Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is very little luck involved in this, just get really good at algorithms. No need for a famous school, specific degree etc. It requires intelligence, if you don't have that then you need luck.
Step 2: Save more than two thirds of your take home salary, you can still live way better than the people sweeping the office floor.
Step 3: You now have a ton of money saved up, take whatever risks you like or just retire early.
>Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is very little luck involved in this, just get really good at algorithms.
Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in most of Europe(the world?) you aint getting in to any well paying job at a big tech company without a degree from a prestigious university or previous experience at equally big and famous companies.
Companies here don't have the FAANG resources to whiteboard everyone who bothers to apply and check their algorithm skills when all the future employee needs to do is work on some CRUD app so they initially select based on how impressive your resume is and run you through some coding test later to weed out the bullshitters.
Although I live and work in a city with one of the top 300 technical universities in the world where graduating means you have to study algorithms, advanced math, etc. almost no jobs here outside or research and academia require knowledge about algorithms. Companies just want an experienced node/python plumber ASAP.
I'm sorry, I'm Australian and studied and worked in Australia. I spent 4 years in SV, and now founded a startup in Europe.
Even after the Covid issue has played out, I'm convinced SV will still be where a passionate technologist can optimize their impact and lifetime earnings. There's just nothing that can compare to being surrounded by so many smart people who share your interests.
I've heard stories about the dotcom crash, and how it was awesome because everyone who had no business being there left. You just had the geeks that wanted to build stuff for the sake of building stuff, and it turns out there was still plenty of money floating around after things got going again.
Europe has laws which makes hiring people risky and expensive. And even if you do become a top earner, expect to pay 50% in taxes (+ 25% VAT). It's hard to fathom individual engineers would be able to save enough to have the sort of financial freedom to bankroll a company while still in their 20's.
But don't worry, there are government grants for you! Just be prepared to spend 1/3rd of your time dealing with paperwork and hourly reporting of what you did on a day by day basis, all for 50k here, 40k there. I feel these grants are designed to be demoralizing and the startup equivalent of unemployment benefits. And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe, from startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding schemes and mountains of paperwork.
Don't underestimate how good SV has it with the "I like you and your idea, here's $1m and come back next year and tell me if it worked".
No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a type of gain that's compelling to you then of course you dont need to worry about it. But if they are, then you need to make your own luck by making those sacrifices. Things about family ties and wants and stress are all part of the work you put in to make your own luck.
Being American is a pretty great gig, for all the stuff you keep hearing on the news. There's a reason silicon valley is silicon valley, New York is New York, and so on. Theres a lot of luck that comes from being here. My parents left behind their entire support network in india to set out on their own, navigated the complex immigration process (granted, easier 20-30 years ago than now), and made those sacrifices, and it more than paid off. And I got lucky by just getting to be born here. Things like "you dont want to move outside your country " are completely valid, and part of why american immigration works is because immigration is such a hard thing for people to do (leaving everything behind) that it self selects for the people willing to make those sacrifices.
The one valid one you mention is the difficulty of immigrating. That can be a straight up barrier in the way of a motivated person that would be a useful addition to this country and should be removed. This is the country of immigrants. We should keep that part of our culture alive.
> No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a type of gain that's compelling to you then of course you dont need to worry about it
There are many reasons why this might be out if your control, beyond visa requirements. Maybe you have dependents your can’t bring with you (sick or elderly family for example), or maybe your SO has a job that’s hard to move. Or you have a family and can’t afford the crazy SV rent for a place large enough.
I was replying to the bulk of the comments in the post above, which were along the lines of not wanting to go because of age/liking hometown etc, and specifically mentioned at the end that there are valid barriers to consider, including one in the original post about the complexity of immigration. There are true barriers in the way, my disagreement was with the ones listed above.
I disagree with your disagreement about the barriers, namely:
It is false that the US is the ideal place to live in (or to temporarily migrate to if you're in tech). It is false that, all other things being equal, one should prefer to live in the US. The US is not the default place people should aspire to live in, not even people in tech. Even within the US, SV is not the best place to live in. Living in some place means much more than just working in trendy tech companies.
For a lot of us -- I'd say the vast majority, outside the HN bubble -- the US is not a particularly interesting place to live in, even if there were no immigration barriers. Which there are, anyway.
The U.S. is absolutely not the ideal place to live in. However, it is the ideal place to aspire to if you want to make a lot of money without being born to an already wealthy family. (Wealth of course being relative, because you need some wealth to immigrate nowadays)
Money, and opportunity for their children to earn money, is the reason so many people have immigrated to the U.S in the past century.
