Louie Bacaj
@LBacaj
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Engineer turned Entrepreneur.
New York City
Joined May 2009
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I managed multiple engineering teams before quitting big tech.
Now that I quit, I can speak freely.
Here are 12 things your manager may not be telling you, but I know for a fact will help you. 👇
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Charlie Munger on remote work for Software Engineers:
"those people are never going back"
"If your job in life is to get on the telephone and talk to other engineers all over the world while you solve problems, why do you have to do it from an office?"
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These clips are two of the best pieces of writing advice you will ever get about writing on the internet.
I promise.
It is so good we show it to our newsletter students.
1st: Most of us should write to help ourselves think.
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Once you realize how much of the rewards in this world go to people who simply make noise, you realize you cannot afford to simply be a “heads down, do the work” kind of person. You need to do both.
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The top 10 predictors of successful engineering careers.
I've helped hire 100s of engineers in my 12+ year career. I've managed and steered the careers of multiple engineering teams.
Some of these may surprise you, but I am confident they predict career success in our industry.
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From living in poverty in 2010, earning $20k per yr in a restaurant,
to half a million in tech by 2020.
My income 2010-2020
2010 - 20k~
2011 - 39k
2012 - 70k
2013 - 77k
2014 - 165k
2015 - 125k
2016 - 175k
2017 - 251k
2018 - 335k
2019 - 423k
2020 - 500k~
My decade in review 👇
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Software engineering is like 80% writing.
And I'm not talking about code:
- Jira Tickets
- Designs docs
- Presentations
- Emails & slack
- Documentation
- Internal and external blog posts, etc.
You may not realize it, but you try to program humans more than machines.
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9 uncomfortable truths about engineering and tech right now.
How Twitter might play out, the ramifications, and what Elon’s calculus might be.
Disclaimer: Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m relaying observations through a lens of engineering for over a decade & managing engineers.
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It's my two year anniversary since I quit the big company job to become an entrepreneur.
By the way, here is how much the big company used to pay me before I left: a $310k base salary. About $275k in equity vesting each year. A 35% cash bonus on top. And at the time all that was
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2/ Being smart or good at what you do does not give you the right to be a jerk.
Empathy as an engineer is a superpower.
Caring about those you work with will do more for your career than writing beautiful defect-free code.
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I first visited Google’s offices in San Francisco way back in 2016.
It was strange that tens of thousands of engineers were just hanging out doing nothing for a large chunk of their day.
Software engineers were biking and going to the gym. They had swimming pools. They had
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5/ Your code should follow this pattern:
1. Make it work
2. Make it fast
3. Make it beautiful
Reminder: You won't have a chance to make it fast or beautiful if it doesn't add value.
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Back in 2014, I was a software engineer at one of the big banks. At a quarterly meeting, the head of a big biz unit came to speak to us devs.
The biz guy said, "Your work on automation will be so amazing. Estimates are it'll directly help us eliminate 200k+ biz jobs!" People
I apologize but won't be amplifying startups whose mission is to fully replace software engineers with "AI devs."
It's clear why VCs & investors love this idea; and why founders as well. Imagine how much money they could make if they succeed!
I hate the idea of that future.
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2nd: In the real world, people are not paid to read your stuff, like your teachers were.
So, everything you learned in school about writing is wrong.
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I became a creator on Gumroad this week. Incredibly grateful.
180 Sales, conversion of 8%, total sales of $3,505 in 4 days so far. Took me ~40hrs to create the product.
Here’s what I learned from this small bet 👇
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1/ As a software engineer, you are not there to take requirements blindly.
You are there to partner with your business and product partners.
That means you have to earn an equal seat at the table on product decisions.
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Even though software engineers get paid good money, having managed many, I can tell you that the good ones are still underpaid.
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I managed and grew many Engineers into leaders in Startups and Big Tech.
Tech Leads, Team Lead, Staff+ "Architects," Managers of Managers, etc.
I've also reported up to EVPs, CTOs, and CEOs.
Eleven hard truths about engineering leadership 👇
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Strong fundamentals and programming get you in the door as an engineer.
But to move up, you'll need people skills.
