a high-throughput distributed system to prioritize user retention metrics, reducing latency by 150ms through a custom caching layer."
Ugh. Pain. I'm hiring, and I've been filtering out resumes that are heavy on these kinds of metrics.
Because I literally get thousands of entries with these kinds of wording. Often with excessively precise numbers, like "by 23.5%".
My problem is that it's hard to tell the amount of real work it took to do that. It might have been as stupid as creating an additional index in the database, or it might have involved a deep refactoring across multiple systems with a zero-downtime gradual rollout.
I would prefer something like: "I worked as the hands-on leading developer to do a large-scale refactor on the highly loaded front-end network routing system, resulting in user-visible latency decrease on the Youtube front page".
For me the key words are: "hands-on" (and not just writing a product brief and getting resources for it), "large-scale refactor" (so likely not just creating an additional database index), "highly loaded".
Youtube is very tough for promo- I wouldn’t recommend it
>At one prominent tech company, I underwent 13 separate interviews for a single role.
In what insane world does this make any amount of sense?
>The problem of "doing more work and not getting compensated" is pretty well-known.
Yes, the reward for more work is always more work. Hard work is the best way to make yourself unseen. Those who get promoted are busy advertising themselves, befriending strategically and may even take credit of your work while you are busy sweating.
>My final conversation with my manager was heart-wrenching. I had prepared a script, anticipating a counter-offer or a guilt trip. Instead, I was met with soft and understanding empathy.
Too much naivety out there to mention empathy even in a startup, let alone when working for a shark as Youtube. That was rather a good news for your manager: no counter offer, but also the fact they never rewarded you internally (L5/6) was a way to push you to leave.
> If a company requires 13 people to sign off on a hire, it suggests they operate on a consensus-based model that stifles autonomy [...] the companies with 5 to 8 rounds had the clearest internal culture
Wow. 5 already feels like too many to me. 3 would be closer to ideal, counting the initial screening. 8 is positively too many; 13 is hellish.
It's very depressing when we start accepting 5 as the new normal.
Why does OP's linkedin say Senior then?
And??? Where did you go? Did you get L5/L6? Or did you just leave and not get another job? What a wild article to have the interviews so prominently featured but not have a conclusion.
I really don't feel it's that unique that it took a while to quit. A big reason these cultures are so popular is because a lot of of the time people don't quit right away and you can keep extracting work above their pay grade until they do. Even if you have some churn, you can keep getting that kind of work for cheap as long as you have a good supply of new hires.
The article title is actually "How I Left YouTube".
Maybe someone could update it?
Love how he’s critical of the 13-interview hiring process despite having done all 13 of those interviews.
“Nobody drives there anymore. There’s too much traffic.”
These companies can do 13 interviews because people will put up with them.
The little place I work does phone screen, work sample, final interview, reference check. We can be done in a week. Nobody wants to work with me bad enough to sit through 13 interviews.
I read the title and thought it would be about migrating from youtube to something self hosted/self made. Oh well :) Good luck in your future endeavors or sorry about your "ai" layoff, whichever applies.
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Seems like a warm reboot for a career coach hustle
Expect a mailing list subscription with courses coming soon
I'm sorry, but why did the author not mark this post as AI generated? It's clear from many different phrasings that this was written with an LLM. And no, I won't point out any particular spot, but I'm sure my fellow commenters will know what I am talking about.
I acknowledge that the author (probably) had indeed experienced the things described (at least most of them, as LLMs often like to add details here and there), and it was fine in terms of being interesting, but I feel offended when people try to pass of text formulated by an LLM (even if they put in a bulletpoint draft) without disclosure that it's been written by an LLM.
Can the author please share the prompt containing the draft that he sent to the LLM?
I'd much rather read that!
Tried to read through the article, but couldn't finish. I felt this writing heavily alluded to a ChatGPT generated response. Too many punchlines and paragraph breaks.
>The strain comes from context switching. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, I had to care deeply about our quarterly goals and production stability. Then, from 6:00 PM to midnight, I had to care about inverting binary trees and system architecture design.
>This duality is exhausting. It forces you to lie by omission to people you respect. You can't tell your team, "I can't take that ticket because I need to study dynamic programming." You just have to work faster.
Guess what promo will get you? More context switching. Maybe that’s a thing to work on.
> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.
Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. Nobody will care or remember what you did or what level you were given enough timespan. Take the bits that you want (money, skills etc) to live life, but don't get too caught up trying to win the game.