Nodir.log

I've exchanged a couple of messages with this person in 2018. Today I received this message. For those with dreams: despite all odds, you will have *everything* you wish for. It is only a matter of time and determination. I've seen a *lot* of examples. For those who other people look up to: it is easy to underestimate how huge positive impact your encouragement, advises and experience sharing will have on others.

Wrote a thread on distributed systems https://twitter.com/nodirt_/status/1530297313473617920

Rust. В Январе прочёл книгу по Rust и сравнил с Go в твиттер-треде: https://twitter.com/nodirt_/status/1478419198174896130 Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1478419198174896130.html

Fuck war

Update on mock interviews. Over the past 3 months I've conducted 30+ one-way mock interviews. Interesting combination of observations: - for some people a mock interview is more useful than for others. For example, if the candidate barely knows algorithms, the mock interview is not a good use of their or my time. - slots get booked very quickly. One time I opened extra 6 slots - they got booked within a couple of days. This enables an unfortunate situation: a candidate who isn't ready but lucky gets a slot, while a more-ready but unlucky candidate doesn't. Also some folks are shy while others are over-confident, I've seen both. Some book multiple slots and some can't get any. I anticipate a rapid increase of my load after I start at AWS. I don't want to make promises that I cannot keep, so I've disabled interview scheduling after Oct 18. Still, I like this volunteering practice — it just means now things will be a bit different — I will have to control my time a bit more. To deal with both, now I review applications, put them into a priority queue and invite those in the top of the queue based on my availability. The priority is based on 1) your readiness, 2) membership to minority groups that I want to lift and 3) how many mock interviews you and I already had. To request a mock interview, fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/e/1FAIpQLSfWz5MRfrE96F283-FLSzzOkXplnt1GslBk8vqhi73R80M-kA/viewform P.S. The reactions bot screwed up comments in this post. If you have any questions, ask them in @nodir_log_chat. I've removed the bot so reaction emojis no longer work either.

Trying despite disbelief I am very good at finding reasons why something will NOT work out, and pessimistically hyper-focusing on them. In my past they were enough to immediately give up on an idea. One thing that my wife taught me is what I call trying despite disbelief. I think the first time it happened was ~9y ago. The company I worked for made me a H1B work visa and offered $56k/year salary. I took the deal without negotiations and moved to the US. When my wife, girlfriend at the time, heard that my salary is just $56k, she was like "WTF, they low-balled you, go and ask for 20% more". I laughed because nobody gets 20% raises, but she convinced me to TRY. I went to my boss and asked for 20% raise with zero belief that I will get it. The funny thing is, when I try I appear like I know what I am doing, smiling and such, and what do you know, to my surprise I got ~15% increase. Another time I left my backpack with a laptop in a coffee shop. I called them up and they said they don't see one. Past me would give up, because I got a pretty strong signal that it isn't there. By that time I already had a few experiences where trying helped, so I simply drove there and there it was, on the floor. I don't know how they couldn't notice it. There were many other examples. Some still required encouragements by my wife and others, like trying for L7, and asking for more money. Another example is me accepting the L7 high-risk high-reward offer -- I'll do my best and hopefully survive. Even publishing this post is an example -- the reason not to post it is that this is possibly bullshit. --- I am not saying that it will help everyone, but it might certainly help those competent but not confident. Quoting Wikipedia "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their own ability, and that people with high ability at a task underestimate their own ability" (I encourage to read the rest of article). If you believe you belong to the second group, or sometimes you find yourself thinking "if even he/she did it, then I should be able too!", then it might help. Or if you are a woman, because the ever-present patriarchy makes you feel small. A part of this is accepting a possibility of failure. In fact, I usually go with low expectations and just do my best. If you fail, that's OK. It isn't the end of the world. Another thing is, you might luck out. An interviewer might not ask you topics that you are weak at (I am weak at parsers). In my Google interview I wasn't prepared for system design. I failed one; the other was quite algorithmic (=easier) and the interviewer was from Android (not working distributed systems themselves), so I got lucky. You cannot get lucky if don't even try 😉. Like I said, I tend to hyper-focus on reasons why something will NOT work out, in a pessimistic way. While it is discouraging, it also guides me to work on the weakest parts. If you think about chances of success as a confidence interval, then working on the weakest parts maximizes the lower bound. You can see an example of this in my obsessive preparation for the behavioral interview which I never did before and which isn't very technical. This attitude also poses the question "What am I missing?" and you can see an example of this in researching my Microsoft interviewers and discovering new topics to learn. Thinking how a system might fail (failure modes, unhappy cases) is one difference between L4 and L5. Overall I can say that this simple technique made a big difference in my life. The first step is the hardest.

