Understanding Down Leveling and Team Matching

It takes more than hiring both Alice and Bob to solve the encryption problems once and for all to be a great softwareineer Eng. This is episode 300 8 of the Soft Skills Engineering Podcast. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. I'm your host, Dave Smith. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice show where we talk about all the non-technical stuff that goes into the technical field of software development, and we we only have three people that do anything with encryption ever. Alice, Bob and and Jameson. I thought it was Eve. Oh my god. Yeah, maybe I can get a PhD by proposing a revolutionary fourth like stand in name for encryption scenarios. There probably is one. Oh yeah. I'll just take whatever however the many they have and then add one more and then that'll be my your contribution. Yeah then I'll go accept my Turing award. Right . Previously we were limited to fifty-six entity descriptions, and now we have fifty-seven and it's unlocked the field of cryptography. Thanks to the pioneering work of Jameson Dance, PhD. Yes . Cool. Well do you want to thank our patrons, Dave? I do. I have a one time shout out for Ocel and weekly shout outs for Memester Josh, Owen Chartle, Craig Motlin, I love Mavis, the stochastic parrot, Andrew Pollock, Arun Duna, Koshachtan Ohio, Patron.com.au, we're hiring, Ira Chan, Monkey Face Emoji, Jonathan King, testing is documenting dot org. Ola dopofadiy, Will Angel, my neighbor has smelly feet, Nick Hathaway, Travis Sanders, Braden Canes, John Grant name or emoji or whatever the phrase and whatever language you want every week on the show. And any dollar amount over zero gets you access to our Slack community. It's invested in yacht futures right now, so there's no physical yacht, but I can't wait for you to take delivery. Yes. I'm just imagining someone who submits a Patreon name that is like the script for the intro of the show. So we just it it sounds like we started the show over, but it's really someone 's name. It's like starts with hello, I'm so and so, welcome to episode, whatever. And and then they just like incept us. Show nested shows. I guess someone could dictate the contents of our show if they wanted to leave a long enough description. But don't, please. Yeah. We we will be committed. Yeah, and if it's long enough, then you might like DDoS our brains and then we'd die because we wouldn't be able to get up and get drinks or all that other stuff. This episode is sponsored by Hired, which is the best way to quit your job and get a new one, and we will hear more about them very soon. Alright, shall I read our first question? Please do. This comes from an anonymous listener who says, I'm currently working at a FANG in Europe and seriously underpaid. For those that don't know, Fang is a stand-in for a bunch of the typically highest paying tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google. Alright. Continuing. I recently got an offer from a US startup which is series C funded to work remotely. Two big pluses, I'm going to get a two times pay bump, and I can finally work remotely and travel across Europe since they support work from anywhere. Now that COVID restrictions are are relaxed, this is something I've wanted to do for years. Two problems. Their tech stack is Ruby on Rails. Something that no air quotes big companies use, so I may not be considered seriously because, of the last X years of working on a not so famous tech. And currently tech environment screams of a recession, so I'm safer at a big company than some startup. Do you think two and a half years in a Fang provides enough credibility to take care of both of these problems if things go south. Any other factors I should consider when moving from Fang to a remote startup job? Hmm. 5 years in a Fang. I imagine that's this is that this person's first job then? Yeah, it could be . Mm-hmm. Enough credibility to take care of both of these problems. It it sounds like they're saying even if things go south of the startup, I have this two and a half year long stint at a fan company to kind of fall back on as as credentials in a way. Is that right? Yeah. So there's kind of a I guess there's a a premise here that we may have to determine if we agree with, which is that certain technologies, in this case Ruby on Rails, are not likely to be in demand at f a future company this person wants to work for. Yeah. It's kind of wild that Ruby on Rails is now legacy tech in this person's mind. Huh. Remember the the Ruby on Rails like anti Java Crusade. Yeah. And there's a lot of hype and hyperbole about how Ruby and Rails were killing Java and and Java's demise has been greatly exaggerated. Yes, that's that's uh certainly bigger than ever. But it yeah, it's wild that this thing that still in my mind has this air of like new hotness. Doesn't seem like it has that anymore to to newer folks in the industry. Yeah, they're on like version seven. If you look at their change log, it's just pages and pages and pages going back thirteen years. Yeah. So wild. Yeah. I still don't know if anything is like better than it or a better like quick developer experience for building the kind of stuff you build in Rails. It's so it's weird that it's legacy because it feels like we haven't I guess single I don't know. I'm getting I'm getting technical. I better stop. Yeah man my my eye was starting to twitch. Like what is going on? I feel like single page apps have contributed to the downfall of Rails because it was definitely geared more towards server rendering and they've done a bunch of work to