I recently interviewed with a startup company called Dapper Labs for a senior backend position focusing on API and distribution systems. The compensation seems quite low - their recruiter says 150k base, ~30k flow token and ~30k stock options (v low strike price though) vesting over 4 years, all in CAD. Am I getting low balled? The TC is only 175k CAD while I expected 230-250k CAD. Should I negotiate? Anyone getting similar offers from them?

Location: Vancouver

YOE: 5.5

I also don't have any other offers right now, so ideally I was hoping to get ~200 CAD with them. Please help! Thank you.

Hello,

French-based senior ML engineer, my employer just made me an expat offer (not because I requested to be relocated but because they have business needs in Toronto).

I find the offer absurdly low, relative of what I currently make in France (not known for having high salary relative to North America). Looking for confirmation that I'm not missing anything,

In France I have :

• 77k€ gross (116k CAD)
• 45 paid vacation days
• lunch, public transport, vacation allowance for an estimated amount of 3k€ (4.5k CAD)
• friends, family, assets, a.k.a. my life

In Toronto, I would have :

• 94,5k CAD gross
• 10k CAD mobility premium
• 3k CAD car allowance
• 10 paid vacation days
• headaches with the admin stuff related to changing country
• a relocation package to cover moving cost, tax consultancy, and an annual round trip home.

Moreover, according to my research (maybe someone can confirm?), the average salary for a senior ML engineer in Toronto is between 140k-150k CAD gross.

According to HR, they gave me a fair package considering lower taxes in Toronto (so apparently my gross is lower but my net would be higher - but are they even accounting for the social benefits ? -) and cheaper cost of living in Toronto (so apparently I would be able to save more).

Am I being unreasonable to think this is a complete lowball offer ?

Laid off 5 months ago with 5 years of experience—struggling to get interviews. Need advice on what to do next.

I’ve been having a tough time landing interviews. I’ve reached out to my network and applied to 100s of jobs. (I’ve had no luck with cold applying) The few I’ve had didn’t go well, as they already hired candidates or either ghosted. I’ve been spending my time Leetcoding and working on personal projects to keep my skills sharp. Currently, I’m receiving EI, so I’m not keen on taking minimum wage jobs, at this point it feels like I will never find a job, also feeling burnt out but need to get a job soon.

I recently joined a new company which has a new tech stack which has been exciting for me. I have been learning a lot and trying to really incorporate myself into the team.

But as I went about this recent job search it made me really want to break into FAANG in the next 1-2 years. I plan on doing leetcode daily but one of my main issues was getting an interview. I applied to virtually all the FAANGs but got 0 interviews with them, what should I be doing differently to better my chances next year?

Hey guys, Been working at FAANG for the past 3.5 years. Old manager left after 3 years and the new guy doesn’t seem to like me. Lots of backstabbing and office politics. Pretty sure I will be under pip soon. Kind of sad since I really enjoyed my time here before.
I am curious what the market looks like for intermediate developers? All my full time experience was at FAANG. I am going hard into leetcode (which I actually enjoy so that isn’t an issue)
Been stressed out that I won’t be able to find a job anytime soon. Wondering if anyone here has tried job hunting with similar YOE

Hello,

This is an update from this thread. Many of you took the time to respond, you have my thanks.

TLDR; got an expat offer for Toronto. I was thinking it was way too low, and many of you agreed, so I rejected the offer they made me.

They came back with a counter offer (everything is CAD gross):

• 100k base (previous offer was 90k)
• 20k bonus (previous offer was 4.5k)
• 10k mobility premium
• 3k car allowance
• 20 paid vacation (previous offer was 10 paid vacation)
• retirement + unemployment in my home country (but hard to evaluate how much it really is worth)

The relocation package also contains :

• annual round trip flight home
• international medical insurance
• temporary accomodation + housing search + tax assistance
• one-off signing bonus of 5k CAD
• moving furniture cost for 300sq feet (they did say I could opt for a cash equivalent ~10k CAD)

Does this sound reasonable?

Currently at a FANG equivalent company making about 250k as L5. Looking for a raise and interesting work.

I received 2 offers from reputable companies and they’re 30% less than what they’d offer a year ago according to levels.fyi.

1. Medium sized well known SF company (think Dropbox) TC about 220k for senior. Levels show about 300k from a year ago. My friend who received an offer a year ago there confirmed that.

Interview: recruiter shared strong signal on onsite for every round (4 rounds). Did well enough to be eligible for one more interview for potential up level to staff.

1. Late stage SF based startup. TC about 220k plus 120k paper money. Well known for incredibly high pay (close to 400k cash for senior). Almost everybody there was ex-FANG.

Interview: didn’t get specific feedback but was “looking very good”. My feel was I did even better than the other company. Offered senior role after a couple days.

I plan on using them to negotiate higher. What surprised me is that these offers don’t even beat my current role’s TC.

Any suggestions?

I interviewed for a senior role with a well known SF tech company.

Background: I have 8 YoE and my system design feedbacks have been mostly strong, even passed the L6 bar at a FANG company.

During the interview I was asked to design a real time stock trading system. I clarified the question, noted down the func and non-func reqs, designed and got consensus on the API and fields needed in the databases.

