Average yoe from new grad to senior
I'm trying to decide between a few offers right now with similarish TC. So far I have offers from Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, and Riot Games. I'm in the interview process with Palantir, Facebook, and Twitter, but I may have to pull out due to Microsoft deadlines. Google (116 base, 160 stock, 50 sign on) Microsoft (110 base, 120 stock, 50 sign on + 18 relo) Riot (125 base, 18 ssp, 20 sign on) Bloomberg (135 base, 0 stock, 30 sign on) My focus is learning and maximizing opportunities I can get further in my career, in the event that I want to switch companies. Starting at the lowest level for all of them, I'm wondering what is the expected yoe it would take to get to Senior SWE level at these respective companies. Industry standard Senior, since you can get Senior at Bloomberg a lot easier than other places lol. Thanks!
Fastest at Microsoft would be 3.5 years and you’d have to come in under leveled at 59. 1 year per level is extremely fast, but I’ve seen it done through first level Principal a couple of times. More than a couple times to Senior.
Google: 5y from L3->L5 Microsoft: 5y from 59->63 Bloomberg: 2y to Senior Take Google since their levels are valued more at other companies. 63 from Microsoft often gets downleveled to L4 at Google, while Senior at Bloomberg with 5 yoe gets downleveled to L3 even or 62 at Microsoft.
How come Microsoft reloc is 18k? :o Last year it was only 5k!!
International
Speaking only from my experience at Google: The new grad to L5 (senior) timeline can be anywhere from 2.5 years (have two friends who've done that), to well over 4 years. I'd say expect 4 +/- 1 years for L5 from new grad (2 +/- 0.5 years for L4). My experience has been that those who come into the company as new grads tend to get promoted faster (mostly due to selection bias; the people coming in as new grads tend to be better engineers imo). If you want to maximize future opportunities, I don't think any brand name has as much value on your resume as Google. In terms of overall growth and learning, Google is massive and you can move around fairly easily, but the work afforded to junior workers tends to be fairly routine or boring. However, there's a ton of internal resources for growth, from free classes and big education reimbursements, to design docs explaining major architecture that doesn't even exist anywhere else. I'm leaving next month, but I'd definitely recommend Google as a good first job for a new grad.
Do you think what most people learn from Google is the internal stack that are not applicable elsewhere? While I do agree Google offers lots of learning resources and opportunities, they are not necessarily “transferrable” knowledge at all.
The way I think about it: Google's stack is unique and in many ways appears better than external alternatives. While at Google, I rarely had to worry about scalibility or choice of backend stack, since there were well established, highly reliable patterns for standing up services. As a new grad engineer, I think it's more important to get into the groove of software development and train communication skills, rather than get sidetracked by issues of scale and server maintenance. Once that foundation is strong, then it would make sense to learn more about specifics of how scalibility, maintenance and other more nuanced issues work. That's partly why I'm leaving: I want to be in an environment where I'm forced to deal with issues of scale and maintainability, but that's only after I've already nurtured a solid core of software development and communication skills.
Based on TC I'm guessing you got an Assoc offer from Riot. 4-5 is a reasonable ball park, with changes coming up to better align levels to industry, I foresee a shift slightly downward, notably the jump from mid to senior.
Do you know what kind of upleveling/downleveling would occur if one we're to leave Riot? Would an Senior leaving Riot be equivalent to and L5 at G?
Fwiw I'm on the opposite side, having hired former googlers into Riot. But with some of that realignment work, goal would be that a senior maps to L5, staff to L6. Anything beyond gets fuzzy and frankly most places tend to not hire at that level much vs promoting up.
Congrats! I would guess 5-7 years? MSFT offer looks pretty good. What org?
Thanks! It's with Azure
Very nice!