On the flip side companies don’t really seem to care if you’re interested either. I applied to around 200 companies in the final 2 years of my data science undergrad and no matter how much interest I showed in the fields of my interest: stream processing, network analysis, and recommendation systems nobody really cared. I added projects and hackathons and applied directly to teams working on that stuff, never even got an interview in those areas. I ended up getting a front end job at a FANG.
The truth of hiring is nobody is actually honest about it, most of the advice you read online is unrealistic. Engineers mostly care about compensation, working conditions, and future job prospects. Companies mostly care about whether you fit some pre defined funnel and can pass their interview hoops they don’t care about how interested you are or “how much value you can bring” like you read online.
Companies will hire the engineer who passed all 5 technical interviews with good feedback over the engineer who got medium feedback but has experience and interest in the field. And engineers will turn down the most interesting job with middling pay for the high paying boring job that offers remote.
> Companies mostly care about whether you fit some pre defined funnel and can pass their interview hoops they don’t care about how interested you are or “how much value you can bring” like you read online.
I think this is overly cynical. Companies do want these things but at large companies you:
1. Cannot maintain a network of trust amongst people making hiring decisions to keep the bar high.
2. Want a plausibly "objective" process to avoid complaints or lawsuits for discrimination
This leads to modern hiring practices. Smart smaller companies put up fewer hoops, most aren't so smart and just ape the big companies not understanding the forces that led to those hiring practices.
If you can get a strong enough recommendation from someone within the central network of trust of an engineering organization you can skip interviews even at large companies like Google.
I doubt about skipping interviews at Google. I've been at Google for about 8 years, but never met any Googler that joined after skipping interviews (except for acquihires or people who join after a company merge/acquisitions).
This is unsurprising, the network of trust I'm describing at Google isn't large while the company is huge (~27,000 engineers). Additionally, bypassing the interviews expends cultural capital, so you'd expect those who can make it happen to not usually do so. If I haven't been lied to, at least one person in the last few years joined as an IC without the standard interview process because someone near the very top of the org chart said they absolutely needed him on their team ASAP.
It's funny that most of my high school buddies grind their jobs for a paycheck, but as a software developer I'm supposed to "find a company I'm passionate about" so work "has meaning".
Hard lessons I learned over the last 24 months:
- Titles don't matter. Promotions provide minimal pay increases. It's better to focus on finding another job.
- Job difficulty doesn't scale linearly with salary. I'm working roughly the same as I did in jobs where I earned 1/3 the salary I get now.
- RSUs are the way to get crazy money. I completely disregarded them early in my career.
100% correct. Tell you more - one can try to get a job that pays less thinking you are going to work less - in reality you are going to work more for less money and less respect. These are shit companies and must be avoided.
"The term restricted stock unit (RSU) refers to a form of compensation issued by an employer to an employee in the form of company shares. Restricted stock units are issued to employees through a vesting plan and distribution schedule after they achieve required performance milestones or upon remaining with their employer for a particular length of time. RSUs give employees interest in company stock but no tangible value until vesting is complete. The RSUs are assigned a fair market value (FMV) when they vest. They are considered income once vested, and a portion of the shares is withheld to pay income taxes. The employee receives the remaining shares and can sell them at their discretion."
I'm very much on board with this. I put stability and money on about the same pedestal and is why I still work where I do after many years for a salary that is fantastic for 90% of the country but is "merely average" for Seattle.
Working for a rock solid medium-sized that's been in existence for a hundred years and funded by a stable endowment and a pile of public service contracts and has never had a layoff is more interesting to me than knowing that the odds of me still having a job in the 2030s, if I still want it, is well above 90%.
> a stable endowment and a pile of public service contracts and has never had a layoff is more interesting to me than knowing that the odds of me still having a job in the 2030s, if I still want it, is well above 90%
How do you know you're still around by 2030?
I've had 3 people from my close circle die off in the past 6 months. One of them my age, left behind a spouse and two kids. That really changed my perspective. If I'm gonna spend most of my waking hours labouring away in a cubicle away from home then I at least want it to be meaningful. I'm not going just to tick-tock my life away doing meaningless shit for boatload of money that I may or may not get to use eventually.
So keep the paycheck and try to take it easy - like the Office Space guy. You still can deliver value to the company if you work 1-2 hours a day (remotely, of course)
Money also can't buy cool stuff if you spend all your time working.
I definitely prioritize a certain level of money over cool stuff. However i make money to spend on things that make me happy - what's the point if you don't spend it. Taking a lower paying but cooler job, is just another way of spending your money.
A lot of this is the difference between a FAANG eng and a more average person. 300K for me is absolute abundance. 140K is great, but unless you are a single guy with low costs, hardly a rocket ship to having a lot of wealth. Lots of people earn 140K.
Same here, and I learned to pretend and smile at the hiring manager and founders who were trying to make money priority sound weird. Eventually the money was being paid by the same people who offered the cool stuff to work on.
Heh, maybe this is why I am an average engineer.