Building products vs Building resumes
If I had to give myself one advice at the beginning of my career ... it would be to focus on product building over resume building. I started my career in the wireless industry - and largely spent the first 10 years at two amazing companies - Qualcomm and TI. I learnt a lot of digital wireless communications, signal processing, software writing skills and x-layer systems concepts. And yet I was deeply unhappy for two specific reasons.
The first was that at the end of the decade, while I could point to a lot of learning and a lot of "projects" I had worked on - I could not point easily to a product where I had a significant contribution to - a product that worked, worked well and for which people were willing to pay money. This is in no way is a commentary on Qualcomm or TI. It was a particular situation I found myself in. A situation I believe many young engineers find themselves in - even as they are working at very good companies.
The second was that Qualcomm had this tool called "ph", built to serve a need and with good intentions, which nevetheless at that time was a source of career comparison among young folks and a source of deep unhappiness within the company. Instead of focusing on building products, there seemed to be a lot of energy spent being ensnared in looking up who is going up the chain and who is not etc. I would be lying if I said I was not part of this unhappiness loop.
This all changed for me when I could identify the core problem I was facing - one of not having had strong contributions to product building - and made deliberate and specific changes. Specifically I moved to and worked at startups for a number of years - in each instance working on named products and also, in the process, learning how to build teams and learning how to work with other functional teams (RFIC, RF systems, Digital ASIC, Low level firmware, integration and test and so on). The products I worked on include a DVB-T ASIC at MaxLinear, two generations of Cel-Fi products at Nextivity, a SON product at Airhop. I also had a brief stint at Intel working on XMM7260 and XMM7360.
And since 2017 I have worked on Starlink at SpaceX - leading the L1 and L2 teams.
This shift has made all the difference. I stopped worrying, largely, about titles, salaries, and so on and focused on building products that work. And this mental shift, paradoxically but perhaps not really, also given me the greatest career satisfaction and career lift.
So, as we now embark upon an exciting new product at SpaceX, we are looking for young or mid-career protocol stack as well as generalist software engineers who find themselves at the same crossroads that I found myself in 2005. Engineers who have deep skills, self-confidence but as yet have not succeeded in translating that to product building or have not been given the chance or do not have the confidence of their teams and leads to the degree they would like.
See, the thing I like about SpaceX is that we build products, at a large scale with small, focused teams. And we build products at a very large scale. And we are laser focused on product building that directionally align with our mission - of making humans multi-planetary. Building products works best when the teams are lean, are mission focused, want to build something great and where the individuals are not focused explicitly or daily on resume building or maximizing their salary or RSU potential. I say this pointedly, at the risk of upsetting many people, since we find that people who can join SpaceX likely will have opportunities at other places that might pay better or much better. But what we can promise is that very few companies can match the passion for defining and building products, at scale and at a pace as we do and with team sizes where everyone ends up making significant contributions. Products that also make a significant impact to society and the world. And this means that things you will work on will be making an impact very soon. And we manage to do all this while having a life, tending to our families and communities. This is because the definition, design and product building is truly focused on pruning away everything but the very essence of that product and then building that really well. This is of course the real genius of Elon. As it was of Steve Jobs and Andy Grove and so on.
So if you are a software engineer or a protocol stack engineer and want to make a difference by building amazing products and are not particularly or exclusively focused on resume building, please do ping us. We are excited to have people like you come on board. We promise you a fun journey - which we are completely sure will in fact accrue well to your long term career.
ASIC DV Engineer at SpaceX
2yThis post resonates with me. Over my 20+ year career, I've worked with many great, talented, creative, supportive, productive and fun people and teams at many companies. I learned a lot at all of those positions, and I enjoyed my time with those people and teams. However, none of my work translated into either a profitable product, or what I consider a successful or impactful product. Since joining SpaceX 4 years ago, with the exception of a couple of minor projects that account for a total of about 2 months of my time, everything that I've worked on has contributed to building the Starlink network and is in use or development today. We've connected hundreds of thousands of people in remote areas who had poor internet or no internet with Internet connections that typically have speeds of 100 Mbps or better and latencies that are well under 50ms. We've help with disaster relief efforts in Tonga and Europe and are now providing connectivity and assistance to Ukraine. I couldn't be more proud to be part of this team and what we've accomplished.
Senior Hardware R&D Design Engineer at Elbit Systems
2yWell written and certainly something that many professionals feel while trading their valuable time and skills for money working for large corporations. One can learn a lot there, upgrade positions and salaries, cherish personal ego and hope fully contribute to the large common goal. But often that goal is too large and too far to have that personal feeling of satisfaction (unless one is the top manager of the specific project who usually receives most of not all accolades upon the achievement), most importantly, causing lack of feeling of personal contribution to the product actual people, real, tangible customer want and find useful. And this is not something large corporations to blame for, this is just how this world works. I’m compelled the success of great product shall be tangible down to every person, every professional who have his time sweat and skills into it, not necessary by means to material bounces, but by having him to feel the end customer satisfaction, the pride the customer has in using the product. I realize this is hardly achievable and in most cases unrealistic expectations in large corporations, but I bilieve this is the reason of the professionals leaving for small companies and start-ups
Silicon Engineering at Starlink
2yI am glad I realized this early on. Being self employed was a great way to do this. I find working on Starlink is rewarding in a very similar way.
Director, Systems and Signal Processing
2yNice write-up, also indicates the market / demand for talent… Is there distortion?