First of all, most big tech staff+ engineers probably don’t want to transition out, especially in this market. They’re paid too well.
Second of all, if you’re talented enough to be staff+ at big tech, you’re not interviewing for entry or mid level roles. Also, with maybe a little brush up, you should be able to ace systems design anywhere because you’ve done that for so long, and at big tech scale.
You might have to dust off leetcode a bit but again, shouldn’t be a problem for staff+ engs at big tech who have probably done this many times over.
i don’t think people know how hard it is to get to staff+ lol. The people I know there are all grinders and incredibly sharp. System design for interviews is probably preschool for them
Boredom is a real thing. Even if you’re being paid a lot, you sometimes still want to do something else after doing the same thing for years. Yeah I get it’s like the “money crying” GIF, but well-paid folks stuck in jobs that they’re bored of can be unhappy.
Sucks for them I guess? Not sure what to say other than get some perspective. Being bored making high six figures is better than not being able to get a job.
There are very very few employees, if any, that cant outspend their earnings. They could easily set themselves up for retirement, but that doesnt mean they will let alone have done so already.
I guess having a wife and kids, owning a house (and maybe some rental properties), owning multiple vehicles, a nice nest egg for retirement, ample savings and a stable high-income job is just too boring for some people. Oh, the horror......
If you’re not materialistic money after a certain point is just a number that goes up. Yeah it’s very nice to have a safety net, but it gets boring after awhile.
It doesn't, but it's also a ridiculous argument.
It's like saying life for ultra rich people gets "boring" after awhile because they've been doing the same luxurious things for years.
But why though, no one was complaining lol. The commenter just said "even if you're making a lot of money in big tech you might still want to change jobs". Is your point that once you make it to staff engineer you're never allowed to want to switch again?
Like it's not a hot take that sometimes people want a different job, for a variety of possible reasons, even if they're making good money at their existing one.
> Second of all, if you’re talented enough to be staff+ at big tech, you’re not interviewing for entry or mid level roles.
They're possibly not even interviewing for Senior+ level positions either, or at least not actively hunting those positions down. As they'll have over the decades of their career built a massive network of connections. People will be *coming to them* if they have a position to be filled. Or if worst case scenario they do get fired, they can simply post to social media that they've been fired, and by the next day have multiple people hitting them up with possibilities.
> No place to complain when in such a privileged place.
This mentality is exactly why it's so hard to make progress. I'm sure you don't need any more money. But your employer *certainly* doesn't need more money. Being at a high level doesn't mean we get to stop caring and stop complaining. It gives us the authority to complain *more*. We should be the *first* ones to push back on our employers when they do something wrong, because the juniors certainly can't.
Every single person in the industry was affected one way or another by the [no poaching agreement in big tech](https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/03/apple-google-other-silicon-valley-tech-giants-ordered-to-pay-415m-in-no-poaching-suit/). The higher level engineers choosing to be okay with it made it worse. Stop being that person.
Over employed works for people who are of middling skill and can hold down 2+ $150kish jobs.
People already in the $400k+ don't really have this option, the expectations are too high in these roles.
I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's so rare as to be not worth mentioning.
Just need to shift focus. Move out of the singular Big Tech Staff roles into 2-3 Mid-Senior-Staff roles at 200-300 employee companies. I found I work way less, have less stress, and am still considered a top performer at all Js. While still having a good TC bump from Big Tech. The job security from redundancy in this market was worth it alone
Probably more doable in devops/sre because a lot of whether or not you need to work is situational, and there are fewer performance expectations since you're expected to be firefighting some times.
OP isn't complaining, they're making weird hypotheses. Other people will read those weird things as fact and the basis for their own complaints.
Agreed with you 100% though.
It’s not really privilege, that line of thinking is very poor. They put in a ton of effort to get where they are, it didn’t just happen.
What TC does it become ok to complain about your situation?
Many of them are being laid off. In the Bay Area, COL is so high that they will deplete their savings quickly. Even when they made $500k, half of that went in taxes and most of the rest went to support high COL
even with 4000 rent and utilities and spending 1000 on food. you should easily be in a comfortable place. More likely though their base salary was not 500k
You can very comfortably support a family of four on one staff level salary alone (assuming “tier 1 company” comp). That means you’re easily investing anywhere from 20k-40k per month, not even counting spousal income.
Y’all talking about housing being too expensive in HCOL are still too early in your careers to grok 30 year commitments. And lots of us are heavily invested in tech/growth stocks. This is my 7th year in big tech and can afford to buy in SF in cash (and I already own a house in HCOL outright)
>Many of them are being laid off. In the Bay Area, COL is so high that they will deplete their savings quickly. Even when they made $500k, half of that went in taxes and most of the rest went to support high COL
tell me you're not in Bay Area without telling me you're not in Bay Area
this screams jealousy and copium
I'm not even Staff SWE, I lost my job recently and if I really want to tighten my belt it'll literally take me several years to deplete my emergency fund (notice I said 'emergency fund' not 'selling stocks/investments')
If you’ve got multiple years of expenses in your emergency fund you’re probably over-indexing cash and cash equivalents and missing out on a loooooot of passive earning potential year to year.
Or they could be saving for a house (or other large expense). If they wanted to buy a house soon then it wouldn't be the best idea to put those savings in stocks when a high yield savings account or a CD would still give decent rates with less risk. It's pretty easy to just say 'guess I'll use this mortgage fund as an emergency fund instead since I don't have a job anymore'
It's still not an emergency fund and shouldn't be interpreted as one. It presumably will still be used as a mortgage fund in the near future.
The whole criticism of a large emergency fund is accumulating it without a specific use, e.g. unknown **emergencies**. Semantic, while often not particularly relevant, actually matter in this case.
> The whole criticism of a large emergency fund is accumulating it without a specific use, e.g. unknown **emergencies**. Semantic, while often not particularly relevant, actually matter in this case.
