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Good Will Hrunting posted:Titles are stupid just post your location and how much you make and what you do lol Yep. Title means gently caress all. Get a job you like, doing stuff that's fun that pays you well.
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Feb 5, 2017 07:51
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apseudonym posted:At least for Google those pay bands are super low. Are you loving kidding me
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Feb 5, 2017 09:08
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oliveoil posted:I can't imagine getting $200k to start as a junior and going up from there with stock price increases and bonus grants. That sounds like a crazy magical world thing. Am I just really under paid / too dumb to have properly been job-hopping like a smart person all this time? As total compensation: To the vast majority of software engineers in the world today, $100k USD is really good money to be making at any point in the career. To the vast majority of software engineers in the USA today, $200k USD is really good money to be making at any point in the career. To the vast majority of software engineers (or, well, for anyone in any industry who's not a CEO) in SV today, $400k USD is really good money to be making at any point in the career.
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Feb 5, 2017 14:46
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Hot drat I wish I had a salary like that. Out here in St. Louis it's nothing like that at all.
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Feb 5, 2017 15:30
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Doghouse posted:Hot drat I wish I had a salary like that. Out here in St. Louis it's nothing like that at all. Have you seen how much housing costs between STL and SF? It's very possible you have more in the bank after rent/etc than your contemporaries. My total comp is only marginally higher than my cash comp, which has been the case throughout my career. Not having to worry about handcuffs has made it pretty easy to move around though...
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Feb 5, 2017 15:47
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leper khan posted:Have you seen how much housing costs between STL and SF? It's very possible you have more in the bank after rent/etc than your contemporaries. Indeed. The wife and I bought a nice big house in a nice neighborhood for ~400k that would have cost $2m+ in SF, I would guess. Still, the numbers that are being discussed here are mind boggling to me.
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Feb 5, 2017 16:09
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Again, a lot of the numbers being thrown around are total comp and not salary. They make a lot of assumptions about the amount of RSUs being distributed in a given year and the continued value of said stock.
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Feb 5, 2017 16:16
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Doghouse posted:Indeed. The wife and I bought a nice big house in a nice neighborhood for ~400k that would have cost $2m+ in SF, I would guess. Still, the numbers that are being discussed here are mind boggling to me. I don't even find it weird anymore that it's high, it's that the baseline seems to keep going up that boggles my mind. I'm sure by the end of the year I'll be seeing someone come in here and nonchalantly go "oh what? $300k in SV? No that's like entry-level, everyone should be getting that", then next year it'll go to 350-400, what next?
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Feb 5, 2017 16:25
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$300k total comp is doable for a senior / L5 position in NYC. A lot of that depends on stock comp doing really good though, as salary is only about half that. Plus you get murdered on taxes, because you hit AMT levels which knocks out the deduction for our really high state and municipal income taxes. Also housing lol. I pay $2,600 a month for a 650sqft apartment in a building that's like 80 years old.
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Feb 5, 2017 16:32
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For what it's worth in my experience I would not call those pay bands "super low", total comp or not, but I am not much of a negotiator so 
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Feb 5, 2017 17:06
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Arachnamus posted:.. really? I know Silicon Valley is crazy for this stuff but I didn't think it was that high. The amount you're paid depends less on your skill and more on what company you've joined up with. Majorly profitable companies pay more, as you've just seen.
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Feb 5, 2017 18:27
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Pollyanna posted:The amount you're paid depends less on your skill and more on what company you've joined up with. Majorly profitable companies pay more, as you've just seen. Also whether as an engineer you are seen as a profit or cost center (but just filtering for tech companies goes a long way to helping this).
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Feb 5, 2017 18:55
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geeves posted:Amazon has a horrific process, btw, in which they require you to install malware on your machine to basically spy on you like crazy while you do the interview. I read about this at Amazon, it sounds bad. I know my process was nothing like this. I got contacted on linkedin by an internal recruiter, had a phone interview with an SDE in Seattle, then a day of face to face interviews (four in total). The phone interview involved writing code in a shared text editor website (collabedit or similar). I used python in all interviews. YMMV, but my Amazon interview was a good experience.
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Feb 5, 2017 20:48
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Blinkz0rz posted:Again, a lot of the numbers being thrown around are total comp and not salary. They make a lot of assumptions about the amount of RSUs being distributed in a given year and the continued value of said stock. Yeah, salary is about 60% of my total income (not taking into account any future stock grants I may get, just what's vesting this year) so if the stock tanks notably my numbers would be way off.
