Hey folks, Spouse and I are considering moving back to the midwest. I’ve been researching jobs, and it looks like the big G has campuses dotted around the region (Chicago, Madison, Detroit/Madison Heights). I’ve been doing the LC grind, and once coronavirus is winding down, I’m going to start interviewing (I’m in contact witn a recruiter already). Here’s my dilemma, half the appeal of the midwest is the low CoL, but that means nothing if our TC drops to match it! Levels.fyi has like no data, and what data there is doesn’t strike me as accurate given Austin’s (seemingly accurate) numbers vs Chicago (which has a higher CoL, but has L4s in the high $1xx range vs Austin in the low $2xx range). https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/L4/ My question: is levels.fyi accurate? Is the pay really that low? @anyone working at those campuses, is it worth the move?
The pay is very top market.
Check H1B site and do comparisons for different cities. https://h1bdata.info/
It ultimately comes down to competing offers. The good G offers in Austin likely had competing offers at Amazon, FB, etc.
Get the offer first.