Money isn't everything, but you can sure buy a lot of freedom with it. Of course, nothing in life is risk-free, and making money is no exception, and the U.S. is unforgiving when it comes to those who come here and fail.
I do agree with that. If its out of your control, its out of your control. I see that as the difference between "want" (I dont want to leave) and "can't" (I cant leave). Living in a community of immigrant families and a city of immigrants here by NYC has colored that perspective for me since I'm surrounded by people that went through hell for a better life, including my own family. I personally am of course incredibly privileged that I get to just be born here and have the opportunities that come with being an American. But my own family has been uprooted 3 times within my own lifetime so far moving around the country to pursue better opportunities before winding up here, and that pales in comparison to what others have gone through. If you can't you can't, but if you don't want to, well, selection bias, but I'm surrounded by the people that did anyway.
Understood, but if the first step of advice is "move to SV", that right there is unhelpful to the majority of programmers. It cannot work as a piece of general advice, and for most people it's also unattainable and/or undesirable.
Yeah definitely, its not good as a general bit of advice, but it could be helpful as a specific bit of advice to a motivated person down on their luck. If your luck is tied to geography, see if theres a way to move to somewhere with better luck. Whether it's a different city or a different country.
Sounds like having priorities that go beyond making money or having career success. Nothing wrong with that, but it may be something to make peace with.
Yes, of course. To elaborate, most people (outside the HN bubble) have these priorities, they are good priorities to have, and these people work in tech. Therefore, advice starting with "move to SV" applies only to an extremely small subset of programmers worldwide, and as such, is not very helpful.
If the career advice is "ditch everything in your life, become magically younger, live in a country you don't like, ditch friends and family, and generally live for work, and then you'll maybe succeed at having a tech job", that's... less than useful. Maybe if you're young and starting.
Someone who is reading this conversation will benefit from being told that moving to the Bay Area, New York, Berlin, Sydney, Amsterdam etc. for a couple of years is possible. Maybe it's not you, and that's fine. In general, though, helpful advice is about choosing the right side of a trade-off, not a panacea.
It's more than "maybe it's not you": it's not most people outside the HN bubble where SV is the mecca and everyone wants to join a US startup. Yes, there are trade-offs involved in every choice (except age, of course: that's not a trade-off, you cannot choose to become younger and be picked for low-wage trainee job positions that are only offered to young people), but I don't get why we're so fixated in such specific trade-off options.
In the spirit of the article, which warns about optimistic people arguing for unrealistic paths, I'm just warning that "move to SV" is not, for most people, reasonable advice.
Now, you may argue that for people reading HN, there is a larger subset which do aspire and would benefit from moving to SV. I won't argue against that. But I thought the spirit of the article was not about providing career advice for such a small subset of tech-minded people.
To sum up, this proposition is false for most people (and not just me): "everyone passionate about technology should, all else being equal, strive to move to Silicon Valley and work there, because that's the best place there is".
In a discussion about career advice, saying "move to where the most and best paying jobs are" is absolutely good advice. It may not work for everyone, but that advice applies to far more people than 'an extremely small subset'. It applies outside of tech too.
And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe, from startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding schemes and mountains of paperwork.
Couldn't agree more with this point. Also atleast in my experience they are there so just few people can be employed without much real pressure to produce real results... As long as paperwork is completed the results don't matter much.
Don't forget the tax prepayments that might be 1.33x of your previous taxes, i.e. you pay 100k in taxes for one year and for the next year you need to prepay 133k.
I can second that sentiment in Canada as well - I'm not even aware of what the good paying jobs would even be - there's none with FAANG fame, and every job has a hard wall with a laundry list of 5+ years of experience with a dozen web technologies that you can only climb over with the appropriate connections.
As a canadian, I disagree with how strict you’re describing the issue to be. There are a fair amount of big and well established companies that are not going to penalize you for lacking the five years and connections. With that said, they’re almost all in Toronto, but that’s a different issue ..
Yeah, I didn't want to get too regional, especially when it seems to be a single exception (possibly Vancouver as well?). As I understand it Toronto is almost like a different world, especially when compared to Western Canada, like using New York or Silicon Valley to describe all of America.
> Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in most of Europe(the world?) you aint getting in to any well paying job at a big tech company without a degree from a prestigious university or previous experience at equally big and famous companies.
I did exactly that though, I joined Google in Europe a few years ago.
