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Compare career levels across companies

levels.fyi

251–260 of 428 posts

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#252
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that new hire salaries at the same level are typically higher than folks internally who have been at that level for some time. The market rate has actually gone up significantly in last 1-2 years.

I have 16 years of engineering experience and Google has made me two offers (original and revised) for a T4 position in NY that are well below the numbers reported on Levels (in fact, below the average on the site). So, either I am getting low balled like hell or there is skew in the numbers. Edit: there is skew in the numbers, not some in the numbers.

Are you accounting for annual refreshes? It's likely that the data posted represents employees that not only have had their grant value increase, but have had reasonable annual refreshes. The initial offer would naturally be much lower by comparison.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, a Google recruiter once told me to spend a few months becoming a Python expert, and then they'd interview me (in Python); Most SWE hires are generalists at Google, not tied to a specific language. Unless you're being hired for a specialist role, you should absolutely be able to interview in the language of your choice. It's sometimes harder to put together an interview slate for a less popular languag…

> you should absolutely be able to interview in the language of your choice. Except the choice is between Java, C++ and Python. They are very clear about that, asking what your preference is during the scheduling phase. I went through the interview process this year, and even tried to ask my interviewers if it was ok to do Kotlin instead of Java. It wasn't.

I just did an interview in Go. I think people have done javascript too.

Sounds like a miscommunication happened somewhere. You should provide feedback to your recruiter.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#254
post #90

Those stock grants values are crazy high.

I believe based on comments here that they are reflecting current value, not initial grants. Many of these companies have performed insanely well over the last 10 years and anyone getting typical grants have done well by them. An AMZN grant from 4 years ago is worth over 5X from then, for instance. 6.5X 1 month ago for that matter but October was rough. Being at the right company during the right 10 years is transfor…

This is not true of most of the numbers on levels.fyi that I can tell. I know for my own FAANG employer, the numbers seem right on the dot with numbers I have seen elsewhere and my own compensation (RSUs being at time given, not current value).

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, a Google recruiter once told me to spend a few months becoming a Python expert, and then they'd interview me (in Python); Most SWE hires are generalists at Google, not tied to a specific language. Unless you're being hired for a specialist role, you should absolutely be able to interview in the language of your choice. It's sometimes harder to put together an interview slate for a less popular languag…

> you should absolutely be able to interview in the language of your choice. Except the choice is between Java, C++ and Python. They are very clear about that, asking what your preference is during the scheduling phase. I went through the interview process this year, and even tried to ask my interviewers if it was ok to do Kotlin instead of Java. It wasn't.

I interviewed and passed at google. Through 6 interviews I used JS, C, Go, and Swift. One of the tougher Qs was to make a pretty full-featured promise library from scratch in whatever language I wanted in one of those interviews. Chose Swift because I'm a fan of the syntax for blocks (esp when whiteboarding). Feedback was that was my best interview of the day. My experience - they wanted to know I could program, didn't care about language.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#256

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 outperfor…

My understanding was that large run ups (or downs!) in AMZN stock would result in adjustments, such that your total comp stays on target. Is that a simplistic description?

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#257
post #5

With anonymous submissions on sites like these (see also: Glassdoor), I wonder if there's any sabotage going on where companies submit fraudulent information about competitors. Isn't it a potential downside to this open approach without any verification?

Anonymous, self-reported compensation data will likely skew higher than reality due to reporting bias. In contrast: https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary shows the actual width of the salary distribution, and the dataset includes all offers made to engineers on our hiring marketplace -- no reporting bias or fudging numbers upwards. (Disclosure: made that page. But also love Levels.fyi. Transparency is good…

I actually think Triplebyte’s numbers are low because they don’t reflect RSUs and refresher grants. It’s also hard to compare ISOs to RSUs.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#259

Wow.... these salaries make salaries (including mine's) in Sydney really, really low.

I live in Thailand and mine looks -extremely- low.

Unfortunately for Sydneysiders their cost of living is just as high as Bay Area. At least Thailand is much cheaper.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#260
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol, have you ever worked for Google? When I was there, joking about how our jobs was all about moving protos around was a classic memegen topic.
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