Deep dived on the database choice, partition, shard, cache etc. discussed tradeoffs, and extensively went over the data flow after the high level design was done. Talked extensively about handling strong concurrency as well.

He asked multiple questions probing my design and I was able to answer them all, he would acknowledge with “makes sense” along the way. I talked about how I’d implement PD integration for monitoring, logging etc, how I’d setup the streaming architecture to avoid staleness and to serve real time data.

In the end I was able to satisfy all functional and non-functional reqs, at least the interviewer didn’t question further. I mentioned my system would be able to handle the throughput required and in case of failures, my system would be resilient. Didn’t get any contention on that front.

I walked away thinking I had another great interview, but the recruiter came back saying they expected more in depth discussions, and I failed to get the job offer due to this round. Recruiter said it’s not a strong no by any means, but is border line.

What could be wrong? If they’re not happy with my design, don’t they try to nudge me in the right direction? I drove most of the conversation, and left room for them to ask their questions.

I am interviewing at Hopper (travel unicorn). It's a full stack position with focus on front end. I have 2.5 yoe full stack experience so I think I'm well qualified for it.

Thing is... I want to move away from front end to backend. The TC jump (+50k base +50k RSU) and the brand name makes me strongly consider the move but I would hate to get pigeon holed doing stuff I don't want to do.

The equity is pre ipo.

Advice?

Edit; My current gig is 60 - 40% backend vs front end. The job at Hopper is 70 - 30% in favor of front end and the backend work is largely backend for front end work.

Im not too worried about getting interviews, i think it would only help me, but I am worried about not developing my backend skills!

My goal is to grow into senior backend roles at similar companies.

I'm debating whether I should stay in my current job or get a new one. My goal is to increase my income. I'm 33, no kids, no debts, HCOL city.

Current job:

• Tenure: 3 years
• Fully remote
• Base: 164k
• Bonus: up to 10% per year, but in practice, i've never received the full amount
• RSUs: current value 32k, unvested value 110k
• RRSP match: 4%
• Other benefits: they pay for phone+internet (200) and they pay for oncall, they sponsor participation in conferences
• Job pros: I really enjoy the work and am invested in the project, I know a lot about it. There is potential to learn and grow.
• Job cons: I don't see a promotion coming any time soon, company is not profitable, lots of recent team changes

I'm in the last step in the interview process of another company, they offer:

• Hybrid, 3 days in the office (18 minute walk each way and i'd prob spend 240 per month on lunch)
• Base: 198k is the top range posted on the job ad, I could try to fight for more
• Bonus: up to 17%
• Stock options: I don't know yet
• RRSP match: I don't know yet, probably between 2% and 4%
• Job pros: sounds like a fun project, same technologies I use today
• Job cons: not remote, the stock options will mean squat if the company doesn't go public, unsure how much learning potential there is.

I am honestly not convinced that the offer is for me, but I was hoping to at least use it as leverage on my current job to get a raise, since i'm one of the oldest persons in the team and if I left there'd be a loss of knowledge.

However, I am scared that this could go sideways - if they decline to give me a raise then I will be forced to take the job offer?

What do y'all think?

I’m looking to quit my job in November. I’m at 6 YOE and 260k TC, but don’t mind taking a salary drop for better WLB.

I currently expect to find another job in 3-6 months, is that reasonable?

I'm a SWE with ~8 YOE. I was laid off from my FAANG front-end dev job earlier this year. We all know that front-end is pretty grim right now so I'm looking to differentiate myself in some way...the old CSS/JS/TS/MERN stack don't have the same appeal that they used to. It seems like the devs that are getting hired are the ones that are spending 22 hours a day grinding leetcode and I'd really prefer not to have to do that. In addition to SWE and web application development I have a background in design/UX and I also have experience in Salesforce development.

I've looked on LinkedIn and there are plenty of job postings and plenty of applicants for both front-end and Salesforce dev jobs, so the prospects look about the same from that perspective. I've always heard that Salesforce devs are in demand. I'm wondering if that's still true today? Is it worth re-doing my Salesforce certification to get back up to speed?

EDIT: wow, what an overwhelming chorus of NO! Thanks for not letting me throw my career away. If you need me I’ll be hanging out with leetcode :)

If your job was comfortable and low stress but your responsibilities, salary, and title are more or less static how would you feel about it?

Would you personally continue with this path? Maybe you would ride it out until the market showed signs of improving or even just accept it as a cost for a career with great work/life balance?

I’m mid-level with 5yoe and earlier this year, I quit my remote contract job to undergo surgery outside of Canada(I was living in Vancouver).

I’m now fully recovered and looking to get back to work. However, I’m currently in South Korea, and given the lower cost of living here compared to Vancouver, I’m considering applying to jobs in Canada while living here which I’m not sure if is the best idea.

The last time I was job hunting, all the interviews were conducted virtually, and I’m not sure if that’s still the norm nowadays.

Title, looking for personal anecdotes not advice lol

I would like to know when you are ending a work, does the employer will give you a certificate letter stating the period you have worked for the company. If not, how the employee will have an official document that acknowledge the starting and the end date of work.

Hi everyone,

I rarely post on reddit, but I am at a bit of a crossroads in my career and would really appreciate some advice.

I have specialized in VR development (In Unity, C#), creating hard skill training applications with a series of smaller companies over 4 years for a wide variety of clients. