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Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

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Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#121

Post by flashgordon »

ehsankia wrote: post #106
taurath wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay though, if you joined Big Co now and made $400k/yr, you'd be taking home $260k post-tax. Anyone can live even in the bay area on half of that, extremely comfortably. In 2-3 years you'd have your $300-400k for a down payment - thats 30% of a $1.2mm house. 2-3 years to buy a median priced place. Thats not bad. Also, prices in say, Santa Clara CA have gone -5.5% YoY, and are forecasted by zillow to go another -8% i…

I honestly never understood all my peers constantly complaining about not being able to afford $2M house, as if that's what happiness is all about. You can still rent a very fancy apartment, max out your 401k, have a top car and live a great life, but just because they don't own a house they are always unhappy. I guess it's true that money != happiness. There's always more you could have.

Ummm I dont think anybody cares about the house being $2M (or 5). If they could pay a quarter of that for a Single Family Home with N bedrooms (N being what they need for their family) and in an area they would like to be in (say closer to work/good school district etc) they would happily do so. Now if you are judging somebody because they wanted to live in house with a backyard instead of a apartment that is just passing your moral judgement onto somebody. True money may not be happiness but not having to worry about money for real estate definitely removes a lot of stress.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#122

Post by yaacov »

cbanek wrote: post #61
a1pulley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually had the opposite experience with Google. I'm currently negotiating a job offer at Google; my initial offer was significantly lower than my four other ones. It's TBD whether they'll end up matching, but my recruiter has been trying to systematically deconstruct the argument for working at a local competitor to make the case that 0.67 * other offer = Google offer. I'm not sure if they'll end up matching -…

I know it's just anecdata but Google also lowballed me very hard. They even offered me less than I was currently making at Microsoft, and when I told them that, they basically said, "well, that's how it is." I walked away, and now get an email every year asking me if I'd reconsider. Maybe it was the wrong decision, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth. As a woman in engineering, I now totally believe in the Goo…

Google lowballed the heck out of me to start, but they were willing to match absolutely any offer from any other company. Their recruiting process is rough but everyone I’ve spoken to has ended up with a competitive offer at the end. You might just have had an exceptionally incompetent recruiter

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#123

Post by flashgordon »

a1pulley wrote: post #39
bradlys wrote: post #29

Facebook and Google are only setting the pay standard among other well paying public companies. The rest of the valley isn't keeping up. Startups in particular feel like slowly ramped up in pay but capped out. They're not offering enough stock to make up for it either. Usually only enough to make it such that your TC at startup would be equal to that of a big company IF the company IPO's/sells. (A big IF!) I don't se…

I've actually had the opposite experience with Google. I'm currently negotiating a job offer at Google; my initial offer was significantly lower than my four other ones. It's TBD whether they'll end up matching, but my recruiter has been trying to systematically deconstruct the argument for working at a local competitor to make the case that 0.67 * other offer = Google offer. I'm not sure if they'll end up matching -…

Google is actually far from the most competitive when it comes to matching. There used to be a time when they used to atleast match Facebook but now given the set of scandals from FB, they are openly refusing to match an FB offer and I have known candidates who have gone to Google despite this (possibly for "ethical" brand and saner work life balance).

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#124

Post by chillacy »

ehsankia wrote: post #107
hnaccy wrote: post #73

These numbers make my head implode. Back to the leetcode grind.

Pro-tip, work on personal projects, code something meaty. I learned far more from making websites and tools than I did with coding competitions.

To put this in context though, if you’re already getting recruiter interest and scheduling onsites it’s better to leetcode. If you aren’t getting resume callbacks then build stuff.

It’s been discussed before but the sad reality is that passing an interview loop at the big 5 and building stuff are not really correlated.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#125

Post by astrange »

scarface74 wrote: post #83
borski wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your standards may be too high. That looks like a gorgeous home to me. To be fair, I will agree with you that most places in the Bay Area don't seem to have A/C, but that's also because it's not generally needed here except for a couple weeks a year. You could do what we did in NYC all the time: window A/C's.

That is kind of depressing. My wife would swear I was joking if I told her that we could rent a house for $3,000 more than our mortgage that was less than half size and looks like something built in the 70s. And people on HN wonder why software engineers living in other major cities in the US have no interest in going to the west coast.

They look like they were built in the 70s because they were. That generation decided there were enough houses and promptly banned building any new ones - so we've still got the same ones.

