Reading all the comments in this thread, I wonder if there's some correlation to specific areas of the tech industry. e.g., Are people working in the AI space (or even something like ML infra) just inundated with job offers right now?
And yet the manager would be your boss. Not sure why you think how long someone has been in a role is somehow a worthwhile signal.
If it takes 6+ months just to get "up to speed", are you really having much impact when you leave 6 months later?
Expectations at FAANGS is that it might take a month or two for the contribution to start (one week, if you count bootcamp tasks at Meta), but it takes about 6+ months to full ramp up at the Senior+ level.
At small startups, it is very different.
If you're walking into a place with very little in the way of documentation and process, it could take a while to learn enough to be effective (ex: 50 different microservices and 5 different stacks, nuanced environments, etc.)
On the other hand, if everything is very standardized and well documented, you can jump right in.
Are they all junior IC level low balls, or is this accidentally revealing why staff level+ engineers aren't getting calls?
I'll be honest and say if tomorrow morning I get laid off, I'm not expecting my current pay to get matched.
> And yeah, not getting the 20% pay bump between job hops that I'm looking for.
That kind of answers my question lol. This isn't the environment where I'd consider not getting a pay bump a low ball.
And ironically that mentality is what I assume when I hear stories like OP's: These companies assume that people from certain backgrounds have expectations forged in a much more favorable market, and they'd rather not waste their time interviewing someone looking for a 20% pay bump in a down market...
I've done everything from UI to cloud to embedded stuff, but I was mostly focusing on embedded roles thinking that a) I like that sort of work and b) the competition wouldn't be as bad, though Amazon did layoff a lot of device folk in my geographic area.
Salary expectations seemed to be a big thing at companies, and I'd expect that FAANG folks looking to find that sort of compensation at smaller companies are likely to be disappointed or possibly even weeded out at the start.
That said, some companies are definitely low-balling but most seem willing to pay around 'market rate' for folks. I took a slight step-down in pay, but I like what I'm working on and the people and the companies that we offering more money we're offering enough more to overcome that.
What does this mean? What do the quotes mean?
This seems to be nearly a tautology; the market rate is what people are willing to pay.
At that point I've answered their salary question and probably not scared them off and if they really want to put a number on it, it's up to them. At this stage, if they don't have a range or just won't say, it tells you a bit about them.
Better than people who job hop every 1-2 years but maybe they're looking for someone with longevity?
My most memorable was this tier 3 hedge fund trying to convince me to take a junior IC role for a new team that had also hired a manager and director from outside the company for a new endeavor/initiative, and the manager had been at his last 3 jobs for roughly over a year each, get out of here lol.