How many employers do you find yourself needing to exclude because of the “no Leetcode” thing? Do you think you’re sacrificing anything in the way of comp by doing so?
My last job where I thought I was being hired as a senior developer I was asked “what was my 90 day plan to create a modern software department to create two green field projects”. It ended up they were looking for a dev lead.
The next job interview I spent most of my time white boarding architecture. I wasn’t asked a single development question. I just explained what I did on my last job.
As far as comp, if I were in a position to travel a lot, there are plenty of consulting companies willing to pay me more than I am making now - all I would have to do is send out a few emails to my network. Again not bragging. After working 20+ years if you can’t get some type of consulting gig you’re doing it wrong.
I’m not really architect / principal level just yet (probably 3-5 years of continuous improvement from that I would say), but I feel like I’m just barely getting ahead as a senior making $200k paying $2300/month in rent with no hope to buy and about a 40-60 minute commute (depending on whether I drive to BART or walk). Just wondering if there’s something better out there.
My commute is 30-40 minutes depending on traffic and we just bought a 3000 square foot 5 bedroom/3.5 bath house + a large office, new build in a great school system for $335K with 5% down. Our mortgage all in is a little less than $2100/month.
The most senior hands on developers/individual contributors/team leads can make between $130K-$160K. Even with that, it leaves more than enough to max out a 401K, and have enough fun money to do most of the things we want.
But like I said, just from talking to hiring managers over “informal lunches”, there are positions for overpriced “digital transformation consultants”, “enterprise architects”, etc. where you can get $200K and live in a lower cost of living area as long as you live near a major airport.
Without knowing regional pricing information it's hard to say they "should be able to save enough to buy something at some point".
If he is only paying 2300 rent he is living in a small apt even 60 minutes out. The cost of everything in the bay makes you wonder where money goes.
Lunch is a minimum of 25 bucks, bottle of cheap beer 10.
So your rent plus debt servicing should be around $4000... leaving your around $4000 a month for everything else. You should be able to live pretty well on that! That is more than most people make total.
Don't we all.
> Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately)
We all also pay for this.
> probably $2000-2500/month
Dude you still have $1000 probably free just chilling if you are strict.
I don't get this, "you are not where you should be" mindset.
The student debt sucks, but you are doing extremely, extremely well. Making more than some doctors.
As for “doctor money”, according to https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie... I make below the average salary for every physician specialty except public health & preventative medicine, and I’m several years older than the typical newly minted physician.
I also live in an area where you need to make at least $80k or so to qualify for a 1br apartment, according to the “3x rent in gross salary” rule used by a lot of landlords. With my large, fixed expenses (student loans), I’m not convinced moving to a lower CoL area actually improves my bottom line, either.
I’m not poor, and, like I said, I’m getting ahead slowly now, but I’m by no means rolling in it.
You could say my career trajectory is behind being in my 40s and still being an individual contributor, but I don’t see any scenario where I would have wanted to be a person manager. (Been there done that. Went screaming back to an IC role).
But, I do see a narrow path where I can retire at the standard retirement age and be okay with a paid off house, enough savings to be okay, and hopefully social security between me and my wife collecting half of mine instead of her own.
Based on the comments in this thread, I'm guessing leetcode has done some successful marketing in the valley. I'm an East coaster.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see if your company is solving hard problems (tm) or problems at a scale that has never been done before why you need smart people (tm). But I find it ridiculous that some companies care about how well you can do esoteric algorithms when they are hiring you to do yet another software as a service CRUD app or some internal bespoke app that will never see the light of day outside of the company.
I’m not even convinced knowing hard computer science is important in most jobs. One of the best developers I know graduated from a well known but not well regarded private for profit college. Didn’t know much hard computer science but he reads like crazy about best practices when it comes to writing software. His code and unit tests are things of beauty to maintain. We worked together at three separate jobs. He’s also in his mid 40s and he codes on his own time and does side projects like someone in their 20s.
I got my start doing assembly in the 80s as a teenager, bit twiddling C on x86 PCs and mainframes for a decade, but none of that matters when I am spending half my day as a “full stack developer” and the other half as the de facto “AWS Architect” (in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king).