IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

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Mist

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Two of my technical/engineering directors went to work for Amazon, along with a bunch of other people from my company in the cloud operations unit. The money must have been amazing for them to leave.

This morning Zoom just offered me multiple positions related to implementing, managing or supporting Zoom-based contact centers for F500 clients and are willing to give me whatever position meets my salary expectations loooool. Apparently after the bid to acquire Five9s failed they just need to hire a bazillion people to meet demand.

My company just said today they have a >250 million dollar backlog in bookings because there isn't enough hardware to do implementations even though we're a mainly cloud company. We literally can't buy enough CPUs and Cisco switches to rack servers and put phones on desks.
 

alavaz

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I interviewed for Amazon a few years ago and the base salary wasn't that great. I interviewed for a federal aws architect and spent easily 12+ hours in videoconferences with their "chime" software that they make you use.

I had a softball coding interview since architects don't code at all really. Where they hammered me though instead was on a presentation for "fedramp architecture" in AWS. I was actually kind of irritated by it as well, because I got told over and over again that it was not just a powerpoint sales position, but based on the interviews that's exactly what it was.

Anyway, the offer was 130k base, with a 75k signing bonus that is paid out over the first 3 years as well as a stock option that vests over the first 5 years. So the large amount the recruiter gives you is basically only realistic for your first 3 years. After 5 years I would be making less than I do now. This also included a bonus for maintaining a security clearance, so a commercial architects base salary would've only been like 120k.

The health benefits are good though. Better than pretty much any other company I've worked for in the last 10 years.
 
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Phazael

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Amazon and companies like them are brain draining the tech people as much as they can. They may not be able to directly fuck over smaller companies with monopolistic practices (yet), but they can certainly pay tech people lavishly to drain the talent pool of anyone smaller than them (read god damn near everyone) to choke them out that way. Name one fucking industry right now that does not need IT. There are none. Part of me wonders if Amazon and MS are doing this to force more dependance on their cloud services, since anyone worth a shit with those technologies is probably grabbing the golden ticket. In some ways its a lot scarier than what is happening with our logistics and agriculture infrastructure in the country.

Between big tech raising the pay level (combined with very gratuitous WAH) and the market inflating in general, its a workers market for tech in a way it has not been since the mid 90s. Its fucking insane and cannot last forever, so I grabbed something that pays comfortably with the QOL I want and am content to be their single point of failure. If I had no morals and was in debt though, there are some lucrative deals for someone with a proven track record right now.

Then again it might be the big boys hedging against dual gigging, which is rampant right now.
 
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Mist

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I interviewed for Amazon a few years ago and the base salary wasn't that great. I interviewed for a federal aws architect and spent easily 12+ hours in videoconferences with their "chime" software that they make you use.

I had a softball coding interview since architects don't code at all really. Where they hammered me though instead was on a presentation for "fedramp architecture" in AWS. I was actually kind of irritated by it as well, because I got told over and over again that it was not just a powerpoint sales position, but based on the interviews that's exactly what it was.

Anyway, the offer was 130k base, with a 75k signing bonus that is paid out over the first 3 years as well as a stock option that vests over the first 5 years. So the large amount the recruiter gives you is basically only realistic for your first 3 years. After 5 years I would be making less than I do now. This also included a bonus for maintaining a security clearance, so a commercial architects base salary would've only been like 120k.

The health benefits are good though. Better than pretty much any other company I've worked for in the last 10 years.
Well now you're just bragging. That's like what I make for doing similar stuff lol.

EDIT: Oh nm that was a presales engineering position. Not the same stuff.

I bet that would have been an easy fucking job. You didn't get commissions with that?
 

alavaz

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Well now you're just bragging. That's like what I make for doing similar stuff lol.

EDIT: Oh nm that was a presales engineering position. Not the same stuff.

I bet that would have been an easy fucking job. You didn't get commissions with that?
No commissions, they were very adamant it was not a sales job and performance wasn't tied to sales. It probably would've been easy in some facets, but painfully boring in others. I hate powerpoints and vizios and all that dumb shit. AWS is obviously going big in telco though, so if you want to spend 5 years making cash, they'd be a great place to do it.

The Amazon stock option was in the form of Restricted Stock Units. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but the awards are structured in such a way that you get x amount (well say 100 for easy math) and then it's granted in increasing percentages for 5 years - i.e. 5, 10, 20, 30, 35. You can sell them as soon as you get them (or so they made it sound) or hang onto them with the promise that you can cash them out at FMV whenever you want. It seems like most of these guys do the big tech company tour 5 years at AWS, Microsoft and Google so they can vest in each one, then pick their favorite to go back and retire from or start their own company or whatever.

It does seem like over the last 5 years big cloud providers, Microsoft and AWS especially, have been scooping up all of the competent DoD contractors for their cleared staff. It's been tempting but I know that won't last forever.
 