The top 8 people skills that helped me move from Senior Engineer to Senior Director in 4 short years.
🧵
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10/ Advocate for junior engineers.
My friend
@VicVijayakumar
reminded me that just because they don't have 10+ years of experience does not mean they won't be good.
Without junior engineers on the team, no one will grow.
Help others grow; you'll grow too.
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3/ As someone in the code, every day, you will see things that others will never see.
You will know what's possible; they'll guess what's possible.
Some of the best product features are born because engineers found clever ways to solve something.
Look out for those things.
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I’ve managed software engineering teams in Dublin, Ireland, and Bangalore, India.
And I have a different take on this.
Nobody keeps you around because of a physical office when they can hire someone 5x-10x cheaper elsewhere. They have offices there too.
They keep you around
Employee: So I’ve been thinking, my job can be done from anywhere, would it be OK if I moved to North Carolina?
Boss: Actually that’s a great point, your job *can* be done from anywhere. But I’m thinking more of a Bangalore sort of vibe?
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7/ You don't need permission to add value.
If you see something and know you can fix or improve it, do it.
Nobody will ever say to you, "why did you add all that value? WTF is wrong with you!?"
Every time I've done that unexpectedly, I've earned outsized rewards.
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It’s clear now that the reason employers treated tech workers so well wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts.
But because tech talent had options.
It’s impressive to see how fast so many employers are chucking any goodwill out the window these days.
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@daniel_nguyenx
When I see behavior like this I can’t help but feel like some people are pre-disposed to commit crimes no matter what.
What is the point of committing a crime that could ruin you, your family, and bring shame to everything you’ve ever done? Especially after you have money.
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6/ Build relationships with engineers in other teams and other companies.
Learn about the problems they are solving. Learn different architecture and designs than the ones your team uses.
You never know when their solutions will save you days of work.
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12/ Even though you work with computers, your career and future depend on people.
Until AI runs things, people still run the world, and relationships matter a lot.
Build relationships with people outside of engineering, listen to their problems. It will change your trajectory.
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4/ You are there to add value first.
All the code you wrote will end up in the recycling bin of some computer if it does not add value directly or indirectly to the business.
It doesn't matter how pretty your code is or how much you love it if it doesn't add value.
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How to get promoted in 2022.
Before I quit my high-paying job, I was the youngest Senior Director in Walmart Engineering.
I had the most promotions in the shortest amount of time. I climbed 6 levels in 4 years.
This thread has all my secrets to get promoted in 2022 🧵 👇
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Google has laid off at least 12k employees.
And now has bought back $140 billion in stock in 12 months.
Sharing this in case you had doubts, or hope they might still care about you: the employee.
Don’t be a fool, make your money and diversify out of Big Tech.
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This is very sad.
Laid off from a high-paying job, they used all their money as a down payment for a home. They can’t make the mortgage. And the Tech Market is now very tight.
Bad things compound too. And sometimes much faster than good things.
It’s easy to say now, with
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This top comment on HN, to this post on getting to $45K/MO, captures everything wrong with the developer mindset today.
”everything has to be crazy hard technically or it’s not valuable.”
You’ve all been duped into delusions of grandeur, only so they can take advantage of you.
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9/ Just because you think someone shouldn’t be hired, that does not mean they aren’t a good engineer.
It also does not mean they don’t have a strong work ethic.
A strong work ethic is the most important thing, and it's nearly impossible to tease out in an interview.
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8/ 10x engineers do exist and so do .1x engineers too.
If you think they don’t exist, that’s just because you haven’t worked with any of them yet.
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Tim Ferris asked Warren Buffet & Charlie Munger a question in 2008 and didn't get the response he hoped.
This was long before Tim became an accidental podcast star in 2012, with over 200m downloads.
The striking thing to me is not the elementary question he asked Buffet &
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As a manager, I've never made a single counteroffer to an engineer trying to leave my team.
Counteroffers are more damaging than you may realize for everyone involved.
And I still managed to retain at least as many people on the fence as my peers, if not more.
Here is how:
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I’m convinced that what’s happening at Twitter is one of the most important things to happen to our industry in a long time.
Not just because Twitter itself is important, which it is.
