- champagne posting
- Apr 5, 2006
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YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER
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my job is terrible. i'm the only data scientist in an organisation of 2000, looking for new opportunities like this shining beacon on a hill:
Process Specialist with Agile Mindset posted:
Oh, and the deadline is in five weeks.
You pass by the coffee machine on your way back to your desk. Nothing ignites the creative juices like a good cup of java made on fresh beans. The word processor comes to life at your command; you dig in and start to write.
Suddenly you look up - hours have passed without notice, you have been totally immersed in your task. The result is a lean and simple addition to the R&D procedures that will allow the project managers to continue running their agile teams without drowning in paperwork, but it also meets the requirements of the ISO standard.
Above all else, it ensures patient safety. Safety first!
Satisfied you stretch your legs and head to the kitchen for a refill.
Does the above scenario appeal to you?
company makes dental prosthetics
during another unrelated opportunity a company asked "would you do this technical thing? it probably likely won't take a week". lo and behold it would have taken a week
edit: thanks to The Leck for finding The Questions:
quote:
- who do you work with on a daily basis / describe the day to day role
translation : are you working with a well-defined team that puts out consistent work or is this place a clusterfuck with people coming and going on a weekly basis because management is incompetent
- how are decisions made / how will [team] be asked to accomplish things / who makes those decisions
translation: are the people making decisions that impact your work accountable to you / your team and do you have the ability to influence them or are they dictated from on high or even worse forced upon you by a hostile entity
- what are the company's primary values? what characteristics are you looking for in a candidate in relation to those primary values?
translation: if they say 'uhhhhhhhhhh' here it's a red flag. if they throw gibberish at you it's not a red flag but it's not a good look either. this should get a human bean answer
- what would be expected of me for the first / three / six months? What will success look like in this position, how will it be measured?
translation: same as the last one.
- what sort of training/mentoring/career dev things are here
translation: they should also be able to answer this without thinking. if they hesitate or bullshit you it's a red flag
- what's the most impressive thing you've seen out of someone else you've interviewed recently
translation: what qualities are people here impressed with. what caliber of candidates are you also considering.
- What do you see as the most challenging aspect of this job?
translation: every job has some bullshit aspect to it. this is their chance to lay it on softly and your chance to decide if it's a particular brand of bullshit you can put up with
- how do you set milestones/deliverables for projects and how does your team react when it's clear they won't be met
translation: are you going to work me like a slave when we don't hit the deadline we never agreed to
- when was the last time you took pto / how much did you take / what did you do
translation: without fail lovely interviewers for lovely companies will try to deflect this one. if they try to say 'oh no don't worry about that' or respond with their actual pto policy just reiterate that they didn't answer your question. when was the last time YOU took pto
When interviewing:
"[redacted posted:"]
[redacted]
When interviewing with startups:
tl;dr version:
quote:
1) How much money does the company have in the bank?
2) Tell me about a time the founders disagreed. What happened?
3) What is the role of the company’s board of directors?
4) Tell me about the changes you’ve experienced at the company over the last year.
quote:
When you're leaving a big company to interview at a startup, there are some hidden questions you might not know to ask.
Not all startup jobs are created equal; without the right info, you could make a bad choice.
Here are 4 questions you should ask in a startup interview loop:
1) How much money does the company have in the bank?
OK, yes: this sounds super crass... an embarrassingly direct question. But it is also incredibly crucial, because without this info, you have no idea what kind of situation you are potentially walking into.
You would never ask this question at a megacorp because, well, the answer is usually "infinite money." The cash position of a public company is also usually freely available. Besides, you probably wouldn't be talking to someone who could give you a direct answer anyway! 🤑
But at a startup, everything is impacted by money. For example:
* How free is the company to build towards its vision?
* How likely is the leadership to make desperate/rash decisions?
* Will you have access to the resources you need to do a good job?
There are lots of less-gosh ways to ask this question, like: "how strong is the company's financial position?"
And be prepared, the answer might sound more like "here's what % of our Series B is still in the bank" or "here's how many more months of runway we have." These are ok!
But by not asking, you have no idea what you are signing up for.
And if a founder/senior member of the team isn't willing to give you *some sort of answer here*, that is a big red flag. They may be hiding something you won't find out about until you start work.
2) Tell me about a time the founders disagreed. What happened?
In any startup with multiple founders (most of them!) the founder working relationship can make or break the company. If it is wonderful, the company may thrive whereas if it is toxic, nothing can save it.
Notice the phrasing of the question. As a candidate, just like as an interviewer, you must practice behavioral interviewing.
Don't ask "how do the founders handle disagreement?" Any smart person can answer that well: “They talk, hear each other's perspectives, and work it out!”