catch up, but maybe like the reputation has not caught up with the capabilities or something. It is it is the case though that at big companies you don't tend to see rails. But I still see it a lot at small companies. Yeah. And there's a lot of like famous now big companies that have kept rails too. Like Airbnb still use rails and yeah, Shopify. Okay , well I'm doing the bad tangent instead of the good tangent where we talk about technical stuff. Yeah. So I mean here's the question. If first of all, do you agree that using Rails for some number of years is actually harmful to your credibility as an engineer. No. No, I think it's fine. Me neither. It's kinda weird. I think if you pitch yourself as as a Rails expert that only knows and wants to work in Rails, yeah. Then it it might be hard to do other stuff, but I only want to do Rails. So look, I want to get this job, but before you hire me, you have to rewrite everything in Rails first. Or it'll be a really big onboarding ticket for me. Right. The hiring market has been pretty frothy, but I've never heard of it getting that frothy. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You get to demand tech rewrites in your contract. I'm starting in three weeks and you gotta rewrite all this crap before I get here. Okay. I mean you're the only engineer that responded to any of our job postings, so I guess we're gonna have to do that . It'll be interesting for you to be on the other side of unrealistic rewrite timelines now. You'll be the client saying, What? It's not done. It's been three weeks. Hey, bad news. I know we hired you three weeks ago and promised to rewrite everything in Rails, but we just got our second applicant and they said it has to be Java . Looks like we're moving to microservices. Yeah, looks that's that that's exactly right. It's not about the microservice architecture. It's about the the whims of the software developers who happen to work on each service. There is a a more than tiny kernel of truth to that. I think that's a lot of the motivation. It's like I get to do whatever I want and I just publish this API and ignore all of the other hard distributed system problems and like platform standardization problems. Boy. Technical, non-technical episode today. Yeah, super . Yeah, I think you're fine if you if you work on Rails for a while. Yeah, as long as you can show I can learn other stuff, that's fine. Yeah, and I do I do actually think so you know ev even if you did take the argument that Rails is ha is somehow a blot on your resume. I do think that two and a half years of Fang experience will be attractive to other Fang companies, even if there's say like a three year gap. I don't know why it is, but there is a bit of a club I've noticed among recruiters who see that you've got you know, oh you're applying for Google and I see you've got Facebook on the resume. It's like a hop between 'em. There's a special door for you. You know, maybe we'll skip the phone screen. Uh but the fact of the matter is though, all of these companies, as far as I know, and I've interviewed at several of these and worked at one of them, all of them have such a rigorous, demanding, grueling interview process that there's really no a shortcut through that. You might get like an expedited expedited treatment, or you might get to skip some of the earlier steps, but it doesn't really matter once you get to the actual core of the interview, what your legacy is or what your heritage is. Yeah. Yeah, so long story short, it'll help you get in the door. I don't think Rails is going to hurt you in any way whatsoever, unless you just completely forget everything else you know. You know? Yeah. And you're still gonna have to go through a pretty grueling interview process regardless if you decide you want to go back to a fang company. Yeah. What about the other part of current tech environment? I guess we should this is what June 2022 if you're listening to this far in the future and there's some indications of a downturn uh coming, uh kind of arriving unevenly depending on your company's health and Yeah. Whatever we say next, we're bound to look stupid in six months. I await the billions flooding in. Yeah. Wait, no, no, hang on, hang on. If I'm trying to make myself wrong, the market crashes horribly and I do not get a wealthy benefactor to just give me a billion dollars. Oh I see. That's your prediction. Oh I can't I can't wait to look real stupid when that turns out to be false. When the billions blow in. Yeah, I don't know. I I uh I'm gonna leave you know, there's there's there's a right way and a wrong way to be to pr to inaccur ately predict the market. The right way is to have an economics degree and predict it wrong. The wrong way is to not have an economics degree and predict it wrong. So I have no idea which companies are gonna be safer versus others, but I I don't think it's a slam dunk that big companies are somehow safer or provide more continuity. In fact, I think that at a bigger company, even if you're a star performer, the whims of the market may swoop in and just kick you out of that company because of where your desk happened to be located and not because of any of your particular contributions. Yeah. Whereas at a small company, you can, you know, there's a better chance you can rise to the top, be a top performer, and actually have that be a factor in whether you keep your job in a downturn. Yeah. Yeah, this is like a this is like a a a skill set Yeah, yeah. It's like what do I planning planning for bad things instead of good things. Like wait a minute. I only plan for pay raises and