If you’ve worked at multiple companies across “tiers” (Google to Salesforce to Target for example) what did you notice the difference really was of employees on average? Would you compare it to how colleges at different tiers are (everywhere has some smart people just a matter of how many?)
The colleges analogy is apt. One of the cultural benefits of the higher concentration at top tier companies: even when there is disagreement, there is a lot more respect for fellow employees and their work because you know how high the bar is to get in. In other places, it's easy to dismiss people as idiots and wonder how they work in the same place as you.
Been at Sun, HP, yahoo, various startups and now salesforce. I would say that actually yahoo had the best engineers on average, but I was there over a decade ago. The problem yahoo had was that the top level leadership were terrible. The same thing happened to HP actually. After the HP founders were gone it was just a shitshow at the top. it used to be a great company that took care of its employees. Salesforce people are more political and the range of competency varies so much it baffles my mind. In general the architects here are really good but I think the middle layer has a lot of junk because salesforce as a company is too nice to actually fire people. The smallest startups had a lot of smart junior people that are super immature. I am definitely showing my age with this post.
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Worried that our top performer is an attrition risk. How do managers handle this?
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I’m Sooo Happy about Biden signing TikTok ban bill today!!
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Avoid teams with only Chinese or Indians especially with a Chinese/Indian manager
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Heard congress distributing wealth
I’ll start it off, having been at Microsoft and qualtrics. I’d say at MS there were definitely some impressive people but if I had to put a word on the average person it’s “competent.” Not everyone is amazing but they fundamentally understand how to do their job day to day and execute on the details. At Qualtrics, there’s a lot of high powered performers but a lot of unpolished people with years of experience that make (IMO) junior mistakes that they try to make up for with “hustle.” There are also a lot of junior employees that clearly don’t have strong managers teaching them basic day to day “how to” skills, more of “hustle and get it done.”
Do you mind to DM me? I have some questions. When I try to DM you, my Blind crashes. :))