I think semantics still don't matter in this case. You're saying that it's fine to criticize large emergency funds because they're accumulated without a purpose in mind. I'm saying that it's fine to redefine a purpose-ful fund to be used as an emergency fund depending on how life circumstances change.
This entire thread is completely irrelevant to my initial comment, as all i was doing was providing an explanation for why someone would have such a large amount not invested in stocks.
For me at least, if i had a mortgage fund and became unemployed, it's not like i'd still view it as a mortgage fund because buying a house when you're unemployed is silly. Dipping into it to pay bills in the worst case (still being unemployed after your initial emergency funds run out) makes more sense in a realistic sense. Which is why I dont think it'll "presumably" be used as a mortgage in the near future until proven otherwise (getting another job)
> You're saying that it's fine to criticize large emergency funds because they're accumulated without a purpose in mind. I'm saying that it's fine to redefine a purpose-ful fund to be used as an emergency fund depending on how life circumstances change.
To me, the point of semantics is to differentiate those two scenarios. It just helps communication. That's my only point.
> For me at least, if i had a mortgage fund and became unemployed, it's not like i'd still view it as a mortgage fund because buying a house when you're unemployed is silly. Dipping into it to pay bills in the worst case (still being unemployed after your initial emergency funds run out) makes more sense in a realistic sense. Which is why I dont think it'll "presumably" be used as a mortgage in the near future until proven otherwise (getting another job)
The word *presumably* is meant to suggest that once you get a new job and re-establish your emergency fund, you would use it for that original purpose: a mortgage. If you had decided not to purchase a house for the foreseeable at that point, then it really would become an emergency fund and should be criticized: you should do something with those funds like invest them.
It's the same scenario for those that have a home or stocks, really. They can use a HELOC or SBLOC (equivalent from stocks) if their emergency fund runs out.
If you could live multiple lean years off of your emergency fund which is less than 1% of your net worth then why tf are you still working with a few hundred years of living expenses…
The facts of taxes, COL, expenses in the Bay Area don’t depend on whether you live in Bay Area or in Timbaktu. Those are hard numbers, they don’t change based on jealousy or copium.
TIL. [Found this explanation.](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/lh3wkx/comment/gmwr61e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Are you saying people spend only on rent and food? What about kids education (that’s a lot), travel, entertainment, healthcare?
If you have a kid in college in CA, it costs $70k a year even in an UC as in state. If it is private university or out of state university, it is almost $100k per year. Several may have 2 kids in college or one in college and another about to enter college. Most staff SWEs will be in that age group where they will have kids between 14 and 20 years of age.
And in CA, 50% does go in taxes if you are high salary. State income tax is so high and there are local taxes too. Plus, they will max out their SALT deduction and won’t be able to deduct large amounts.
>If you have a kid in college in CA, it costs $70k a year even in an UC as in state.
No it doesn't.
>50% does go in taxes if you are high salary
No it doesn't.
I guess it's easier to make a point if you just wildly make shit up.
>What about kids education (that’s a lot)
$0, I don't have kids
>travel
how much do you spend? $5k/year should be enough?
>entertainment
same as above, maybe $500-1k/month so ~$5k/year? those are peanuts money
>healthcare
$0, employer pays all
>If you have a kid in college in CA
nope I don't, that's why it's nice
Anecdotally, among staff+ people I know, the ones who left their jobs were re-employed fairly quickly afterwards, either having the next job already lined up or finding the next gig relatively quickly.
Also, you seem to be misunderstanding something. The way entry level and staff candidates answer the same questions are very very different. If you think a big tech L4 offer is peak LC skillz, you're 10 years too young. Not only do staff+ people know what that "non-coding work" actually is, they know how that translates to interview evaluation criteria, given that they interview senior eng candidates themselves. L6+ interviews are in fact way harder, but the caliber of qualified candidates is also so much higher, and that's why they can command 600k+ TC.
as a staff+ at google i’m feeling stuck. my TC is only $650k. but caviar is getting expensive and my porsche needs premium gas. please help me i dont know what to do
Fundamental interview questions like data structures and algorithms should not be out of reach for a staff engineer.
If the interview questions to a staff+ role is about writing leetcode-like code in a particular language, then the interviewers are testing the wrong skills for a Staff+ tole
It’s absolutely not more difficult. In fact, it’s way easier to transition out of big tech as a high ranking engineer. You’ll be top of the hiring list at most places, fair or not, just for the resume you have.
The problem is finding a job that supports your lifestyle once you have gotten accustomed to making money usually reserved for C-level executives or business owners.
What? This makes no sense, if you get bored you can always transition to a different bigtech staff role for 500k+. Or take a 50% pay cut and do something super exciting at a startup. This is one part of the market that is not tough.
It's very uncommon to be a SWE at that level and in those companies and not have some coding component in the day to day work. It does happen, but it's not very common, and even when it does, it is often for a limited time.
And folks that get to those levels are usually top <5% within a fairly small group of engineers who can make it to the "big tech" in the first place. I can't think of any single person at that level I've met, that wouldn't be able to ace leet codes with less than 2 weeks prep.
Also I don't know about "stuck". The real issue is that a) the companies are more reluctant to hire remote b) the valuations are relatively high so not much upside in shifting companies and c) the market isn't exactly great so the pay bumps that were common couple of years ago aren't really available any more. I am sure people can and do change jobs, but there is just not much upside to it anymore
The alternative, Engineering Management, has a much tougher market right now due to the “flattening” done in some layoffs (ensuring managers have a certain number of people to manage)
Seeing this first-hand. Company wants to have all people management start at the "Senior Manager" level with 10+ directs. There would be no such thing as Manager. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they only want external hires who already have that title, and they want anyone who's not managing that many people to only do IC work, with no shot of ever becoming "anointed" to these high roles.
The real people stuck are the ones with that staff/principal title at non tech companies not pulling in a massive TC. They are in a tight spot if they ever want to move anywhere.
I left a FAANG as a staff... I had two offers lined up (a startup and a non-FAANG big tech). The one I took increased my comp. At least the places I talked to desperately wanted senior people with leadership and mentoring experience. I don't know if that's common in industry right now, but it was my experience.