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Feb 5, 2017 20:53
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Most software companies outside the big tech companies give jack poo poo for stock, bonuses, etc. when most surveys are bad at looking at anything besides base salary. On top of this, the software jobs that pay market comp are as a rule enterprise-centric and the need for salespeople in these markets dilutes the compensation pool available for engineers as well.Mniot posted:We were doing a terrible job of interviewing candidates, across the board, but I wonder what we could have done to weed out this type of bad manager. There's something truly bizarre about tech where managers and high level executives commonly have no experience doing the fundamental work output of the company. Almost everyone that's a Wall Street CEO was an analyst or trader at some point. Even Jack Welch from GE used to be a chemical engineer when he started there, and Angela Ahrendts worked in fashion and retail for her entire career. But outside of Silicon Valley "tech" companies commonly have no education or direct experience whatsoever related to software but are focused mostly upon an industry that could use some tech influence / disruption (politics, media distribution, travel, transportation, construction, etc.). Almost every other defense software company I saw was founded by military officers that never worked in building software, and the few that did were oftentimes the boutique software companies that actually delivered good software. Admittedly, for enterprise software you absolutely need to know the domains of your customers and a lot of the business world is super nepotism heavy, but it's disproportionately rare to find companies founded with any serious emphasis and recognizable expertise in software engineering and I think that has resulted in some serious brain drain and increasingly worse environments (and more importantly - results) from these companies' engineering efforts.
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Feb 5, 2017 21:40
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Echoing the above, I worked at Shoebuy for a while and even though its entire operation is a website it was just not, at its core, a "tech" company. But it worked for them. As near as I can tell their speciality was writing contracts so carefully that Shoebuy made money no matter what happened. Biggest recession in lifetime? Profitable year.
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Feb 5, 2017 22:54
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Doghouse posted:Hot drat I wish I had a salary like that. Out here in St. Louis it's nothing like that at all. Do what I do, work remotely for SF/NYC based companies and enjoy the cheap real estate in St Louis.
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Feb 6, 2017 02:15
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Hey, that's what I'm trying to do! Speaking of which: On a scale of 1 to 10 how desperate would you have to be to take a remote job for a company with no current remote employees? The product seems interesting but that just really feels like bad idea.
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Feb 6, 2017 02:44
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Iverron posted:Hey, that's what I'm trying to do!
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Feb 6, 2017 04:00
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Iverron posted:Hey, that's what I'm trying to do! you'd need to be at 15 or 20 desperation the only way i'd do it would be as the manager/lead for an all remote team where i had hiring input if you go in as 'just a developer' you'll have to do amazing work to have any sort of visibility outside of your immediate manager
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Feb 6, 2017 04:54
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And having been the lead for a distributed team that was the primary hiring authority if I did it again I'd have to vet the company supremely hard and still I'd have to lean toward a no.
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Feb 6, 2017 05:27
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Yeah that's pretty much where I was at. I think I'll try to vet out at least a 50/50 ratio.
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Feb 6, 2017 07:02
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Yeah I just joined a team where only my manager and another two team leads are in the same office as me and they work from home 2-3 days a week. The rest of the team is outsourced from Europe and South Africa. I had no idea going into it that this was the case, but we'll see how it goes!
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Feb 6, 2017 15:30
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Good Will Hrunting posted:Yeah I just joined a team where only my manager and another two team leads are in the same office as me and they work from home 2-3 days a week. The rest of the team is outsourced from Europe and South Africa. I had no idea going into it that this was the case, but we'll see how it goes! Congrats on finding a job that didn't make you run screaming, by the way.
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Feb 6, 2017 16:47
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Congrats on finding a job that didn't make you run screaming, by the way. Yet  Thanks though! No complaints thus far but it's only day 4. At this level it'll probably take 6 weeks until I can really judge.To be fair, I know so few people who objectively like their engineering jobs here in NY. One is a Googler but is pretty frustrated with his being switched around teams regularly, one is a Facebooker, and the rest are in ad/fin-tech and hate the boringness or work at Kool-Aid drinking start-ups and also hate it.
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Feb 6, 2017 17:04
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apseudonym posted:Yeah, salary is about 60% of my total income (not taking into account any future stock grants I may get, just what's vesting this year) so if the stock tanks notably my numbers would be way off. Better hope Tiny Hands doesn't forget the Gmail password for his Twitter account! (assuming I'm remembering right and you're at google)
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Feb 6, 2017 19:02
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Good Will Hrunting posted:To be fair, I know so few people who objectively like their engineering jobs here in NY. One is a Googler but is pretty frustrated with his being switched around teams regularly, one is a Facebooker, and the rest are in ad/fin-tech and hate the boringness or work at Kool-Aid drinking start-ups and also hate it.
