Disney Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Let me preface this by saying I have extreme impostor syndrome and I am optimizing for most chill company that's easier to survive in. I have offers from cockroach labs, and disney streaming. Both are senior level offers. At my last company (which i was let go from, I believe it was cause I took too long to resolve an outage in their eyes) i was basically doing mid level eng work so I'm not even sure I'm senior material tbh.

I have a little over 5 yoe. I've been laid off before and my perf has oscillated from good to bad etc (at times I've had personal things interfere with my work) so I'm very fearful of cutthroat/extremely high expectations environments.

From what I've seen, cockroach labs is very highly regarded in the industry, so in the case where I get laid off, it may be better to have a better brand name on my resume. They also do seem to have a good wlb. However, a lot of the people there are coming from other very reputable companies, and I'm very worried I won't be up to the par compared to these people, especially in this environment where performance is looked at more closely. They also did a large RIF last year which impacted low performers.

As far as disney, it may be easier to meet the expectations if the talent bar is lower, but they have done a fair amount of layoffs over the last few years, and the streaming unit has only recently gotten profitable. Seems the leadership is telling a story this will last, it's unclear how well the performance of the business will be long term. Cockroach labs seems to be very well positioned from a company performance POV.

I say all this because I don't really want to go through another job searching phase for a while, so I'm considering the strength of the business as well in addition to how capable I would be of surviving at the company.

In anticipation of my , we can collect questions here. I can also answer questions afterward.

Work history

I've worked in leadership positions at companies like Netflix (2013 - 2017), Google (2017 - 2021), and now Disney. I'm currently a Director of Software Engineering at Disney as part of Disney Streaming (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ Star+).

Happy to talk about mobile development, engineering management, and career growth.

Other

I have a deep background in music and audio, having received a Masters in Music & Audio Technology in 2003, and then working with Dolby for more than 5 years.

After I left Google, I took a career break to learn, explore, and recharge. I traveled to Ghana, learned about accounting, became a startup advisor, and read a lot.

I'm on LinkedIn here: .