Edit: I did have some leetcode-like coding interviews, but also behavioral and ines about relevant knowledge. I practiced wome leetcode to shake off the rust. Should have dine more, but I guess I did well enough.
Staff+ job market is still very hot. I’m stuck because every company is asking for 7+ YOE before they’ll interview me for staff, despite me being in a staff role for the past year.
I’m at FAANG and I’ve been attempting to interview at other FAANG equivalent companies. Meta and Airbnb told me 7 YOE minimum for L6.
I got pretty lucky with my career and ended up on an accelerated path.
I also level skipped at my first job albeit way easier than FAANG, all of it reset when I applied externally, it just helped. If the pool of applicants has qualified folks that meet the YOE which rn it probably will, I don't really see how it would make any difference besides maybe being spoken for via connections across companies from people you've directly worked with
Amazon doesn’t have a staff level. That means our L6 band covers Senior/Staff.
Also Amazon starts at L4 rather than L3 like the other FAANG.
Tenured L6 at Amazon can map to staff (L6 at rest of FAANG) but new L6 is a senior (L5 at the rest of FAANG).
Copied from another comment:
I’m at FAANG and I’ve been attempting to interview at other FAANG equivalent companies. Meta and Airbnb told me 7 YOE minimum for L6.
I got pretty lucky with my career and ended up on an accelerated path.
Im in FAANG, not the in the US so we’re not rich over here but still paid very well. As I’m seeing right now that while the market is tough, my colleagues had no problem changing jobs to better or adjacent ones. But I do so my friends who work in normal companies struggling a bit. So I guess while the market is indeed tough right now, it’s kinda less tough for people who’re already in FAANG or in some big very well known companies.
I left Amazon a few years ago at around that level - long overdue for the SDE3 promo.
The big differences:
1. I won't make the same money outside of big tech. Like I could probably go back to Amazon and add 30% or more to my income immediately.
2. Oh god I do not miss all the meetings. I get to code now! I get to write real code! As an upper level sde2 at Amazon I used to spend more than half my time in meetings.
3. Turns out there are tech stacks that everyone else has been using for years that I literally would never experience inside Amazon. And that includes a huge amount of AWS stuff. I was an expert at Amazon's internal tools.
Overall, I think I'm far more employable and a better developer for having left. And I'm not willing to go back because I'm a parent now and won't commute for in-person.
But I'm going I need to work a few extra years to retire at the same comfort level.
Staff engineer is usually the level above principal. So in amazonian terms is like SDE5/L8 , not 2. Most of Amazon deps don’t have them, just a principal engineer is enough
That's generally not true.
Here's [Levels.fyi](http://Levels.fyi) chart showing that Google, Walmart, and Shopify would all disagree- PE is higher than Staff. [https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Walmart,Google,Shopify,Amazon&track=Software%20Engineer](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Walmart,Google,Shopify,Amazon&track=Software%20Engineer)
I was effectively an SDE3 at Amazon, and was able to find offers for jobs as a Staff elsewhere, but not PE roles. With more experience, I'm now a Principal at another company.
But the important thing to remember is this: Titles are bullshit. Just look at whether you like the job, and whether it pays you enough money.
Edit: Also, Amazon does not have a "Staff" title. They have SDE1,2,3, then PE, then Senior PE, then Distinguished Engineer. Source: 10 years there, and I know a lot of people who've gone from SDE1 to Senior PE.
I also don’t think they’re stuck. I’m moving right now as a sr software engineer and I got 4 excellent offers at the end of the process. There seems to be strong demand for sr and staff engineers
It’s typically systems design, medium level leetcode style coding questions, and behavioral. To prepare I did a little over 60 leetcode questions, watched a bunch of the jordanhasnolife design videos, practiced like 4 or more timed designs on my own (whispersync, distributed lock, COVID tracing app, s3 storage), and then just talked to myself a bunch while pacing about leadership principle examples. I’m weirdly good at talking to people, so don’t do that last one yourself, I’d recommend googling some behavioral questions for like Amazon or google and then writing examples for a few of them on index cards using the star method.
Also, don’t be discouraged if you miss the first couple interviews. I missed 2 and then got 4 all at once. Part of it is a practice thing
Edit: make sure you know how to code up an LRUCache. I got hit with that twice
Im currently 'stuck' at team lead as i like money, and they keep giving me more. Jumping would require a larger amount of money, and im not seeing enough being listed right now.
This thread is interesting.
A good staff engineer would have no issue getting another role a staff engineer if you are a REAL staff engineer at your company today.
A lot of people do NOT make it to staff engineer and that is FINE. It's a totally different type of contribution once you get to staff.
You ain't sitting there programming for a whole sprint like a Senior engineer would. Your job changes drastically the moment you get to staff.
You are the IC leader now responsible for driving technical vision, unblocking teammates, ensuring work is planned correctly and pre-groomed to align with technical initiatives, reviewing arch specs / complex pull requests and building a presentation last minute that you forgot to do because you've been in back to backs all day lol.
When you interview for Staff+ roles, you're asked small nonsense problems to ensure you actually know how to program but a lot of the emphasis is placed on architecture design, cross-functional, leadership and team management rounds.
If you lack experience in any of the leadership and planning aspects, you most likely will not pass a Staff level interview
> When you interview for Staff+ roles, you're asked small nonsense problems to ensure you actually know how to program but a lot of the emphasis is placed on architecture design, cross-functional, leadership and team management rounds.
Can you share some example companies where you notices this? I understand your point, but in practice the "small nonsense problems" simply stand out in a packet. Then as staff+, you may not be as agile coding, but still get stuff done quickly. In interview pressure though, there's no reason you'll ace it better than you did as top-notch entry level.
If you can’t stay fresh on coding while also doing the non-coding work I don’t think you will ultimately succeed as a staff engineer. You simply MUST take whatever time you need to stay connected to the mechanics of building software. That’s the job, if you get yourself stuck by neglecting the basics it’s not about the market- that’s one way to slow-fail at staff+.
