DOUBLE The Pay? But Is This Engineering Role Risky?

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what's up it's the last day of the year 2024 just heading back from Crossfit let's get these windows clear um going to go to Reddit for a topic today um I think this is a super interesting one I feel like I don't see people talk about this kind of thing a lot sorry these windows are still too mangled and this spot is kind of crappy to back out of oh there's a car coming of course that what happened today um but the topic is about someone who's been kind of uh I don't know stuck at a a particular pay in their job for a while and they said it's it's newe to family situation so it's not like um I don't know some other Factor like they can't get promoted or they don't you know they've never tried looking for a job or something but

uh or never considered it I think they're saying got some family stuff going on for a while for whatever personal reasons kind of keeping them in their job and they're kind of feeling like paywise it's kind of mostly plateaued whatever but they said on a whim they said I'm going to go start applying so I don't know exactly what changed for them so kind of an interesting Omission from the post but something's changed and we're we're at the very end of December right now they were saying they applied to some jobs at the beginning uh first job rejected them second uh jobs are kind of quiet and um then sort of very recently they got an update from the two jobs and uh one was a small incremental increase in pay and the other one was pretty significant uh I don't know what the currency

is that they were talking about I I suspect it's from India I'm not totally sure but they just had a like a letter for it I think so um but the the unit like basically the the quantity was almost double so that's a pretty significant Step Up in pay now they were saying they're kind of like hesitant I guess maybe is a good word for it because it's going to be for a principal level engineering role now they've been a software engineer they said I think for 15 and 1/2 years okay so for context um I'm a principal engineering manager at Microsoft uh I had been managing engineering teams for eight years before that I had two years of working experience built up before that so like 10 years so 10 years and I was uh you know accepted into a Microsoft principal engineering manager

uh sorry for a principal engineering manager role um this person has 15 and a half years so they have 50% more work experience than I had um now I know like not every year is equal not all work experience is equal we're talking about engineering manager versus software engineer um like there's a lot of differences here but my point is that if we assume some of these variables are roughly the same uh they do have you know like 50% more time in Industry than I would have um when I was applying to Microsoft so the reason I'm saying that is because if they felt like they had quality years of you know in their career then I I feel like that's that's a pretty significant amount of experience okay it's not like hey like I you know graduated from college University and then after a

couple years I'm senior and now it's like year three and they're putting me to principal and it's like I don't know um I think after like 15 and 1 half years they've seen a lot but the reason that I think this is such an interesting topic is because um I don't often hear people talk about this it's like I got a job offer hell yeah I'm taking the one with more money like no brainer jumping into it um and that's like that's all I see so this is very interesting that this person is hesitant and they're saying I'm not actually sure if I'm like prepared for that now their sort of their stance at the end of their post was like uh like that's they're leaning towards taking that job I'm assuming because the the other job offer they have is only a small step

up and pay so it's kind of like I talked about this on one of the recent vlog entries but the um sort of like the overhead that it might put on you to go switching careers for like an a what might seem like a very small change in pay you might be like it's just not worth it like there's a a lot of hassle to go learn stuff maybe for some people that's a really good opportunity they're like um pay is the same pay is maybe less and they're like I think that this is going to be a better learning opportunity or better balance in my my work life uh balance right so like for some people that like the pay might not be a big factor um but it seems like for this individual they're saying like kind of seems to be one of

the focal points that they have so they are leaning towards this role that's higher paying like significantly but also comes with a higher title so the where my head is at for like for navigating this is like is this impostor syndrome or or are they genuinely the impostor right like I I would lean like without knowing this person again if I make some assumptions about 15 1/2 years assuming those are some good working years not just like wasted trying to Coast that's probably a good amount of experience like I I'm kind of doubting that they are an impostor they probably do have the necessary skills but it's as they're talking through this in the post you can tell they're kind of like second guessing themselves um so my my gut feeli tells me this is some imposter synd going on um but at the same

time like without knowing this person and knowing where their skill sets are like maybe maybe they have genuine concerns about thinking about they kind of mention it right like you know I think I'm going to have to spend more time doing architecture like do I have to brush up on that like how like all these things that like at a principal level these are your expectations now right it's not like oh good job that you did that it's like it's not just good job it's like that's we expect that of you you need to be doing that uh at steady state so this person is kind of doing this reflection and going hm like I don't know how much of that I do already or how much experience I actually have doing that like what is my comfort level doing that um so I mean

