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Job market is brutal for SWEs 🥲
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NASA has brilliant software engineers who work on ridiculously difficult problems, but I wonder what motivates these engineers!! NASA pays shit in comparison to FAANG, and those engineers could easily make 3-5x more money working on trying to get underaged girls addicted to instagram, but they choose not to. Why the f?
Well whatever motivates them now they can just do go to spacex or blueorigin to do similar work for higher TC.
I’ve heard space x pay isn’t great as well, but I’d assume it to be better than NASA
Because sending man to the moon is more fun than moving Protos?
Fun yes, but fun isn’t going to afford you unnecessary luxuries that humans crave
Job security and benefits
Difference between Indian and American cultures. Former emphasizes job security, pay, prestige. Latter emphasizes interests, choice. Have you ever wondered why most inventors in tech are from this country and not India?
Literally every country which isn’t steeped in wealth (i.e., literally all of Asia, Africa, Central + South America, and Central + Eastern Europe) values hard material outcomes over soft outcomes like job fulfillment. Most people never had the luxury of being picky about that shit.
Only those coming from rich families can afford to take the massive risks associated with the latter. Has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with wealth.
I know several SWEs at NASA and they aren’t particularly brilliant nor are they working on difficult problems. The ones I know wouldn’t pass Microsoft hiring bar.
I would assume those Atleast working in JPL to be pretty smart
I live in Pasadena and I know a bunch of JPL folks. None of them are smart imo
Lots of people are not TC chasers. Some people are just super passionate about a mission and just need enough money to have a decent life. Now that I have a decent amount of money in my savings account after 8 years at FAANG, I'm exploring options I'm more passionate about but that will likely cut my TC in half, or even more than that.
Who says they actively rejected offers from FAANG/Unicorns for NASA? It's much more likely they didn't have significantly better options. Most SWEs have no clue about levels or Blind. They couldn't fathom how much better top companies pay. Or even if they know, they consider interview prep to be too much for them. Or they think high TC comes with terrible wlb. When in reality it all depends on the company/team. Plenty of top paying places have solid wlb, plenty of poor paying places do not.
Not everybody is motivated by top money. You can ask the same thing with CS professors. I've worked with NASA engineers before. They absolutely geek out over space stuff. They attend rocket launches, do amateur astronomy, and they love what they are doing. Some are incredibly smart and some are not. But they definitely achieved what they've always wanted to do since they were kids... I wish I had that certainty with my career.
Most of them likely don't know what top money looks like or think it's out of reach for them. You think the average SWE knows it's really just lc, system design and gtfo? Or what pay bands at top tech companies look like? No way. Also some already come from wealth. Easy to pursue passion over practicality in that case. Not to mention who says you can't also find interesting work at better paying places?
@Bolt, how well does the strategy of LC and system design work for people who are self taught or bootcamp graduates? I’m trying to transition to SWE from analytics and want to manage my expectations for the future.
interest > money ?
Could be prestige 💅
Prestige is a currency that any Googler and tell you. They give up some $$$ for it.