Changing jobs during the Great Resignation

I don't quite get the study plan, as it sounds more like cramming. Nothing wrong with cramming per se except that what you learn does not stick, and you will have to repeat the process when you need to switch jobs again.

I think a better system is to regularly study fundamentals and always deep dive in your work. Case in point, I've never had problems passing interviews by FAANG or other hot startups, I always got title bump when switching jobs, and I never spent extra time prepping for interviews. Say you're an ML engineer who builds an image recognition pipeline using Spark and PyTorch. Do not just be content with assembling a number of open-source solutions to make your pipeline work. Instead, study the internals of Spark, understand the math and algorithms behind your image recognition models, read survey papers to understand the landscape of data processing and image recognition or further, machine learning, and implement a few models and try to optimize them. Similarly, if you work on database systems, do not just stop at being familiar with MySQL or Postgres or whatever. Instead, understand how transactions work, what consistency means, how principles of distributed systems play out. Study Jim Gray, Gottfried Vossen, Maurice Herlihy, Leslie Lamport, the database red book and its references... You get the idea.

As for leetcoding, replace it with study of algorithm designs. Study Jon Kleinberg's book or Knuth's writings (no, you don't have to read through his books, but his writings are incredibly insightful even for mortals like us), for instance. Instead of working out hundreds of back-tracing problems, study backtracking's general forms.

People tend to underestimate the effect of regular study for years. You'll find that in a few years your knowledge will converge and you will be able to spend less time to incrementally improve your skills, and you will have so many concepts to connect to greatly benefit your projects.

Increasing comp can be much more than "doubly effective." It's unlikely to triple, quadruple, ten-times, etc, your comp, but in the industry talked about here it's far from impossible and if you only ever focus on your expenses you might blind yourself entirely to those opportunities.

But gets only 30 minutes a day with his wife...

> Is it really necessary to cram like you're taking the SATs again to get a good job as a software engineer?

Frankly, yes. Just as the SATs and ACTs are IQ tests with a shitty veil on top, FAANG interviews are meant to be the same. Everyone knows interview prep has basically zero correlation to job duties in software engineering, but you have to play the game.

> the author wound up at Facebook, the most soulless company on the list.

Who cares? Searching for meaning through work is fruitless, unless you're at a company that actually really aligns with your values and what you hope to see in the world.

Huge comp packages allow people to pursue meaning in life outside of their 9-5. It pays the bills, and allows for hobbies. I'd attempt to be a MotoGP racer if I had unlimited free time, but I don't - what I DO have, is a pretty nice white collar job that pays well and is somewhat mentally stimulating. The paycheck allows me to do things I'm actually passionate about otherwise.

8-10 YOE and new offers only means he was right around a cool $1M/yr