From some acquaintances who moved there to work in tech I heard integration/dating/making friends is very difficult as a foreigner especially if you come from $UNCOOL_COUNTRY and the real estate market is terrible, with cramped and expensive apartments in a poor state and buying is even more difficult if you're not a swiss citizen which is a difficult citizenship to get.
Vast majority of people rent in Zurich. I lived in multiple countries (US, Australia, Europe - Germany, Austria and more) and apartments in Zurich are better maintained than anywhere else I've seen. You can find cramped, if that's what you want, but there is plenty large apartments - bigger than US or Australian apartments. E.g. looking at our corner of the city, there are 2 bedroom 85 - 120m2, 3 bedroom 120 - 160 m2 places. In Sydney, we had a 75m2 2BR with tiny bedrooms and it was a typical apartment there.
If you want to live in a house, Zurich is the wrong place, you'll probably need to commute.
Language is a big issue with integration.
It's not that people don't speak English or High German, it's just that to truly integrate you need to speak the local language.
And learning a dialect without an accepted written form, and thus no textbook to speak of is not easy.
If this is the case Zurich sounds exactly like New York (other than the difficulty of buying property for non-citizens). Might just be the feeling of alienation that arises from living in a big city as an outsider.
> Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is very little luck involved in this, just get really good at algorithms. No need for a famous school, specific degree etc. It requires intelligence, if you don't have that then you need luck.
Sorry but no. Like everyone else has pointed out, this is so far from the truth that I’m actually in awe that someone would write this.
There is a ton of luck involved with getting a job at a good tech company. First being something straight up mentioned in the article - knowing the right people. The chances of a regular hard working person getting past even the initial resume filter takes luck. It takes luck for a referral to find the right hiring manager’s desk.
Get past that and then depending on the company, there’s always the chance that someone interviewing you is having a bad day or maybe the team “fit” isn’t there.
There are a ton of obstacles that come down to luck because it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
Edit: Since many people are using anecdotal data and survivorship bias as proof that this is true, how about a counter point. I interviewed at a FAANG before and didn’t get the job. Later on, I met someone who works at that company who was able to look me up. I had passed their bar. Not with flying colors but well enough that you would generally get an offer. Why didn’t I? Because that specific team that interviewed me had a skillset need that I didn’t have. But there’s no way of knowing that prior because the job description doesn’t point that out. It’s just how their (and most companies’) process works. So like I said, luck.
Perseverance can help, but what you say doesn’t discredit what I’m pointing out - that you just might not have Lady Luck on your side.
Again, anecdotal data. I did keep trying at other big tech companies. I did get a good job where I was hoping to save money, build a career, etc. Exactly as OP planned. You know what happened? COVID-19 led to mass layoffs less than a year after I got hired. Now I’m back to square one. I’ve barely recovered the savings I spent moving, which as others have already pointed out, is a prerequisite to OP’s advice. Sometimes luck simply isn’t on your side. To say that all it takes is intelligence and hard work is simply not true.
> It takes luck for a referral to find the right hiring manager’s desk.
I only know about Google, but there is no such thing as a "hiring manager's desk". The hiring manager only gets info about a person once they passed interviews.
Ok, perhaps the titles are different per company, but the point still stands that the referral has to land on the desk of the right person in the right position. Doesn’t change a thing about what I wrote.
Do you seriously believe that anyone who is reasonably intelligent can just waltz into a high paying job at Apple or Google by sending them a resume? If so, I'd respectfully suggest that is... probably not the case. (Not that I have firsthand experience. I've never applied to nor been interested in those big tech firms.)
ADDED: I'm sorry, but the people on this thread who are arguing that if you can't get a $200K+ job at Google, you're obviously not even trying have some serious blinders on.
> Do you seriously believe that anyone who is reasonably intelligent can just waltz into a high paying job at Apple or Google by sending them a resume
People who have waltzed into a high paying job at Apple or Google by sending them a resume believe exactly this.
It’s one of the many problems with any sort of unsolicited financial/job seeking advice. Actually the problem with advice of any sort. It’s almost 100% wrong.
I'm just very aware of how lucky I've been on a couple of different occasions (ADDED: Specifically from an employment perspective).
During the dot-com bubble bursting, my company was having big layoffs and I landed a new job based on an informal lunch meeting with someone I knew that I had literally a couple of days after being laid off. (Some other leads I was investigating in parallel prior to getting an offer produced not so much as a nibble.)
Then, probably only a month of so before that employer shut down (somewhat after but somewhat related to the 2008 downturn), I contacted someone I knew at another company--which resulted in an offer and I'm still there.
