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You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area. I'm not saying these jobs are easy, or easy to get, b

You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area. I'm not saying these jobs are easy, or easy to get, but yes, they exist, even in this market. The reality is the biggest drop-off in recruiting is at the very top of the funnel. Your basic phone screen and first technical screen -- before you get to a full panel. Once there you have way more, qualified, applicants than roles. I'm not sure it really matters which person gets the job, and this is one way you can make a fairly arbitrary decision. It's nice because it's within your control to grind some leetcode lol. From the company's perspective it's fair and has limited negative selection risk, and doesn't lead to as many regrettable hires. If you've got 100 great candidates and 1 role, does it really matter which great candidate gets the job, so long as the selection process is relatively fair and uniform? From the company's perspective, probably not. Since there's no feasible way to select the local maxima, the second sort is consistency.

Thrymr 2y ago
> You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area. Sure, it is possible, but that is a small number of roles at a small number of companies, and the vetting process will be more intense. I think the coding interviews we're talking about in this thread are going to be at the junior to mid-level for the most part.
damontal 2y ago
You can make millions as a famous actor in Hollywood. So what? That doesn’t describe the average actor’s situation.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  I think it's a lot easier to get a staff role than being a Hollywood actor. Staff+ comprises around 7-10% of a company's engineering team. A quick Google leads me to believe there's usually about 15-20 A-list actors at any given time and 130,000 members of SAG-AFTRA. I think it's certainly achievable if you put in the time and effort (and of course if you're good at your job) -- the question is do you want to or not. It can be incredibly demanding and may not be intrinsically rewarding to you. It seems folks generally believe "senior" is an achievable level -- they should, it's usually the first "terminal" level at which it's ok to remain for the rest of your career -- then you shouldn't view staff as intrinsically out of reach.

Thrymr 2y ago

> You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area. Sure, it is possible, but that is a small number of roles at a small number of companies, and the vetting process will be more intense. I think the coding interviews we're talking about in this thread are going to be at the junior to mid-level for the most part.

damontal 2y ago

You can make millions as a famous actor in Hollywood. So what? That doesn’t describe the average actor’s situation.

arcticbull 2y ago
I think it's a lot easier to get a staff role than being a Hollywood actor. Staff+ comprises around 7-10% of a company's engineering team. A quick Google leads me to believe there's usually about 15-20 A-list actors at any given time and 130,000 members of SAG-AFTRA. I think it's certainly achievable if you put in the time and effort (and of course if you're good at your job) -- the question is do you want to or not. It can be incredibly demanding and may not be intrinsically rewarding to you. It seems folks generally believe "senior" is an achievable level -- they should, it's usually the first "terminal" level at which it's ok to remain for the rest of your career -- then you shouldn't view staff as intrinsically out of reach.