I've been rejected at Google and Facebook and most of HN doesn't think my total compensation is all that impressive, so, I probably don't have many options to be real with you.

Why do you care whether HN thinks your comp is impressive?

Money is a tool. Once basic material needs are met, tying personal self-worth to a numeric value is not a recipe for happiness, and chasing other people's expectations of what you should be earning is even worse.

I would say you probably do have options, if you choose to go for them.

>not a recipe for happiness

And certainly not a recipe for morality

Why morally? If you go for the money and you do not steal it, you certainly bring value into the world, that people are willing to pay for. Do not see what is morally wrong about it.

> you certainly bring value into the world

Just because someone is willing to pay for it, doesn’t mean it’s good for society or the world.

What?

Do you buy something, that harms the society or the world, why?

Besides what on_and_off said (and you can add many more to that list, for example diamonds, oil, construction using migrant workers in bad conditions, etc) there are also people who only care about money, regardless of the harm that it causes (deforestation of the amazon? Tobacco products? Financial products that lead people to ruin? Drug industries? Human trafficking?)

Some people will pay for all kinds of things that are extremely harmful. Your comment seems rather disingenuous. Why are you trying to twist my words to reflect badly on me? Guilt about the products you buy? (See what I did there? Same thing you were doing :D)

You started to talk about society and their good or bad decisions in their life, when they buy things. I thought it was interesting then to ask you as an example of society. There was no judgement from my side. And I certainly have no guilt, when i buy a product, that improves my life.

I am not ignorant. Of course i see, that with my buying decisions, i kind of maintain all these side effects, that come from working off this planet. I want the best product that can be created with as little resources as possible. That would be of big value for me.

But who am i to judge someone else's decision to buy something, that they value. I might not like it. It might not a good decision in the long term. I would prefer that certain decisions were not made. Personally i can only try to make things better. I will not become a dealer, who has to provide a good product to my clients.

In any way, i was just curious. No bad intentions.

(and to the other commenter, i dont know what to answer.)

Cheers!

> In any way, i was just curious. No bad intentions.

My apologies, then!

really ?

have you looked at how most of the smartphones, clothes or even food are made ?

I can't even say if your comment is supposed to be satire

> If you go for the money and you do not steal it, you certainly bring value into the world, that people are willing to pay for.

Opioid manufacturers bribing doctors to prescribe more opioids so people get addicted and will buy more opioids.

One flaw in your reasoning is that often times people are willing to pay for things which are bad. For example, the Holocaust was bad (a lot of good people died), but people were willing to pay for help in carrying out the Holocaust. Therefore, it doesn't follow from the fact that people are willing to pay for a thing (the Holocaust), that that thing is a morally correct thing to do (the Holocaust was bad). That is to say, just because someone values something (people valued the Holocaust), doesn't mean that it is a moral thing to do (the Holocaust was not a moral thing to do).

To see my point all you need to do is imagine either a bad person or an ignorant person having money. If you think either of those situations is plausible, then you can surely imagine such a person paying for something which has a bad effect on the world. For most ideas of morality, doing things which can reasonably be expected to have bad effects on the world is considered immoral (this is very loosely stated, but hopefully you can see my point).

> my goal is to make ~$250k a year as fast as possible. To do so at my current company would take at least 3 years and 2 promotions

Hi,

I don't want to dunk on you, but I would truly encourage you to gain some perspective on just how myopic a view this is.

(I couldn't reply to your comment below where you said this)

Are you familiar with their circumstances? Maybe they have a limited window before retirement age. Maybe they have medical bills. Maybe they need to support a parent or grandparent. Maybe they need to send remittances to support a family "back home".

There's any number of reasons why that number might not be myopic.

I don't think it's myopic if everyone I follow on twitter and see on instagram is getting Hawaiian offsites and European work trips at Google and Hudson River Trading while I can't even go to Seattle for our internal ML conference because it got filled up too quickly for the last 3 years or whatever.

I enjoy what I work on..I just wish I was treated more like all of my friends and former coworkers.