But none of that provides much in the way of insights for someone else beyond a generic "have a network that knows you do good work and is in a position to hire you."
But it's not especially actionable. Except perhaps insofar as a reminder to not let yourself be locked in a company building and never interact with anyone outside those 4 walls.
In my case, it basically boiled down to working a long time in the industry and having relationships with former co-workers, consultants who did work for us, and clients.
ADDED: Having said that, a lot of people think their resumes are all they need to land whatever job they want. And maybe that's true in some cases. But other than my first job in the tech industry--which I got out of grad school--every other position has been basically through people I knew and my resume was essentially irrelevant.
Yes. Any reasonably good programmer can get a job at a FANG company with three months of serious study; any reasonably intelligent person can become a good entry-level programmer with 1-2 years of serious study.
The demand for engineers far outstrips supply.
I've been studying for the past two years and have failed at multiple FAANGs, some twice. Failed at FB, NFLX, AMZN, in addition to MSFT and UBER.
Then again, I'm not entry level (10 yoe), so I might be competing at a higher bar. However, I'd gladly join any of these companies as a junior engineer without hesitation.
I've seen stories of, amongst others, someone who studied while in prison get into GOOG, someone who was a aesthetician get into NFLX, a cab driver who got into UBER, all as SWEs.
I actually wish I wasn't a SWE so I could compete at the entry/junior level. I feel my 10yoe (SWE at investment bank), which gives me a TC only slightly higher than a FAANG junior SWE, is wasted.
How much time are you spending specifically on interview question practice (HackerRank/Leetcode)?
I've got close to 20 years of programming experience, including working at Google for several years and launching some very high-profile projects. I still fail interviews if I haven't studied for them. You could argue that it's a stupid system where they test 20-minute coding exercises with a trick answer, and you'd be right [1]. But it's a system that can be gamed, and can be gamed with relatively little time. Putting in a week full-time, or working a problem a day for 3 months, will put you way ahead of most of the rest of the competition.
[1] But the interview bullshit serves another less-obvious purpose: it tests how much you actually want to work at the organization. It's relatively easy to bullshit enthusiasm in a calm chat with a hiring manager. It's pretty hard to do it when your brain is occupied by solving a hard problem and you're frustrated because you have 5 minutes left to solve a problem and there's still a sticky bug.
At the start of the process, I began with comp sci/DS&A fundamentals - including books like Algorithm Design Manual, Intro to Algorithms, etc. Took a few months break to get married, then resumed, eventually starting to 100% grind leetcode problems. As my wife can amusingly attest - I no longer have any hobbies or other personal entertainment since we got married. Studying for interviews consumes all the free time I have that I don't spend with her.
Add to that, since last year, my day job got a lot less demanding, so I am actually studying/leetcoding during the afternoon at work too.
One wrench thrown into the loop is that I am a mainly a frontend engineer by trade, and it seems frontend interviews at FAANG and many other top tech companies are focusing less on leetcode/DS&A and more on JavaScript trivia problems. So that has been a context shift, and I am focusing more on getting as many JavaScript tricks and patterns into my repertoire now, and less on leetcode.
Pretty much my #1 personal goal in life at the moment is to get into a FAANG, or at least similar caliber, company. No, it's not a life or death matter, but whereas someone else might be content to watch TV/Netflix, or play games, or go golfing, I'm spending that time leetcoding...
What I feel torpedoes me during the interview is that I can get often get 90%+ of a solution, even if it's a problem I haven't seen before. But some edge case or bug in my code kills me, or I miss some trick or pattern that is the key to getting it right. In a less competitive company, this might mean passing the interview, but for a FAANG or similarly highly competitive company, I feel not getting 100% technical perfection means dead on arrival.
Sounds like you're doing a lot of the right stuff.
I started as a frontend engineer at Google, 11+ years ago, and you're right that there's a lot of Javascript/DOM/HTML trivia to understand. Google was also one of the few companies that insisted you know vanilla JS cold and don't use frameworks in the interview. It's worth studying up on MDN to make sure you really know JS corner cases. You need to know the leetcode-style problems too - when I applied (and I think this is still true), it was 2 interviews for algorithms & data structures, 2 for frontend, and 1 system design.
It also may not be the right time to apply, since many FAANGs are dramatically slowing down hiring. Your odds get much better in boom times than bust times.
I actually just got my rejection from FB today. Purely JavaScript questions, no leetcode at all. If I were to rewind, I'd have focused more on purely JavaScript tricks and less on other parts of the frontend repertoire. i.e. the time I spent on CSS seems to have been a waste.