a couple thoughts come to mind here for me it's like one I think I know like when people talk about imp Coster syndrome it's like very much a we don't like it we want to like how do we get rid of it how do we prevent it like it's this thing that's like you know stopping us from achieving greatness is like often how it feels like it's framed but I think in this context it's actually a bit of a helpful tool um depending on the severity of it and I wanted to talk about this a little bit more um I don't think it's helpful when it starts to you or starts to make you like genuinely fearful right if it's truly inhibiting you I think that's where it's like that's not that's not good I don't think that we need to impose any more I

don't know like barriers for our success on ourselves but I think it this is why it sounds kind of funny I guess but I think a little bit of it's actually helpful because in this case it's forcing this person to do some reflection okay like they're they're genuinely asking themselves or asking I don't know like depending how you look at it like like I don't know if these are some of the things I'm good at so I think it's helpful in this case because they're going I think these are expectations at a principal level so they're they're doing this analysis and going at this level these are new expectations okay and where where are my skills so clearly they interviewed people that interviewed them they they have the belief that this person can operate at that level that's a that's a good sign obviously but

when this person's doing their honest reflection I think it's helpful for them to go hm like if I'm expected to do more architecture work maybe like the maybe the answer here is not oh I guess I shouldn't take the role because I don't have a ton of architecture experience or I don't feel confident in it I think the answer is hm I'm going to take this role this is my opinion by the way I'm going to take this role and I know that I feel uncomfortable about architecture I feel like that's an area I need to improve in so what should I do I should go spend time and improve this skill like instead of looking at these things like oh no I don't have this skill oh no that's preventative oh no that's a barrier that's going to keep me from this I'm going

to fail instead of doing that try reframing it to be like okay like these are the things that I need to get better at and I'm going to acknowledge them I'm going to jump into this and I'm going to make sure that I'm spending extra time improving these things that I think need more effort um so it's hard to answer this kind of stuff without knowing more details about the person like uh for example if I could sit down and talk with them and uh like I guess like interview them maybe not the same way but like just to get an understanding of like when they're talking about their confidence in architecture or leading projects and things like that like if I were to hear them talk about examples of when they've done this are are they able to share examples of it and they're

just kind of like maybe being modest or again like the impostor syndrome is kicking in or is it truly like hey man I managed to get by and I haven't really actually spent time leading projects or I haven't spent much time doing architecture if it's more of the latter where it's like I haven't spent time doing these things um what I would say to a person that's in a situation like this is like you have a job offer and you're like I don't know if I can do some of the expectations I talked about this in another video where I said job hopping uh and this isn't the case for this person but similar kind of thing to think about is I said in a previous video that I absolutely think that people can uh if you like hyperfocus on job hopping you can really

try to optimize like how much you're making and you can optimize like your your career ladder progression but potentially at the cost of this increased risk of like I can't do my role effectively so this also comes to mind as this person's talking but based on their you know their provided information they're not job hopping uh I think they were saying like they've been at the same place for quite a while now so certainly not that but uh it's this you know this situation where someone's like I'm about to take on a rooll and I don't know if I can do it so I think it's the the hyper focus on job hopping really highlights this kind of thing but I don't think that this person I don't think that they're in that situation so I I suspect a lot more of it is impostor

syndrome but uh I wanted to bring up the job hopping part because same same idea when you find yourself like in this opportunity where you're like cool there's this you know it could be cool job it could be uh you get to relocate and that's awesome could be awesome pay could be all the above but you're like I don't know if I can do the roll so I think for I got to clear this windshield holy crap where did that come from um I think it depends on the person a lot though if you're if you're someone who's not like self-motivated right like if you're not the kind of person who's like okay I got to figure out how to do better on this so I got to turn here um if you're not the kind of person to do that like when do you

think it's going to happen right so that's the thing that I would I would want you to be honest with yourself about now I would still be hard pressed to tell someone hey you know what maybe you shouldn't take the the job that's paying twice as much if all other things are equal truly and I don't know that for a fact here but if they were all other things are equal but one of them is going to pay you twice as much I would say I would think you need to be very concerned that you will not be able to operate at that level if you are very concerned and you're like I don't think that I have a in me like the initiative um or you know maybe I need to dedicate extra time to go scale up or uh put in a little

