It’s a genuine question — I also went to similar level schools as them like GaTech, University of Southern California, Pune Institute of Technology, etc. And just like them I also started as SWE at a mid-size company like Oracle, LinkedIn, etc. on a work visa. How exactly are they able to achieve such massive success? #tech #swe #confluent #kafka #bayarea #oracle #linkedin #amazon #google #meta
A combination of hard work, luck and right place at the right time.
And being good do identify problems and find a good solution.
She co-developed Apache Kafka. Have you developed something similar and useful?
He develops useless blind posts.
Looks like she worked hard, partnered with some other talented people at LinkedIn (Jun Rao and Jay Kreps), and came up with a winning product (Apache Kafka) She then took a risk and started a company with those two. How many of those things have you tried?
Timing is everything in life! Right time at the right spot! She was a mediocre IC, she did intern and later joined the same team after graduation. That team(Jay, Jun, etc) was working on streaming. She had a huge ego issue and wasn’t very acceptable by all. But you know how things work when you form a company that is based on a very popular + well-accepted technology. I believe she was let go from her CTO role, which is expected.
Lmao sounds like a lot of salt there
Check with the folks from Confluent, also I know (many of us) the story
Real answer: Being naive and foolish enough to believe in your own project to quit your job and starting a business around it and actually being lucky enough to succeed at it. Most smart people see all the flaws and things that can go wrong and don’t take the leap. To be fair, 99/100 such leaps result in failure. But one of those turn into a massive hits. This is all to say there is no paved path to such success that you can replicate.
Gluck
Back in the day, a lot of problems were unsolved and there were a lot of low hanging fruits. A lot of people were promoted faster and got rich by solving these low hanging fruits. I'm sure all of us have solved tough engineering challenges, but unfortunately we entered the tech industry at a time where there was less value on engineering excellence and more on making profits. Today making the company more money is valued and rewarded over actually improving the engineering quality of something. I've seen people get promoted for simple UX changes but the backend engineers who worked hard aren't rewarded. It's all about showoff these days. She like many others who worked in tech in the 2000s got lucky being in tech at a time when engineering quality was rewarded.
Sounds like the same thing I heard from folks in the early 2000s about the 90s. “Oh, if I’d only gotten here N years ago when there was more opportunity” Hell, I may have said that once too, and you know what? It’s an excuse.
Just look at the stock price growth from 2000s vs today and 90s vs 2000s, you'll have your answer about how fast things have changed and companies grew from 2012-2019. I made a lot of money from 2015-2019 and worked on the best projects. People today though don't get to work on interesting projects due to the economic downturn. These days it's more about money than career growth or engineering challenges. I don't even want to be like her, I like my boring, stable life so this is far from an excuse.
People have lame role models she is a real role model for folks on visa and basically all immigrants to the US.
Who?
Tech Industry
Yesterday
2674
Tech companies to avoid as a white guy?
Tech Industry
Yesterday
2220
1 vs 5 Million - no lifestyle change
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1879
Lack of diversity in engineering division at X
Tech Industry
2d
27943
How did this happen? (Meta Stock)
Layoffs
Yesterday
2115
Fired without warning, no severance. Top performer.
Because she co founded confluent ? How else . She promoted fast worked on a lot of streaming infra and intensive data pipelines , built her niche realized a gap in the space and co founded a very very successful company. It’s not about the school.
The missing part of the story is how she slowed down confluents ability to be successful early and was toxic to engineering culture to the point she was forced out of the day to day. The moral of the story is to a) be a good engineer and b) be super lucky in terms of team you end up on
One of the best comments, thank you confluent!