I am a software architect at a small startup in the Midwest with 7-10 years development experience in backend API development, distributed systems, microservices, etc. Current salary is 140k in the Midwest. I am currently prepping with LeetCode and would love some help on where I should expect to interview at level-wise. Iβm aware that since I do not have a FAANG company on my resume I will be downleveled. Should I expect to be downleveled to level 4/5?
140k in the mid-west π³. Where do I sign up?
L4 would be reasonable depending on experience
Might be helpful to take a look at http://levels.fyi
You could try out for a year or two. Grass on your side may be same color.
Do whatever you can to work remote and stay in the midwest. You are sacrificing quality of life by moving to the bay area, which you will only appreciate after you lose it.
Here's a contrary opinion. I have almost 10 years of experience in finance, working on problems that aren't even close to Google scale. I bombed my Google interview and still got an L5 offer. 10 years is a lot of experience. If you were learning from your mistakes, you'd be an awesome engineer by now. Just go in well prepared. Leetcode and System Design ftw. Your prep will have a huge impact on your leveling.
Very interesting. Iβm glad to hear you were able to get an L5 offer. I honestly thought it might be a stretch for me. I have been prepping the last 2 months on LeetCode along with system design. Nothing I havenβt seen before but more or less just training my reflexes. Almost all of my work has been high scale cloud solutions which has been great for drafting mock question responses to. I have a few whiteboards at home that I am not looking forward to training on soon π Did you take the counter-offer from citadel or was this in the past? I hear citadel is pretty fun to work for.
Bro 140k in the Midwest is hella nice. Stay there.
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Getting into Google at L5 would not be a downlevel, if anything you should be happy if you get in at L4 with the possibility of getting an L3 and this is all under the assumption you even get an offer.
I would not take L3 with 7-10 years of experience. But I agree you should expect 4. 5 is going to be a stretch depending on how good your experience is (not much info in post).
Thank you. I appreciate your candor π