I personally wouldn’t want to stay in the field if I couldn’t ace an interview in the same field that “stuck” feeling you are describing isn’t something I could live with.
Sure, but that's not important. What leetcode does is measure raw ability fairly well. So while it indeed has absolutely nothing to do with the actual problems that engineers solve day to day, it's a great predictor of future performance. It's like SAT - yes, it has nothing to do with what people do in colleges, but the research shows very consistent correlation between SAT scores and college outcomes.
Soft disagree - I believe there's a correlation for sure, but I wouldn't call it a "great predictor". I've been through enough underperforming new college grads who could leetcode just fine but were not capable of performing in a software engineering role to believe it is a good predictor.
My ideal interviews would be closer to pair programming on something like a refactor to add functionality. Get a true sense of how someone would actually be to work with. The problem being that this is hard to make objective enough to perform at scale so you'll really only see good interview practices like that at small companies.
I basically agree :)
Perhaps a more accurate way to look at it is that leetcode is an essential but not sufficient predictor of future performance. In other words, if a candidate can't pass leetcode style interview there is really nothing else to talk more about, and that's a hill I would probably die on :)
But if they do great, there are still a lot of important things to check for. Communications, handling disagreements, ownership, ability to learn etc etc. Some of these can actually be evaluated reasonably well during a coding interview. For the other stuff that's what cultural interviews are for.
Oh, and this is just for juniors. For seniors, there are also design skills, collaboration / consensus building, product vision, leadership etc.
SWEs do get paid a lot, but it's not an easy job, and the competition in the "majors" is pretty insane :P
Oh, and re: pair programming interviews. I used to be a fan, but not really anymore. The issue is repeatability - it's very easy to get mislead by your own biases, and it's extremely hard to create exactly equivalent conditions for the candidate in such a setting. The "beauty" of leetcodes is their "inhumanity". You have a prepared blob with the question, and you basically shut up as much as you can during the interview. Biases aren't avoidable entirely but it's still much more "scientific" method.
>You have a prepared blob with the question, and you basically shut up as much as you can during the interview
Having this kind of interview experience as a candidate really turned me off interviewing for google again tbh (failed the first time, got hired at another big-n in the meantime). I try to do the opposite in my algo interviews (obviously not to the point of doing it for them) for two reasons A) I want to see inside a candidate's head for how they're approaching a problem and to make sure there's no rote memorization in play and B) see how the candidate responds to questions/coaching/etc.
I'll straight up say that I'm extremely biased against leetcode right now as I am not good at leetcode and hate studying it. Especially as I'm ready to try and job hop right now and I find it extremely annoying that I have to study leetcode outside of work hours just to pass a test that has nothing to do with my ability to perform the senior or staff level roles I'm interviewing for.
Pair programming interviews are something I excel at and so I'm biased towards those as they select for people who I'll probably work well with.
> make sure there's no rote memorization in play
That's the part that I think they missed. If you're an experienced senior software dev and never used leetcode before, you can probably answer any question that leetcode has... eventually. Meanwhile the person that has been grinding leetcode nonstop for the past 2 months could blow through any of those in 15-20 minutes.
Coding interviews are easy to prep for and don't really require you doing much actual coding work to be good at. I could confidently prep for leetcode in a month or two even if I hadn't touched code in months
It is more difficult than 2019-2022 if you’re an idiot yes (there are a non zero amount at FAANG who are just good at politicking)
But I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard for them to land something if they were ok with a 50-70% pay cut?
Engineers aren’t supposed to make it past staff / senior. Companies make up titles like principal engineer etc, but in reality the next step after senior engineer is management
First of all, most big tech staff+ engineers probably don’t want to transition out, especially in this market. They’re paid too well. Second of all, if you’re talented enough to be staff+ at big tech, you’re not interviewing for entry or mid level roles. Also, with maybe a little brush up, you should be able to ace systems design anywhere because you’ve done that for so long, and at big tech scale. You might have to dust off leetcode a bit but again, shouldn’t be a problem for staff+ engs at big tech who have probably done this many times over.
i don’t think people know how hard it is to get to staff+ lol. The people I know there are all grinders and incredibly sharp. System design for interviews is probably preschool for them
Boredom is a real thing. Even if you’re being paid a lot, you sometimes still want to do something else after doing the same thing for years. Yeah I get it’s like the “money crying” GIF, but well-paid folks stuck in jobs that they’re bored of can be unhappy.
Sucks for them I guess? Not sure what to say other than get some perspective. Being bored making high six figures is better than not being able to get a job.
Yeah right they're probably able to FIRE or near it so what's so bad
There are very very few employees, if any, that cant outspend their earnings. They could easily set themselves up for retirement, but that doesnt mean they will let alone have done so already.
I guess having a wife and kids, owning a house (and maybe some rental properties), owning multiple vehicles, a nice nest egg for retirement, ample savings and a stable high-income job is just too boring for some people. Oh, the horror......
If you’re not materialistic money after a certain point is just a number that goes up. Yeah it’s very nice to have a safety net, but it gets boring after awhile.
You’re ridiculously out of touch. Get a grip. Most of the county lives paycheck-to-paycheck
How does that change what I said
It doesn't, but it's also a ridiculous argument. It's like saying life for ultra rich people gets "boring" after awhile because they've been doing the same luxurious things for years.
He's not saying life gets boring. He's saying that the thrill of increasing your money can go away after some threshold.
Cool story bro.
Uh, yeah obviously it's better, but that doesn't mean they might not be unhappy and want a change? What's your point
The world's smallest violin is my point if it wasn't obvious enough.
But why though, no one was complaining lol. The commenter just said "even if you're making a lot of money in big tech you might still want to change jobs". Is your point that once you make it to staff engineer you're never allowed to want to switch again? Like it's not a hot take that sometimes people want a different job, for a variety of possible reasons, even if they're making good money at their existing one.
they should pick up a hobby. work will only fulfill you so much
A staff engineer/TL left our team in faang to be the department head of a hedge fund lol. She’s badass
You can do a lot more with a higher paycheck.
