Got a google offer for Level 5 ~300TC. I performed well in the interview as they appear to be jumping through hoops to get me to agree to a much lower salary. But this offer is unacceptably low given level 5 at a lot of companies is near 500 now. It’s also less than what I make now as a T5. I haven’t revealed my current TC to them. I truly do not understand how this is possible. The google brand doesn’t mean as much as it used to and it’s far from the best place for career growth. Google cloud is a failure, their only strategy is to copy Amazon. Most google products are a failure because pms are stubborn and don’t listen to feedback from users or even Google employees. Why do people still want to work at google? Is the low tc even worth the extra interview prep?
Hype
No
Yes, it’s worth to coast
"Prestige"
You need an offer from another FAANG for them to not low-ball you. Provide them with a meta offer and they will make it a lot more competitive.
get a competing Meta offer
The only way 300k is acceptable for L5 is if you measure it as hourly pay. You could probably get away with 10 hours a week as an L5. There’s no other company out there that would pay 1.2M for an L5 to work 40 hours a week, except maybe Jane Street or Rentech, though I don’t know if they have levels like these. If you care more about TC than hourly pay, then obviously decline the offer, the pay cut is not worth it to be here. For the most part, Google just needs warm bodies to maintain most systems and doesn’t need to overpay for great generalist talent, and there are enough warm bodies out there that will be happy to work at Google with the pay that it’s currently offering.
I should start using the words "warm bodies" more often.
😭 warm bodies
When I tell people I work at Lyft, they assume I’m a Lyft driver 😂😂😂
I respect a Lyft driver more than a G engineer
There are actually some cool new products GCP has that AWS doesn’t. But I agree trying to copy AWS directly isn’t a good strategy. To answer your question, they can do so because people keep taking lowball offers
WLB + prestige.
But the prestige is gone so now it’s high effort to basically work at Microsoft?
Nah, prestige is well-known when you have google on your resume and start applying elsewhere. It makes a laughably huge difference.