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by Swizec6 hours ago |
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upvoteby gajjanag14 minutes ago|
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> That's why you need to put your scope

The problem is, "scope" is often equated to "how many people worked in my empire" rather than "how much business value did my work X generate".

The two things are vastly different, and I have seen the distinction/oversimplification play out over and over in my own career as well as many others around me.

As an extreme on the "individual technical expert side", there are things out there that can pretty much only be accomplished with a few people around the world who possess the dedicated expertise. These results can't be replicated by a cobbled together team of 10 or 100 people even though the latter sounds more impressive for "scope".

Some organizations do a decent job of recognizing these different "archetypes", many don't.

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upvoteby elevatortrim4 hours ago|
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That may be your anecdote but CTO at a 30-50 person scale up would typically have much more management/accounting/signature/high-stake conversation/... experience than a senior developer at google.
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upvoteby Swizec4 hours ago|
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Yes. Which is why it's important to put scope on your resume.

I can't know you ran a 30 person scale up unless you tell me. It doesn't have to be in those words exactly, usually it's tied to ARR or rounds raised or something you can easily talk about that translates across companies.

I've seen resumes with titles like "Lead Engineer" who under that title put something like "Hired 45+ people to run <huge systems> at <company you've heard of>". That person has more scope than the 30-people CTO in your example :)

PS: 30 people isn't even that many for a whole company. That's a Series A startup with early signs of product-market-fit. It's common to see a ratio of 10 employees for every 1 engineer in the company.

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upvoteby calculatte1 hours ago|
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An unverifiable line item on a resume gives you real insight on an individual's experience and skills? I think your system is flawed.
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upvoteby Swizec3 minutes ago|
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[delayed]
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upvoteby lazyasciiart3 hours ago|
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But that's nothing to do with the comparison he made, which was "at 3-person startup"
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upvoteby Retric4 hours ago|
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When you swap between 9 hats, you don’t get meaningful experience at any of those roles.

Instead you become a generalist which is only really needed at tiny organizations.

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upvoteby ozim2 hours ago|
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Big organizations need generalists too.
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upvoteby Retric26 minutes ago|
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Generalist means something very different for big orgs.

At FANG size companies have people to setup 401k and health insurance, tiny startups need 1 of 3 people to figure that out even if it just means finding a company to outsource such things it still needs to happen. Payroll doesn’t need to be a complex system but taxes must be paid etc.

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upvoteby zelphirkalt3 hours ago|
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Well, what do you even mean by "put your scope on the resume"? Do you mean literally "Scope: blabla" for each occupation? Or do you mean something more implicit?
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upvoteby Swizec3 hours ago|
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> Do you mean literally "Scope: blabla" for each occupation?

No I mean

> Tell me what you did, for whom, what was the impact.

It's really that simple. Just tell me what you did at your job. What was it that you worked on. Why did it matter. Did you own a workstream (or 5), code monkey all day, own a critical service, play code janitor, ... what did you do?

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