promotions. Yeah. What is what is this? What is this quit my job and don't get a new one thing? Right. What is that ? This is this is wrong. Uh yeah It depends a whole bunch on the state of your startup company that you're evaluating. And this is good practice no matter when you're joining, but especially in these times, it it is more important than ever to ask probing financial and business questions in your interview if you're looking at a startup and it's not kind of publicly known. Like what is their burn rate? What is their runway? What are their hiring plans? What are their plans if revenue drops? You know, like how how might this chart out for the next couple of years for you if you join this company? I've I've seen companies that are still hiring as fast as they can. I've seen companies just yesterday I think Coinbase posted that they are actually rescinding a bunch of offers and totally freezing all back fills and all new hiring. And there's some companies that have done layoffs. So there's there's a range of actions that companies are taking in this macro environment right now. And you can kind of infer a little bit about what the future might be if you dig into the business of of this company a bit? Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. At least knowing how w what what if we can't raise any money ever again? Like how long will the company survive? That feels like an always relevant question for joining a startup, but especially important now. Like if if they're if they're counting on the series D flowing in in a year, then it might not, and that could affect your calculations. Especially because firing is or layoffs are often last in, first out. So they lay the folks off who have joined most recently less context to lose and kind of like less less painful in some cases. Right. For the company. Yes, yes. For the company. Obviously. Yes. For the really it's all about the person who has to lay someone off. And we want to make So their their feelings are less hurt by having to say you don't have a job anymore to someone they've known for less time. So yes this this is the best possible thing for me. Yes . I'm confident this is the right decision because I don't know any of your hobbies. Oh man. I can sleep well at night, which is I won't even remember your name in three months. Yeah, so I I would say interrogate pretty deeply this startup and if you are joining a US startup and working remotely, if this is not a common pattern of them employing lots of folks in Europe, that would also be a red flag to me too. Because that might mean you're technically a contractor or through some third party and those are easier like legally sometimes to end easy easier relationships to end or or they just stick out more as like a thing to cut that is kind of like weird and okay when things are going great and when it's not it's it's a pain to put up with or something like that. So I would I would look into that as well. That's my advice. I'm all done. I agree. Hey Jameson, have you heard about the great resignation? Is it that Charles Dickens book? Wait, no. The entire population on Earth has started taking our advice and quit your job. Oh yes, that's right. Apparently we have achieved influ encer status. We've been telling developers for years to quit their jobs, and now we want to tell you how to do it. We're ready to reveal the secret. You mean you don't just walk out shooting finger guns? Yes. Well you do that first, but after you do that, there's a new service we want to tell you about called Hired. What is Hired, Dave? Hired is the biggest AI driven marketplace that matches engineers with companies. It is a great way to find your next job. I've been watching this industry for twenty years with a keen interest on hiring in particular, and I've never seen anything like hired. Tell me about what you're seeing. So I've interviewed about 150 people in the last year, and I am serious, every candidate that's come to me through Hired has multiple offers and they're incredibly high, scary high, like thirty percent higher than other candidates. Is that before or after the finger guns? Yeah. Uh both. The beauty is it's totally free for engineers uh and we would love for you to go try it. Go to hired dot com slash soft skills to check it out. Hired.com slash soft skills quit your job the best way and check out hired. How would you, Jameson, like to read our next question? More than anything. That's what I want to do right now. So I will. Because I do what I want. That's how I to decide what to do next in life. What's the thing I want to most do? This. And then it's amazing. Yeah. So I've been working at this big tech company for around four years and working as a mid-level engineer. I recently got approached by a Google recruiter for L5 or senior engineering position. I've led a few projects in my current company, but I don't consider myself a senior level. That and the fact that I've worked majorly in front end and the role I'm going to be getting interviewed for is full stack. Interview rounds seem to be focused on distributed systems mostly. I've got two questions. Is this some dirty trick in recruitment I have to be aware of? I hear about down level a lot, but never up level. If, say I do prepare like crazy and pass the interviews, do you think I may not have any luck with the team matching Google does. Like no team may want to hire a junior senior. Love the show, keep it up. Oh yes. Another Fang situation. