I've been at FB for around 8y, 20+yoe, TC 400 < x < 500, varies a lot based on bonuses and such. Core skills are SRE. My current situation isn't really working. - I want to move to be closer to family (NYC area), but FB remote work policy says my work is 15% less valuable if I do it my video calls originate from elsewhere, thus they want a 15% pay cut. Not really interested in the work in the NY office, it's a lot more of the same as I'm doing now. - All my large RSU refreshers have vested and the small ones are too small to care about - Work is super boring, I'm stuck in a team doing maintenance coding on an internal product that was designed like shit and I can't change teams and go remote at once because reasons and rules. If I were to wait for FB, it would take a least another full year before I'm close enough to family for kids to see grandparents regularly. - TC is pretty much stagnant since I've hit the top of my band. I don't really want to go for promo because I've seen managers run people through the "we cant tell you exactly what to do, but we need a little more" treadmill for years. - My core skills are SRE-like, close to the OS and hardware, deep diving, performance engineering, predicting outages, etc. The work I'm doing isn't anything like that. - Totally bored, spend more time writing games for my kid's tablet than actual work Started looking around at other positions and it seems people are interested. I'm talking to these guys right now NYC - have to commute, but this is close to family and looks interesting - Jane Street - Looks fascinating, but commute and I'd rather have 3 hours of my life daily than amazing TC - PDT Partners - Same Remote - Bridgewater - Not too interested, their culture seems like a bad fit for me - Door Dash - Looks generic, kinda boring, warned of the oncall from past employees - Dropbox - "Just like FB but smaller" according to friends. I kinda like the smaller, but maybe I'm looking for more of a change after so long. I probably won't get past the leetcode - Anyscale - I don't know anything about them other than they're like databricks and heavily rely on ray.io. Kinda reminds me of docker where they have their entire business based on a great name that makes them no money, but I have no facts here to back that up. - Series B security startup, a16n funded - Team is run by an ex FBer that I know, I'm pretty sure I can get the job if I want it. Recruiter went on about how it's a small company that's planning on doubling in 2021 and again in 2022 and already has funding for it, if I want to move towards director role, this may be a good option. I'd love some opinions from people that have more experience choosing a position than I do.
It sounds like anything requiring a commute is a no go.
Maybe start your own business
I've tossed around the idea of writing games, but it doesn't seem profitable without lots of luck or money. Seems like a better side gig. The only other things I know how to build that other people don't involve massive amounts of funding like asteroid mining or faster communications. I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind giving me that kind of money.
What have you heard about head of doordash SRE? Looks like former Google SRE which is pretty hardcore right?
I haven't heard anything about specific people. I heard that the app stack was all basically in the same bucket and the pager went off constantly, spend all your time fighting fires.
Yeah, I guess I'm extrapolating that someone with many years of experience on Google SRE went to DoorDash to work on problems as interesting, or more interesting, as Google, but totally conjecture.
Better.com is in NYC and hiring pretty aggressively. I think they’re cool with remote. Obviously Spotify has the best remote policy at this point.
They don’t pay much
Consider Plaid then! DM me for a referral
I don't think Dropbox is "just like FB but smaller" -- smaller yes, just like FB nah, its really hard to get fired here, apart from getting impacted by layoffs. Whether you'll find interesting work is an unknown though
Stay away from Dropbox. No future there though that was obvious way before they IPOed and then tanked.
Where were you before FB? Also, interested in Bloomberg? We manage our own datacenter and have pretty legit SRE practices
You think Bloomberg will offer him 500k ?
500k maybe hard but nothing wrong in trying it out (HR phone could filter too high TC anyways so little time wasted). Also I didn’t get a sense TC was OP’s major drive🤞🏻
But unlikely OP will go down from 500k to 300k..
The way you have worded it, it seems that you already know what to do. I'm not sure this group will be able to give good advice as you seem fairly experienced and know what you what you like and don't like. It seems you have covered the qualitative metrics. Do you have some quantitative metrics you're looking for?
I'm worried that I go somewhere else and I'm just as bored with their issues. I'm amazingly effective when I'm motivated by something that interests me and far less so when I'm bored. I'm also worried I'm missing something, some company that would be a great fit or any problems at these companies that should make me avoid them.
I see. Yes, I think I'm in the same boat. Highly ineffective when the work is not fun and highly effective otherwise. Not sure I can give you some solid advice , our interests don't align. I can think of two groups within Google you may like: Fuchsia (swe work) and a SRE group that deals with massive outages. I get the impression that you're hesitant to take the plunge to try something else. Which is reasonable, considering your tenure. Ultimately i think that's your issue. I think at the end of the day you won't find any response here that will help you move forward you'll have to do that on your own.