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Feb 6, 2017 23:29
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necrobobsledder posted:Most people don't like their jobs, especially after a couple years of dealing with situations out of their control or simply unexciting work. You can have all the same problems working elsewhere without anywhere near close to the compensation or opportunities for growth, but depression is most common in developed countries and people aren't particularly rational. I'm trying to decide if I just have a case of grass-is-always-greener or my current place is really that crap and I would be a lot happier somewhere else. I've been here 7+ years and the money is great: at least 5% raises every year, last was 7% on top of what was already high for the market even though I haven't been promoted in 6 years. Also I moved back to my hometown 3 years ago to work from home and it hasn't affected those raises at all. I don't care whether it's affected promotion because I loathe management and don't really want to be promoted anyway. The problem is it's consulting/agency work, much of it subcontracted from [big rear end defense contractor] with all of the problems you would think that come with that. I've pretty much become convinced that work-for-hire is the absolute worst loving way to make software. I'm not sure if you could come up with a worse set of incentives counter to actually properly engineering anything. It's apparent in all the things talked about ITT and in other threads that we just don't have, ever, like: actual requirements, automated testing of any kind, code reviews, documentation, an actual project management process, anyone who can write a JIRA to save their goddamned life, etc. I'm well aware that most places have some variation on this kind of terribleness but I have to believe there are plenty of places that are significantly better. Also I've watched it go downhill in terms of average developer skill. When I joined I was definitely the dumbest person in the room which was great, now I find myself explaining what I feel is pretty basic stuff far too often.
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Feb 9, 2017 02:37
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Dogcow posted:I'm trying to decide if I just have a case of grass-is-always-greener or my current place is really that crap and I would be a lot happier somewhere else. I've heard it said that you should always be interviewing; I'd certainly accept that if you're not happy where you are you should be interviewing. It is not impossible to find good jobs. The real risk is in hiring on somewhere only to discover they're worse than your current position, but ideally the interview process will help clarify that for you (remember, you're interviewing them just as much as the reverse).
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Feb 9, 2017 03:06
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I've heard it said that you should always be interviewing; I'd certainly accept that if you're not happy where you are you should be interviewing. It is not impossible to find good jobs. The real risk is in hiring on somewhere only to discover they're worse than your current position, but ideally the interview process will help clarify that for you (remember, you're interviewing them just as much as the reverse). You can also Google and Glassdoor companies before you even apply. If you read too much "this company is painful to work for" then just don't apply. You can also ask programmers you know to tell you about the company that they work for and if it sounds good then apply and ask for your pal to put in a good word. You can go to meetups and ask people working for local places what they think and where it is they're working and go from there. With many years of experience you probably have a bajillion options.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:15
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Dogcow posted:I'm well aware that most places have some variation on this kind of terribleness but I have to believe there are plenty of places that are significantly better. Also I've watched it go downhill in terms of average developer skill. When I joined I was definitely the dumbest person in the room which was great, now I find myself explaining what I feel is pretty basic stuff far too often. It doesn't hurt to interview and look around and talk to people, if you're not sure look around a bit. Maybe you'll find a thing you enjoy more or worst case all the places you look seem suckier and you can feel better about your current choice. e: ToxicSlurpee posted:You can also Google and Glassdoor companies before you even apply. If you read too much "this company is painful to work for" then just don't apply. You can also ask programmers you know to tell you about the company that they work for and if it sounds good then apply and ask for your pal to put in a good word. You can go to meetups and ask people working for local places what they think and where it is they're working and go from there. With many years of experience you probably have a bajillion options. Honestly with those reviews I feel like no one goes to leave a review there if they're happy so lots of positive posts on those sites make me nervous.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:16
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So today I sent out a request for code review for a medium-small enhancement for the construction business management desktop app I work on. It included adding several columns to a table, just int columns. It was a straightforward solution, and I even ran it by the team lead who said he would do it the same way. Our DBA, who apparently controls every aspect of the DB, sent me (and everyone on the team because this is how our retarded code review process works) a rambling email in response saying basically that I need to have a meeting with him ("before the code review!!") to discuss any changes like this, along with some nitpicking (I used default values, which goes against some kind of convention they apparently have and didn't tell me about, okay fine). He said this was a big deal and "these columns are going to be there forever" and "It's totally my fault that you guys aren't trained to do db tasks the right way," among other things. Is it just me or is this stupid and ridiculous? Is this normal? Maybe it's just me. I've only been working in the field for about 3 years and I already really really want to start my own company, I hate this crap.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:28
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Doghouse posted:Maybe it's just me. I've only been working in the field for about 3 years and I already really really want to start my own company, I hate this crap. So in, do you have a good idea? If not, are you a white bro who fell into a trust fund with a mediocre - bad idea in ad-tech or finance?