Instead ask the question the behavioral way: "Tell me about a time..." This forces the answer to be specific and real.
Founders always have some disagreement; if they own that and show they know how to handle it, it is a powerful positive signal about the company.
Note: Be especially wary if you are interviewing with a founder and they repeatedly answer your specific questions about this by taking the topic back into the abstract.
This could show that they are not transparent, not self-aware, deceitful, or all three.
3) What is the role of the company’s board of directors?
I'll be honest. During the 16 years I worked at Microsoft, I am not sure I could have named anyone on the board. Bill Gates? The Netflix guy? 🤷🏼♂️
It just wasn't in any way germane to the day-to-day of working there.
In a startup, however, the company's relationship with its board could have a huge impact on whether you want to work there.
If you are talking to a founder or senior exec, look for words of alignment and respect. Not snark or 🙄 or "ugh, the board, don't get me started.”
If interviewing with a more junior employee, a great answer might well be "No idea, I’ve only seen them in the office once.”
A board that is out of the way operationally, helping behind-the-scenes but not interfering, is a good sign that there's a healthy relationship there.
Fun story: I once interviewed for a senior job at a tech startup. I went with the CEO to meet the board for a last round of interviews.
The first board member got me into a room and started with: "Hi! FYI. you can't tell him, but we are firing the CEO." AWKWARD. Um, kthxbye. 🛫
4) Tell me about the changes you’ve experienced at the company over the last year.
A big company is pretty much the same year after year. Working there in 2017 is the same as working there in 2018.
The best startups, on the other hand, are growing, changing, strengthening.
The single best way to predict the future is by analyzing the past.
And so by asking your interviewer not "where do you expect to be in a year" but "what have you experienced in the last year", you get a window into what the actual the pace of growth is at the company.
A great, thoughtful answer about the ways the company is growing is a huge plus. A positive is often: "wow, I can't believe how much we've done/grown/changed/built when I think about it."
A worrisome answer is "honestly, it's about the same." When startups stagnate, they die.
Hear the stories about what the last 12 months were like, and use that to gauge whether it would be an exciting place to spend your next few years.
Companies that are thoughtfully growing employ people with a strong growth mindset, creating an amazing place to learn and build.
Last thing: Don't be afraid to ask these things. 💪🏼 You have the right to ask direct questions in your interview. As a founder, I relish being able to share info about our company.
If you get vague answers/hostility, especially from senior people, this is a bad sign. Run away!
Startup interviews require you to probe differently than megacorp interviews. This is a good thing! What you learn will help you find the place that's a strong match for you.
Be prepared to ask the right questions, and you'll be one step closer to landing your dream startup job.
Courtesy of The Leck and this duder on twitter: https://twitter.com/jensenharris
Here's an amazing effortpost about interviewing for white collar jobs:
alright gonna effortpost how the white collar interview process more or less works. i'll edit this post with it just a sec
e:
office jobs all follow a pretty standard process for hiring, and if you go outside of this process everyone is going to look at you like you have two heads. it's not your fault that you don't know what this process is, and the people looking at you like you have two heads also don't understand that not everyone knows this like the back of their hands. it's a skill that most of us are taught when getting into our first internship.
the process can start either one of two ways. either they decide that they need to hire to fill a position, or someone with some sway inside the company finds you and decides that they need to create a position for you to fill. almost always you're going to be falling somehow into the former, but it goes without saying that being in the latter is a very very good place to be.
when they decide to hire for a position a bunch of processes are set into motion. the team or department overseeing the team has to come up with a job description. that job description is then vetted by the hr department. the budget is cleared with accounting. management decides who the new hire is going to work under. etc etc etc. eventually this is all hammered out and the job description is passed back to the hr department, or recruiting if the company is large enough to have a dedicated recruiting department, and they start posting the job opening on places like linkedin, the internal company job board, and wherever else.
at this point external recruiters may be brought in as well. these guys take the job description and contact everyone they possibly can to try to get the job posting in front of as many eyeballs as possible. if someone they convince to interview gets the job, they get a payout based on the candidate's salary. it's usually something like 10% where they get the first half up front and the second half if the new employee remains with the company past a year. you may be thinking, 'wow this probably incentivizes external recruiters to just throw as much poo poo at that wall as they can to pump up the volume' and you'd be 100% correct. they're almost entirely garbage. don't be surprised if you have a rough time with an external recruiter because they're all bottom of the barrel garbage. however when you're first getting started you'll have to deal with it because they'll probably be the only ones who contact you.