But it has far-reaching ramifications for the entire industry. And especially for Big Tech.
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11/ Have empathy for the people you interview.
You could be in that situation.
The set of things to know is large, even if you only ask basics. Plus, on a whiteboard, the other person is being judged.
They have a lot to lose, maybe hundreds of thousands in income.
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I've been on over 1000 plus engineering interview loops in my career.
I can confidently say that the Whiteboard interview is flawed, in the best case.
And In the worst case, it's harmful and biased.
Here's why the Whiteboard Interview is bad for hiring 👇
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Most books could've just been an essay.
But the right books can change your career trajectory and life.
These 8 books, I know from experience, will help those looking to grow into leaders:
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There are many people in leadership positions at tech companies that don’t understand:
Codebases without the people that wrote the code are just a liability, not an asset.
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Almost all the leadership roles available in tech right now require you to go in and clean up someone else’s mess.
Most of the roles are at firms that have to do more layoffs, firms that just botched their layoffs, and teams that are defeated and demoralized.
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The Big Tech layoffs are baffling—wave after wave of mishaps.
Layoffs are never easy, but these are done so poorly it’s as if they’re actively trying to destroy any goodwill they have with existing employees & potential future hires.
The only explanation is bad management.
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In 2022 I had a hunch ChatGPT would cannibalize its information supply chains.
Once sites like StackOverflow die, it’s a matter of time until LLMs get worse.
The real value of sites like StackOverflow is long tail answers you can’t find anywhere. Stuff maybe one other person
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If you become an engineering manager being one of the best coders on your team will actually hurt you.
Because you’ll nitpick a lot. Things will rarely be done the way you would’ve done them. And no engineer likes being Micromanaged.
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This article by Janahan on how he keeps a “Brag Doc” for work is a huge reason he was consistently one of the easiest engineers to have promoted.
It’s why I always say:
Add Value and then Make Noise
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Unpopular opinion: All those extra monitors are a crutch & a distraction.
Real engineers work out of a single monitor.
When you buy 350,000 H100 GPUs, it’s hard to afford a monitor anymore
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As a kid in communism, my grandfather used to tell me:
“focus on the stuff they can never take away from you.
They can take your clothes and property.
But they can’t take away what’s in your head, your skills, a fit body. Someday you can leave and build something with that.”
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1. Small engineering teams move much faster than big teams. Obvious, but it still needs to be said.
Elon has factored this in.
2. If you are willing to throw out large chunks of a system, you can rebuild the core parts in a fraction of the time with great people.
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For software engineers working in a dysfunctional environment:
The reward for working your ass off, and killing yourself, to get a feature to the finish line is that you get to do it again.
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The unfortunate truth about putting people on PIPs (performance improvement plans) is they rarely work.
Most managers & HR would never tell you this because they fear lawsuits.
But you’re almost always better off taking or asking for a severance than trying to make a PIP work.
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If you want to be a software engineer, you have to become comfortable building things without all the experience you need to build them.
But if you keep learning and building, there is a high likelihood you’ll figure it out.
This is a good lesson for a lot of things in life.
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9. If this doesn’t fall apart, there will be intense pressure on Big Tech to downsize much more after this.
If Elon can let go of 90% of the staff and things keep going and can be rebuilt better, you can bet investors will put insane pressure on them.
Big tech gonna crush earning when Elon shows them they don’t need 2/3 of their employees.
Long GOOGL, AAPL, MSFT, META.
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An uncomfortable truth about being an employee:
You don’t want to make your boss look bad. I’ve never seen someone rise doing that.
If you’re smarter than your boss, you’re better off staying quiet or just quitting.
But rarely better off offending or making your boss look bad.
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I’ve convinced 5+ younger family members to become software engineers. All from poor families, all immigrants.
They all earn 150k+ a year—a few, much more.
Software engineering will likely continue to be one of the best, most reliable ways, to make millions in the next decade.
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1. How an engineer handles grunt work.
Engineers love the latest & greatest tech.
But the majority of software development is:
- gluing together APIs
- refactoring shitty code
- fixing other people's bugs
They'll struggle to get to the exciting stuff if they hate the boring.
