When is the right time to switch?

This edition of the newsletter contains

• one quick write-up that will help you grow faster in your career
• a video I posted
• a paper I read
• one SWE Math Weekly Question

I have also shared 3 super-interesting articles read over the weekend. Thank you once again for reading this edition of my Newsletter. Now without further ado, let’s jump right in …

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When is the right time to switch?

Knowing when to switch roles or companies significantly impacts your career growth and trajectory and I have a simple 3P formula that can help you find the right time to switch.

1. Paisa (money)
2. Power (core competency growth)
3. Position (ladder growth)

At any company you are working at or switching to, you should get at least two of the three Ps. If you are getting fewer than two, it is time to switch.

Paisa (Money)

Monetary compensation is often a primary motivator for job change. Consider a switch if your current role does not provide enough or if the increments do not keep pace with industry norms. If the other two P's outweigh your average salary, it might be worth staying at the current company.

Power (Core Competency)

Power in this context refers to your growth in core competency and how close you are to becoming a subject matter expert in the domain you operate in. Aim to become a really good engineer, and a good job will always present you with opportunities to become one.

Assess whether your current role challenges you, introduces you to new technologies, methodologies, or projects, and ultimately contributes to your professional depth and breadth. Again, if the other two P's outweigh the lack of core competency, it might be worth staying at the current company.

Position (Ladder Growth)

The third P, Position, involves your upward movement in the org ladder. Your official title matters and it dictates the roles and responsibilities you have handled. Hence, an important criterion to decide if it is the right time to switch or not.

Assess if your current job provides a clear and actionable path for promotion and increases in responsibility. Stagnation can often lead to your future employer doubting your abilities and will negatively impact your career growth.

Again, if the other two P's outweigh the lack of ladder growth, it might be worth staying at the current company. Most people remain an L5 at Google is an example of this.

I always kept evaluating my situation every 6 months and kept over-optimized for two of the three Ps. For example,

1. at Practo, I optimized for Power and Paisa
2. at Amazon, I optimized for Position and Paisa
3. at Unacademy, I optimized for Position and Power
4. at Google, I optimized for Power and Paisa

My entrepreneurial stint has been about optimizing for Position and Power with a hope for a high gain in the third P in coming years.

To me, this has been a pretty structured framework to guide my thinking process, ensuring that my career decisions are both strategic and beneficial in the long run. Hope it helps you as well.

Here's the video I posted

I published a video - How BitBucket reduced master database load by 50% and also solved Read your Write consistency

One theoretical concept that most engineers have no idea about how to implement is - read-your-write consistency and BitBucket did it while also reducing the database load by 50% ??

I dissected one of Atlassian's engineering blogs where they wanted to reduce the load on the database master, but could not afford to query the replica having stale data. In simpler terms, they beautifully implemented read-your-write consistency.

It is packed with a ton of highly practical learning. System Design is not theoretical and is not about drawing boxes. It becomes fun when you dig deeper into implementation nuances.

Paper I read and would highly recommend

I spent some time reading Firecracker: Lightweight virtualization for serverless applications

Docker is not the optimal way to run serverless workloads; hence, AWS Lambda or even an online judge like CodeChef, uses Firecracker as its execution environment.

This week, I’m reading about Firecracker which is Amazon’s lightweight VM built specifically for serverless applications like AWS Lambda and Fargate. The paper covers how Firecracker supports thousands of short-lived containers and functions on shared hardware without sacrificing security or efficiency.

I skimmed the paper once, and it is pretty interesting to understand the story behind how Amazon found the right trade-offs between traditional hypervisors and containers and balanced both really well. Three things I found amusing are

• how Firecracker achieves sub-150 ms boot times
• how each VM uses just 3 MB of RAM, maximizing density on a single server
• how it leverages Rust and some key patterns to enhance security by design

definitely a good weekend read, if you have time :)

You can download this and other papers I recommend from my papershelf.

SWE Math Weekly

SWE Math Weekly is where I post one CP-style math question every week. The problem won't just be random theoretical math exercises. It focuses on topics that are actually and commonly used in AI, ML, and other advanced domains.

If this sounds exciting, hop along, and solve the problems. It's going to be fun, I promise! This week's question is - Heat of the Market

Heat of the Market

SWE Math Weekly's 6th challenge is live and it is all about exploring how house prices change due to neighborhood influence, especially when influential figures buy property nearby.

The problem is super interesting and highly practical. It involves one of the most dreaded concepts in math that we all studied but never knew where to apply it. Once you get it, you will think of modeling 100 other things with this :)

You can find this and other questions on SWE Math Weekly

Three interesting articles I read

I read a few engineering blogs almost every day, and here are the three articles I would recommend you to read.

• We are destroying software
• Go Data Structures
• Good engineers are right, a lot

Thank you so much for reading this edition of the newsletter ?? If you found it interesting, you will also love my courses

1. System Design Course for Beginners
2. System Design Course for SDE-2, SDE-3, and above
3. Redis Internals Course

I keep sharing no fluff stuff across my socials, so, if you resonate do give me a follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and GitHub.