Apparently once he got NI — lowest rating at Google. From some LinkdedIn contact, Ritendra Datta, who promoted to D1 @ FB. Felt it share worthy -- --- Just hit a personal milestone of becoming a director of engineering at Facebook. So I thought I'd reflect a bit on career, hoping it's of some value to my network. Please expect some survivorship bias. At Google, director-level promos were celebrated - a recognition of scaling up effectively while holding high values - Senior VPs widely announced them, while CEO announced VP promos. While Google and Facebook engineering levels are comparable, I also appreciate FB's approach of not making any noise about promos. Regardless, this felt like a meaningful milestone. Below I've jotted down what helped, what didn't help, and what didn't matter. What didn't help: - Skills Gap: Growing up, I stood out for my coding skills because I started early. Later I found out that many had similar skills. OTOH, not knowing enough advanced linear algebra slowed me down on foundational ML. - Low Performance: Early at Google, I got a performance rating that the bottom 2-3% gets. Made me doubt how I got the job. - Low EQ: As a first-time manager, when someone left my team, I was very emotional and upset. Not helpful. - Imposter Syndrome: Always surrounded by amazing achievers: -- A co-worker/housemate, and a PM lead, both All-India Rank 1 at IIT-JEE. -- A co-worker ranked World no. 1 in Topcoder. -- A close collaborator whose amazing work was called out by Stephen Colbert. -- Co-workers who navigate extreme ambiguity at breakneck pace with confidence I don't possess. What helped: - Peers: Having very capable people around has perks. They push you to be better. - Managers: My managers in the last 5 years - Greg Friedman and Amit Puntambekar - incredible humble leaders. Emulating them was worth a dozen leadership courses. - Team: People I've managed are better than me. I grow more by working with them. - Empathy: Folks can tell when empathy is genuine and support you back. - Resilience: The 5-year grad school grind of writing/rewriting papers, often failing - a lifelong lesson in resilience - Introspection: From a 3-person team to now 120 people, I never stopped introspecting. Can I scale? Making right decisions? Overconfident but wrong? - Luck: Hard to overstate the massive role luck plays in careers. What didn't matter: - School reputation: Though many co-workers are from top-ranked schools, that's not held me back. - Grades: Never got near-perfect GPA/rank. These are used as filters for hiring. Beyond that, not much. - Expertise: Not being in academic research, my specific research mattered less. I am no 'expert'. - Overworking: I rarely work nights/weekends. Nobody asks me to. I find that trying too hard to get promoted can be net negative. Instead, I've tried to: - set career milestones - fix skill gaps - not be intimidated by high achievers but learn from them - associate with strong leaders - always introspect - take on challenges not knowing how to do it - avoid overworking - be empathetic - hope for some luck. Thanks for reading. --- #engineering #software #swe #tech
Thanks for sharing!
Being a director doesn’t exempt you from the blind tax. TC or GTFO
This Ape can’t read either. OP shared a story of a FB director.
I feel that whatsoever you shared might be / become the bare minimum necessary qualifications for a director for present time. In next ten years, the bar for a director would be considerably greater. Could you imagine/elaborate what would be the expectations of a director in next ten years?
I heard his group have bad wlb at fb.
yes, good to know the director doesn’t have to work long hours but that rarely applies to the lower levels
Yeah, the key for manager success is to "delegate the actual work and so they can focus on leadership (translation, kiss bosses' asses)", right?
Very inspirational
Very helpful guidance and inspirational!
how much of this hyperbole vs truth remains to be seen.
🍿
"-- A co-worker/housemate, and a PM lead, both All-India Rank 1 at IIT-JEE. -- A co-worker ranked World no. 1 in Topcoder. -- A close collaborator whose amazing work was called out by Stephen Colbert. -- Co-workers who navigate extreme ambiguity at breakneck pace with confidence I don't possess." How these "didn't" help you? Please explain, did it dent your confidence or they never helped you?
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