Also got rejected from AMZN back in December. Made the mistake grinding leetcode during the weeks leading up to the interview, when it turned out to be purely JS trivia.
The hardest part of interviewing as FEE seems to be the lack of sample JS interview problems available, versus say, leetcode. I feel I am pretty well versed in using JS and have pretty in-depth knowledge of the arcane workings of the language far beyond a typical developer (certainly more so than my coworkers), but just like how leetcode interviews cover cases you'll never encounter in day to day work, frontend JS interview problems seem to do the same.
That said, I don't know how much JS knowledge a typical FEE at a FAANG or similar company has. But that's one big reason I want to get into one of these companies - I'm assuming, and hoping, the level of knowledge and enthusiasm (I hate to use the word passion) is much higher at SV tech companies than outside. Most of the places I've worked (banks, finance), the JS engineers can barely explain how async stuff works in JS.
I'm kind of in the same boat. I failed all my interviews as well and I have about the same amount of experience as you. I agree that getting into these companies is easier as a junior engineer.
You may want to look at an interview prep course like Outco.io or Interview Kickstart. I haven't attended one yet but will most likely do so once I'm ready to start interviewing again. I think the feedback they offer will be worth it rather than me constantly headscratching after failing another interview.
(The fact that these courses exist just exemplifies the whole problem with software interviewing but I don't fault them for that)
I've been in touch with the people at Interview Kickstart. They seem like nice people, but I'm pretty sure I know what my problem is - not doing the coding rounds with 100% perfect optimal solutions, when another competing candidate is doing so.
For example, in my failed FB interview above, I quickly and successfully solved two problems in the phone screen - thus I passed. The first onsite (virtual) coding round I struggled on the first problem but got it with about 10 minutes to spare. Main issue was that the optimal solution involved doing something in JavaScript that AFAIK typically considered bad practice. The second problem I waltzed through in 5 minutes. The second coding round I got the first problem, but there was an edge case bug I didn't catch, and fixing that took up the entire 45 minutes so I didn't get to a second problem. I'm guessing that was a big negative signal.
I know communication goes a long way, but considering how competitive these positions are at FAANG level companies, I'm sure there is someone else out there that communicates and vibes just as well as I do in addition to getting the 100% optimal solution quickly.
The one thing I can see a service like IK offering me is networks and referrals, but not sure how much that would be worth, especially since they aren't exactly cheap. That said, I'd pay the tuition without hesitation if they could guarantee me a job (of any level) at a FAANG level company, but that's not the case :). Or at least a 100% refund if I fail to get into such a company after a period following the curriculum - but I feel that's easier promised than done even if they were to offer such.
I have friends at some of these companies who have given me referrals, but ultimately all that does is give me higher odds of getting an interview, and in some cases, a chance to directly chat with the hiring manager prior to the interview. For whatever it's worth I've had managers express great enthusiasm about having someone like me on their team after a conversation, but then I get torpedoed for not being able to find the perfectly optimal solutions to some leetcode medium/hard.
Yeah I hear you. I've struggled with the exact same problem. The stress doesn't help and often times I've figured out the answer just 5 or 10 minutes after the interview was done. I know I got rejected from Amazon and then a week later I was doing practice interviews on interviewing.io and the guy who was mock interviewing me said that he works at Amazon and that I should apply. I had to tell him that I did apply and just got rejected from an onsite interview the week before.
Yeah, referrals at these sized companies only help to get a recruiter to pay attention. It doesn't really help. I've even gotten interviews just by searching LinkedIn for ___ recruiter and messaging them directly.
FWIW, I recently attended the Outco sales pitch and they do have a almost guaranteed payment option. Instead of paying up front you can pay nothing and then pay 10% of your first year's base salary. Obviously that would cost you more than if you had paid up front but that could be an option.
Thanks, I'll check out Outco. Scheduled an info session with them next week.
One other thing that did make me hesitate Interview Kickstart though were that they seemed to be for generalist SWE only, not frontend. The person I spoke with said FEE would have the same interview problems/track as any other SWE, but my personal experience over the past two years has shown me this is usually not the case.
Also would be concerned about what IK/Outco considers a "success". I'm only targeting a relatively small subset of companies (FAANG, obviously, plus others at similar level). So my definition of success (aforementioned companies) vs. theirs (any company?) might be different. A question to ask during the info session I suppose.
Same here. I’ve considered wiping my resume and leaving off my background intentionally just to get the chance to interview at the entry/junior level. Of course, those positions are now mostly exclusively reserved for those coming out of college. So unless you have the income and time to go get another CS degree, you still can’t apply.