Spend less time trying to mimic fake-perfect lives on social media. It’s not healthy. Instead, find out what’s important to your happiness and work on that. Money should be a means to that end, not the end in itself.

Hell, you don’t even need to be rich to go to nice places. My uncle is a great example of someone who optimises for happiness: he earns very little but does a job he loves, he brutally cuts out expenses from his life for things he doesn’t care about and loves quite cheap, but instead he spends the money he does have to go on an island holiday once a year and to visit his family (especially his grandchildren) multiple times a year. It’s all about perspective on what’s important to you. Money shouldn’t be it outside of enabling you. (Obviously you need enough to pay your bills, take care of your health etc)

There will always be people who seem to have it better than you do. Maybe really analyze what you want to get out of your time on this earth?

Get off of Instagram, then. Should be healthy in other ways, too. If you're only in it for the perceived status maybe you should to change that.

Eh... If you follow YouTubers you would think all of them achieved financial freedoms, have a uber house in Bali, and do nothing all day long.

You're not myopic but you just follow a niche group of people.

Honestly, interview around with no expectations if you haven't. You may be surprised at what else is going to be offered. I'm not going to tell you it's necessarily 400k or anything, but the variance is quite high if you're willing to relocate to, say, Seattle. An amazon resume is worth a certain amount of money, and there are other companies that will offer you things you enjoy working on too.

I’ve tried, but haven’t gotten interviews from the companies I’m interested in. I did get a offer from a hedge fund, but it was a severe lowball (50-70% of typical offers) probably due to my interview performance.

If it was a good hedge fund, they won't offer anyone they don't rate. If they offered you because they think you're mediocre and can get you cheap - do not work for them, they're charlatans.

It was Citadel. I think Two Sigma is considered more impressive.

Citadel are certainly not charlatans. Are you sure you're not just good at what you do but have crippling imposter syndrome?

> The tech industry is large enough that if you're good enough to work at Amazon, you probably have options.

> I've been rejected at Google and Facebook

These two statements are not contradicting each other...

Perhaps, but my goal is to make ~$250k a year as fast as possible. To do so at my current company would take at least 3 years and 2 promotions, whereas even James Damore was making $400k+ 4 years into his tenure. I can't get offers at trading firms, so I'm kinda SOL overall.

The easiest path to $250k is to go to Oracle. The next easiest path is to go to a unicorn. If you can reach the SDE2-equivalent, you'll be earning over 250k.

The HN salary dick swinging contest is absurd and not something you should factor into your overall happiness.

Like the $500k engineer has time to tell you how to be happy. Ever since he started making $600k a year, he's been enjoying himself at his $700k/year job. The fact that you're not even making $800k/year like him means you're probably not worth talking to. You'd have to be at least a $900k/year engineer like him to be worthy of time.

HN is still tame. Blind is cancer about comp related dick swinging.

Keep hitting leetcode, try again, and pray harder... that's what everybody else is doing.

I had a co-op who used to be chill, laid back, and wasn't strong from engineering perspective (a wee bit lack of passion too). All he did was leetcode and he got MSFT -> Google.

> that's what everybody else is doing

Bit scary to know that yet say it. There's many ways to scale the same mountain, perhaps going the packed out tourist route isn't the best for most? Might take a bit longer.

Alternatives:

build a startup and pray to get acquired

join a startup and pray to get acquired (there's still a post acquisition interview though)

contribute to OSS and pray G/F noticed and maybe ask to hire you (still have to go through some interview)

This ain't the old Silicon Valley anymore. Majority of the companies in SF applies Leetcode as filters.

You do now that you have Amazon on your resume.

My resume was mostly fine even before joining fulltime.

> Personally speaking, I've had Amazon try to pull me a few times and I just stopped responding to their emails.

Good for you, but some people have to take whatever opportunity they can get.

Tech interviewing is so fickle that just because you pass an Amazon interview doesn’t necessarily mean anywhere else would take you.

We shouldn’t criticise anyone for taking a job to support themselves and put food on their family table.