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I've never worked at a thing. So I'm out. It's all you, Dave. Yeah. Okay . Yep . I do I do have some comments on down level, up level. Why what is down level, first of all? Is this a term you're you're familiar with, Jameson? Is this when you interview at some maybe you're interviewing for a senior role and they say, Well, not a fit for that, but we can offer you this mid level role instead. Right. Yeah, that's exactly what happens. And it's pretty common in these I don't know Google, if it's common to Google, I think it might be. I definitely common in other companies. And the reason you never see an up level is because at least at the companies I'm familiar with, the people who do the interviewing are at the level typically that you're interviewing for and they are not authorized to approve a higher at a higher level. That was a weird homonym higher and higher. So they're they just can't. Like it's the process is set up to totally prevent up leveling. There's there's just no way for that to happen. So that's why you never hear about it. So I think there there is some inform ation missing from folks that are interviewing to up level people, and there are also some incentives. Mm-hmm. If I'm a senior engineer and I'm interviewing someone for a senior role, I might not feel like I know what a staff engineer does or or like I would do those things. If uh if uh like I'm I'm at the role that I know the best and and what it takes to move up it might be a little bit fuzzy to me. There's also I I don't think this is a thing people would do deliberately, but certainly some maybe some some bias that might creep in where folks feel like especially if they want to level up, they might be reluctant to level up someone in the interview because that's my spot. Yeah, that's that's my spot. Or like what else would it be? Yeah, it's my spot, or like if I don't get it, nobody can. I'm not saying these are conscious feelings that people have, but but something that might affect their evaluation of folks a little bit. I agree. Now, having kind of explored down level and up level in during the interview process , I will say, to answer the question directly, is this a dirty trick in recruitment? I don't think so. I think it's very often the case that recruiters when they're going out casting their nets to try to bring in engineering fish , they don't often know what level you're really appropriate to interview for. They've got an idea, but it's pretty fuzzy in a lot of cases. And so it's it's not usually the case in my experience that they go out targeting people who are not experienced enough and then they dangle this senior level in front of them as like a as bait. You know, come in, interview for senior. So I don't think it's a dirty trick. Yes. Just wait until you get a level two offer. Anyway, the I don't think it's a dirty trick, but I actually do think that it does increase their chances of success because a down level offer is much easier to make than an at level offer. I I saw so many cases of senior engineers being interviewed and it was like, oh man, we just have a couple of concerns. I'd feel a lot better if we downleveled this and everyone just the whole room you can see the temperature just be like ah yes that's the answer it's a down level and so I I suspect recruiters do know that going in that they have a better success rate if they come in higher to start and then end up downleveling you. So that's that's a real it's a real outcome. Yeah. So so it's it's both recruiters aren't necessarily super accurate judges of your level from your resume and the screening they do, and just like your level might get pushed down as sort of a trend in the interview process. Is that what you're saying? I am saying that. And not only that, and I but I think like to the to get to the nefarious part, do recruiters know that? Yes. They absolutely know that down levels happen. And so they absolutely know they should come in with a higher level they should bias toward uh higher levels to start the process, knowing that that increases the chances of success on the back end of it.. Yeah So not a dirty trick. In fact, it might even be to your benefit. You know, like more likely you get an offer. Yeah. I think one thing that you are implicitly saying is that you should think about whether you would want to accept a lower level offer if they give it to you. If if you're interviewing only one hundred percent for this L five level and at L four, you would spit at their feet and storm off. I don't know. It makes it more expensive to interview there because you're you're going for L five or nothing, you know? Right, right, right. So I would do some at least some comp research on what L four looks like comp wise and see if that's something you're going to do. Yeah, because you might be hidden there. Yeah. So let's let's talk about the second question. If I do get through the interviews, am I gonna like let's say I get through the senior interview and I get an offer, am I gonna have trouble with the team matching process? So for those that don't know the way Google interviews, at least the last time I interviewed there, which has now been four years, my goodness, the way that they did it was they have a general purpose interview process, and if you pass that, then they go through a team matching process where they shop you around to, you know, five, six, seven different teams. You talk to them, they talk to you, and you have to have a mutual agreement on which team you want to join, you know, mutual between you and the engineering manager. And when you get a match, you could join the team. So the question is: would you get through the interview process only to be