After struggling and with sheer hard work I made my way into Amazon in 2017. Before that I worked for small fintech firms. Joined Amazon as a SDE1 that time, start was rough but it got better with time. Delivered a pretty neat project which I would say is my best project this date. 2019, and I got promoted to SDE2. Made an internal switch and joined AWS where I spent another 2 years. No promotion is sight, work was ok. With no promotion in sight, I got pretty negative. For the last 6 months I was doing KTLO, then went on paternity leave leave. Came back and resigned. Though my work at Amazon was overall good but last few month of slackness was heavy penalized. I came to know later via a recuiter that last manager (whom I hardly worked with) marked me as low performance thereby closing door of Amazon for me. I repent leaving amazon and taking the last few months not seriously. Learnt that you should never slack. Then I went to join a pretty small company with a staff title, money was good. Things were good. Suddenly after working for a year got wrapped into the layoff wave and that was the end of that stint. This was at the end of 2022. Ramped up on leetcode. Got two offer. One very good lucrative offer from hubspot and other from MSFT. Was not very educated about hubspot and friend convinced me that given the market situation I should join MSFT which I did. I was offered more stocks at hubspot compared to MSFT. Role was also more senior. There are rumors that google might buy hubspot. At the time I got offer HUBS was 200 and today is 660. At MSFT, I am in Teams org where I had the impression that I will be on the backend development. However, I am forced into doing mostly frontend due to business needs. Overall, I 2019 I was a SDE2 and today at the time of writing this I am a Sr SDE at MSFT which is more so equivalent to Amazon SDE2. Nothing moved. Quality of work degraded, went from being in AWS AI to doing Frontend in Teams. Hubspot could have been a solid opportunity but left it on the table. This whole thought makes me feel sad that what I was, what I could have achieved and where I am right now. It pushes me to believe that I am very mediocre and should be happy with what I have and just keep the wheel moving. Are there any suggestions on how I can pivot from here ? Right now trying to make an internal move with MSFT to see if I can get back to service work. Ohh, I am based in Canada so not that I have a plethora of opportunities. And I am no longer that young, 37 now, I started quite late. At this point, my mentality is that I should not really take career very seriously. Just do what ever comes my way and spend more time with friends and family. It’s basically another way of saying that I have given up.
37 is not that old too. It depends on what you enjoy doing, if you like to be a techlead in 1 or 2 years from now, you can start searching and join a decent sized startup(if any US based startup has remote roles and fine with you being in Canada) so that you can make an impact and avoid risk of being laidoff.If you prefer certainity keep changing teams untill you find right fit for next 1 year before settling down.End of my 2 cents 😀
Nothing wrong with being a mediocre SWE. As long as the TC is decent and you’re able to somewhat coast you can focus on other hobbies and family. Just another perspective.
Dude, sounds like you’re depressed or at the very least burned out. Most people are dicks on online forums like this so take what they say with a grain of salt, but treat this one comment seriously: get help. You’re clearly past the point of dealing with this by yourself effectively.
Nopes neither I am depressed nor burnt out. It was just a retrospective of last few years and the decisions that I made or say happened.
TC pls
HubSpot had multiple rounds of layoffs in the timeframe you’re describing. You could be unemployed with a B-tier marketing company on your resume instead of Microsoft. Cheer up.
I've seen this before. You are the guy who rues that grass is greener on the other side, Yada Yada. Guess what, even if you had chosen hubspot, you may have still been regretting if the google deal did not close. All those stocks would be paper, and msft at all time high would be a missed opportunity. That's not the end of it, in that parallel universe, you wouldn't have known Microsoft was front-end work, so you would only be cursing yourself for having let go of such good backend development. As for AWS sde2, who knows you were the top or bottom end, so don't do a blind comparison of levels. I suggest you instead focus on finding internal/external roles that match your interest.
(Therapy helps with this, too!)
So you mean to tell me that you couldn't predict the future accurately and made a left turn when you should have gone right? You suck! Just kidding. Welcome to the club. No one knows what the right move is at the end of the day and all of us are just guessing. Dwelling on hindsight and things outside of your control overall is a dumb exercise. You are on the right track that you should prioritize friends and family and things outside of work which will in the end make you more happy and give you a more fulfilling life. Work is just a means to pay bills and these companies could care less about you and will drop you in a heartbeat. Clock in, clock out, do the frontend bullshit and turn the computer off. Focus on your life, not work.
What's your msft tc as senior sde?
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Re-apply to hubs if they are hiring. DM for referral
Isnt that the boat has not now shipped ?
No harm applying again or even reaching out to the recruiter. HS has amazing culture when it comes to hiring and they don't generally have black list kind of thing. I will say don't assume that the ship has sailed.