This is all assuming you can get past the resume filter which is all luck unless you know someone with enough pull within the company already.
Why use stock ticker names instead of typing the company names out properly? It literally only takes a second or two longer and is much clearer to read.
It’s usually signalling. Specifically, it signals “I can afford to invest so much into stocks that I live and breathe stocks, and if you don’t, then I don’t care about you.” It’s a very conceited attitude.
Of course, in this case specifically, it might be because they worked for 10 years in an investment bank, and might be used to always speaking about companies in terms of stocks.
This is a particular kind of challenge that definitely occurs for more experienced engineers, however I also suspect you have a stronger foundation than you realize and could shine with some specific guidance.
A buddy and I provide all kinds of practice interviews to help engineers get into FAANGs. We work on a success based payment model, and help substantially with negotiations, too.
If you're interested send me a note with availability for a chat (email and website in profile). I would love to at least offer some advice for next time even you decide our coaching is not for you.
> Any reasonably good programmer can get a job at a FANG company with three months of serious study
Do we seriously believe there are so many FAANG jobs available that "any reasonably good programmer" who wants one can have one, just for the price of a bit of "serious study"? I don't think so. Google et al may be big, but they're not that big or growing that fast.
A great deal of the demand for engineers does not come with anything like FAANG-level prospects.
For every junior FAANG engineer, there are legions of senior or staff level equivalent engineers at companies outside of the Silicon Valley style tech/software sector who will retire with their TC topping out at maybe around what a lower-mid level engineer at a mid-top tech company would make.
Disclaimer: I don't work at a FAANG. However this is my observations from interviewing at FAANGs.
Seems random to be honest. Some of my interviewers have been older people. Some of the people waiting with me at lobbies prior to interview have been older people. I'm 38 FYI.
Seems your ability to pass the leetcode problems is the most important factor, so long as you don't torpedo yourself with odd behavior during the non-technical portions.
For more experienced candidates like yourself and I, I hear the system design round is also important. But your success in that is more difficult to gauge, whereas you kind of know whether you bombed an leetcode round or not.
Depressing is that your multiple decades of experience might be absolutely worthless as far as passing leetcode rounds go. Your experience may or may not be useful for the system design round. It's useful if your experience with systems matches that with what the company is looking for. It's useless if not. I've noticed the systems at many non-tech enterprise companies don't exactly align with the systems at newer tech companies.
This is kind of depressing for me. I've failed interviews at Amazon, MS, Google and Netflix. I studied a bunch and managed to get 5/5 on all but one section of the TripleByte test.
Don't be depressed. It's false that any reasonably good programmer can get a job at those companies. There are plenty of reasons why you may not get a job at any of them (bad luck, peer competition, interview antipatterns (google Yegge on this), maybe algorithms aren't your strong suit, ageism, etc). Even worse, from initial rejections you can spiral down into anxiety that will hinder you in future interviews, and listen to this: you cannot tell a person not to get anxious at the prospect of rejection, either.
People who say it's easy are arguing from an optimistic point of view specifically addressed as unhelpful at the start of the article.
Yes I do believe that, other less prestigious companies didn't even respond since I had holes in my resume but Google did. Getting an interview there is not harder than any other place, often times it is easier.
Yeah, step 2 sounds easy, but is actually the hardest. I know plenty of folks who had well paying jobs, but quickly blew it all on boats, multiple luxury cars, investing in their cousin's hot startup, etc.
Lifestyle creep is incredibly hard to resist when everyone around you is caught up in it. My compromise has been to allow myself reasonable splurging on a few hobbies that prioritize experiences over consumerism while keeping the rest of my life as minimalist as possible.
I've heard of people who did this and went on to retire. OTOH I don't know of any engineer who left Big Tech to take advantage of their financial security to do something _highly impactful_. In other words, the "Google mafia" was a lot weaker than the "Paypal mafia".
The problem is this : most creative engineers don't have the mindset to mindlessly study for algorithms interviews, only to then have to spend years in constrained engineering roles.
> most creative engineers don't have the mindset to mindlessly study for algorithms interviews, only to then have to spend years in constrained engineering roles.
I agree with this, but then they can't really complain about luck when they had the option to fix it. It was a choice they made and now they have to live with it. It is fine to gamble, but then you shouldn't complain about the outcome if you lose.
> Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company.