anyways- at this point the company is getting resume submissions for the position. every company handles this next part differently but it's mostly: a group of people sift through the resumes to find people they want to interview, those candidates are interviewed, a final candidate is identified and extended an offer. every step of this process is extremely arbitrary and people will reject candidates for any loving reason. one of the reviewers didn't like the font you used on your resume? denied. a recruiter thinks one of your bullet points is awkward and makes them think of a bad time they had two jobs ago? denied. do not take it personally if you submit a lot of resumes to jobs you think line up with you perfectly and don't hear back from 95% of them. you're being rejected for extremely stupid and arbitrary reasons. that's just how it is and why i said it's a numbers game. you just have to keep bashing your head against that brick wall until you finally smash through.
the interview process itself is an entire process that any of us could write a book about. i recommend googling some common interview questions and preparing how you'd answer them. things like, 'tell me about a time you had a conflict in the workplace and how you resolved it' or 'what's your greatest weakness?' that kind of bullshit. the thing to keep in mind however that at this point, all of the interviewers are looking for a good gut feeling about you. it's most likely that you're talking to the people you'll actually be working with and they're mostly concerned with: is this guy going to be able to do the job and not be a colossal pain in my rear end, and is this guy someone i actually want to work with. this process is also just as arbitrary as the resume process. you answered the question you thought the interviewer was asking but it turned out he was trying to get at something else and you didn't pick up the hint? denied. interviewer just thought you 'came across wrong' when they asked you something specific even though you answered it correctly? denied. just like with the resumes, if you get rejected time and time again despite feeling like you knocked it out of the park, don't beat yourself up over it. it's stupid and arbitrary.
eventually you get to the offer stage, which we have an entire thread dedicated to in business and finance for a reason. this is basically hr trying to figure out how little they can get away with paying you while you try to figure out how much you can get out of them. just like the resume and interview stages before, don't beat yourself up if you gently caress this up the first few times you go through this. they do it for a living day in and day out while you do it maybe once every couple of years at most.
again, i want to emphasize that i call this a numbers game for a reason. make sure you have some friends or people itt review your resume to make sure it looks ok because there's shitloads of unspoken rules about them. the interviews you'll just get the hang of by doing lots of them. eventually you will have done so many that you won't give a poo poo any more which ironically will make you way WAY better at interviewing. with the offer stage just hold the cardinal rule of NEVER SAY A loving NUMBER JESUS loving CHRIST close to your heart and you'll probably do fine.
if you have questions about specifics we can help you out with that too
champagne posting fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Oct 22, 2021
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Jan 9, 2018 08:55
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 23, 2022 21:44
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- Progressive JPEG
- Feb 19, 2003
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data scientist usually means analyst
advertised salary is a good way to tell which it is
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Jan 9, 2018 10:20
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- Valeyard
- Mar 30, 2012
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Grimey Drawer
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I'm chasing up opportunities in London
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Jan 9, 2018 19:35
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- ultravoices
- May 10, 2004
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You are about to embark on a great journey. Are you ready, my friend?
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new year new computer touching
two of my current job's clients have fled with the new year so it's really really time to go look at being a stemlord.
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Jan 9, 2018 20:00
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- champagne posting
- Apr 5, 2006
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YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER
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but i've also been told (possibly in this thread) that the uk is a terrible place to touch computers professionally
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Jan 9, 2018 20:40
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- The Management
- Jan 2, 2010
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sup, bitch?
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I’m six months into new job and everything is a clusterfuck (inherited) and I’ve tried hard to fix it. now I give up since my colleagues apparently can’t tell they’re buried neck deep in poo poo or want to do anything about it. I’m going to stop rowing against the tide and ride it down for a while until I identify where the non-disaster areas of the company are and transfer there.
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Jan 9, 2018 20:41
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- Emacs Headroom
- Aug 2, 2003
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Which is better:
1. Small consistent set of more in-depth interviews with standard rubrics, or
2. Large number of more conversational interviews with people you might work with?
I prefer the first, but I've noticed the second is picking up steam, especially for research-y groups (I think this is how MSR would interview; they probably got it from Bell Labs or something)
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Jan 10, 2018 02:52
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- DELETE CASCADE
- Oct 25, 2017
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i haven't washed my penis since i jerked it to a phtotograph of george w. bush in 2003

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Which is better:
1. Small consistent set of more in-depth interviews with standard rubrics, or
2. Large number of more conversational interviews with people you might work with?
I prefer the first, but I've noticed the second is picking up steam, especially for research-y groups (I think this is how MSR would interview; they probably got it from Bell Labs or something)
i'd pick 2 every single time, because i can carry on a conversation, and i hate being marked down for missing a rubic buzzword by a person who hasn't demonstrated that they understand what the buzzword means. then again, i'm a white male, and the rubric-based interview methods are designed by/for big companies to avoid the gut feeling decisions on "culture fit" that happen in case 2 and are likely to work in my favor
however, if you're a phd applying for a research job, there should be no rubric-based interviews anywhere. they should look at your publication record, then discuss how your research might fit in to their goals. it's just not possible to develop a standard rubric when hiring at this level. if you're just taking your phd to google for a software engineer level 3 job, expect rubrics, but not for a researcher
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Jan 10, 2018 03:02
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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but in order to not go down in real salary i'd have to be paid to the tune of £70k and for some reason no one in london wants to pay that to an entry level person
Dunno if you're joking but entry level in London is half that.
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Jan 10, 2018 05:02
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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ive been telling recruiters i want 80k, some of them dont sniff, others have told me its unlikely with only my 2 years of experience 
honestly i would rather just get a higher paying job in glasgow, but im probably already working for the best company i can be, so it would need to be a move to somewhere else with the view of going back to current job eventually
No loving chance you're getting £80k in London unless you're a technical lead. 2 years should expect no more than 45k imho.
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Jan 10, 2018 05:04
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- champagne posting
- Apr 5, 2006
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YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER
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No loving chance you're getting £80k in London unless you're a technical lead. 2 years should expect no more than 45k imho.
Dunno if you're joking but entry level in London is half that.
duly noted, will touch computers elsewhere
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Jan 10, 2018 08:09
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- distortion park
- Apr 25, 2011
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No loving chance you're getting £80k in London unless you're a technical lead. 2 years should expect no more than 45k imho.
You can get a lot more than that with 2 years experience if you're happy to work for the financial industry
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Jan 10, 2018 20:31
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- Workaday Wizard
- Oct 23, 2009
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by Pragmatica
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No loving chance you're getting £80k in London unless you're a technical lead. 2 years should expect no more than 45k imho.
80k before or after taxes?
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Jan 10, 2018 20:33
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- PleasureKevin
- Jan 2, 2011
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http://archive.is/RVYsf
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Jan 10, 2018 21:26
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- jre
- Sep 2, 2011
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No loving chance you're getting £80k in London unless you're a technical lead. 2 years should expect no more than 45k imho.
You can easily get that as a senior dev, tech lead salaries are 90-120k for mid-large companies
also
You can get a lot more than that with 2 years experience if you're happy to work for the financial industry
How long have you been living in Canada ?
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Jan 10, 2018 22:21
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- Kudaros
- Jun 23, 2006
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I'm wrapping up my PhD this month and applying for jobs. Mostly Data Science jobs. I've got a variety of past experience in things such as spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, etc, that don't quite make sense to generic healthcare company data scientist #69. Should I peel all irrelevant skills like that off of my resume?
I have a more recent LaTeX formatted resume that I submit in PDF form. I was wondering why I was only getting callbacks from smaller companies, looked into it, and whatever machine reading tech larger companies use spits back incomprehensible garbage, which may explain my unfortunate callback rate. So I'm updating an old resume from a couple of years ago.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:04
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- Emacs Headroom
- Aug 2, 2003
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however, if you're a phd applying for a research job, there should be no rubric-based interviews anywhere. they should look at your publication record, then discuss how your research might fit in to their goals. it's just not possible to develop a standard rubric when hiring at this level. if you're just taking your phd to google for a software engineer level 3 job, expect rubrics, but not for a researcher
Assuming you're talking about a real reseach position (i.e. MSR / FB Research / Google Brain as opposed to some BI "data scientist"), how about :
"inside" research interview: interviewer is expected to read recent publications from the author and attend their job talk. interview will focus on:
- how much of the research they developed on their own (vs. came from e.g. an advisor)
- how impactful the research is
- what caveats and limitations exist and what might be done to address them
- whether the researcher has an idea of how to translate their results into products
- (most importantly) whether the researcher has specific ideas to develop their own line of inquiry at the company
"outside" research interview: interviewer will present a new business problem, and the researcher will be expected to develop ideas for a line of research that can address it (e.g. "out sign-up page performs poorly for some groups" -> "oh let's try contextual bandits"). looking for
- ability to think through an unfamiliar business problem
- ability to come up with standard or novel scientific approaches to tackle the problem
- good notion of ways to take the research and build it into systems
- foresight in identifying low-hanging "v1" approaches, and how they can later be augmented
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Jan 11, 2018 02:05
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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You can get a lot more than that with 2 years experience if you're happy to work for the financial industry
I worked in finance (financial research software company, billion dollars but not a bank) and that was the wage for people with several years exp. I actually knew a guy earning 100k but he was VP in a quant research role at HSBC. Not sure where people are getting these six figure GBP salaries from, I suspect they've never actually worked in London.