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Feb 9, 2017 03:33
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apseudonym posted:Honestly with those reviews I feel like no one goes to leave a review there if they're happy so lots of positive posts on those sites make me nervous. My experience with online reviews in general is that the creepy, overly polite ones that are just the right length are the bad ones. Products, businesses, whatever...doesn't matter. A place with 500 reviews that carefully enumerate how the place is awesome in every specific way possible is fake. A place with a fair number of 4 or 5 star reviews where people say things like "place/thing was good" are probably left by people that meant it. If you read multiple people say the same thing was good in a variety of reviews between 3 and 5 they're probably legit. But yeah a LOT of 5 star reviews is a bad sign. Plus never go based on reviews alone as like you're alluding to they can be easily faked. However, if a place has a LOT of negative reviews just don't. This is especially true if they all complain about the same thing. I saw places where a lot of reviews were 1 or 2 stars with stuff to the effect of "the owner is a dick who will deliberately underpay you and keep you there 70 hours a week." The rest were glowing 5 stars from people praising the management in glowing terms very specifically. So...yeah. Look for things like that. The most telling reviews to read are the worst ones. A place that isn't attracting angry rants probably hasn't done anything to deserve them. Yet, anyway. If a lot of people vocally hate a business, product, or service avoid it.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:37
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Doghouse posted:So today I sent out a request for code review for a medium-small enhancement for the construction business management desktop app I work on. It included adding several columns to a table, just int columns. It was a straightforward solution, and I even ran it by the team lead who said he would do it the same way. Did you push to prod before review? If so, I can understand the DBA being upset. If it's less than a million rows just lol.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:38
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leper khan posted:Did you push to prod before review? If so, I can understand the DBA being upset. No of course not. And yeah neither the application or the amount of data or clients have data is that big at all.
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Feb 9, 2017 03:41
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Iverron posted:On a scale of 1 to 10 how desperate would you have to be to take a remote job for a company with no current remote employees? The product seems interesting but that just really feels like bad idea. I'd have to get the temperature of the room as far as how amenable the team is to do decisionmaking and communication out in the open. Are they actually OK with hashing that out over slack or video call, or do they just want to walk over and tap someone on the shoulder. My current team has two remotes out of 12, myself included, so it's different than the past jobs I've had were 50% of the team was remote and the office-based people were spread across two or more company locations. But the other remote is a friend of mine who also lives here in St Louis, and we are the sole Android developers for our project, so if we really have to we can just both meet at a coffee shop and pair in person. apseudonym posted:Honestly with those reviews I feel like no one goes to leave a review there if they're happy so lots of positive posts on those sites make me nervous. At a former employer of mine, when HR did a 30-day checkin for new hires, they mentioned "don't forget to go onto Glassdoor and give us a review." This had the effect of totally skewing their ratings with 5-star reviews. The only basis for a review you'd have in 30 days in was that "new job" honeymoon period, and that there was a kegerator in every microkitchen.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:49
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Doghouse posted:So today I sent out a request for code review for a medium-small enhancement for the construction business management desktop app I work on. It included adding several columns to a table, just int columns. It was a straightforward solution, and I even ran it by the team lead who said he would do it the same way. Sounds like the DBA just had a different expectation for the work process (and he admits that the issue is his problem if he said that it was "totally his fault", I assume). I don't think it's ridiculous or stupid, it's just a matter of working with your DBA to set expectations about code changes that change the db schema (or touch the DB in any way really, because when changes happen in the DB, they become his problem). Maybe he didn't handle the response in the best way possible, but I don't think there's anything crazy or stupid there. Just have a chat with him, lay out some ground rules for changes moving forward so he doesn't get caught off guard, and send out an update to the rest of the team to let them know how DBA dude wants to handle things in the future.
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Feb 9, 2017 07:32
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Dogcow posted:I'm trying to decide if I just have a case of grass-is-always-greener or my current place is really that crap and I would be a lot happier somewhere else. If they're treating you fairly, paying you fairly, and have a comfortable living/working situation, that's pretty rare. It'll probably keep going downhill, but it sounds like timing is under your control. A new job might mean a new location, and will mean new coworkers, new boss, new project...pay might be lower. IMO there's no real correct answer here, because it's up to you what kind of contingency plan you'd make. Move immediately? Take some time off to brush up on stuff? Some other option? One thing you could do is spend some time learning to set up servers and trying to implement some better processes in a skunkworks kind of manner, if you can limit the scope and start small. That would be a good line item to show that you didn't sit on your butt for seven years and instead were curious about industry best practices and took initiative to implement them, etc. etc.
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Feb 9, 2017 07:57
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genki posted:Sounds like the DBA just had a different expectation for the work process (and he admits that the issue is his problem if he said that it was "totally his fault", I assume). I don't think it's ridiculous or stupid, it's just a matter of working with your DBA to set expectations about code changes that change the db schema (or touch the DB in any way really, because when changes happen in the DB, they become his problem). There's no reason he should be demanding a pre-review with just him, but yeah his overreaction is probably just frustration over a poorly-defined or -executed process when it comes to his domain (the db). Easy enough to try and get him directly involved. Now if he digs in his heels and wants everything to be done his way without being willing to bend at all, that's a harder problem.
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Feb 9, 2017 10:44
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