I had the pleasure of working with a handful of Pivots for about 2 years, and I have to say that felt like the closest I ever got to a healthy engineering culture. Delightful people, superb engineers, always focused on working and learning together. I feel really privileged to have worked in that environment.

For the first 10 years or so of my career, I didn’t even know my job title. I knew my pay, which is what I cared (and still care) about. They could call me the janitor as long as they paid me a good salary and the work didn’t change.

It wasn’t until one of my startups was bought by a big corp that I came to learn my job title, because suddenly it was tied to compensation. That mattered.

But you still had different pay, no? Seems like a clever way to make people less likely to complain about incentive package

> Measuring oneself as an engineer by the title of the salary band you're in is a disservice.

It's really not that deep - people do this because both a title and salary are effectively money you can bank and that's the only thing that matters - we don't work grueling, stressful, tedious, jobs just the sake of "a hard day's work".

> Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-hours work I did with Dimtriy to expand our offering to include IPv6.

I wish people would introspect more deeply instead of perpetuating toxic relationships with corporations; you're basically saying your most gratifying experience at work (where you are given a small slice of the net on your labor) was when you did something completely abstract and not when you got more money, more status, more whatever? Ok that's like saying my most gratifying experience at school was not when I graduated but when I had to sit in detention. Note I could've said "when I discovered XYZ mathematical principle" but I didn't because they're both equally as arbitrary in the overall scheme (learn skills and move into the workforce).

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I think an important skill is to comfortably see things in completely different ways, and leverage each view for how it helps.

Both views are simplified models, there is no conflict. Non-parallel lines are not a contradiction. For best navigation, triangulate. In a high N-dimensional nonlinear situation, accumulate lines/models/viewpoints.

That’s a pretty solid endorsement. Where do you work?

I think it's relatively straightforward to get to E5 even if just by being hired as one. A good number, I want to say a majority but don't have the data, of externally hired E5 at FAANG were E4 in their previous role.

Getting E5 to E6 seems to be the great filter. But if you know what it takes to go from E5 to E6, I think going from E6 to E9 is smooth sailing (provided you find wind in your sails).

But by then the marginal utility of a promotion starts dropping sharply. If you're already earning upwards of $450k as an E5, $550k or even $800k isn't that attractive.

The article author got it right, it's just the HN submitter who got it wrong.

Original title: "Waxing Asymptotic in Career Velocity"

I am 5 foot four and was born with a limp, do you think if I tried really hard I could have been a pro basketball player?

The entire idea that anyone can do anything they put their mind to is a lie. There are all sorts of path dependencies that limit what people can do.

I think you are confusing physical possibility with statistical probability.

And even physically, some things are just what they are. You can't escape death; you can't escape from a black hole, etc. You may claim these things may be possible in the future, but we are talking about what is currently possible.

But, the main way to understand the argument being made is: even if something is physically possible, if it is guaranteed that only say 10% people of people will achieve it, then you need to manage your expectations. It is exactly the same reason why gambling is a bad idea. In the aggregate, you are guaranteed to lose

A lot of grief arises because people ignore this basic concept. And, a lot of things in life are zero-sum: not all employees can be at the top level, otherwise that loses its meaning. Similarly, not all citizens can be president, not all people can be rich, etc.

I know that you know this isn’t true. You are telling me the only thing keeping a guy in a wheelchair out of the NBA is motivation? As for astronauts, NASA has a height limit of 193cm to be on a flight crew, so no amount of motivation is going to let a 6’6” guy be an astronaut.

These are the easy and obvious counters to your assertion that motivation is all it takes to be anything, but it is even true at most things. We like to believe that hard work is all that is needed to achieve anything you want, but any rigorous thinking and life experience will show this isn’t true. People have different skills and abilities, and some people simply don’t have the skills for certain things no matter how much they work at it.

Lastly, some of these things are simply numbers games. Every profession only has a limited number of opportunities, and some of these most highly desired ones are extremely limited. If there are two people who want to be the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, no amount of motivation is going to prevent at least one of them from failing to get the job. Even if both candidates had infinite motivation and infinite skill and infinite experience, only one of them can have the job.

I mean that's just obviously, objectively, not true. If you're born with 12-inch legs you are _not_ going to be an elite marathon runner. Heck, even if you're born with average genetics, you're not going to be an elite runner.

What would make us think the same thing isn't true of mental activities? Obviously there's a lot more noise in the signal, and it's a lot more subjective, but there's pretty much 0% chance that if anyone just "tries hard enough" they can become a genius.

My career goal was always to keep programming, because it was what I enjoyed doing the most. I resisted every single move which would result in doing things other than programming.

It wasn’t a good approach for money making, but at least the primary goal was achieved.

No idea which path would’ve been a better life with all things considered.