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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

#391

Post by mark-r »

dasyatidprime wrote: post #355
refenestrator wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write a script that deploys something to a fresh ec2 instance.. then you can say you used aws for your side project. Aws is like 800 services, but under it all is ec2 and s3 -- just get familiar with those and the rest are conveniences.

This is not an unreasonable point, but I will note that I was partly using “AWS” metonymically to refer to a whole cluster of technology decisions surrounding the current wave of “cloud” everything, and I was also partially referring to the purer “have you been part of a full-scale service deployment with real users” aspect—there's a bigger difference between “operating a service when there's hundreds of thousands of…

I recently had a job for exactly a week before the company decided I wasn't working out. One of the things they had me doing was logging in to Azure and trying to debug something - even though Azure never came up during the interview process, only AWS. It seems they didn't recognize there was any difference between them.

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

#392

Post by dragonwriter »

mark-r wrote: post #387
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm back in the job market and it doesn't even seem like HR has a clue what programmers do. My favorite was: "Must be fluent in: C#, .NET, and .NET Framework..."

I've found that the understood meaning of .NET has changed from when the term was first defined by Microsoft. Originally it meant the C# language and the multi-language library that it employed. Now it means specifically the parts of that library that are used for server applications.

Eh, I hear people talk about .NET desktop apps all the time and they are understood quite well. .NET (and, frankly, everything that isn't HTML/CSS/JS) may be less used outside of backend use than was once the case, but I don't think .NET is conventionally understood to be backend-specific in any general sense.

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

#393

Post by zz865 »

echelon wrote: post #213
thr1236 wrote: post #193

Hard to know what is a good or high total comp in the current market. I’m at $175k in central FL. I see a lot of people posting much higher pay on various forums and I often wonder if I’m underpaid. Now more than ever. Outside of FAANG (and similar) I’ve only found companies paying around ~200k total for senior level engineers. These places still have rigorous interviews but not quite FAANG difficulty. Still, the mot…

> I’m at $175k in central FL. For total comp that's really low. I'd expect that to be paired with RSU equity grants of $150 - $200k/yr. Any publicly listed "tech company" that isn't penny pinching like Amazon will probably offer similar rates. Maybe look for a tech company that is hiring remote? Negotiate a good total comp package if it isn't in line with what you see on glassdoor, etc.

Holy shit, I'm in NYC and $175k is pretty good for a financial, for Florida it looks amazing.

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

#394

Post by mmaunder »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #369
mmaunder wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You picked the bottom of the range and didn’t add benefits. Top of the range with cost of benefits, which a contractor would have to pay for themselves is over $100 an hour. Keep in mind we pay for all certifications, exams, college degree programs, 21 days PTO which accumulates to even more, matching 401K, conferences with biz class travel, healthcare, etc.

I won't say too much about pay scales because others have, but 21 days of PTO is not "incredible" by any means, especially if you make people use it for sick time as well. At least if I was looking in a strong market, that would reduce the value of your other numbers downward to me. I recommend explicitly creating separate sick time, or switching to a minimum PTO (making sure employees take that time off).

Amazon, for example, starts at 10 days for FTEs and accrues to a max of 20 days once you've worked for longer than 6 years. We are roughly the same as Facebook and Google who are between 20 to 30 days per year, depending on how long you've worked there.

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

#395

Post by ryanSrich »

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?

CS grads can start at $225/yr at most FAANG cos. With zero years of experience. There’s really no secret here. It’s well known. Get a CS degree, know you’re interview questions well, and you’ll likely get in. It’s the interview that’s the real test.

Also to be clear, that’s total comp. Not salary. Salary is closer to $150. I think most FAANG cos top out around $200k for salary, but I know several people making over $1m a year.

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

#396

Post by ryan93 »

baby wrote: post #176
gavinray wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s less than the GDP per employee in the US.

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

#397

Post by aleksiy »

ramraj07 wrote: post #293
aleksiy wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add my own data point. I studied leetcode for 6 months during covid. Sent about 30 applications interviewed at 10 companies and received 8 offers. 2 of these offers where double my current TC through negotiation. It's not just FAANG but startups making very good offers. I have 3 YOE. For negotiation: Always ask for at least 20% more + a signing bonus Have competing offers Interview well Be willing to walk awa…

Could you give rough range of these offers? Would be interested in understanding absolute numbers

My lowest offers where 120k CAD Base, 100k USD in options.

My best two offers:

200k CAD Base, 390k USD RSU /4 years, 20k CAD Sign on

200k CAD Base, 330k USD in Options / 4 years, 20k CAD Sign on

I'm also still waiting on some numbers from Google Canada but I doubt they will match.

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

#398

Post by sangnoir »

cxx wrote: post #115

Not my experience at all. For context, I'm a L6 at FB right now and have more than a decade of experience. I've never seen tech interviews become as stupid as they are now. In the last 3 months I've applied to a few places, including one where I literally built from scratch what the hiring team wanted to do (and got promoted for it at FB), and I've never seen the difficulty of the programming rounds so high as now. I…

> I've blocked or helped block every single interview loop I've been in except when I knew this person was supposed to join our team directly if they passed, then we just had an reasonable problem and a good talk. My goal is to make hiring slow down to a crawl, make it so hard to find anyone that it hurts the company and is forced to change it.

Have you considered that you might be frustrating the interviewees and your colleagues too?

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

#399

Post by cweill »

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…

What's well paid for FAANG senior? 300k? 400k? $500k+? Are levels.fyi's numbers out of date?

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

#400

Post by warent »

bittercynic wrote: post #319
warent wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days I just immediately turn those down without a second thought. It's a joke of an interviewing system and your time is way too valuable for that. Happy to do coding questions, but not 8 hour long take-home projects. Those have screwed me too many times

Could those long coding projects be a strategy to force you into sinking so much effort into the process that you're now in a weak negotiating position due to the sunk cost? I admit I'm speaking from ignorance here, and am only curious to gain more insight into this.

I've never thought of that! only rver heard my bosses/colleagues say they felt it gave them a better signal. But it wouldnt surprise me if some people had darker motives like this
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