| I have been working for about 4.5 years now across 3 big tech companies (Google included). I would consider myself a hardworking and ambitious person who loves computer science. I graduated top of my class at a state school. I've gotten promoted, consistently "exceed expectations", lots of positive feedback, etc. But I have not actually accomplished a damn thing or written a single interesting or useful component in my professional work. The thing is, it's becoming clearer and clearer that so much of what goes on is bullshit. A pattern I have seen 3 times now is managers significantly over-hiring to build their little management moat of mediocre junior devs, then leaving on to brighter pastures with their shinier resume or promotion. Most of the work is dealing with other people's code messes, operational gruntwork, and ticket grinding that will have little to no impact and is a complete waste of smart people's time. It has little to do with building software or solving hard problems, just maintaining and tweaking the existing systems. It does absolutely nothing for your career. You could be Jeff Dean stuck on worthless legacy grunt crap with no upside and I doubt you would get noticed. On the flip side, people who actually get interesting, promotable work are the luckiest in the world. It is the difference between a rocket ship advance of career and skill or stagnation and frustration. But this is rare IMO. And it's so hard to tell going in which you're going to get. I've now taken a gamble on three teams that looked good on paper but turned out to be legacy management empire crap. It pisses me off that once you choose you're basically stuck there for a year or two before you can try again. I don't want to waste any more of my life on this merry go round. |