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> or have some other successful characteristic that you do not. That's both fair and true, but I'm someone without any successful characteristics. > You don't

> or have some other successful characteristic that you do not. That's both fair and true, but I'm someone without any successful characteristics. > You don't need to have gone to a particular school. All of the interns in question went to top schools of course :) > If you already got into one of FAANG, you almost certainly have a strong baseline skillset already While I wish that were true, unfortunately, the FAANG is Amazon so I don't think that's much proof of anything. I would work towards achieving mastery of what I would need to do to pass an interview, but I can't even get an interview - again, because of my current company and undergrad.

ryandrake 6y ago
It's helpful for your mental health to not take anecdotal "salary reports" on HN seriously. Whenever salary comes up, everyone here knows someone whose brother's roommate pinky-swear definitely makes $400K at Facebook, therefore this must be "normal salary" there. I've worked for a number of companies talked about here and have never even made close to the "HN Quoted Average Salary." Voluntary online salary boasts from random people are going to tend to bias high. You're probably doing fine.
- lowiqengineer 6y ago
  That's kind of you to say, but I do personally know lots of people at Facebook, Google, Lyft, Citadel, Stripe etc that _do_ make this much or more. Meanwhile, even the L6's at my company make around $300k - that's about what E4's make at Google. Plus, levels.fyi is generally pretty accurate.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    How do you know? Have you seen their W2 forms? A lot of people are also full of shit, especially when it comes to things like compensation. How do you know "levels.fyi" is accurate? AFAIK they base their information on self-reported anecdotes too. How do they correct for bias? The only organizations I would trust to give accurate salary averages are payroll companies, who can properly do a uniform sample, and I don't think they publish their data for free. Personally knowing someone that makes $X does not necessarily mean that $X is an average or normal compensation.
tcoff91 6y ago
You are making 3x the median family income for this country while getting to work from home and stay safe from COVID-19. The job market is imploding around us while we work cushy tech jobs. Abject misery abounds as people lose their loved ones and their livelihoods. It comes off as as quite tone-deaf when tech people complain about their $150k salaries. There are way too many entitled people in tech who have never worked a shit minimum wage job in their lives. Look, if you really want to make it to a company like Jane Street, there IS a path. It's not a path that many have the energy to take but it's there. If you are having trouble getting interviews you can do a ton to produce content needed to raise your online profile. You can make lots of meaningful open-source contributions on github. You can produce great blog content. You can code live on twitch and develop a following. If you combine that with actually developing the algorithmic chops to pass their interview process, you can get into a company like Jane Street. I personally don't view maximizing my income at the expense of all else in my life as a good way to live so I won't be grinding it out to get one of these jobs, but if that's what you really want then the path is there. But you probably will still be unhappy once you achieve it if you're unhappy right now. And don't be so hard on yourself. If you've made it as far as you have, you definitely have successful characteristics. You're not special, and that's OK. But just because you're not special doesn't mean you don't have successful characteristics.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  People should not be complaining then about their $25k salaries, either. Because there are way too many people on this planet who do not have even that. (And, oh, by the way, one could be sent off to war only to die there after plenty of suffering.)
  - Twixes 6y ago
    Cut the bullshit please, $150k is simply good money even in Silicon Valley and great pretty much everywhere else on Earth.
- lowiqengineer 6y ago
  > The job market is imploding around us while we work cushy tech jobs. Abject misery abounds as people lose their loved ones and their livelihoods. This is also the case for people at Google, etc but they still manage to find time to complain about not being able to expense their lunches [0] Overall I don't disagree, but the path to JS or equivalent companies seems to be astonishingly narrow given the fact that I didn't join there out of undergrad and I'm currently at a company that Jane Street recruiters don't consider to be impressive or noteworthy. > And don't be so hard on yourself. If you've made it as far as you have, you definitely have successful characteristics. You're not special, and that's OK. But just because you're not special doesn't mean you don't have successful characteristics. I'd say I'm exactly as hard on myself as society is. Everyone else gets constant external validation - all I get is signals to say I'm stupid. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/google-tells-employees-not-to-expense-food-perks-in-work-from-home.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/google-tells-employees-not-t...

ryandrake 6y ago

It's helpful for your mental health to not take anecdotal "salary reports" on HN seriously. Whenever salary comes up, everyone here knows someone whose brother's roommate pinky-swear definitely makes $400K at Facebook, therefore this must be "normal salary" there. I've worked for a number of companies talked about here and have never even made close to the "HN Quoted Average Salary." Voluntary online salary boasts from random people are going to tend to bias high. You're probably doing fine.

lowiqengineer 6y ago
That's kind of you to say, but I do personally know lots of people at Facebook, Google, Lyft, Citadel, Stripe etc that _do_ make this much or more. Meanwhile, even the L6's at my company make around $300k - that's about what E4's make at Google. Plus, levels.fyi is generally pretty accurate.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  How do you know? Have you seen their W2 forms? A lot of people are also full of shit, especially when it comes to things like compensation. How do you know "levels.fyi" is accurate? AFAIK they base their information on self-reported anecdotes too. How do they correct for bias? The only organizations I would trust to give accurate salary averages are payroll companies, who can properly do a uniform sample, and I don't think they publish their data for free. Personally knowing someone that makes $X does not necessarily mean that $X is an average or normal compensation.

tcoff91 6y ago

You are making 3x the median family income for this country while getting to work from home and stay safe from COVID-19. The job market is imploding around us while we work cushy tech jobs. Abject misery abounds as people lose their loved ones and their livelihoods. It comes off as as quite tone-deaf when tech people complain about their $150k salaries. There are way too many entitled people in tech who have never worked a shit minimum wage job in their lives. Look, if you really want to make it to a company like Jane Street, there IS a path. It's not a path that many have the energy to take but it's there. If you are having trouble getting interviews you can do a ton to produce content needed to raise your online profile. You can make lots of meaningful open-source contributions on github. You can produce great blog content. You can code live on twitch and develop a following. If you combine that with actually developing the algorithmic chops to pass their interview process, you can get into a company like Jane Street. I personally don't view maximizing my income at the expense of all else in my life as a good way to live so I won't be grinding it out to get one of these jobs, but if that's what you really want then the path is there. But you probably will still be unhappy once you achieve it if you're unhappy right now. And don't be so hard on yourself. If you've made it as far as you have, you definitely have successful characteristics. You're not special, and that's OK. But just because you're not special doesn't mean you don't have successful characteristics.

Koshkin 6y ago
People should not be complaining then about their $25k salaries, either. Because there are way too many people on this planet who do not have even that. (And, oh, by the way, one could be sent off to war only to die there after plenty of suffering.)
- Twixes 6y ago
  Cut the bullshit please, $150k is simply good money even in Silicon Valley and great pretty much everywhere else on Earth.
lowiqengineer 6y ago
> The job market is imploding around us while we work cushy tech jobs. Abject misery abounds as people lose their loved ones and their livelihoods. This is also the case for people at Google, etc but they still manage to find time to complain about not being able to expense their lunches [0] Overall I don't disagree, but the path to JS or equivalent companies seems to be astonishingly narrow given the fact that I didn't join there out of undergrad and I'm currently at a company that Jane Street recruiters don't consider to be impressive or noteworthy. > And don't be so hard on yourself. If you've made it as far as you have, you definitely have successful characteristics. You're not special, and that's OK. But just because you're not special doesn't mean you don't have successful characteristics. I'd say I'm exactly as hard on myself as society is. Everyone else gets constant external validation - all I get is signals to say I'm stupid. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/google-tells-employees-not-to-expense-food-perks-in-work-from-home.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/google-tells-employees-not-t...