Comment by bishnu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bishnu | Hacker News Reader

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When I was searching for entry level SWE jobs in Canada in 2011 after abruptly dropping out of grad school, I applied to ~50 positions and interviewed at around a dozen (public+private sector) in Vancouver + Alberta, all paying $50K-$60K.

A year later, Google swooped in with an offer that quintupled my compensation. The thing that struck me about it most was the supposedly-intense Google programmer interviews were actually far less difficult than most of the all-day interviews I did for Canadian institutions. I was a bit outraged that these interviews could be so tough for such meager compensation, especially given the cost of living in Vancouver. I was surprised they were able to get away with it, and it looks like it's starting to bite them in the ass, for which I am glad.

Edit: The specific places I would name, if anyone's curious, are Zymeworks and SAP in Vancouver, as well as staff research positions at UBC, University of Calgary, and the BC Cancer Agency.

I am a UofA graduate. Back when oilpatch was throwing big money at companies, me and my manager identified a solid start-up opportunity. I contacted two UofA comp sci guys, and they were not willing to come onboard because they were going to US. Right out of the gate, we could afford five six figure salaries, but we had to abide by some restrictions. I tried a lot to build that startup, but we just could not. As the comment above mentioned, get to them before Google, MS or Intel does; and cultivate a relationship.

You make $250k-$300k/yr for an entry-level software engineering job?

He did say it was a Google offer, and definitely includes RSUs.

yeah, sure. for google/apple/facebook/etc. 150k cash + 100k+ equity and bonus compensation sounds about right. on a good year, add another 100k. on a really good year, add another 250k. on a really really good year, add a couple million. who do you think is buying all these houses?

the first step to making this kind of money is not settling for anything less, because opportunity is the biggest cost. when was the last time you turned down 150k to wait for a better offer?

I've worked at Google for 8 years.

The only way you are likely to see "another 100k on a good year" is if you sell all the RSUs you've got that year.

I've see a few people "add a couple of million" when their project of 7 years succeeded, but these were very senior people.

I think it's an illusion to think that rank and file SWEs will ever have an "add a few million" year.

> who do you think is buying all these houses?

I see very few rank and file Google SWEs being able to afford anything within 1 hour commute of Mountain View.

so what you're saying is, you've seen everything i've described happen, at least to "a few people", and you're just one guy.

How are the offers from Google et co's Canadian offices?

About $90k CAD when starting I think (KW).

What was the difference in the interviews?

It varied. The biggest difference is the Canadian interviews covered a lot more ground and asked very specific, fact-based questions. I interviewed for a bioinformatics research position at some podunk Sunflower genomics lab at UBC, and their several hour long interview consisted of questions that went pretty deep on C++, Perl, Linux sysadmin stuff, and molecular biology, and was followed by a round-table interview where ~15 people grilled me on like, BS HR stuff (stereotypical "give us an example of how you used conflict resolution in the workplace" type questions). For a position that paid around $40K! That's probably the toughest interview I've ever given. It's mind-boggling that they are able to hire people, in retrospect.

Thinking about everything else said in this thread, I think the type of interviews these companies do sort of make sense. After all, all the good talent that knows its own value is already gone; all that's left is a mix of the incompetent and the undervalued, and they're trying to pick out the undervalued.

That requires a lot more rigour than the US process, which basically consists of "hey, we're offering [huge salary], compete for it."

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