Ppl's posts about offers are nuts! The ppl here are amazing!
Alright, my mind is officially blown. I am amazed at some of the people and their skills/knowledge on blind. I have one more summer and then 1 year left in my information systems masters degree, trying to get internship offer, (failing btw), and then I see people who have like crazy pay and stock options only a couple years older than me(I'm almost 27), and I work a job at $44k salary. But people are pumping out over triple of that with a couple years of experience after school or even starting?! Am I missing something? I mean I got a 2$ raise this year, so I'm grateful for that, but how do I skyrocket like everyone else? "Give me the power, of man's red flower, so I can be like you"
Get a real job. Don’t waste your time on deadend jobs. Work on leetcode.com in your work hours.
Would hacker rank suffice?
I didn’t have a good experience with hacker rank, but if you like it, just go for it. I think there is generally no doubt that leetcode is the best website available today.
Comparison is the thief of happines
Yeah, but I need something to shoot for haha
If you shoot for what others make you'll never be happy. Shoot to make enough money to pay the bills, max out your 401k, and spend on hobbies you enjoy. Depending on where you live that might only need to be 50k, elsewhere it might be 120k. It's all relative.
Isn’t 44k like the average American income?
I'm not sure. Maybe so. But I don't want to just live to pay taxes and other bills. If that makes sense.
No, I hear you on that. It’s just good to be reminded that we’re all in an incredibly lucky position to make several times what the average American makes doing shit we enjoy.
I complain about living in the bay area at least once a day but in the end i have never seen an area where so many people take a few years off work or fly planes as a hobby. The opportunities this area has afforded me would have been difficult to come by elsewhere
That sounds amazing!
Dude I am in bay area. I never took a year off or flew a plane. I am underpaid so it makes sense.
I went from 40k to 115k after moving to SF 4 years ago. Now I make 230k. I also overpay for a tiny 1br apartment.
Are you saving up more money than you would have been able to otherwise though?
Yeah definitely considering total comp. I can get by comfortably/borderline luxuriously on my base pay, and my RSUs are basically a second mini salary and all savings... But yeah, I live in a tiny box and only save around $1k a month organically so it’s sort of a weird feeling. Also maxing 401k/Backdoor Roth + some ESPP though so take home is extra tight.
I wish I knew about the pay packages and stock (Glassdoor numbers were very off) in Silicon Valley along with the best ways to prep years ago. I would have put in a lot more effort whenever I had interviews. Count yourself lucky that you have access to all this info, Ball is now in your court. Just remember that there is a lot more to life/happiness than money/career.
So are you saying I should be working on those leetcode problems then? Or what other ways of prepping are you talking about. I am very grateful for everyone input. It helps a lot because half way through college I decide to switch to technology and overhaul my major. And so I have been around the tech space less than 2.5 years and trying to capitalize and get as much info as I can to make up for lost time!
Yes. Leetcode s good but also try to develop a real affinity for learning. Many of the bay area folks aren't really that good, they just happen to be in a field that pays a lot. If you learn right, you'll breeze past say 60% without trying. That's a big deal because it means you can pull in 300k+ at 25 hours work. That's a lot of left over time to develop side income.
Sad that leetcode is the standard answer to get ahead in our field these days. Do you really think doing all those problems makes you a better programmer?
being proficient with data structures and practicing to a point does help. as is reasoning about your implementation and getting a problem right the first try
Being able to do it well could be correlated with having to write lots of real code too. That is, being fluent enough that the mechanics of whatever you’re doing become second nature.
my mind is blown when people tell me abt trader salaries
90% of the Same exact job in countries like China or Europe pay a lot less. Silicon Valley and to an extent Seattle are the only places that pay this crazy comp. though most of the work done here can be done at same quality for a fraction of the cost outside USA. It is insane why companies are still paying these crazy amounts. But make hay while the sun shines. With globalization you can never be sure how long this party will continue
Worked for a company that had onsite developers, outsourced everything, and then brought developers back on. Basically the quality they were receiving as well as communication issues justified rehiring the developers. Something about not having enough direct control on their product. That being said, companies that don’t have an emphasis on a tech product (airlines, banks, etc) don’t seem to have a problem doing it.
My company tried to outsource devs and the code ended up being absolute shit - so bad that in the end we scrapped that product and rebuilt it. My coworker on that team always complained about the code quality from the remote contractors.
Keep in mind most people with those salaries live in San Francisco bay area, where the cost of living is triple rest of America too (you can't find a reasonable home here for less than 1 million, and they are really not that nice.)
Holy crap. But what about the stock options and all that type of stuff? I mean shoot! I didn't even know stock options were a real thing below executive level until I hopped on here.
Yes Bay Area is not for everyone.