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Jan 11, 2018 05:05
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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All I'm saying is when the IRL recruiter is telling you it's not going to happen, and the guy who worked a long time in London in finance is telling you it's not going to happen, and the only person telling you it can happen is the guy who thinks it takes over an hour to get from zone 4 to zone 1 on the tube, it should be pretty clear cut that the UK sucks overall for salaries.
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Jan 11, 2018 05:27
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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80k before or after taxes?
Before. Fyi you get taxed 40% on poo poo over like 45k or something.
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Jan 11, 2018 05:55
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- distortion park
- Apr 25, 2011
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How long have you been living in Canada ?
https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/sala...&tl%5B2%5D=java
While pay is admittedly low in London especially considering the cost of living, there are still quite a lot of well paying jobs and the salary tail is quite long.
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Jan 11, 2018 06:58
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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Ya this seems about right
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Jan 11, 2018 07:00
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- jre
- Sep 2, 2011
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All I'm saying is when the IRL recruiter is telling you it's not going to happen, and the guy who worked a long time in London in finance is telling you it's not going to happen, and the only person telling you it can happen is the guy who thinks it takes over an hour to get from zone 4 to zone 1 on the tube, it should be pretty clear cut that the UK sucks overall for salaries.
I'm basing the London salaries I posted on what the company I work for pays the members of my team in London, and on the market salary review for other companies in the sector I've seen.
How long ago did you rage quit the UK and go to Canada to work as a barman ?
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Jan 11, 2018 08:08
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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I'm basing the London salaries I posted on what the company I work for pays the members of my team in London, and on the market salary review for other companies in the sector I've seen.
How long ago did you rage quit the UK and go to Canada to work as a barman ?
Maybe you're right, I wonder what an A-list company, say Amazon, pays an engineer in London. Let's have a look then:
SDE I: £38-49k, average £42k
SDE II: £44k-67k, average £56k
SSDE: £52k-97, average £81k
Welp. But sure it's "easy" to get £80k+ as a freaking noob in London because. Lol.
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Jan 11, 2018 09:11
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- distortion park
- Apr 25, 2011
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All I'm saying is when the IRL recruiter is telling you it's not going to happen, and the guy who worked a long time in London in finance is telling you it's not going to happen, and the only person telling you it can happen is the guy who thinks it takes over an hour to get from zone 4 to zone 1 on the tube, it should be pretty clear cut that the UK sucks overall for salaries.
it very much can happen. I made about the amount you suggested as max with 2 years experience and at my review was told I was underpaid and given a big raise
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Jan 11, 2018 09:11
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- distortion park
- Apr 25, 2011
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Looks like I got owned hard by my recruiter though
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Jan 11, 2018 09:13
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- distortion park
- Apr 25, 2011
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Maybe you're right, I wonder what an A-list company, say Amazon, pays an engineer in London. Let's have a look then:
SDE I: £38-49k, average £42k
SDE II: £44k-67k, average £56k
SSDE: £52k-97, average £81k
Welp. But sure it's "easy" to get £80k+ as a freaking noob in London because. Lol.
It's not necessarily easy, but even the stackoverflow survey has 75th percentile of 2 years experience and a nothing special profile at 50k. You can make more if you have some sort of advantage over the average dev.
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Jan 11, 2018 09:20
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- qhat
- Jul 6, 2015
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Looks like I got owned hard by my recruiter though
Please understand that, by your own data, earning £80k probably puts you solidly in the top 10% of earners for that level of experience, if not top 5%. You're outside of the norm.
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Jan 11, 2018 09:20
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- Captain Foo
- May 11, 2004
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we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'
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post the interview questions that were in the op of the other thread or this one is worthless
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Jan 11, 2018 14:52
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- champagne posting
- Apr 5, 2006
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YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER
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post the interview questions that were in the op of the other thread or this one is worthless
be the change you want to see in the world
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Jan 11, 2018 15:02
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- akadajet
- Sep 14, 2003
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I haven't had to give interviews for javascript developers in over a year and my outlook in life as improved greatly as a result.
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Jan 11, 2018 15:13
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- The Management
- Jan 2, 2010
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sup, bitch?
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drat, London devs are getting owned big time
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Jan 11, 2018 15:42
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 23, 2022 21:44
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- distortion park
- Apr 25, 2011
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drat, London devs are getting owned big time
open an office here and take advantage of that cheap offshore labour without the language barrier
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Jan 11, 2018 15:54
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