You mean, a remote job in a place with low costs of living. Otherwise, this algorithm doesn't work for people with families. I've been on the job market just before COVID-19 hit. The costs of living in tech hubs are absolutely ridiculous. If it's not housing, then it's something else. For instance, you could afford staying in London with a spouse on a tech salary (the other salary would go straight into savings). But not with daycare, which quite literally costs more than housing.
I think London is particularly bad regarding the cost of living:SWE pay in general. But even in SV, if you started as L5/E5 at Google or Facebook and had enough for 20% down you should be able to afford to buy a 3bed house with <1hr commute based on the cash flow from that single job.
Should children wreck your finances? A lot of countries are spending a lot of money to reverse that sentiment right now. Yes, they are currently expensive, but blaming people for having children isn't going to fix anything.
What about health aspects? One should never overestimate their fertility. Rates of birth defects rise as humans age (not just women, men too). Complications at birth also rise. Older grandparents have less time to enjoy their progeny. Older parents have health issues that prevent them from spending as much time with new grandchildren.
Each family chooses when it is right for them to add a new member. Finances play into that, of course, but they should not dominate the decision like they do today. Top Tier economies are seeing the results of this myopia.
Many European countries are schilling out big bucks to bump their birthrates and help with these financial concerns. Places like Switerland have had their fertility rates under replacement since the 1970's. Data is a bit wonky, but it seems these policies have helped the problem from a continued backslide, though not ended it.
> A lot of countries are spending a lot of money to reverse that sentiment right now. Yes, they are currently expensive, but blaming people for having children isn't going to fix anything.
I think it's more about why people blame the government or society for the economic ramifications of this choice.
Which people? Environmentalist maybe. But those worrying about failing retirement pension system or the amount of migrant labor probably do realize both are caused by low population growth in their country.
> But those worrying about failing retirement pension system or the amount of migrant labor probably do realize both are caused by low population growth in their country.
The more years that pass, the less I am certain that many people realize anything beyond their front bumper.
Potentially very unpopular opinion, but to add to this, I think it’s irresponsible and unfair to the children if you choose to have have kids before your finances are in order. And selfish to put your desires above the wellbeing of the potential child’s.
We're talking in the thread about bad luck. It's entirely possible - and common - to have finances in order, decide to have children, and then experience sudden events causing financial hardships.
Also, we're in a subthread of "saving lots o'moneys by working for big tech", so this applies also to people wanting to improve your situation. I personally didn't realize how bad the calculus of chasing after companies in tech hubs looks until I started doing costs-of-living calculations while evaluating job offers with relocation. I ended up doubling down on remote, because even a moderately shit tech job (even a in-office one where I live) would leave us with more savings on a single income than us relocating to a big tech hub and living on two incomes (one non-tech).
I didn’t say I had anything against anybody who has kids and falls on hard times. I understand that makes my comment rather off topic in this thread. I do know a lot of people who definitely did not have their finances in order and decided to have children anyway. The children are the ones who suffer most in these cases! This is super irresponsible and selfish. Hell, I once knew a couple who literally said they might have a third child because it would be easier with the extra child support money...
Here I agree with you in principle - deciding to have a child while not being able to financially support it, and just hoping for the best, is extremely irresponsible and likely to permanently scar a new human being.
That said, before judging a struggling family, there are also some other things to consider:
- Pregnancies happen by accident. It's both easier and harder to conceive a child than people think. It can and does happen by accident even with multiple methods of birth control applied, and at the same time a couple can try to have a kid and not succeed for years (or at all).
- Your job can disappear suddenly and through no fault of your own. I had this situation in the past, where my coworkers and I didn't know that there was a hostile takeover of the company happening for almost a year before it run out of money and stopped paying us.
- Random events (family problems, illness, or a pandemic shutting down the global economy) can suddenly break your finances while a child is underway.
- People miscalculate.
- The drive to procreate is, in general, one of the strongest forces in all living organisms, and thus very hard to control - especially with abstract considerations like numbers on the screen symbolizing your chances of survival.
> Hell, I once knew a couple who literally said they might have a third child because it would be easier with the extra child support money...
Can't speak about that particular couple, but in general, that's economic reality. I've seen such things too (hell, my wife and I sometimes joke that we should try for two or for four, because there's little difference between three and four kids, and having a fourth gives guaranteed retirement from the government). Sometimes benefits are set up this way on purpose, by countries that want to improve their population growth.
I mean, I'm not going to campaign to put any actual restrictions or laws in place and I don't go around judging people or complaining or whatever. But I do think that people shouldn't have children unless they are able to take good care of them, and financial stability is part of that.
I guess my complaint is that many time people don't think of consequences or plan for the future and then other people (their children in this case) are the ones to suffer.