Episode 17: Finale. About a month ago I've written a post about Outtalent, a startup that helps folks from around the world to join FAANG. Apparently my post generated considerable amount of candidate traffic, so @tilekgram, the founder and my friend, was very grateful. One of the services that Outtalent provides is TC negotiation guidance and it might increase compensation quite a bit. When Tilek heard that I will have negotiations soon, he shared their negotiation materials with me and created a telegram group with the Outtalent negotiation specialist Ana. She interpreted all TC-related emails from recruiters, drafted my emails and prepared me for phone calls: what to say and not to say, how to behave, when to show/not-show emotions, etc. I honestly was completely clueless in this regard. Meanwhile, the Amazon recruiter was pushing for a decision and hinting that they might be about to bump TC more if it speeds up the process. When I shared my Google counteroffer, the recruiter pushed back a bit. In my head I was like "yeah, he is right", but Ana deciphered that the push back email did not actually contain any strong arguments against increasing TC, and came to the opposite conclusion — we must push forward (I couldn't see those clues myself). She drafted a response and prepared me for the final/critical phone call. It went much better than I expected: It seems the recruiter, the hiring manager and comp team were so tired of this taking so long that it took literally one day to approve the TC I shamelessly asked: it grew to 192% of my current TC. 🤯😂 Thanks Outtalent for extra cash! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Today I signed the Amazon offer letter, submitted my resignation letter at Google and told my coworkers. I will be joining AWS ECS org as a Principal Engineer (L7) on October 18. I anticipate first few months at AWS to be tough because this job is a jump in the level. My new goal is not to get fired in the first 6mo 😅. I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped me with mock interviews, prep materials, career discussions or just lending an ear. Thank you! 🙏🏼 This is the last episode. Thanks for reading 🙂.

Episode 16: Decision. Suppose MSFT follows through with a good TC: what other dimensions should be considered in the decision? Are there any biases that I am falling a victim of? Is my impression of .NET based on potentially outdated 10y-old good old memories? I called my old .NET friends and they told me that .NET got even better, and that C# is way ahead of Java as a language now (hopefully this will not cause a holy war in comments), but of course there may be selection bias here (these are .NET friends). I also learned that many switched from Visual Studio to JetBrains' Rider, but selection bias again — my friends speak Russian. Am I just clinging to my past too much, trying to achieve college dreams, being afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone, and thus limit myself? Sure, stdlibs, runtimes and GC always fascinated me, but maybe its just my thinking got stuck in the previous decade, while the world and new generations have moved on to the Cloud. Am I falling a victim of Availability bias? For a true leap (episode 1), one must be ready to jump to something completely new, no? To challenge the potential availability bias, on Thursday last week I spontaneously drove to the AWS building in Seattle. It is a gorgeous set of skyscrapers and huge beautiful receptions. I've been missing the city vibe since I left Tashkent — other than SF, Silicon Valley is pretty flat; and so is Redmond. I tried to picture what would day-to-day life be if I work here. The commute was fine, and also there as Amazon shuttles — I hate sitting in the traffic doing nothing, while I can work on a shuttle. And then I spontaneously called my Amazon recruiter and took him to lunch to his favorite local restaurant. We talked about all kinds of stuff. He shown me various Amazon buildings and who sits where. Jokingly I asked him where the Infinidash team sits and we talked about Corey Quinn, and how one of the buildings is named after users that pay $0.05/y, but provide feedback worth millions. When I asked how much time he has, turned out he is done for the day and will go pick up his kid. I was surprised because it was only 3pm — quite a contrast with what I read about Amazon's stressful culture where people work night and day, and one of my concerns for the first few years in Amazon. Apparently he picks up his kid everyday at 4pm. He then proceeded to give me other examples of how high-level engineers work, how EC2 co-creator didn't miss a single football game of his son, and about the art of not stretching yourself thin. I kept our conversation light, but in the end I told him that Google made a counteroffer, because I figured that MSFT. He responded that if it helps me to make the decision faster, he can take the counteroffer to the compensation team. On Monday this week MSFT recruiter called me. Apparently my case was exceptional because I applied for one job, but then they were trying to make me an offer for a different job without making go through another interview loop. They had to jump through a series bureaucratic hoops to make it happen. In fact, she still didn't have approved TC, but because I've been pressuring them to hurry up, she was willing to share an approximate number that could get approved. She said they cannot offer level 67, but only 66. Accordingly they offered the TC of ~1.28C where C is my current Google TC. Its better than my current pay, but the latter is no longer relevant given the offers; and MSFT TC is 30% less than AWS TC. I love .NET, but not to that extent. A few more email exchanges made it clear that MSFT isn't low-balling me, but they just don't currently have a job in DevDiv that would justify level 67. Well, I really tried, but MSFT left me no choice. AWS it is! ☁️✅ There was just one thing left to do: use the Google counteroffer as a leverage to potentially bump the AWS TC even further. I mean, 1.83C is a ton of money, but still it is silly not to even try using a leverage when you have one. Till the next episode 😉