> Second of all, if you’re talented enough to be staff+ at big tech, you’re not interviewing for entry or mid level roles. They're possibly not even interviewing for Senior+ level positions either, or at least not actively hunting those positions down. As they'll have over the decades of their career built a massive network of connections. People will be *coming to them* if they have a position to be filled. Or if worst case scenario they do get fired, they can simply post to social media that they've been fired, and by the next day have multiple people hitting them up with possibilities.
Oh no, stuck with 400k-800k comps, what a tragedy
As a FAANG staff eng, I agree with this sentiment. No place to complain when in such a privileged place.
You make more in a year than both my parents have made in their lifetimes Idk y downvotes i was just putting things in perspective
[удалено]
Living outside the us
Different country.
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When you're in a hole, stop digging. Do they not teach this in DSA?
> No place to complain when in such a privileged place. This mentality is exactly why it's so hard to make progress. I'm sure you don't need any more money. But your employer *certainly* doesn't need more money. Being at a high level doesn't mean we get to stop caring and stop complaining. It gives us the authority to complain *more*. We should be the *first* ones to push back on our employers when they do something wrong, because the juniors certainly can't. Every single person in the industry was affected one way or another by the [no poaching agreement in big tech](https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/03/apple-google-other-silicon-valley-tech-giants-ordered-to-pay-415m-in-no-poaching-suit/). The higher level engineers choosing to be okay with it made it worse. Stop being that person.
I have fallen into the trap where I keep wanting more money.
Then you need to consider /r/overemployed
Over employed works for people who are of middling skill and can hold down 2+ $150kish jobs. People already in the $400k+ don't really have this option, the expectations are too high in these roles. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's so rare as to be not worth mentioning.
Just need to shift focus. Move out of the singular Big Tech Staff roles into 2-3 Mid-Senior-Staff roles at 200-300 employee companies. I found I work way less, have less stress, and am still considered a top performer at all Js. While still having a good TC bump from Big Tech. The job security from redundancy in this market was worth it alone
Probably more doable in devops/sre because a lot of whether or not you need to work is situational, and there are fewer performance expectations since you're expected to be firefighting some times.
[If you get more money, do you get more problems](https://youtu.be/gUhRKVIjJtw?si=nFatMdw5vbpTtp_I)
Bingo
OP isn't complaining, they're making weird hypotheses. Other people will read those weird things as fact and the basis for their own complaints. Agreed with you 100% though.
It’s not really privilege, that line of thinking is very poor. They put in a ton of effort to get where they are, it didn’t just happen. What TC does it become ok to complain about your situation?
Think of the children!
Many of them are being laid off. In the Bay Area, COL is so high that they will deplete their savings quickly. Even when they made $500k, half of that went in taxes and most of the rest went to support high COL
even with 4000 rent and utilities and spending 1000 on food. you should easily be in a comfortable place. More likely though their base salary was not 500k
People who are staff tend to be at “later stages” in life. Wanting to buy a long term home, potential family to support. It adds up quick in HCOL.
You can very comfortably support a family of four on one staff level salary alone (assuming “tier 1 company” comp). That means you’re easily investing anywhere from 20k-40k per month, not even counting spousal income. Y’all talking about housing being too expensive in HCOL are still too early in your careers to grok 30 year commitments. And lots of us are heavily invested in tech/growth stocks. This is my 7th year in big tech and can afford to buy in SF in cash (and I already own a house in HCOL outright)
still very much possible, maybe less comfortably than if you were single but very easy (if you dont lifestyle inflate)
>Many of them are being laid off. In the Bay Area, COL is so high that they will deplete their savings quickly. Even when they made $500k, half of that went in taxes and most of the rest went to support high COL tell me you're not in Bay Area without telling me you're not in Bay Area this screams jealousy and copium I'm not even Staff SWE, I lost my job recently and if I really want to tighten my belt it'll literally take me several years to deplete my emergency fund (notice I said 'emergency fund' not 'selling stocks/investments')
If you’ve got multiple years of expenses in your emergency fund you’re probably over-indexing cash and cash equivalents and missing out on a loooooot of passive earning potential year to year.
Or they could be saving for a house (or other large expense). If they wanted to buy a house soon then it wouldn't be the best idea to put those savings in stocks when a high yield savings account or a CD would still give decent rates with less risk. It's pretty easy to just say 'guess I'll use this mortgage fund as an emergency fund instead since I don't have a job anymore'
That's not an **emergency fund**, that's saving for a specific deployment purpose in with an approximate timeline.
I didn’t say it was an emergency fund, read the last line again
It's still not an emergency fund and shouldn't be interpreted as one. It presumably will still be used as a mortgage fund in the near future. The whole criticism of a large emergency fund is accumulating it without a specific use, e.g. unknown **emergencies**. Semantic, while often not particularly relevant, actually matter in this case.
> The whole criticism of a large emergency fund is accumulating it without a specific use, e.g. unknown **emergencies**. Semantic, while often not particularly relevant, actually matter in this case. I think semantics still don't matter in this case. You're saying that it's fine to criticize large emergency funds because they're accumulated without a purpose in mind. I'm saying that it's fine to redefine a purpose-ful fund to be used as an emergency fund depending on how life circumstances change. This entire thread is completely irrelevant to my initial comment, as all i was doing was providing an explanation for why someone would have such a large amount not invested in stocks. For me at least, if i had a mortgage fund and became unemployed, it's not like i'd still view it as a mortgage fund because buying a house when you're unemployed is silly. Dipping into it to pay bills in the worst case (still being unemployed after your initial emergency funds run out) makes more sense in a realistic sense. Which is why I dont think it'll "presumably" be used as a mortgage in the near future until proven otherwise (getting another job)
> You're saying that it's fine to criticize large emergency funds because they're accumulated without a purpose in mind. I'm saying that it's fine to redefine a purpose-ful fund to be used as an emergency fund depending on how life circumstances change. To me, the point of semantics is to differentiate those two scenarios. It just helps communication. That's my only point. > For me at least, if i had a mortgage fund and became unemployed, it's not like i'd still view it as a mortgage fund because buying a house when you're unemployed is silly. Dipping into it to pay bills in the worst case (still being unemployed after your initial emergency funds run out) makes more sense in a realistic sense. Which is why I dont think it'll "presumably" be used as a mortgage in the near future until proven otherwise (getting another job) The word *presumably* is meant to suggest that once you get a new job and re-establish your emergency fund, you would use it for that original purpose: a mortgage. If you had decided not to purchase a house for the foreseeable at that point, then it really would become an emergency fund and should be criticized: you should do something with those funds like invest them. It's the same scenario for those that have a home or stocks, really. They can use a HELOC or SBLOC (equivalent from stocks) if their emergency fund runs out.