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I want to tell you a true story about tech and why America is still the greatest place in the world.
I recently helped a relative move here and 7X his salary in under two years.
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6. Engineers are deeply attracted to tough problems.
It’s like catnip. As an engineer it was my achilles heel. As a manager it was my strongest selling point.
So you can imagine that rebuilding Twitter, will probably attract a lot of engineers. Elon knows this too.
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The biggest lie of the information age:
You can’t trust your intuition, but you can fully trust the data.
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If you’ve ever worked in a place where everything is urgent and every feature is a top priority, you should consider yourself lucky.
That world teaches you a valuable lesson. It teaches you that there are only three priorities in life.
You. Your health. And your family.
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I trusted the Small Bets community and nervously became a creator on Gumroad. Three weeks later, I am humbled by the power of the internet.
Over $11,000 in sales from my first info product that I was charging $15 for at first.
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4. Tech is not the moat it used to be.
So much of what Big Tech does has been commoditized and is now off the shelf.
Engineering teams today can do in a fraction of the time what took Netflix years and years to accomplish before.
What took Netflix well over decade to build and perfect, you could argue both Disney and HBO did 80% of it in a few years. App-wise, handling scale-wise, adapting streaming-wise.
Shows how quickly innovative tech can become commoditised, and rare tech skills become more common.
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If Elon Musk turns Twitter around, that's not an indictment of the engineers, designers, and product people that are now gone.
But it’s a massive indictment of its leadership at all levels.
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@dvassallo
Forget about it man, we ain’t going back.
But as a token and small gesture, so they can remember me, i’d send this powered by Small Bot in my place.
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Tech went from free food and massages to treating folks like inmates sharing a cell pretty quickly.
I don’t know about you, but I’m never going back to cubicle prison again.
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This is a perfect example of how you can become completely diluted and run off track if you listen to and are influenced by the wrong people.
Thousands of software engineers are inspired by these people.
A few "JS influencers" (let's call them that for simplicity) are finding
You can tell this
@t3dotgg
fellow is an asshole when he sends a real email to Hey's support while trying hard to force the app to break.
I bet he calls 911 to test his cell reception.
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Timeless Career Advice for Software Engineers
My video course is out:
I include all of the stuff most Engineering Managers are afraid to say, from my decade+ experience.
I compressed a year's worth of One on Ones into an hour and a half.
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I’ve got this belief right now that if you:
– Understand tech
– Communicate well
– Can write even a little code
– Are willing to look foolish for a bit
You can make a great living in the modern era.
With those skills, you may not realize it, you’re a modern-day Michelangelo.
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No one tells you this when you first become a manager. But one of your most important jobs is to make sure there’s a path for people to move up.
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@Carnage4Life
It is ironic that she says:
"We couldn't predict covid;
we couldn't predict the supply chain issues,
And we couldn't predict the bank failures."
But her bonus was destined and very predictable.
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If you’re naturally shy, introverted, bashful, timid, etc.
I’ll tell you from experience that you can’t afford to be any of that when your money is on the line.
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5. Even most of Big Tech’s domain knowledge is commoditized.
How to do search is known.
How to stream video is known.
How to build social graphs is known.
How to do eCommerce is known.
People moved around and taught each other. Elon is banking; he can rehire this knowledge.
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3. How engineers communicate, especially with non-technical people.
Being understood across domains & up the chain means knowing when to use:
- plain & simple language
- less or more technical detail
Invest in this. It is a solid predictor of success for technical people.
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I recently quit my cushy high-paying job in big tech to do a startup.
Right before I quit, I took on over a million dollars of debt. A Thread.
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Confession:
As a hiring manager, I’ve prioritized hiring engineers that could show me something, a side project, etc.—even very senior ICs.
It’s impossible not to.
Compare someone who shows vs. someone saying:
“take my word for it, this is what I did at my previous employer.”
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People in tech are going to see more messed up things at work than they’ve likely seen their whole careers.
Things that may make you want to resign on the spot.
My advice is be rational about it. Plan your exit. Diversify out of needing your employer. And put your family first.
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The smarter you are, the more likely you are to overthink what can go wrong.
You have to create a circuit breaker for overthinking.
