I've been interviewing for director of Engineering roles. Most private companies want to pay me like $230-290k + ISOs. My Square comp is in the toilet thanks to stock drop so this was starting to sound decent before Affirm called and said they were targeting $700K TC. Who else does this? For various reasons I'm not that into the usual FAANG set, mostly they get picky about my leadership YoE and I don't want to go back to M1 level just for comp. But wondering what alternatives are out there who pay. TC:$450K last time I did the math but there's no bottom to this stock
What do you recommend if someone wants to become a director at some point
Become a manager first, that's the hard part. Then it's just empire building. First, find a growing company. Then, a manager who is popular but incompetent, leading an area with headcount. They'll get a lot of headcount that they won't want to actually lead or organize... You raise your hand every time. Once your team gets too big, you split it, make one of your reports an EM, et voila, you're managing managers. Once you're ticking managing managers YoE you're in good shape. Keep growing, from here size of org is what recruiters see and care about. Jump if your org stops growing even if there are very good business reasons for that.
Thanks! Do you think there's a benefit of becoming a strong engineer first? I see people jump to manager after 4 Yoe. So those people will get manager Yoe but aren't that strong technically