Bored at Google
I’m bored. Been here 4 years. Not liking the work anymore, the pay is good by all intents and purposes I guesss, but damn bro I feel like my brain and soul’s melting by the day. What should I do? Seems like a good time to switch companies now that I’ve hit my comp cliff. How’s the market / interviewing like for SWE’s nowadays? Still same ol’ LC problems with design here or there, or do they ask different questions now since you have 13 year olds cracking LC Hard problems for fun since that’s all you Bay Area nerds know what to teach ur kids nowadays (fuck man)… What other industries/companies you recommend? I’ve been doing mostly infra work most of my career, though lately I’ve done client infra past year, but I’m ready to do something else. I wanna learn and do something new in something that matters, however pretentious and entitled that sounds but I know opportunities are out there. What are those opportunities/companies/fields I should go for? Is it crypto companies, AI (I’m prob not smart/educated enough to even be considered for AI, only have a BS of comp sci, no fancy masters). Should I quit for a year and travel? Idunno man, maybe I’m having a midlife crisis (almost 30) or maybe I just need a break from staring at the screen all day writing dumb ass code. Maybe Google is the best it gets and I should just stay here eating different types of exotic fruits all day. Any thoughts are appreciated, whether they’re productive or not. TC: $200k (conservatively, after my cliff. More like $240 but let’s just keep it at $200k cus I’m a dumbass) Level: L4 YOE: 6 years Age: 30 Single, male, ugly af (unless it’s ur mother ur asking)
Networth ?
$450k (not including 401k). Not that much by tech standards but yeah. I lost a good chunk buying in peak crypto 2021 lol
Wow that’s not bad at all !!
It's "for all intents and purposes", not "for all intensive purposes". I stopped reading at that point.
Lmao
OP too intense lol
Save up and plan to retire early. That way you can work on things that actually interest you even if it is tech. Taking a break is definitely a good idea. Google takes people back pretty easy if you are under a year gone.
Damm bro you seem like a great coworker to have, if you want make $500 more join us.
Lol can’t tell how sarcastic ur being, but thanks. Bloomberg recruiters have messaged me
Quit and travel and come back
Ill trade w you
6 yoe L4 200k is kinda bad
Yeah I know. It’s technically $240k, I just like to think of it as $200k cus I’m conservatively paranoid. Is that still bad, genuine question? (too lazy to look up bands)
It was $300k/y avg past 4 years. But now that cliff hit its fallen, a lot.
When u say infra what exactly do u work on
Worked on data pipeline stuff at Adobe Marketing Cloud for first 2 years. Then did Google Cloud Storage Efficiency for 1 year, then switched teams and been doing backend/fullstack/client “infra” work for a consumer apps team past 3 years (it’s been a mixed bag of work all across the different apps)
You should definitely look into transferring to another company. You should be able to get an alright L5 offer that would put you at 350k+. Has your manager not given you any indication of refreshers / top-ups to keep you whole past the cliff? What are some of the things that you are interested in doing more generally? Life is short and we owe it to ourselves to live the most of it.
Travel, eat good food, meet beautiful exotic women, broaden your perspective