TJT

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Amazon recruiter contacted me about a 300k job. Big tech is really going big on salaries in this environment. I agree to talk to them about it and they send me a package that includes like 2 hours of coding exercises and who knows how many (3-4?) hours of recommended prep work.

Fuck. Off.

You know who has time and desire to do that shit? Unemployed people.
Always gotta brush off those college array manipulation problem solving skills bro!
 

TJT

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Is this a Vinen humble brag? We haven't had one of those in a while.

I mean, that much prep work isn't nothing. But I don't know what job opening doesn't have at least an hour of coding work as part of the interview. So...300k isn't much of an upgrade?
As I've only started interviewing for senior roles in my yearly practice interviews they generally don't make you do code bullshit in them. They do at the lower ranks though. Not a single senior role I interviewed for bothered. They do ask more detailed questions thought and want very specific use cases you have solved in terms of scaling, efficiency, cost, and so on.
 

BrotherWu

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Always gotta brush off those college array manipulation problem solving skills bro!

The stuff I have seen was a little more involved than that. When I interviewed with a chip manufacturer for a pre-silicon team, it was 4 hours of programming exercises with 4 different people. It sucked.

Side note, after I told Amazon to pound sand, they came back and said they could give me a waiver for the pre-test. I'll have a live coding exercise, which is fine and us exactly what I prefer to use when I interview candidates.
 

Voyce

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These people are ALL over tech, and will quickly identify you as not one of them (I mean, you can tell they're one of em and they can tell you aren't).

Combine that with them being all over HR, and you'll enter the realm of dread if you aren't cuck blooded.
 

Nirgon

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If you work in tech get ready for obese, angry, less than qualified females backed
by the tech lead types simping for them, and letting them behave like psychos. Expect softballs and learning opportunities for them while you do the heavy lifting, often disguised as things that will be routine or simple (or something comparable to other taskables, you're gonna get the hideous outlier they can't figure out that's been in the backlog). If you're reading this, you're probably a big EQ brain so you will figure it out burning the midnight oil and be desirable to other places hiring based on it.

They'll be sent to get paid certifications that they almost magically pass by 1 point or go to cushy conferences where they bring nothing of value back, but talk about their trip.

HR got covered.


Big red flags to look for are people who all worked for the same place previously, coming in and filling out a department somewhere else. Typically it's because they get caught out by one company, and promotion/salary frozen so they go infest another place. The action point here is try to research who is on the team and if they've all come from the same previous place.

The government job I did for 6 months was this to a T. All of them were from General Dynamics originally and on the same team and in the same positions.
By the time I got in, they had already pulled this kind of crap and scape goated/run off 5 developers (I found this out seeing the Jetbrains licenses and who used them/when and it was 5 within 1.5yrs) by the time I got there. I nailed the project I started for them then got the hell out. They wanted to dump all their support on me and make me the only guy working there on Friday while they all worked this 4 day week they managed to negotiate for themselves. Thank god I can pass certs and interview well, they looked the part and I smelled it comin from the getgo.
 
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alavaz

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Saw this, maybe one of you can get a leg up in the world if you have the chops.
Or relentlessly pursued by 3 letter agencies.
The government job I did for 6 months was this to a T. All of them were from General Dynamics originally and on the same team and in the same positions.
By the time I got in, they had already pulled this kind of crap and scape goated/run off 5 developers (I found this out seeing the Jetbrains licenses and who used them/when and it was 5 within 1.5yrs) by the time I got there. I nailed the project I started for them then got the hell out. They wanted to dump all their support on me and make me the only guy working there on Friday while they all worked this 4 day week they managed to negotiate for themselves. Thank god I can pass certs and interview well, they looked the part and I smelled it comin from the getgo.
That's just how government contracts work. You either stay in the seat and sign on with the new company that wins the bid or you stay with your current company and move to another contract. Generally, you stay in the seat if you like the customer and the new company meets your current pay.

Was this DC/NoVA? I've worked at 3 different places over the last 15 years (WA state, UK and NC) and none of them were nearly as bad as people on this forum make it sound. Mostly competent people with one or two stand outs and one or two serious turds. About the same as my experience in private industry.
 

Nirgon

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Or relentlessly pursued by 3 letter agencies.

That's just how government contracts work. You either stay in the seat and sign on with the new company that wins the bid or you stay with your current company and move to another contract. Generally, you stay in the seat if you like the customer and the new company meets your current pay.

Was this DC/NoVA? I've worked at 3 different places over the last 15 years (WA state, UK and NC) and none of them were nearly as bad as people on this forum make it sound. Mostly competent people with one or two stand outs and one or two serious turds. About the same as my experience in private industry.

East coast, DC area is close enough. Rest of the office looked cool and normal enough.
 

BrotherWu

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As a Firmware guy, the question they gave me was: Implement a hash SDK in C without using arrays. lolwut

I've had to use hash tables once in my entire career and that was in Python for testing.
 

Deathwing

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Aren't hash tables(hash maps or dictionaries in other languages) one of the fundamental data structures? I'm curious how you've avoided using them for so long.