John Myles White, former engineering director at Meta's MSL, shares candid reflections on promotion culture at big tech, how the employee-employer power dynamic has shifted industry-wide, and lessons from his career. He describes how promotion-obsessed culture in AI Infra and Monetization led engineers to build intentionally coupled systems and ship work they didn't believe in just to hit promo bars. He contrasts this with PyTorch's craft-focused culture, which held higher standards but slower promotions. John also discusses his background as a Julia core contributor, the R vs Python vs Julia language wars, the importance of statistical rigor in A/B testing, and his biggest career regret: never attending his skip-level's office hours out of fear of wasting their time.
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