I recently heard some advice from someone in eng leadership to an IC to avoid performance work since it's a career dead end.
I find that interesting because it seems to me that performance work seems like one of the most straightforward ways to make "senior staff".
I find that interesting because it seems to me that performance work seems like one of the most straightforward ways to make "senior staff".
You probably shouldn't work on performance if you report to the person who gave that advice but, in general, perf work gives you quantifiable huge wins, making a promo or out-of-band comp case easier than in most roles (tho not as easy as in a role that directly touches revenue).
For direct impact, you can get wins on cost savings via reducing waste and revenue via reducing latency.
For leadership/scope, since perf work tends to be organizationally undervalued, it's easy to find large initiatives that are big wins that a lot of people can be involved in.
For leadership/scope, since perf work tends to be organizationally undervalued, it's easy to find large initiatives that are big wins that a lot of people can be involved in.
If you build tools, it's easy to find places where tools have a large immediate payoff that grows over time, e.g.,
https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1267069847428411392,
https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1266712673648926721, which is different from many other areas, where it takes a long time before you can show that tooling was valuable.
Performance is sort of the opposite of a hot area (like ML) or something that's perennially trendy online (like fancy languages), which makes it easy to find a job and also means that you work with people who are genuinely interested in the thing and not just trend following.
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