Been at VMware for 5+ yrs now. Working in the same team doing systems stuff. Joined as a new grad after MS. Currently Sr. MTS and things have been going good as far as growth and responsibilities in the last two years. WLB is great and manager is very good. But TC is low(I think) due to salary compression and very capable, high calibre teammates. Also, feeling somewhat burned out because of being in the same place for a while. Starting interview prep and trying to figure out what to aim for next: Google/Facebook et. al: High TC, stable but will be just one more cog and 6 month prep with system design where I have no Dist. System background. Startup: moderate TC, risky but more growth and can probably leverage my systems background. Anyone with a similar background and YoE have any advice here ? I would still prioritize WLB over TC but don't want to stagnate both in terms of TC and skills. Early 30's, H1B TC: 200k YoE: 6
FANG
When you say systems and then you mentioned you don't know distributed systems, what you mean? You work on Kernel or OS?
Yes. Low level OS. Just started working on containers.
Try both anyway. Optimize your happiness. If more TC give you more happiness, go for it. FWIW, conservative TC of L4 at Goog is around 280k, L5 is around 320k.
I would suggest reading this post before deciding. It covers some important things to think about https://lethain.com/forty-year-career/
Good one. Thanks for sharing
I think it boils down to what "Growth" means for you. Is it promo, is it tech knowledge, gaining contacts or something else? This is tied to what you want to do 5y from now, on top of your next job. If you want to move around in the valley then it is not about just what you have learnt, but it is about other's perception on what you have learnt. If you have FB/G on your resume for long enough, people could think "oh, this person has worked on large scale systems and infra for a long enough time that they can learn/understand other spaces quickly." That way you will get the opportunity to interview at other places, and be considered for other bigger roles. However if you join a startup people may not be convinced about the tech and caliber of engineers working there, when you leave during failures. So that could make your TC hard to increase dramatically. People naturally tie company success to engineer success/trust. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Thanks for that perspective
What language do you prefer and how are you senior MTS and still not confident of distributed sys.. give it a shot to faang
Don't have work experience building distributed systems. Just worked at the OS level.
To be honest not all engineer build some distributed stuff in day to day work. If you are interested in building APIs and distributed system, take some time, do open source and parallel prepare for faang. You will do it. All the best