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Compare career levels across companies

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Re: Compare career levels across companies

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very very few make it to T7. You will not be hired as T7 either. Your comp may exceed T7, but not your level. Yes, you can make a lot of money at Google.

> You will not be hired as T7 either. What do you mean by this? (I know someone that was)

Companies usually like to downgrade when hiring. Amazon does it a lot. So even if you qualified as an L7 they may hire you as an L6 (sometimes with L7 pay) and you need to go through a promotion cycle to get back to L7.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#152
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have strong competing offers? From the discussions on Blind most folks get strong offers from Google only if they have another really strong offer. Keep in mind most of our data presented right now is Bay Area-centric. We're working on filtering all views of data by location still.

There was a sheet shared around in Seattle some time ago with salary information. Some interesting points that came out of that were that salaries for women and minority engineers were significantly lower. Also, there were clearly a lot of misreported numbers (some exorbitantly so). There are actually multiple sheets. Here's one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-CqO6Px-0yA2421OOtJo...

There is an incentive to overstate one's salary and no down side. In fact everyone should just double their salary when self-reporting that information to anyone that won't keep it in confidence.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#153

Huge fan of this site, for two reasons: - It lets “outsiders” to the tech scene understand salary and levels at big companies. If you went to MIT you probably already have frat brothers/sorority sisters or an alumni network that consists of senior engineers at these big companies that know the promotion and compensation schemes well. But if you were an equally smart student who went to a non target school, many of th…

There are two problems with these: 1) If you aren't at one of these companies, it's not a fair comparison. It's really difficult to find a pre-IPO company who is going to compensate you like these, if for no other reason than that options are just not something you can easily stick a dollar value on. 2) It's kind of depressing. It's very easy to find people at similar experience levels as you making FAR more money (p…

So what you're saying is that this tool is bad because it makes you sad ?. Information is empowering use it to make informed choices about your career. If you're taking less money, make sure there is some trade off you're happy with.

Also, most Google jobs are language agnostic. You can code in pretty much one of C/C++, Java, Python, Google hires for generalists. Your Ruby experience is not what's holding you back, so don't get bogged down.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#154

Huge fan of this site, for two reasons: - It lets “outsiders” to the tech scene understand salary and levels at big companies. If you went to MIT you probably already have frat brothers/sorority sisters or an alumni network that consists of senior engineers at these big companies that know the promotion and compensation schemes well. But if you were an equally smart student who went to a non target school, many of th…

There are two problems with these: 1) If you aren't at one of these companies, it's not a fair comparison. It's really difficult to find a pre-IPO company who is going to compensate you like these, if for no other reason than that options are just not something you can easily stick a dollar value on. 2) It's kind of depressing. It's very easy to find people at similar experience levels as you making FAR more money (p…

I wouldn't exactly call these problems.

For (1), I agree that you might have trouble getting startups (if that's what you mean by pre-IPO) to equal the total comp that big tech offers, if for no other reason that startup equity just isn't as close to cash as big tech equity is.

For (2), I'd say that depends on your mindset.

For both of your points, the argument is basically how does this sort of transparency affect things? While salary can always be a touchy subject, I'm generally always in favor of transparency.

Having this information can make it easier for one to decide whether it's worth the effort to pursue getting a job at a big tech company, and also allow you to spot BS when some other company's recruiter says that they pay "top of market" for software engineers.

So again, I wouldn't see these as problems.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#155
post #146

The IBM ranks are inaccurate. Fellows are not above DEs. Both are the highest ranks indeed, but of two different tracks. DE is the highest rank of the engineering track, while Fellow is the highest rank of the research track. Fellowship have also be granted to non-research people over the past 20 years, diluting the merit of the title IMHO. Examples of fellows are: John Backus, Gene Amdahl, Ken Iverson, Benoit Mandel…

Thanks for the correction! We'll update this soon.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#156
post #145

What is it like working at Google? I work at a startup, and these numbers are insanity to me. I have 10 years experience in mostly Haskell & FP (and that's what I enjoy doing). What would I do with my skills at one of the bigger tech companies?

Move protos around [0] :/ [0]: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/

This is not true. There are many many interesting projects at Google. And mobility is very easy compared to other big companies. Please do your own research before falling for the HN dogma of "FAANG" jobs == boring.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

L5? Which location? When did you join? Did you receiver refreshers? Your stock growth alone should push you into upper bands if you stayed long.

I've been here 4 years. I'm sorry, I'd rather not divulge much more than that. Stock growth did result in a higher than expected TC, but the number of shares I have vesting will drop substantially over the next 2-3 years. If you're curious, every year I've been here my manager has given me great annual reviews. My base pay is substantially lower than the others on the list. What are refreshers? Perhaps it's something…

Are you an SDE?

Btw, which office you’re in can make a gigantic difference. Amazon employees in India make a LOT less than in Seattle, for example.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#158

Amazonian here. Can anyone else from Amazon speak to whether you think these numbers look accurate? I'm sitting here in almost disbelief at how little I apparently make at AMZN. I don't think I have anyone to ask that would know and would be willing to give any kind of answer. I've been fairly content at Amazon. I've done good work, and have been a resource to others on my team. But if these numbers are right, I don'…

I've been an L5, L6, L7 and L8 at Amazon over the last 10 years. My experience is that once you've been here a while the total comp is a rollercoaster that follows the stock price. I haven't had a salary increase since I was L6 (and don't want one!) ... so for me it all comes down to when I got stock and how it performed over the next few years. Personally I've done very well that way, as it's nearly always outperformed expectations. I think that tenured people like me skew the comp distribution because of that factor.

In general though, although it's human and natural, I wouldn't focus on what I make vs my colleagues or try to measure worth quite like that. It's simpler to think about it terms of "What would I make elsewhere and would I really be willing to leave and go through the disruption and risk of a change in jobs for that".

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

L5? Which location? When did you join? Did you receiver refreshers? Your stock growth alone should push you into upper bands if you stayed long.

I've been here 4 years. I'm sorry, I'd rather not divulge much more than that. Stock growth did result in a higher than expected TC, but the number of shares I have vesting will drop substantially over the next 2-3 years. If you're curious, every year I've been here my manager has given me great annual reviews. My base pay is substantially lower than the others on the list. What are refreshers? Perhaps it's something…

Being given more stock during annual appraisal

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#160

What is it like working at Google? I work at a startup, and these numbers are insanity to me. I have 10 years experience in mostly Haskell & FP (and that's what I enjoy doing). What would I do with my skills at one of the bigger tech companies?

If you talk to a recruiter at any of the big tech companies they should put you in touch with teams that are looking for someone with skills like yours. I frequently have phone calls, coffee, and lunches with people that are considering interviewing at the company I work for. The whole conversation is just answering questions like yours.
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