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Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

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Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#171

Post by abledon »

gavinray wrote: post #146
tcbumperino wrote: post #83

Once you’re coasting in the 400-500k FAANG range, what’s the optimal move to get 700-800k+? Seems there are too many graybeards to get a Principal title. Better to switch to manager role? Or VP eng type at some startup and hope your stock hits? Or maybe VP at some non tech company?

What kind of a fairy tale is this -- 400, 500, 800k? I make ~110k, and I have no hobbies but code + contribute to a variety of OSS projects in my freetime. What sort of software do you have to be writing besides magic money printing machines for it to be worth that amount of money?

you could do performance optimization for a team on already established services inside GCP/AWS... you are literally saving Millions of $ a year if you optimize the services used by tens of thousands of other companies.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#172

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

grepfru_it wrote: post #42
throwawaysleep wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of you who have done this, how do you maximise your compensation? Tips appreciated.

1. Look on glassdoor, indeed, whatever site you want to use to find out salary expectations in your role/area 2. When asked, give this number as your desired target, but a lot of times they ask about old pay. if the old pay differs greatly, avoid the topic by pointing out how 'the old job requirements are different, benefits are different, etc. But if they press on this number, tell them, don't lie or completely avoi…

> a lot of times they ask about old pay

Been in the industry 25 years and never once agreed to disclose my previous pay. Don’t do it. Ever. It’s none of their business and will only be used against you.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#173

Post by davidw »

dbish wrote: post #4

Even if you think you’re well paid, now is the time to look around. I’ve had a lot of friends, mentees, and coworkers get huge bumps on total compensation even as relatively senior engineers and managers. Pay is jumping and companies aren’t doing a great job keeping that up for their people who have been around for a few years. As an employer, that should be the top worry, keep comp up, don’t lose your people because…

Yep. I got burned out, quit, took some time off and then got an offer that's a nice raise.

I think it's healthy for all of us to reflect on how fortunate we are in this field, sometimes.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#174

Post by polishdude20 »

derwiki wrote: post #2

> But now, these technical interviews are often being waived Huh? First I’ve heard of that

A bit of my experience:

I recently switched careers going from teaching to tech and the job I now have, during the interview, didn't ask me to do any coding tests. They asked me a bunch of questions in zoom about my experiences doing certain things relating to the job and I was able to answer them with examples of how I did those things with a previous project I worked on. Got the offer the next day and I'm very grateful it turned out to be such a smooth and stress free experience.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#175

Post by nemo44x »

spec-obs wrote: post #82

This is not happening for me, but then again I am doing zero to market myself, so that' not a complaint. I would have thought I would have a few headhunters after me , oh well :(

You probably haven’t been picked up in the selection algorithm for whatever reason. Fatten up your LinkedIn and spam it with keywords for the skills part. Make your recent experience impressive.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#176

Post by baby »

gavinray wrote: post #158
the_only_law wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What sort of software do you have to be writing besides magic money printing machines for it to be worth that amount of money? My understanding is that you have to get into FAANG or be in certain roles at certain HFT firms. I’m also pretty sure these are TC numbers are large chunks of those numbers are stock options.

Even in FAANG I have a hard time understanding how any developer is worth that amount of money though. I know a solid number of FAANG and ex-FAANG devs -- the stuff they work on (from what I've heard) isn't much different from the sorts of software I assume most people in SaaS startups work on. Outside of scale (which is significant). A lot of it is internal tooling though, which never hits absurd amounts of scale. I…

Personally, I never understood how you could even pay someone 100k TC… it’s just that some companies make a LOT of money, so much that’s it’s just impossible to fathom.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#177

Post by sokoloff »

tcbumperino wrote: post #83

Once you’re coasting in the 400-500k FAANG range, what’s the optimal move to get 700-800k+? Seems there are too many graybeards to get a Principal title. Better to switch to manager role? Or VP eng type at some startup and hope your stock hits? Or maybe VP at some non tech company?

If you’re in that range, VP Eng at a startup is probably a lower expected value than staying put, unless you have very credible reasons to think that an exit is 9-18 months away.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#178

Post by dt3ft »

dpaleka wrote: post #128
y04nn wrote: post #32

Is this situation specific to the US? Has anyone experiences in other countries?

No one is reaching out in Switzerland right now, but I guess they should.

Switzerland has plenty of code written in vb/c# and tech like wpf is sought after. I highly recommend you look into that and do a few sideprojects using this “old, uncool” tech, if you want a job there. (Source: I lived and worked in CH for 6 years)

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#179

Post by varjag »

mabbo wrote: post #129
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side - I tell recruiters immediately they have to AT LEAST match my current comp. Every single one of them so far has said they can't even get close. If you work at FAANG - your RSUs (most likely) have doubled in about a year. You could easily already be getting paid more than the max offer for the level above where you're currently at.

I've actually seen the opposite. I'm at a FAANG, but based in Toronto. For the first time, recruiters are saying to me that yeah, they can do better than that total comp. Often much better. I like my boss and team, but if someone offers me enough money and a fully remote job, well, it's going to be hard to say no.

FAANG outside of USA/SV is basically any other tech company, this is not surprising.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#180

Post by grepfru_it »

autotune wrote: post #80
grepfru_it wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if you want a job outside of FAANGM (bigtech), a well written cover letter will make you the shoe-in candidate. YMMV

I’ve literally never had to write a cover letter in my 6+ year career in tech outside of FAANGM. Complete waste of time imho.

And i'm explaining from my 22 year career, my best positions came with a cover letter
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