I am interested in impact and high TC. Is it possible to become a legit director before 30? Any suggestions? Choosing people manager or ic doesn’t sound interesting to me, I am more results oriented with an ability to lead. Please, let’s skip bs about startup inflated titles. I mean a legit director with visible impact.
Titles are easy to inflate. You can go to just about any startup and become a director before age 30. Now becoming a director at a major org before age 30? Not impossible, but much more difficult.
This is very true. I was "Creative Director" at my previous company, a startup, for 2.5 years, during the age of 27-29. I actually played the role and played it well, too. But that's a whole other story from being a CD at a larger company. My responsibilities were to lead the UX AND marketing collateral/ website for the company, and help facilitate all the communications between product, marketing, design and dev teams.
Zuckerberg and Gates were CEOs before 20. So yeah, of course it's possible.
I think OP meant appointment or promotion in medium to large-sized companies (not as entrepreneur/founder of your own company)
Yeah, we used to have VPs under 30 and CEOs under 40 - by the dozens - in the dot com era. Like others have said, it's possible. You need to be in the right place at the right time. In large companies, unless you're well-connected (like via Ivy league) or a prodigy, simply slaving on projects and getting top ratings won't get you there.
Right — in a well-respected company, you need to have great mentorship, excellent communication skills, solid execution, a razor sharp mind, high political acumen, and then you have a chance at being promoted from Manager to Director by the time you’re 30. It’ll take realistically 4-5 years, so you should start management when you’re about 26. This will be even more difficult because you may not have enough IC experience for ICs to take you seriously, and be too young for other managers to take you seriously. So it helps if you had work experience during college, and you should also hide your graduation dates, and be a little vague when answering questions about your age. (Reverse age discrimination in management is a real thing.)
Yep, that's why Bachelors from Ivy league or something by 21 with no further education - that gets you there.
First answer on Andrey Karpathy is great. Let’s eliminate startups, as I mentioned “legit” director with meaningful impact and results oriented
Director @ family business is always legit at any age.
Generally directly to vp
why not c exec
Directors actually make the same as ics in their late 20s.
Meihong Wang, hit director at Facebook at age 30. Yangqing Jia, hit director at Facebook at age 30, currently a VP at Alibaba.
996 will get you there
Was director in mid-sized company by 35. Hard but not impossible to do by 30. A lot of it is ability to play politics and having a sponsor.
We have quite a few product management directors who look under or around 30. Engineering would be rare
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not exactly under 30, but close - Andrej Karpathy became director of AI at Tesla by age 31
thanks, dude. he looks inspiring and exactly what I would be happy to be