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I Left YouTube

https://zhach.news/how-i-left-youtube/
21•dhashe•2h ago

Comments

brcmthrowaway•36m ago
Seems like a warm reboot for a career coach hustle

Expect a mailing list subscription with courses coming soon

panny•25m ago
I read the title and thought it would be about migrating from youtube to something self hosted/self made. Oh well :) Good luck in your future endeavors or sorry about your "ai" layoff, whichever applies.
robofanatic•12m ago
I thought same and wonder what other platform one can migrate to and have the same kind of audience reach.
johanvts•24m ago
> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.

That bubble is not the world, I exist outside the ladder and I am legion.

nutjob2•23m ago
The article title is actually "How I Left YouTube".

Maybe someone could update it?

MinimalAction•21m ago
Tried to read through the article, but couldn't finish. I felt this writing heavily alluded to a ChatGPT generated response. Too many punchlines and paragraph breaks.
lukevp•16m ago
And??? Where did you go? Did you get L5/L6? Or did you just leave and not get another job? What a wild article to have the interviews so prominently featured but not have a conclusion.
qwe----3•16m ago
Youtube is very tough for promo- I wouldn’t recommend it
paulcole•15m ago
Love how he’s critical of the 13-interview hiring process despite having done all 13 of those interviews.

“Nobody drives there anymore. There’s too much traffic.”

These companies can do 13 interviews because people will put up with them.

The little place I work does phone screen, work sample, final interview, reference check. We can be done in a week. Nobody wants to work with me bad enough to sit through 13 interviews.

foxheadman•9m ago
You manage to live a life where if you don't like something, you can just avoid it?
krackers•7m ago
>The strain comes from context switching. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, I had to care deeply about our quarterly goals and production stability. Then, from 6:00 PM to midnight, I had to care about inverting binary trees and system architecture design.

>This duality is exhausting. It forces you to lie by omission to people you respect. You can't tell your team, "I can't take that ticket because I need to study dynamic programming." You just have to work faster.

Almost seems like the interview theater is intentional, as a way to discourage job hopping.

arkitct•11m ago
The articles author lives in a made-up world. You never are an Engineer if you are not registered with your (U.S.) states' board, let alone graduated with an actual engineering degree. Oh, and by the way, architecting is not a word either; Architecture is another licensed profession.
ThrowawayTestr•9m ago
>At one prominent tech company, I underwent 13 separate interviews for a single role.

In what insane world does this make any amount of sense?

Scubabear68•9m ago
Reading this I feel like I live on another planet.

I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile.

I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L).

I am assuming he left the job this year? If so, more disconnect. I am working but looking, and this job search is the hardest I have faced in over 30 years. Just talking to a human is almost impossible. This guy went on a zillion in person interviews? Is he maybe talking about the distant past of two years ago?

The NDA minefield? Maybe I am naive or sheltered, but it’s never came up in interviews and was not something I ever sweated. For the simple reason that there is no secret sauce so magic that I could tell someone in ten minutes in an interview and spill all the beans. But what do I know, maybe YouTube has some secret variable this dude invented I am just too dumb to understand.

I could go on. But the entitlement coming off of this post as I stress about paying bills and keeping my kids in school and fed as I read this on Xmas eve is a lot to take.

Am I that much of an outlier that I need to get with the program? Or is this as out of touch with the current reality as I feel?

conqrr•9m ago
> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.

Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. Nobody will care or remember what you did or what level you were given enough timespan. Take the bits that you want (money, skills etc) to live life, but don't get too caught up trying to win the game.

reactordev•4m ago
[delayed]
LoganDark•7m ago
I really don't feel it's that unique that it took a while to quit. A big reason these cultures are so popular is because a lot of of the time people don't quit right away and you can keep extracting work above their pay grade until they do. Even if you have some churn, you can keep getting that kind of work for cheap as long as you have a good supply of new hires.

Mathematically extra-complicated Secretest Santa 2025

https://tom7.org/santa/santa.html
1•tobr•3m ago•0 comments

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https://jaco-bro.github.io/blog/?post=vulgar_script_251224.md
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https://waveinscriber.com/posts/002-salmon-recipe/
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/10/police-facial-recognition-technology-bias
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2•AmbroseBierce•21m ago•0 comments

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Ask HN: What happens when AI doesn't need human tools?

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2•rapnie•54m ago•1 comments

Tell HN: Merry Christmas

138•basilikum•58m ago•38 comments

US drops plan to deport Chinese national who exposed Xinjiang abuses

https://apnews.com/article/china-xinjiang-guan-dhs-deportation-4501dd29b8bd61c7282c88693d47930e
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2•bookofjoe•1h ago•2 comments

GNU C Language Introduction and Reference Manual, Edition 0.1 (May 2025) [pdf]

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4•lioeters•1h ago•1 comments

ShareTechnote

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