There are companies that will pay near FANG levels (maybe 10-15% haircut) without subjecting yourself to onerous completion of hundreds of LeetCode problems. There are other options, and we should be aware of them. You'll still need to prove you can code, but the questions we ask have practical application to our codebases: we use recursion and trees, for example, so we ask questions about those.
Other companies will treat you as more of a human, and less as a cog. In my current job, I asked to see production code when interviewing. I flipped over every stone I could, to know what I was getting into. I saw the good and the bad. FANGs? You must prove yourself to gatekeepers before even knowing if there are teams with personalities you will agree with. You have no guarantee there's something on the other side of the gatekeepers, that you're even remotely interested in.
Money is important, but for a small haircut you can have better WLB, less competitive peers (though still be growing in your career: you can challenge yourself, without being surrounded by hyper-competitive personality types), amazing culture, and a greater level of transparency.
> There are companies that will pay near FANG levels (maybe 10-15% haircut) without subjecting yourself to onerous completion of hundreds of LeetCode problems.
Some even pay more. I wouldn't say FAANG companies even have the highest pay - a lot of the top-tier unicorns are in the same ballpark range.
> FANGs? You must prove yourself to gatekeepers before even knowing if there are teams with personalities you will agree with.
This is not universally true. From experience, while Google does this for their HQ, they don't for remote offices (where there's more risk you can't find the right personalities). Amazon's Principal Engineer interview loop is conducted by the targeted team. (I actually think this is true for other levels as well).
> Money is important, but for a small haircut you can have better WLB, less competitive peers
Might I ask what companies fit this profile? It seems like a rare find for any company to both pay a lot but not be competitive.
/shrug. When I was considering positions in SF a few years back, I was chatting with hiring managers I'd be under first before going through any whiteboard interviews. Maybe things have changed?
Yeah, you can chat with whoever you like if you're reasonably senior, but then you do the same exact interview as everybody else. That "chat" was just a "chat". It wasn't a part of the hiring process. There are likely exceptions at the truly stratospheric levels, for people whose credentials aren't debatable, but for 99.99% of people it's all the same 5-person loop with a whiteboard or a Chromebook.
Honestly, this I'm perfectly fine with -- if you need a calibrated panel to assess your eng bar. What is annoying (the case for Google MTV for me at least) is if gatekeepers block you from identifying if there is potential fit in the first place.
Their interview process itself makes very little sense though. There's literally nothing in it that resembles the job you'll be doing on a day to day basis (copying from one protocol buffer to another, while sipping a free latte), so they're hiring for some proxy traits the correlation of which with job performance is low to non-existent. They know this, too. They've done a study where they just hired some number of people at random, without looking at their interview results, and then tracked their performance over the next few years. Those folks performed about as well as people who received high interview scores.
You have a couple things mixed in here, some of which ring true to me and others very false. The true ones are the stuff about the interview process. I think a day of whiteboard programming is a poor way to assess experienced candidates. It does make you feel like a cog. (I also don't really know how to design an alternative process that doesn't increase the level of bias.) But most of your stuff about what it's like after you accept an offer rings very false. I haven't worked anyplace with better work life balance (and relatedly, really good family leave benefits) or more opportunities for challenging work and career growth. I don't find it hyper competitive (but I'm never sure how much this is a function of where I'm located or what I work on). You're right about transparency though. Having a full view of what's going on at my company is something I miss from previous jobs.
When you work for a company as large as Google unless you are very senior, you are a cog. I am not making a value judgement.
I work at a small B2B SAAS company. We bill an implementation fee, an ongoing licensing cost, and costs per feature. If I create a new feature for a customer whether it’s a one off integration or something that will be in the product, everyone from the CEO to the customer knows how much value I personally bring to the company. That doesn’t scale and can’t work in a larger company.
levels.fyi is currently showing $466k median offer total comp for L6 (staff SWE) at google. Who is paying $395k-$420k to IC hires without FAANG style interviews? The only other companies paying that to IC hires that I know of are in the financial industry and that interview process is even worse.
