Long Read.
Summary: 25+ yoe, 12 years in USA, then 15 years in China, then back in the US and career got reset. How to get it back on track?
So, my first several years of career in the USA was fairly typical of folks here on Blind - Was a Junior Engg, Senior Engg, then Tech lead. Then decided to explore the world and went to China where I was a Professor for a few years, then got back to tech and was mostly in the startup space in Beijing. I was number 2 and 3 hires of 2 startups. The first one failed in about 3 years. The second one grew to 30 and profitability over 4 years. I was CTO in both. During my years in China I was mostly out of touch with the US tech career world, especially career progressions, what HR looks for while hiring etc.
Then I got married and returned to the US (approx 2.5 years back).
I applied for jobs and got no responses.
A recruiter reached out for a contractor position at Facebook at Menlo Park. I cleared the interviews and joined. The pay all in was 150k with 0 benefits. Being new, it looked ok. Joined and was surrounded by recent graduates as it turns out the position was for a Junior programmer. It was a terrible fit and I completed the 6 month contract and left.
Next company - while interviewing I told them I wanted more of a management role. But they were hiring aggressively for tech and promised to transition me over to management with time. It was for a Staff SWE role and it was 160k in Los Angeles with benefits. I accepted and was performing mostly in a management role and things were going well.
After little more than a year, another company contacted me for a remote Senior Engineering Manager position. The interviews went very well and the job offer was made, but the offer letter was for an Engineering Manager position. All correspondence till then was for a Senior position. The pay was 200k with benefits, bonus and stock, so I took it but have a strong sense of resentment that they have cheated me (this is where I am now for about 2 months).
Now comes the turmoil. I have been back in the US for about 2.5 years. I now have a clear idea of how tech, hiring, HR etc works here. In my 3 positions in the USA, after joining there has been a very clear feeling from both my side and company side that I am over qualified. In my opinion, my natural fit would be approx DOE at a mid sized firm. But when I now apply for those positions, HR looks at my current position which is EM and it doesn't even get considered. I now realize I made a mistake and should have directly jumped to a DOE position when I got back from China even if that meant waiting without a job or unemployment for several months. But the damage is done. Applications now are not even clearing first HR screening.
Question: What should I do now? I can suck it up and just grind away at where I am and go through the EM -> SEM -> DOE route over the next few years. Things are going very well at the present company - I am already leading 2 teams and made a significant product in approx 2 months. People listen to me and it's quite easy to lead. OTOH, I cannot shake off the feeling that they cheated me.
I can try switching companies for an SEM role. I now realize that this is going to be difficult because my current and previous titles show too much 'juniority'.
What would you advice me to do? Looking for answers mostly from senior management folks. I know this post will not be popular and will fall off the "hot" topics quickly, but for me it's a long term issue. So if you are senior and have suggestions, please post even if it is 2 or 3 years old. It's likely I may still be looking for feedback.
Thanks and it felt great getting it off my chest.
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comments
Advise - it is difficult or near impossible to get very high level jobs in large companies without a network. It is not the title in your resume holding you a back.
Until you have a network, you can play the numbers game and apply to hundreds of doe/vp roles and expect 99% to fail for no real reason.
Your resume format should be different too. Summary/qualifications should list your cto experiences/successes and take most of resume. You can even condense your recent swe jobs as “various positions in x, y, z” 2019-2021
As side note, cto of 30 person company is extremely different from cto in large company. At best your experiences were equivalent sem. It take a completely different skill set that you don’t have experience with.
On the networking side, yes I am rebuilding my US network but this is a long term process.
Over the past 2 or so years, several startups have reached out for these positions. Another group that has reached out is more mature startups that have a new product idea and want someone to build out the product and the teams. This is something I love and have very direct experience with.
However, with experience I have learned that my career progression at startups is very sensitive to the product and the co-founders. Non-startups may be boring but they are reliable. So bottom line, I have to interview many more startups than non-startups to find something that make sense.
Thanks for writing.
But if you do enough research, you can find startups that at least has a good trajectory (which VCs invested, what are their growth numbers, etc), ride that growth, do well, and youll be able to jump to a unicorn or BigCo!
Good luck OP
2. You can climb up the ladder at the current company. Talk to the HR/senior management and see if they can fast track your promotion.
3. Network and see if someone can refer you for a director of engineering at a mid size company.
4. Do contract jobs that pay a lot.
I am working on the networking part, but it is a long term process.
1 and 2 are something I can do right now.
Thanks for writing :-)
That was your biggest mistake for your level.
I would first highly recommend shedding some resentment. Nobody forced you to take these jobs, nobody cheated you. You should have known that those pay ranges weren't even in the realm of management/senior management. 200k is new grads. Understanding markets is a very very basic attribute of an engineering director. Taking responsibility is also a primary trait of senior leadership.
Also, and don't take this the wrong way, but leading a 30 person startup team doesn't map to senior manager as a large firm. Not even close. Our most recent L7 management hire ran a 200 person eng org as a CTO. I don't see anything in your experience that would guide me to that level, even ignoring your US work.
As for a path forward, as a DOE you should have a fairly broad network. I understand that it is Chinese based, but how large has your second startup gotten?
Have any of your previous team now at a larger firm at a senior position which would have U.S operations? e.g. bytedance
That would be your best way forward. At senior levels, people tend to bring in "their team" - i.e people they have worked with before.