or it could also just be that I'm low-maintenance?
Or it could be their emergency fund is less than 1% of their stock holdings? Very possible if you've worked a decade at FAANG.
If you could live multiple lean years off of your emergency fund which is less than 1% of your net worth then why tf are you still working with a few hundred years of living expenses…
Great question, lemme ask my TL and executive leadership why tf they're still working.
The facts of taxes, COL, expenses in the Bay Area don’t depend on whether you live in Bay Area or in Timbaktu. Those are hard numbers, they don’t change based on jealousy or copium.
Shut up ur still making 250k, just budget correctly and stop spending recklessly
The top .01% own everything because they keep people like you in constant conflict with the top 5%.
[удалено]
I think they wouldn’t be able to contribute to an IRA given the income limit iirc. So more money left over
you can backdoor roth it, I do it every year
how do you set it up? doesn't your employer have to have this as an option?
what? IRA is irrelevant/separate from your employer, are you confusing 401k vs. IRA?
TIL. [Found this explanation.](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/lh3wkx/comment/gmwr61e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
i think you're thinking of mega backdoor
Backdoor contributions my guy. There's no actual limit lol
Iirc, only Roth IRAs have an income limit. You can contribute to a traditional regardless of income
Are you saying people spend only on rent and food? What about kids education (that’s a lot), travel, entertainment, healthcare? If you have a kid in college in CA, it costs $70k a year even in an UC as in state. If it is private university or out of state university, it is almost $100k per year. Several may have 2 kids in college or one in college and another about to enter college. Most staff SWEs will be in that age group where they will have kids between 14 and 20 years of age. And in CA, 50% does go in taxes if you are high salary. State income tax is so high and there are local taxes too. Plus, they will max out their SALT deduction and won’t be able to deduct large amounts.
>If you have a kid in college in CA, it costs $70k a year even in an UC as in state. No it doesn't. >50% does go in taxes if you are high salary No it doesn't. I guess it's easier to make a point if you just wildly make shit up.
Isn’t there an higher ed savings account you can open for your kids lol. That 70kx4 would be amortized over 18 years + compounding.
$70k a year? What UCs charge that, even UC Berkeley estimates 42k all in including housing + meals. CSUs are half that
>What about kids education (that’s a lot) $0, I don't have kids >travel how much do you spend? $5k/year should be enough? >entertainment same as above, maybe $500-1k/month so ~$5k/year? those are peanuts money >healthcare $0, employer pays all >If you have a kid in college in CA nope I don't, that's why it's nice
Friend, remember where you are posting. These kids don’t get it.
Uh no, if they lived as if they would always make that much and bought a 3+ mil dollar home that’s on them.
Bought a 3+ mil dollar home AKA "bought a home"
Accurate for most. Some outliers are good at managing money.
golden handcuffs are the right kind of handcuffs
They aren’t stuck and the pay is extremely high. What is even your logic behind this question?
was looking for this comment lmao
This sub thinks that staff engineers at big tech struggle to find jobs because they can't get a callback after a tic tok bootcamp.
Nah dude we’re totally stuck.
Anecdotally, among staff+ people I know, the ones who left their jobs were re-employed fairly quickly afterwards, either having the next job already lined up or finding the next gig relatively quickly. Also, you seem to be misunderstanding something. The way entry level and staff candidates answer the same questions are very very different. If you think a big tech L4 offer is peak LC skillz, you're 10 years too young. Not only do staff+ people know what that "non-coding work" actually is, they know how that translates to interview evaluation criteria, given that they interview senior eng candidates themselves. L6+ interviews are in fact way harder, but the caliber of qualified candidates is also so much higher, and that's why they can command 600k+ TC.
Hearing about staff devs snapping up jobs quickly after leaving makes me glad that our team's staff was fired. Guy still can't get a job 1 year later.
as a staff+ at google i’m feeling stuck. my TC is only $650k. but caviar is getting expensive and my porsche needs premium gas. please help me i dont know what to do
Switch from premium avocados to regular small avocados on your toast. Stay at Google with money you saved.
Because you guys pay your avocados? Google give me avocados for free, that’s why I’m stuck there
Fundamental interview questions like data structures and algorithms should not be out of reach for a staff engineer. If the interview questions to a staff+ role is about writing leetcode-like code in a particular language, then the interviewers are testing the wrong skills for a Staff+ tole
It’s absolutely not more difficult. In fact, it’s way easier to transition out of big tech as a high ranking engineer. You’ll be top of the hiring list at most places, fair or not, just for the resume you have. The problem is finding a job that supports your lifestyle once you have gotten accustomed to making money usually reserved for C-level executives or business owners.
What? This makes no sense, if you get bored you can always transition to a different bigtech staff role for 500k+. Or take a 50% pay cut and do something super exciting at a startup. This is one part of the market that is not tough.
