I have recently had 5 job interviews for swe positions at finance companies in the uk where I went through the usually gruelling multi round, multi day gauntlet of take home tests, coding interviews, technical deep dives, behavioural, system design etc etc only to be told at the end of the process that I am "too experienced" for the job or that (in one case) "we already have a CTO and don't need another", in one case I was told that I was the "best candidate they ever interviewed". The most annoying one was Goldman Sachs where I interviewed for 16 hours, Jane Street are also time wasters and offered no feedback at all. My problem is that I need high TC. Right now my tc of $250k is not cutting it. I have a diverse 20 year experience. I have worked on compliers, graphics engines, high frequency trading systems, databases, distributed systems, UI design, from an infra and product perspective, ran a startup (which failed) for 2 years, managed teams of 30 people. How is this not of value? Should I just apply to be a SRE at Google London (will I just be bored like in Meta). What am I doing wrong? Background: I am at E5 (down leveled for unfathomable reasons). Bored out of my mind right now, my team doesn't have enough work to do and my promo pack has been rejected twice on the basis that there isn't scope for an E6 - despite me working at this level. Furthermore I am getting managed out as the only UK team member with everyone else in the west coast (got BE and remote request denied for no reason). So I will switch to a new team after the current cycle at Meta. Since I am going to switch jobs I thought I'd look outside as well.
Build something on your own. You could probably raise funds in an area you have expertise in easily.
Yes I ran a startup for 2 years already it is very very difficult to get funding
What's your YOE - 15 relevant? Try TikTok - they are hiring Same case of MM/MA, I just received a good cash offer (great base) from them but I'm not sure yet.
What are you doing wrong? Let me see, there is a bunch of stuff. Simply put, because you have so much experience, you need to better articulate who you are and what you want. At this point in your career, you better be more than just expressing your, YOE. After 10 years, or 10,000 hours, you are basically plateauing if you are in the same role. You should not expect to be any better than someone with 10 YOE. What are you good at, not good at? What do you want to do vs don’t want to do. Someone saying we already have a CTO is a red flag, because that is a totally different job from being a SRE. That might be you miscommunicating or a shit company, or both - because you should be slotted in to what you do and what value you bring instead of YOE. You can’t walk into Macdonalds and say you want to be the VP for UK, when you are interviewing for a night janitor job. You do janitor work, you get janitor pay. That’s it. If someone says we can’t hire you because you have the same YOE as the VP, you say bullsh@t. I don’t want that job. I want to be the janitor. What you need to be saying is that I want this engineering job because that’s what I am good at. I don’t want to be a CTO, because that is a sh@t job that I am not interested in. Offer me a TC that is commensurate with the value I bring.
Yes I see what you're saying. All the jobs I am applying for will double my TC. The base salary alone is higher than my entire TC now. The feedback I am getting is that I should be targeting something even higher? That's nice but those jobs don't actually exist, or they do but in the UK one doesn't apply for them, you have to network with people to find them, and I don't have that network... The point about yoe is valid in general. For me my experiences are varied, I've not done the same thing for 20 years, max I would say 6 years doing the same thing - and that was to build a $60mm per year revenue business inside a us investment bank from scratch (that was where I was running the 30 person team).
I would repeat - what do you want to do? Do you want to manage a 30 person team, or was that such a pain in the ass that you never want to do it again? If you want to be an IC SWE then you need to acknowledge what that means. Do you want to be an IC6 that needs to influence without authority? Unless you are in a Infra team, your primary job will be to write and comment on Workplace posts. (Sounds like a shit boring job too, right) I am not saying you should pick something higher, you should pick what you want to do. If TC is your target, you might be better off being a manager. But that jobs sucks for other reasons - it’s not boring, it’s just bullsh@t. Climbing the management corporate ladder is just a test of your intestinal fortitude - how much bullsh@t can you eat? Pick your poison man.
Not related apologies, but as a new grad, I'd love to know what you personally found the most interesting of the areas you've worked on and why. Trying to find my niche
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