I really appreciate this nod. Gun rights are a big part of the reason I could never live in the Valley, and though it's a huge part of many people's lives across the country it's not something that you see recognized in recruiting efforts.
Many employees choose to go shooting together, but there is no pressure to participate. It's just a normal all-American activity.
I'm not really "the public face of the company". Notice the lack of a trademarked Pantone color. The official corporate identity would tell you nothing about what our office locations are like. They would however proudly tell you about heat beams to zap people and about gun turrets that aim and fire without human action, so they aren't completely boring.
Proposed merger with Orbital ATK should cement its launch capability into New Space era.
Also, Huntsville, AL. Where the James Webb Space Telescope primary manufacturing is performed. Is looking like it may become a budding startup hub.
Huntsville is going through its town center/SoDoSoPa phase at the moment with lots of tiny villages and shopping centers being built. There is a new one going up right by Big Spring Park and it is probably the first time I have seen a crane in downtown.
It's possible to beat typical Silicon Valley pay while living out in a cheap place, with a fresh college graduate maybe getting 6 figures after a year or two, but I'm certainly not promising this to you. We seem to be well above the national average. Most people get a large raise after a year or two.
To put it another way, I'm feeding a family of 13 (sole provider) and living on a 0.48 acre lot that is less than a mile from the beach. I can walk to work, which is across the street from the beach. With the right technical background, you could do that too.
Interviews aren't perfect. Actually, they are awful, but everything else is worse. An interview is largely what determines the level at which an offer is made. Giving a salary isn't simple when you don't know if a person would be a junior-level person or a senior-level person. Some people interview badly.
Even if value is correctly determined, it is important to realize that your value is specific to the job you are being considered for. Picture a world-famous brain surgeon deciding to become a stock trader: it may be that stock traders can be paid well and that the brain surgeon has great skills, but the skills are likely a poor fit for the task at hand. Switching to a different role can make you a beginner again.
Most people got large raises in October. If I remember right, 25% was normal. I don't know when you were offered 115K, but that matters. The market finds a price you see. We made the required adjustment.
I recently checked starting pay for new college grads at Silicon Valley companies, and 115K seemed to be in the middle of the pack. This is however just the raw number. It's more like 200K if you adjust for cost of living in a place like Florida.
I'm assuming from the nature of the description that remote work (but still US based) is a hard non-starter?
We aren't at all likely to hire somebody to be remote on day 1. We consider it to be a security problem.
We do emulators, JIT, hypervisors, stuff like valgrind, debuggers, manual disassembly, binary static analysis, parsers, and assembly. We write our own low-level tools, frequently in C99 to run on Linux. We also use IDA Pro, qemu, Simics, JTAG debuggers, gdb, Coverity, KlocWork, LLVM, and so on. Easily transferable skills include those related to compilers, kernel drivers, embedded RTOSes, vectorizing, firmware, VxWorks BSP development, symbolic execution, boot loaders, software verification, concolic testing, abstract interpretation, satisfiability (SAT, SMT) solvers, and decompilers. We work with more than a dozen architectures including PowerPC/ppc/POWER, MIPS, ARMv8/Thumb2/AArch64, x86-64/x64/Intel, DSPs, and microcontrollers. We hire from no-degree to PhD. Common degrees include Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics.
We don't normally work overtime, and we get paid more if we do. We're never expected to take work home or be on call. Because of the citizenship requirement, there is no chance that the work will be outsourced. Flex-time is fairly extreme; some do randomish hours.
Location hints: Pick Arlington for a car-free life. Pick Florida or Texas to live in a place with solid gun rights and no state income tax. Pick Florida for almost no traffic or commute, surfing, and houses that commonly go for $150,000 to $450,000.
You can email me at users.sf.net, with account name albert.