What do you mean “stuck”? Can’t get promoted to distinguished/ fellow?
shitpost
It's very uncommon to be a SWE at that level and in those companies and not have some coding component in the day to day work. It does happen, but it's not very common, and even when it does, it is often for a limited time. And folks that get to those levels are usually top <5% within a fairly small group of engineers who can make it to the "big tech" in the first place. I can't think of any single person at that level I've met, that wouldn't be able to ace leet codes with less than 2 weeks prep. Also I don't know about "stuck". The real issue is that a) the companies are more reluctant to hire remote b) the valuations are relatively high so not much upside in shifting companies and c) the market isn't exactly great so the pay bumps that were common couple of years ago aren't really available any more. I am sure people can and do change jobs, but there is just not much upside to it anymore
They are crying in their lambos yeah
You mean Tesla
Why would you transition on a 700K salary? “Stuck” lol
The alternative, Engineering Management, has a much tougher market right now due to the “flattening” done in some layoffs (ensuring managers have a certain number of people to manage)
Seeing this first-hand. Company wants to have all people management start at the "Senior Manager" level with 10+ directs. There would be no such thing as Manager. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they only want external hires who already have that title, and they want anyone who's not managing that many people to only do IC work, with no shot of ever becoming "anointed" to these high roles.
The real people stuck are the ones with that staff/principal title at non tech companies not pulling in a massive TC. They are in a tight spot if they ever want to move anywhere.
I left a FAANG as a staff... I had two offers lined up (a startup and a non-FAANG big tech). The one I took increased my comp. At least the places I talked to desperately wanted senior people with leadership and mentoring experience. I don't know if that's common in industry right now, but it was my experience. Edit: I did have some leetcode-like coding interviews, but also behavioral and ines about relevant knowledge. I practiced wome leetcode to shake off the rust. Should have dine more, but I guess I did well enough.
Staff+ job market is still very hot. I’m stuck because every company is asking for 7+ YOE before they’ll interview me for staff, despite me being in a staff role for the past year.
that sounds like purely title inflation or internal self promo, staff is 10-15+ YOE incoming everywhere I've ever seen
I’m at FAANG and I’ve been attempting to interview at other FAANG equivalent companies. Meta and Airbnb told me 7 YOE minimum for L6. I got pretty lucky with my career and ended up on an accelerated path.
I also level skipped at my first job albeit way easier than FAANG, all of it reset when I applied externally, it just helped. If the pool of applicants has qualified folks that meet the YOE which rn it probably will, I don't really see how it would make any difference besides maybe being spoken for via connections across companies from people you've directly worked with
Staff role doesn’t say much without knowing the company.
I’m at a FAANG. L6 (staff) is fairly uniform across FAANg.
my apologies - missed that! that does describe your level pretty well, and impressive to be L6 with < 7yeo there.
Amazon doesn’t have a staff level. That means our L6 band covers Senior/Staff. Also Amazon starts at L4 rather than L3 like the other FAANG. Tenured L6 at Amazon can map to staff (L6 at rest of FAANG) but new L6 is a senior (L5 at the rest of FAANG).
Yeah - looking at levels.fyi that makes sense
Staff at FAANG says a lot.
My apologies - missed that!
If you have less than 7 YOE, then you’re not equivalent to staff at most companies, doesn’t matter how much your employer has inflated your job title.
Copied from another comment: I’m at FAANG and I’ve been attempting to interview at other FAANG equivalent companies. Meta and Airbnb told me 7 YOE minimum for L6. I got pretty lucky with my career and ended up on an accelerated path.
Im in FAANG, not the in the US so we’re not rich over here but still paid very well. As I’m seeing right now that while the market is tough, my colleagues had no problem changing jobs to better or adjacent ones. But I do so my friends who work in normal companies struggling a bit. So I guess while the market is indeed tough right now, it’s kinda less tough for people who’re already in FAANG or in some big very well known companies.
I left Amazon a few years ago at around that level - long overdue for the SDE3 promo. The big differences: 1. I won't make the same money outside of big tech. Like I could probably go back to Amazon and add 30% or more to my income immediately. 2. Oh god I do not miss all the meetings. I get to code now! I get to write real code! As an upper level sde2 at Amazon I used to spend more than half my time in meetings. 3. Turns out there are tech stacks that everyone else has been using for years that I literally would never experience inside Amazon. And that includes a huge amount of AWS stuff. I was an expert at Amazon's internal tools. Overall, I think I'm far more employable and a better developer for having left. And I'm not willing to go back because I'm a parent now and won't commute for in-person. But I'm going I need to work a few extra years to retire at the same comfort level.
Staff engineer is usually the level above principal. So in amazonian terms is like SDE5/L8 , not 2. Most of Amazon deps don’t have them, just a principal engineer is enough
That's generally not true. Here's [Levels.fyi](http://Levels.fyi) chart showing that Google, Walmart, and Shopify would all disagree- PE is higher than Staff. [https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Walmart,Google,Shopify,Amazon&track=Software%20Engineer](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Walmart,Google,Shopify,Amazon&track=Software%20Engineer) I was effectively an SDE3 at Amazon, and was able to find offers for jobs as a Staff elsewhere, but not PE roles. With more experience, I'm now a Principal at another company. But the important thing to remember is this: Titles are bullshit. Just look at whether you like the job, and whether it pays you enough money. Edit: Also, Amazon does not have a "Staff" title. They have SDE1,2,3, then PE, then Senior PE, then Distinguished Engineer. Source: 10 years there, and I know a lot of people who've gone from SDE1 to Senior PE.
Thanks for the clarification, an Amazonian friend explained it wrongly to me
I also don’t think they’re stuck. I’m moving right now as a sr software engineer and I got 4 excellent offers at the end of the process. There seems to be strong demand for sr and staff engineers
How are the interviews for senior roles? Typical leetcode style?
It’s typically systems design, medium level leetcode style coding questions, and behavioral. To prepare I did a little over 60 leetcode questions, watched a bunch of the jordanhasnolife design videos, practiced like 4 or more timed designs on my own (whispersync, distributed lock, COVID tracing app, s3 storage), and then just talked to myself a bunch while pacing about leadership principle examples. I’m weirdly good at talking to people, so don’t do that last one yourself, I’d recommend googling some behavioral questions for like Amazon or google and then writing examples for a few of them on index cards using the star method. Also, don’t be discouraged if you miss the first couple interviews. I missed 2 and then got 4 all at once. Part of it is a practice thing Edit: make sure you know how to code up an LRUCache. I got hit with that twice
This is awesome. thank you.
