Re:Interview with the creators of levels.fyi
by newfangle on Monday June 17, 2019 @07:06PM
(#20208191)
Which FAANG? That matters apple and amazon are not anywhere as competitive as the rest.
They have to be competitive especially at the more senior levels.
Re:Interview with the creators of levels.fyi
by enahs-sf on Monday June 17, 2019 @10:40PM
(#20209351)
So the question for me as an engineer becomes, do I grind it out at a FAANG company and try to be one of those level 7’s OR do I roll the dice on the startup? My intuition is that the former has a better outcome on average. Seems pretty rare to become staff/principal/whatever at a big co and based on the data from levels.fyi, you gotta be pretty far along in your career.
Re:Interview with the creators of levels.fyi
by mkoryak on Monday June 17, 2019 @11:55PM
(#20209646)
I worked at ~6 startups for about 10 years before google.
What do I have to show for it?
A slight beer belly and less motivation to build something from the ground up yet again only to see it burn down. Yeah, I had a ton of fun too.
Would I trade all those years at startups for going straight to google? eeh, maybe 4 of them. On the other hand though, I don't think I would have made it through the interview without knowing a lot of random shit I learned at startups.
Also being a dad and working at a startup does not mix well.
Interesting. Maybe FAANG's do so well in SV because they have a nice pipeline of startup burnouts who learn all this weird shit that you only learn from working at startups for a decade, and then finally end up in FAANG's, use all their wisdom to build even better systems....
Re:Interview with the creators of levels.fyi
by caymanjim on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @02:55AM
(#20210313)
Or neither? Very few people will reach senior management and very few startups are successful. Any IT career is going to set you up for a comfortable life even if you're a mid-level non-management workhorse. Excelling is partially about skill, but vastly more about persistence and luck. Find something you enjoy and don't worry about where you'll be in 20 years.
Re:Interview with the creators of levels.fyi
by MuffinFlavored on Monday June 17, 2019 @07:09PM
(#20208208)
> Total comp for my college hires averages around $150k.
What cities is that number for?
Total comp for my college hires averages around $150k.
Total comp for my career level ICs averages a smidge over $200k.
My top 10% have total comp in the $350k neighborhood.
The very few folks who are at the staff/principal range (depending on which companies titles you're using) are taking home $500-800k (mostly in stock). If we consider attrition, it's probably only 1 in 150 of the engineers we hire who ever hit this tier or above.
The levels.fyi info seems pretty accurate to me. Their estimate for my personal role is within 2% of my actuals.