For some reason most of them have the original gross beige carpet too.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#126

Post by astrange »

BubRoss wrote: post #82
bradlys wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this $5k/month house with AC within 40 minutes drive of SF and 20 minutes drive of work? (Menlo Park to Mountain View generally being work area) It basically limits you to San Mateo to Mountain View. I haven't seen anything for $5k/month with AC there. If you find it, let me know. I'm in the market - lol. I have seen one show up here and there but it's almost unequivocally in a terrible neighborhood and/or n…

In 40 minutes you can get so far north that there are no cellphone towers, no lights and no pavement.

In 40 minutes driving north from Mountain View I think you'll be in SF at best.

You might make it to North Bay/Marin - which is true that it's rural, but it's not because it's a secret or far from humanity or anything. It just has the fiercest NIMBYs on the planet who are fine with all their services being provided by day laborers with 2 hour commutes.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#127

Post by quicklime »

flashgordon wrote: post #123
a1pulley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually had the opposite experience with Google. I'm currently negotiating a job offer at Google; my initial offer was significantly lower than my four other ones. It's TBD whether they'll end up matching, but my recruiter has been trying to systematically deconstruct the argument for working at a local competitor to make the case that 0.67 * other offer = Google offer. I'm not sure if they'll end up matching -…

Google is actually far from the most competitive when it comes to matching. There used to be a time when they used to atleast match Facebook but now given the set of scandals from FB, they are openly refusing to match an FB offer and I have known candidates who have gone to Google despite this (possibly for "ethical" brand and saner work life balance).

Can anyone comment on the difference in work-life balance between Google and Facebook? Maybe $/hour (or some non-linear equivalent) would be a better metric than just total compensation.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#128

Post by caymanjim »

enahs-sf wrote: post #80
mangotrees wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in management at a FAANG company. Total comp for my college hires averages around $150k. Total comp for my career level ICs averages a smidge over $200k. My top 10% have total comp in the $350k neighborhood. The very few folks who are at the staff/principal range (depending on which companies titles you're using) are taking home $500-800k (mostly in stock). If we consider attrition, it's probably only 1 in 150 of…

So the question for me as an engineer becomes, do I grind it out at a FAANG company and try to be one of those level 7’s OR do I roll the dice on the startup? My intuition is that the former has a better outcome on average. Seems pretty rare to become staff/principal/whatever at a big co and based on the data from levels.fyi, you gotta be pretty far along in your career.

Or neither? Very few people will reach senior management and very few startups are successful. Any IT career is going to set you up for a comfortable life even if you're a mid-level non-management workhorse. Excelling is partially about skill, but vastly more about persistence and luck. Find something you enjoy and don't worry about where you'll be in 20 years.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#129

Post by joshuamorton »

pm90 wrote: post #113
Zaheer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google in particular often starts will lower compensation but will match other offers (from Big-N companies) quickly. I'd recommend getting another Big-N offer and using that to negotiate. Some great resources for negotiation: - https://teamcandor.com/salary/guide/ - https://www.holloway.com/g/equity-compensation

> but will match other offers (from Big-N companies) quickly Don't current Googlers find that depressing? I've also heard that pay raises within a team at Google are often designed to "level out" the spread. So if you started low, then you eventually catch up. All anecdotes and internet readings though, would love it if someone with actual knowledge commented on these things.

I've found my raises to be really good (base >10% annually, total comp closer to 25% annually). So the impact of my initial offer would have been not super impactful. Certainly it mattered (10s of thousands of dollars at the start of one's career is valuable), but it hasn't affected my raises positively or negatively, so the overall impact is limited.

As for raises, that's almost right. Given two people performing equally, one who makes more than the other, the lower paid one will get larger raises, until the salaries are approximately the same. If one performs better, they'll get larger merit increases.

This is all subject to the assumptions that the system is fair at rating performance, which I try to ignore when explaining the mechanics to people.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#130

Post by warp_factor »

this whole leveling thing is very sad. It makes you realize you are simply a number: a small pawn that falls into a predefined category and that will do a predefined job without too much opportunities to go out of its way.

I'm missing the craziness of studying at university where I felt everything was possible. I had sometimes similar feelings in startups.

In big companies that created that level structure it's shocking how boring everything becomes. People define themselves based on their level. That becomes the only goal together with the TC (Total compensation). It really feels like a rat race sometimes.

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