I was “inspired”by this post.
In it, Philip Su, an E9 (Distinguished Engineer) from Facebook explains how he progressed in his career, which includes an impressive stint at Microsoft that saw him promoted every year for 8 years straight.
If you have that kind of accelerant so early in your career — you’re bound to be “Successful”, or at least air-quotes successful.
Distinguished engineers at a FAANG company (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google..etc) are the highest technical individual contributors in companies that value (and pay) their technical folks LOTS of money. There are fewer Distinguished Engineers at FAANGs than there are NBA players, that level of elite requires immense dedication.
I’m not as “successful” as Philip. I started my career as a Business Analyst in Shell, I was promoted (sort-of) twice in my 9 years there, then bounced around a bit, and joined Amazon as a L6. I left 4 years later at the very same level, promoted a grand total of ZERO times. Now I’m a partner engineer at Google — a peon in the giant machinery that is Google Cloud. So I’ve worked at FAANG companies, but at more ground-level stuff, than in the stratosphere that Philip operating in.
But, I’m happy where I am, and pretty happy with my journey so far.
Most days I wake up looking forward to some aspect my day — usually that involves some presentation, or 1-3 hour block of time I’ve allocated to learning something, or just something as simple as meeting someone interesting. Learning is a big part of my last two jobs, and I feel so blessed every time I get to build or learn something very deeply technical as part of the my regular job hours — all without the compromise of earning less.
DHH said it best, when he mentioned that happiness is working on something for long stretches at a time — usually alone! That may not be you, but that’s me! And my current job lets me find that happiness — regularly! That doesn’t mean it’s 100% sunshine and rainbows, but overall it’s good.
We just need to leave people the hell alone to work on problems that they enjoy for long stretches of uninterrupted time. That is where happiness is found, that’s where productivity is found, and if you can get away with it, you absolutely should.
DHH: https://lexfridman.com/dhh-david-heinemeier-hansson-transcript/
And while I never got promoted at Amazon — I enjoyed every freaking second there. It was just time to move on, but I could have ended my life as a SA in AWS pretty happy. Imagine a job where you could just build whatever you wanted, and given an unlimited access to the playground of AWS services — what more can a geek ask for?
Even as a L6 in Amazon, because of the way Tech salaries are here in Singapore, I’m was at the top 5% of income earners in the country. And Singapore itself is one of the richest countries on the planet. Seems superficially greedy to pursue more money.
But it wasn’t the same for my dad. He had(!) to work. He had no choice.
He had no degree, and born (and worked most of his life) at the time before the internet. The only way to truly differentiate was to out-commit everyone. With that hard work, he managed to put my sister and me through college and university.
My mom also had to work. She also had no choice. Even though my dad worked, there was little chance we could have got by on a single-income. My parents had no choice but to grind.
But I do.
And the only reason I have this choice is because my parents provided it to me. It would be a shame, if I took all their hard work and wasted it, by not even acknowledging the choice.
There were stretches in my life where my dad would work long hours and I’d hardly see him. My fondest memories of my childhood were the football matches he’d take me to see — I’m old enough to remember watching Selangor play games at Merdeka Stadium. After the game we’d take the 40 minute drive back and eat Roti Canai at the small stall near our house.
On weekdays though my dad would come home late, Often after dinner, sometimes after I’d already fallen asleep. And I remember wishing he’d come home early.
Today, I pick my youngest up from childcare, same as I did for my eldest. I’m home for dinner everyday, and I try to be around my kids a lot. I can do this, because I can say NO. Saying NO is the power of the choice, given to me as a product of my parents hard work.
“No, can’t make that 6.30 meeting today, I have to fetch my daughter from daycare”.
“No, I’m not coming in to work on Saturday, and that also means I’m not working on your spreadsheet till Monday morning”
There’s some tinge of insecurity when you say No. Would people perceive you as a slacker? Would Aren’t you guilty that these poor souls are slogging on the weekend, while you’re out riding your bike? The company expects you to deliver.
Yes, all those things are true (to some degree). But nobody said choices were easy.
Very early on in my stint at Amazon, I was told the most profound wisdom:
AWS will take everything you’re willing to give it. There is no shortage of work. Your job is to decide what you want to work on — and more importantly, what you don’t want to work on. If you don’t make that choice, you’ll end up working on everything both because it excites you, and you want to avoid the guilt associated with saying NO.
Maybe I’m not getting promoted, maybe I’m not getting the intense projects that skyrocket people’s career — but I’ll be having dinner with my kids and fulfilling my duty as a father and husband, all while still providing them a decent enough standard of living. We won’t be buying Ferrari’s or Rolexes anytime soon, but we won’t be starving either.
I have a choice, and I made it. I’ll take it slow, that promotion will come — eventually — or maybe never (like what happened in Amazon).
To be sure — this isn’t what high performers do. I will have to accept that one day, I might will report to someone 10 years younger than me. That the interns joining Google today, will turn those big-brains and ambition into careers that eclipse me very soon. That will hurt my ego …. but that’s the price you pay.
To believe that somehow you can have both work-life balance and a stratosphere reaching career is naive. Instead everything you do comes at a price, a trade-off that you decide today. People try to have it all because they’re afraid of making a conscious decision — don’t be that person.
I decided that my family would come first, that I would reject job offers that required long hours or heavy travel, regardless of what the pay or career prospect might be. The decision harms my career — but I made that decision. TL:DR, Philip Su is right, work-life balance does harm careers. Don’t be naive thinking you can have it all.
If you decide to prioritize career — typically it means you either have no family, or your partner is the primary care-giver at home. That’s perfectly fine. Many families have built their dynamics around that — but just make sure it was a decision you (and your family) made. Not something you think the world thrusted upon you, and have to accept. Don’t be a loser that just accepted life as it came. Be the winner who decided, even if that decision loses you the corporate ladder olympics.
Because if the hours suck, or you’re not seeing your family enough, it’s not because of your job — it’s because you chose the job.
And if the promotions pass you by because you clock off at 5pm everyday to bring your kid to the playground, that’s not the result of discrimination against families — that’s the price you pay for being a good father.
And that price is worth it.
Addendum
I wanted to clarify my thoughts (to myself), around the fatherhood premium and the mother penalty. The Fatherhood premium is a finding that fathers tend to earn more than non-fathers, a seeming contradiction to everything I’ve just said. You can have a family and a better career.
I think a simpler explanation would be that fatherhood clarifies a man’s goal in life more than anything else. When you have a family, society tells you to buckle and provide for your kids.
Hence when a man becomes a Father, he has to start focusing on his career in a way he didn’t do so before. A lot of single men would be phenomenally happy just living in a small apartment, playing video games on the weekends and hanging out with friends — in my experience, single women are more ambitious than single men. Anecdotally most single men over 40, are pretty happy where they already are.
I seen single men who’ve lost their jobs in Singapore, and then experiment with things like moving to Thailand, or doing Grab deliveries. A father in Singapore whose lost his job doesn’t have that option. Your kids go to school here, you can’t up and leave to Thailand. It forces the Father to look for another job asap, get to work, and keep the cash-flow flowing.
A single person might wait it out, or hope for something better. Father’s can’t rely on hope, they’re purpose in life is to provide for their kids, and god-dammit that’s what they’ll do. That focus and clarity would obviously translate to higher income over single-men.