rejected by all these teams? And that that can happen, I've heard. But I think it's rare. And and I think the the the question here is from this asker um or from this listener, if I got the senior level, would the team matching engineering managers see through it and say, Oh, I don't think you're actually at that level. I'm gonna pass. You know? So so they don't make you an offer once you pass the general interview. They they make you an offer to join a specific team after you go through this team matching stuff. Is that how it works? I'm I'm trying to remember the way I went through it. I think the offer, like the dollars and cents came after team matching. So there's there's not a chance that you get an offer, you join there and then like nobody wants you and you just work alone in a in a janitor closet. Oh no, no, yeah. You don't you don't start until you've matched. And they don't even give you a a an offer till you've matched. In fact you will I think if I r at least the way I went through, you will get a a level. So you'll know what level you were leveled at in the interview process, but you won't get dollars and cents, at least when I went through it in 2018, um, until after you've matched. Yeah. It's a little weird, actually. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I'm assuming that they they count on that general interview process to be rigorous enough that if someone passes that at a level then you can kind of trust that that that they'll be able to work at that level. If you are only front end or not only majority front end, I'm interviewing for full stack. I could see that being a red not a red flag, a reason to to not level someone at a senior level if you're looking for a senior full stack person that has deep backend and distributed systems experience and you don't. But I would say if you pass the interview, then like it is doing its job and and you're home free. I think so. Yeah, I mean I'm sure there are there are rear corner cases, but I imagine in the majority of cases, if you pass the interview, you you get matched with a team. Yeah, you will. That's right. They would have to amend the process. So w on the one hand, the engineering managers I think very much trust the general purpose interview process. And so when they're walking into a team matching, they're assuming that you are capable of performing at the level that you interviewed at. So so you have that going for you. However, they also have access to your resume and portfolio and they might look at that and go, I don't think so. I want I want an L five with a little more experience than that. So there I think there is a chance it could happen. But here you wanna know what I think based on all the information here. Like I'll I'll predict the future. Based on what I've got here, which is limited info, I'm gonna guess eighty percent chance you get down level to L four, and none of this is even a question. You'll you'll get matched on a team at the level you're right for In the twenty percent chance that you get leveled at a as senior, I still think you'll be fine. There's a chance you'll bump into a team who goes, nah, no, thank you, wrong experience. But I think you'll probably be fine. Yeah, I'm I'm thinking of the the cases where I've been part of a down leveling in an interview. It's it's sort of like I'm on the fence about whether to make them an offer at the the higher level and down leveling is is a slam dunk. It's like I I believe this person will be awesome at this level below and and might be okay at the level above or might not, but if someone accepts a lower level offer , I'm very confident that they have the skills to do it. So I I think I agree with you that this won't be a problem if you get down leveled. Like if if you're maybe a senior or L5, then then I imagine that means you'd be a kickbutt L4. Yeah. Very likely. Whale? Have we answered it? I think so. Good luck. Good luck. Just one final comment on this whole like Fang interview thing. It's amazing how these companies, these five , six, seven companies have created such a man, what's the word? Like a frenzy. Even a whole cottage industry around their processes. There is, yeah, there are like consultants and companies and courses and books and YouTube very successful YouTube channels. Yeah. Yeah. And you can pay a lot of money to get someone to coach you just to prepare for one of these companies. It's amazing. Yeah, I wonder it it becomes kind of advers arial then. I wonder how they combat that. Yeah. I think so. Or maybe they just say, Whatever, if you are dedicated enough to study for a hundred hours to pass the same view, then that's a good thing. Totally. Interesting. All right. Well, good luck. Good luck. As always, we expect a commission check if it does work and you join this company. That's right. We'll leave it up to you, but let's just say you should feel guilty if it only has one digit. Right. The percentage . Okay , because I thought you meant the I thought you meant the dollar amount. Oh the dollar That that too. I'm just kidding. No one should ever give us yeah, don't do that. Hopefully it's clear that that's a joke, but I will ruin the joke to make it clear that it was we are not entitled. Okay . What should people do if they want their own questions answered? Go to softillSsk.audio and click the ask a question button. Thank you so much to everyone who has done that. The questions come in fast and furious, and there's so many, and we love them. I love reading about your experiences. You keep the show going. Thank you so much. You do. Thank you. We will catch you next week .