<story><title>Non-linear career paths are the future</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2023/02/26/why-non-linear-career-paths-are-the-future/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mabbo</author><text>For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn&amp;#x27;t interview SDE1s unless they were new grads. For a number of years that policy was explicit from our Director because &amp;quot;we find that works out best&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#x27;m at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn&amp;#x27;t even seem like an outlier.&lt;p&gt;One thing I&amp;#x27;ve noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren&amp;#x27;t encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I&amp;#x27;ve worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.&lt;p&gt;Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>r-s</author><text>Did Shopify have a choice?&lt;p&gt;Many Canadians who got computer science degrees left to work for American companies for 2x-3x more money.</text></comment>
<story><title>Non-linear career paths are the future</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2023/02/26/why-non-linear-career-paths-are-the-future/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mabbo</author><text>For a decade at Amazon, nearly everyone I worked with was following the linear, expected path. High school, university, degree, FAANG job. Amazon basically didn&amp;#x27;t interview SDE1s unless they were new grads. For a number of years that policy was explicit from our Director because &amp;quot;we find that works out best&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#x27;m at Shopify, where it feels like a complete 180. More than half my team took non-traditional paths- former dietician, government clerk, logger (like with a chainsaw). My team doesn&amp;#x27;t even seem like an outlier.&lt;p&gt;One thing I&amp;#x27;ve noticed: the women I work with now are far more likely to have taken a non-linear path to get here. They weren&amp;#x27;t encouraged to go into that career when they were in high school, but later in life realized it was a good choice. One really great staff dev I&amp;#x27;ve worked with told me how she was encouraged to be a tech recruiter (and did), then slowly realized she could be the one making the huge salaries she was offering people.&lt;p&gt;Amazon would never have given them a chance. And funny enough, Amazon struggles to hire women in dev roles.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xthrown1</author><text>Amazon is universally known as the shit tier of tech. They can&amp;#x27;t hire top grads and people with experience because everyone has heard the horror stories. Sounds like they are optimizing their hiring strategy to mitigate this.</text></comment>