The world is far too complicated; overthinking will never get the best results. Only action will.
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3. The domain complexity with Twitter is in the distributed system. There is little valuable domain knowledge in the core functionality. Losing people hurts Elon less than we might think.
Rebuilding Twitter today is far easier than it was initially initially. See Gas.
A former Facebook manager just launched an app that overtook giants like TikTok & Instagram to be
#1
on the App Store.
He made $1M in 10 days with a team of 4 people.
Gas App 🧵
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You shouldn’t trust a dentist that determines seniority & pay solely based on how many teeth get pulled.
And you shouldn’t trust an engineering leader who determines seniority and pay based on:
– Github commit frequency
– Lines of code
– Story points
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In engineering titles are, in fact, often there to distract you from the money.
I used to joke with my bosses, pay me my hundreds of thousands & call me the janitor software engineer.
Take the money. The glory is fleeting.
Let others get the glory; you might make even more.
Would you optimize for title, or pay?
Senior Engineer @ Netflix
Staff Engineer @ Airbnb
Principal Engineer @ Microsoft
Distinguished Engineer @ Care
Note that these numbers are all base pay. These are all publicly traded cos.
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2. How an engineer treats those more junior than them.
If an engineer mistreats juniors early on, won't help or guide them, they likely won't treat them better later in their career. In turn, they'll struggle to grow.
Our field is complex; much growth comes from teaching others
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I might hit $100k in income from "internet money" this year alone.
And I am still trying to figure out what I am doing.
I have no plan. I did have a plan, but it didn't work as fast as I needed it to, so I dumped it.
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@MartinTerskin
Yea, if the textile shirt makers were making on average $200k a year & didn’t have better prospects. I probably would’ve picked something else to make there too.
That’s the beautiful thing about the world, there are so many things we could make. To each their own.
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These clips are by Larry McEnerney, from the University of Chicago.
You can search and find the full video on YouTube; much of the rest pertains to academics.
But these two clips pertain to all of us writing anything we want others to actually read.
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My old boss became a Billionaire in a few short years, but there are ppl out here telling you that you can’t become an engineering director in 6 years.
Don’t believe that shit; you can do a lot with some luck and lots of hard work.
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An interesting things about software engineers is that in a single career one could work in 4, 5, or more different domains.
In my career alone I build software for supply chain & logistics, finance, eCommerce, Marketing & AdTech, Pharmacy, etc.
In a single career a wide awake
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5. How humble they are.
Ego destroys long-term success.
Software engineers make good money; some happen to be really smart.
But there is no reason for an ego. There will always be smarter and richer engineers too.
Many engineers need to humble themselves a little bit.
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Hey team, over 20,000 followers. 🎉
Twitter enabled even an awkward engineer turned entrepreneur like me to:
- make friends
- build distribution channels
- amplify the things I am building
So if you are seeing this, thank you.
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A lesson from a successful Software Engineering career has been:
You’ve got to take charge of your own learning.
School isn’t nearly enough if you want to get ahead, and stay ahead.
Not sure if other fields force this as much on people. But all would benefit from the lesson.
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In 2020, I made $0 on the internet and got 0 impressions.
So far, just this year, I made ~$22k and got 8 million impressions.
It’s far from my Big Tech salary, but I am free and chasing my dreams.
Here are 3 rules about making money online that might help you:
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Unpopular opinion: All those extra monitors are a crutch and a distraction.
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Something I internalized late in my career:
Some people can play corporate politics longer than your entire tenure may be at a company.
Heck, for some, corporate politics could be their entire career.
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7. Engineers still have tons of options.
Including the option of taking lower pay for remote work & better work-life balance. And working at a startup or a mid-tier firm.
At least as of now, it seems Elon miss-calculated this a little & lost more people than he intended.
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A side note:
The majority of Big Tech might not recover what it lost this year.
Without tech moats, startups in many niches can be spun up seemingly overnight & eat away at their dominance.
Look at how fast TikTok came up under FBs nose. Also, see how fast Gas is moving.
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These tips from the 1930s about selling via mail order, are better than most of the advice we get today for landing page & product copy.
Highlighted some of the interesting parts:
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