> I personally didn't realize how bad the calculus of chasing after companies in tech hubs looks until I started doing costs-of-living calculations while evaluating job offers with relocation.
Your mistake was waiting until mid-career to try to pivot to a higher paying job in a HCOL area, because then you'll be 10+ years behind your peers. If you start your career in a HCOL area it's not unfeasible to reach 400k+ by your 30s, at which point you can afford a family even in San Francisco if you wanted one. It's also much easier to find a higher income spouse in a HCOL area, which helps the math too.
I've made plenty of mistakes in my career, though arguably, I've never been in this for the money. What you describe is probably near-optimal from financial point of view, but I can't imagine my younger self being capable of seriously considering such thought process.
Step 1 reminds me of one of my favorites from the Onion:
According to a Gallup report published Tuesday, over 95 percent of the nation’s grandfathers began their careers by walking straight into a place of business, saying “I’m the man for the job,” and receiving a position right there on the spot.
Alright, can you get me a phone screen? Sorry to ask the question so directly, but I have applied since 2014, and I can't get to the phone screen.
I'd love to be a frontend engineer, UX engineer, creative engineer (I've seen this role at Google, it looks awesome) or a full-stack engineer.
I have:
A bachelor in information science (2012)
A bachelor degree in psychology (2015)
A master in game-design where I learned about Unity3D and C# (2016)
A master in computer science where I learned about cache eviction in GPUs to perform rowhammer via a JavaScript advertizement (2018).
I have done quite a few side projects (not willing to disclose here, email is in my profile). And I have some work experience as a coding bootcamp instructor (1 year, I trained 50 people to become junior web developers at companies like IBM, Capgemini and a top 5 Dutch bank) and a freelance web developer (6 months) and a freelance iOS developer (also 6 months).
I graduated in 2018 and after freelancing for a bit, I took a sabbatical in 2019 (setting up a bar in Thailand with family and friends). When I started looking for jobs in earnest in 2020, Covid started to hit.
I'm practicing algorithms as we speak, I'll be ready in 2 weeks to a month from now. So far I'm facing no difficulties, this stuff is hard work but it's a lot easier than my security courses. Also, algorithms are actually quite fun. There are a few things there that I really want to learn such as a hyper attention to detail. I'm currently training the skill to write a program flawless without bugs from the get go, complete with the fastest time complexity immediately. I know I can get to this level because I'm noticing that for a lot of algorithms just by playing around one can see the best time complexity for it (I find optimizing for the right space complexity a bit harder).
I hope you'll help me with this. If not, and I don't get to a phone screen, well that is my (and many people) their biggest issue. Passing algorithms is not the issue, getting a chance to be interviewed is. I'm a 100% sure I'd rock at the job, as I'm sure that many other people would who didn't get the chance for a phone screen.
I'm from The Netherlands and would love to work in Zurich. I see you work in Zurich as well, I've been to Switzerland quite a few times, it's amazing.
Google teams that I find interesting and want to know more about:
- Google Doodles
- Project zero (though I don't think I'd be able work there since people have a super big track record regarding the security work they do)
- Google Creative Lab
- Google Health
- Google Stadia
- Google Cloud Platform
- Google Brand Studio (though I don't think I'd be able to work there since it's more about people who can shoot beautiful movies)
The most reliable way to get an interview at Google is to pass round 1 in Google code jam. So you need to first do the preliminary round, then get top 1000 in any of the round 1 competitions. That sounds harder than it is, I managed to do it without having taken algorithms courses after a few months of practicing.
If you don't have time to wait for the one next year then when you talk with Google recruiters they care a lot more about your chances to pass the interview than anything else, since they get evaluated by how well you do there. So selling your ability to pass these kinds of questions is a good idea, put everything related to algorithms etc on there. Did you do well in some competition? Have you solved some particularly hard problems? Did you build something impressive? Things like that.
Also be clear that you are open for relocation, specifically to the large hubs like London and Zurich since there are more jobs there. Otherwise the recruiter might look for jobs at your location and see no openings. This almost happened to one of my friends, but he managed to say that he would be fine working in Zurich instead and he got the job and now works there.
> If you don't have time to wait for the one next year then when you talk with Google recruiters
I never got to speak to a Google recruiter. I simply get automated emails that they don't want to go through with me. But if I ever catch a hold of one, I'll apply these tips.
Step 2: Save more than two thirds of your take home salary, you can still live way better than the people sweeping the office floor.
Step 3: You now have a ton of money saved up, take whatever risks you like or just retire early.