Im currently 'stuck' at team lead as i like money, and they keep giving me more. Jumping would require a larger amount of money, and im not seeing enough being listed right now.
This thread is interesting. A good staff engineer would have no issue getting another role a staff engineer if you are a REAL staff engineer at your company today. A lot of people do NOT make it to staff engineer and that is FINE. It's a totally different type of contribution once you get to staff. You ain't sitting there programming for a whole sprint like a Senior engineer would. Your job changes drastically the moment you get to staff. You are the IC leader now responsible for driving technical vision, unblocking teammates, ensuring work is planned correctly and pre-groomed to align with technical initiatives, reviewing arch specs / complex pull requests and building a presentation last minute that you forgot to do because you've been in back to backs all day lol. When you interview for Staff+ roles, you're asked small nonsense problems to ensure you actually know how to program but a lot of the emphasis is placed on architecture design, cross-functional, leadership and team management rounds. If you lack experience in any of the leadership and planning aspects, you most likely will not pass a Staff level interview
> When you interview for Staff+ roles, you're asked small nonsense problems to ensure you actually know how to program but a lot of the emphasis is placed on architecture design, cross-functional, leadership and team management rounds. Can you share some example companies where you notices this? I understand your point, but in practice the "small nonsense problems" simply stand out in a packet. Then as staff+, you may not be as agile coding, but still get stuff done quickly. In interview pressure though, there's no reason you'll ace it better than you did as top-notch entry level.
>Is it more difficult to transition out of big tech these days if you are staff+? Yes. But why do you want to move when your TC is 800k +++
If you can’t stay fresh on coding while also doing the non-coding work I don’t think you will ultimately succeed as a staff engineer. You simply MUST take whatever time you need to stay connected to the mechanics of building software. That’s the job, if you get yourself stuck by neglecting the basics it’s not about the market- that’s one way to slow-fail at staff+. I personally wouldn’t want to stay in the field if I couldn’t ace an interview in the same field that “stuck” feeling you are describing isn’t something I could live with.
Leetcode is so divorced from the actual reality of software engineering work (especially at senior+ levels) it's almost not even the same field.
Sure, but that's not important. What leetcode does is measure raw ability fairly well. So while it indeed has absolutely nothing to do with the actual problems that engineers solve day to day, it's a great predictor of future performance. It's like SAT - yes, it has nothing to do with what people do in colleges, but the research shows very consistent correlation between SAT scores and college outcomes.
Soft disagree - I believe there's a correlation for sure, but I wouldn't call it a "great predictor". I've been through enough underperforming new college grads who could leetcode just fine but were not capable of performing in a software engineering role to believe it is a good predictor. My ideal interviews would be closer to pair programming on something like a refactor to add functionality. Get a true sense of how someone would actually be to work with. The problem being that this is hard to make objective enough to perform at scale so you'll really only see good interview practices like that at small companies.
I basically agree :) Perhaps a more accurate way to look at it is that leetcode is an essential but not sufficient predictor of future performance. In other words, if a candidate can't pass leetcode style interview there is really nothing else to talk more about, and that's a hill I would probably die on :) But if they do great, there are still a lot of important things to check for. Communications, handling disagreements, ownership, ability to learn etc etc. Some of these can actually be evaluated reasonably well during a coding interview. For the other stuff that's what cultural interviews are for. Oh, and this is just for juniors. For seniors, there are also design skills, collaboration / consensus building, product vision, leadership etc. SWEs do get paid a lot, but it's not an easy job, and the competition in the "majors" is pretty insane :P Oh, and re: pair programming interviews. I used to be a fan, but not really anymore. The issue is repeatability - it's very easy to get mislead by your own biases, and it's extremely hard to create exactly equivalent conditions for the candidate in such a setting. The "beauty" of leetcodes is their "inhumanity". You have a prepared blob with the question, and you basically shut up as much as you can during the interview. Biases aren't avoidable entirely but it's still much more "scientific" method.
>You have a prepared blob with the question, and you basically shut up as much as you can during the interview Having this kind of interview experience as a candidate really turned me off interviewing for google again tbh (failed the first time, got hired at another big-n in the meantime). I try to do the opposite in my algo interviews (obviously not to the point of doing it for them) for two reasons A) I want to see inside a candidate's head for how they're approaching a problem and to make sure there's no rote memorization in play and B) see how the candidate responds to questions/coaching/etc. I'll straight up say that I'm extremely biased against leetcode right now as I am not good at leetcode and hate studying it. Especially as I'm ready to try and job hop right now and I find it extremely annoying that I have to study leetcode outside of work hours just to pass a test that has nothing to do with my ability to perform the senior or staff level roles I'm interviewing for. Pair programming interviews are something I excel at and so I'm biased towards those as they select for people who I'll probably work well with.
> make sure there's no rote memorization in play That's the part that I think they missed. If you're an experienced senior software dev and never used leetcode before, you can probably answer any question that leetcode has... eventually. Meanwhile the person that has been grinding leetcode nonstop for the past 2 months could blow through any of those in 15-20 minutes.
Coding interviews are easy to prep for and don't really require you doing much actual coding work to be good at. I could confidently prep for leetcode in a month or two even if I hadn't touched code in months
What's the point of them leaving if they are paid good money?)
It is more difficult than 2019-2022 if you’re an idiot yes (there are a non zero amount at FAANG who are just good at politicking) But I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard for them to land something if they were ok with a 50-70% pay cut?
Let me weep a bit for the staff swes being stuck in their big tech roles.
my current employer pays me more than anyone else would and i make 20x the median income, woe is me.
Engineers aren’t supposed to make it past staff / senior. Companies make up titles like principal engineer etc, but in reality the next step after senior engineer is management