What is a L6 in real world terms? where would they fit on the GS scale (I may or may not) be applying for a GS15 equivalent in the UK Grade 7 or maybe 6
It would be interesting to see where that fits in a FANG context
It’s above the level that enterprises have historically promoted ICs. Thirty years ago at Oracle or HP the position wouldn’t have existed—-you’d either have to go into management or you’d be stuck at senior engineer.
In government terms the closest thing I’m familiar with is the assistant US attorney chart which does extend reasonably far without needing to hit the supervisory level.
I'm more mid-level in my career, but this a great point. Maybe my strategy in my parent comment, only works to a certain level. Beyond that, perhaps you do have to move into FANG's. There very well could be limits I haven't reached yet.
My understanding is that it is rare as compared to lower levels but far from impossible. The data points at levels seem to bear that out.
Whereas in some other, smaller companies there are perhaps one or two ICs at that pay level, they have been at the company for a decade, and hold all the tribal knowledge. No one ever gets hired into that type of position.
GitLab is not great for remote pay (especially if you live in a low cost area). I work remotely, and would take a big cut if I were to move to a similar position at GitLab.
Categorically, (and this is part personal experience, so sample bias), the kind of companies I'm talking about in my parent comment are about to go public (multiple rounds of investing), recently went public, etc.
They have a good amount of process to them, but not too much. Silos aren't fortified. There's less direction, but more personal ownership. For someone like me, who doesn't have the most polished communication skills (but is technically proficient), I'm in a position where I can make an impact -- whereas at FANG-type companies, I'd just get ignored because there were too many cooks in the kitchen; too many A-type personalities.
At these slightly smaller places, you have a better chance of getting a seat at the table, and you have more opportunity to contribute to projects that play to your strengths.
I interviewed with Lyft for a front end SWE role and got no leetcode questions. I ran through a bunch of 45-minute "make-this-thing-in-React" panels, and passed all with flying colors. That's only one example, but the type of questions I find unusually challenging (dynamic programming) -- the only time I was asked those, was at Google.
Google doesn't hire front end software engineers specifically. They hire general-purpose leetcoding machines (e.g, people that can can crank out DP problems), then assign those people to work on front end tasks.
For a data point, when I applied and interviewed for a frontend-focused position at Google ~1 year ago, I had the option of one of my interviews being a front-end specific interview that would focus on FE rather than algorithms.
That interview track contains the DP-type problems. So now, not only do you have to show your DS&A algorithms skills, you need to showcase your front-end skills. If you interview as a backend engineer, you'll get more algorithmic questions, but overall question set will cover less breath and a similar level of depth.
I thought it was common for frontend interviews to not focus as much on CS stuff/things people typically associate with FAANG-style interviews. Facebook does this for example[0]
Starting your own company is easy for sure! Starting your own successful company is something else, and I found it much harder than getting into FANG, but it requires very different skills and I'm sure some people are better at the former.
Waiting list size by country
Country Applicants
Mexico 1,229,505
Philippines 314,229
India 298,571
Vietnam 231,519
China-mainland born 231,519
Bangladesh 169,231
Dominican Republic 146,160
Pakistan 115,625
Haiti 94,506
El Salvador 64,868
Cuba 55,847
All Others 840,393
Worldwide Total 3,791,973
Yeah, 20 years ago. Now the landscape has changed massively. The only minorities today who can start a new company, that makes them more money than a job at a FAANG company, are women.
Other companies will treat you as more of a human, and less as a cog. In my current job, I asked to see production code when interviewing. I flipped over every stone I could, to know what I was getting into. I saw the good and the bad. FANGs? You must prove yourself to gatekeepers before even knowing if there are teams with personalities you will agree with. You have no guarantee there's something on the other side of the gatekeepers, that you're even remotely interested in.
Money is important, but for a small haircut you can have better WLB, less competitive peers (though still be growing in your career: you can challenge yourself, without being surrounded by hyper-competitive personality types), amazing culture, and a greater level of transparency.