bit of extra effort upfront you know when I'm uh starting the job position like if all those are things where you like absolutely not don't have capacity for it which by the way it's not a wrong answer depending on where you are in life you know your work life balance and all these other things it's absolutely acceptable to say like I do not have time or capacity to deeper on some of these things that's okay it's not wrong but if you're considering that then I would say well okay like when you go to take this rooll on like how do you expect if you feel like you're not there how do you expect to get there if it's not extra time or extra effort and it's it's not like a that's not like a condescending question or phous question it's it's a genu one question

like because if not how do you feel about like when it comes time for performance rewards and like do you do you want to feel like you're in a job position where you're like hell yeah I'm rocking this every time uh or are you willing to take on a little bit of risk and being like maybe you know maybe I'm going to go through a period where my performance is not topnotch because the bar is set so much higher than you're used to right you might not even the reality is you might be thinking the bar is set way higher because of the job title and the pays higher and you might get into it and you're like oh this is all the stuff I do anyway like it's fine but these are things that I would want you to think about when um sort

of doing like the the risk analysis is kind of how I might look at that so I think there's a bunch of things to think about but I I I thought this question was really interesting because I I feel like when I'm hearing people talk about job offers and stuff I almost never hear people kind of take this perspective it's almost always the opposite right um social media is pretty bad for people being like I've you know I've been coding for one week and I landed a $900,000 a second job and take my course and you can be just like me and then the course is like I didn't actually get the job but if you sell a chorus and you charge $900,000 and someone buys it you can make $900,000 in a second um you know what I mean like it all feels kind

of like typical social media um not to say that there aren't people out there that have had great success doing things fast and that's awesome but like man like that's not the norm like let's it's just not the norm so we don't need to always look at things for that lens and social media is kind of crappy for that so I thought good opportunity to actually have some reflection um I again I don't know this person so I'm genuinely hopeful that they have a little bit of imposter syndrome kind of making them kind of check themselves and I'm hopeful that you know based on their own reflection they're like I think I can do this or I think I can put in a little bit of effort if there are some things that maybe uh maybe aren't where they want them to be operating at

and they take the role right um before I kind of pull into my house here the the thing that I wanted to kind of like channel into this conversation is like I've in my own career I've talked about this many times in my own career there's been situations where I've been kind of put into something that feels uncomfortable based on my experience okay and um you know first example going from a startup to Big Tech Tech I'm at a principal engineering manager level okay that's pretty cool that's uncomfortable do I think I can do it I do though like I think I'm capable of that but what about the team I was on substrate deployment deploying to hundreds of thousands of machines across the world I've never had to work with anything in the data center before okay but did I do it I sure

did for 3 and a half years and then I switch teams and I work on the routing plane for substr now we serve trillions of requests per day do I know anything about routing technology in detail before coming onto the team nope right so I have found that putting myself into uncomfortable situations for me has worked extremely well but again this is based on I know myself right like I don't I don't like putting myself in uncomfortable situations but when it kind of happens I know that based on what I'm like like I don't I don't like feeling like an idiot and what's the way to not feel like an idiot is to try and learn your so I think that because of that and because of like how I am when I'm put into uncomfortable situations I'm like I got to learn it's a

forcing function I don't like being uncomfortable I will learn so maybe this individual is similar in that regard where they're like you know I'm put into this principal engineering level it's uncomfortable but like I don't want to be uncomfortable like I'm going to get better or I'm going to address those gaps maybe that's imposter I going to address those gaps so I feel confident again in them um if they're not that kind of person it might be a struggle so I think that it it takes some reflection some honesty uh but I'm very hopeful that this person has a success with that so hope that was kind of interesting I don't have any more driving to do today uh because I'm working from home tomorrow's New Year's so I guess by the time you're watching this though it will be New Year's so happy New

Year to you um I wanted to remind folks if you have questions and stuff if you watch this far um you know put them in the comments find Dev leader on social media send me a message uh but yeah I I'm super excited to have a full year of code commute with all of you so thanks for being here with me um yeah it's a lot of fun so I appreciate all the all the questions to come in and people are reaching out on social media so thanks so much and I'll see you next time take care