Live data from Hacker News

My offer numbers from big companies

us.teamblind.com

251–260 of 295 posts

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#251
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the culture is wildly different than here in the US I don't think it's reasonable to consider private school and nannies as part of "cost of living"... Those are both unnecessary luxuries.

In Zurich, there are no public kindergarten. The monthly fees ranges from 2.500 to 3K+ a month. A nanny is necessary, when both parents have a full time work and family is not around (like in my case).

I think what you are talking about are "Kindergrippen" (when kids are 2-3 years old). Kindergardens are public and free.

This Kindergrippen-age is really the only moment when kids in Switzerland cost you significantly more than in the rest of Europe.

Think it this way: From the actual kindergarden age (4 years old?) you won't pay anymore. It's even free to send the kid to the best technical university in mainland Europe, which is supposed to be ETH (think MIT of Europe)

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#252
post #123

These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. I live in Zurich, Switzerland and I have a similar salary (~200K) but the high cost of living (which, I assume, is similar if not lower than the Bay Area) make my salary comparable to an "ok" salary in other European countries. Just to give you an idea: the overall cost of school + a nanny for 2 kids under 6 is around 70K year in Zurich. As other have mentioned, the…

There are people in Zurich who live happily on 1500 CHF a month which would be 20'000 CHF a year, a tenth of what you're making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1oeSs67myA

You might say "yeah sure, as a bachelor, it's easy to save money but with family it is expensive here". Well, I know a computer science PhD who lives in Zurich with his wife and two kids on 60k CHF a year (Phd salary).

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had interviews with most companies you mention. Getting in touch with a recruiter and passing the phone screenings hasn't really been a problem. Maybe I'm not smart enough, but on-site rounds are a different story. I've practiced CTCI and solved my fair share of questions on Leetcode. Yet I find pretty hard to get back into it on a short notice. It's not a one-time investment. I assume I'm not the only one since…

Well I applied for a job at both Netflix & Twitch and never heard back from them. I think if I had Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon on my CV I might have gotten more recognition. Just my personal opinion, I could be wrong. Funny thing is, I have been called by Google, Amazon and FB recruiters in London couple of times. But I never went for onsite interview. I figured they can't really match contractor pay and they only o…

FB London has many teams doing interesting stuff. I'm not sure about Google (Zürich is bigger and pays more anyway) or Amazon.

Netflix got back to me within a couple hours after a one-click application on their careers page! Unfortunately I had to prioritize other companies at that time, we put things on hold due to the visa situation in the US and I never got the chance to have a technical interview.

Before I left Berlin, Twitch seemed to be hiring engineers there.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I applied for a job at both Netflix & Twitch and never heard back from them. I think if I had Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon on my CV I might have gotten more recognition. Just my personal opinion, I could be wrong. Funny thing is, I have been called by Google, Amazon and FB recruiters in London couple of times. But I never went for onsite interview. I figured they can't really match contractor pay and they only o…

FB London has many teams doing interesting stuff. I'm not sure about Google (Zürich is bigger and pays more anyway) or Amazon. Netflix got back to me within a couple hours after a one-click application on their careers page! Unfortunately I had to prioritize other companies at that time, we put things on hold due to the visa situation in the US and I never got the chance to have a technical interview. Before I left B…

Yeah, but pay in London is mediocre compared to contracting (for FB and GOOG).

I applied to US. I was never interested in moving to Berlin.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#255

> 2. What's your background? > Male. Two years of professional experience. Bachelors. Non-ivy league school. Previously from a unicorn startup . I'm mentioning these because people ask, not that I think they matter. Being an alumni from unicorn startup is my guess on why he got these offers. People are obsessed with salaries and positions which I think is unhealthy. But what I find ironic is that I have always heard…

Money can absolutely buy a lot of contributing factors to Happiness. However it can't solve your unhappiness. Also not having money will often cause unhappiness.

This is really interesting because "it can't solve your unhappiness" "not having money will often cause unhappiness"

So by definition, having money will not solve your unhappiness caused by not having money :)

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to that site, I'd need to make over $200k to meet my same standard of living, but I still think someone with two years experience can't come close to my knowledge of software development. There are inherent limitations. Of course if the job is to write code without any comment about the big picture and without complaint about hours, then maybe it is competitive. And that signing bonus? That just doesn't tra…

We just bought a 5 bedroom, 3-1/2 bathroom house with a nice size separate office in the northern suburbs of Atlanta with about 2800 square feet. Brand new build for $335,000 with all of the niceties. I've looked on Zillow, the same square footage, much older home, would be around 2-4 million at least in San Francisco.

Yup, this is the major difference. The COL numbers can be explained away, but if you want space now and a retirement later then you can get by with much less work outside SF.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#257
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All else being equal 32 years experience will count against, you though --- and this is quite rational... These companies want to hire for trajectory. If someone's gotten to a great level of skills 2 years out of university, that says good things about where they'll be in 5 or 10 years.

By your logic, all they say is "in 5 or 10 years you'll be a has-been".

Don't worry their tune will change when they are the one turning 40.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#258

I'm in the southeast. 24, self-taught, no degree (I was able to make it through Triplebyte, though I'm not persuaded that actually means anything). 2009-2015 IT/helpdesk/sysadmin, and 2015-2017 more dev/devops, all with a local medium (~350 employee) retail-ish business that grosses about $30m annually if I had to guess. I quit this year for a number of reasons (depression), but I mainly worked on automation. A colle…

Switch companies more frequently. Each time you do, you'll make more. The trick is, you're worth whatever the market is willing to pay. But the only way to find out is to go out on the market. Most people stick with the same job for years, meaning they only check their worth a few times. Hence low salaries.

IMO, the key to this is to also increase your responsibilities and skill level - which sounds like the OP has, but some people ignore. It's the difference between a 10% bump and 2x-3x moves early in your career. I also think it's worthwhile to find a good company - growth and culture - and then negotiate well as tech and domain knowledge will make you less replaceable.

One thing that gets ignored on the west coast is how to specialize without hurting your career. In the southeast, we don't have endless tech companies, if you specialize poorly, you could get stuck with relocation being the only answer.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#259

It seems standard way to get a great compensation is to sit down and exercise all the run-of-the-mill algorithmic questions because that will matter the most in the end. Further optimisation could be made by being less fearful about negotiating the offer. Asking for 10% more would never hurt [1]. I am not a fierce critic of BigCo. interviewing practises but it seems a little disappointing that coding side-projects, c…

I think having a tier 1 college degree matters the most even in getting an interview, atleast here in India. This is from my experience of seeing increasing job posts having tier 1 college degree as requirement and colleagues I know having good college degree having no difficulty in getting interviews(github code, portfolio etc really doesn't matter)

Not true for a 5+ years experience. The scene is changing fast. Github is a plus and hacker rank interviews are getting adopted in almost all new startups.

Re: My offer numbers from big companies

#260

Here in Australia there is no point even being a software engineer. 2 years experience will be 90k base, I don't even know what a sign on or bonus is because we don't even have them, and your wage will rise with inflation. Inflation seems to be a fairly garbage number so I would say your wage goes down each year. There are plenty of other jobs that are much easier that pay the same. Australia is not an innovative or…

No Point? Programming is sorta fun, at least compared to the rest of the shit jobs out there. Not to mention, 90k? Come on.
Post reply on HN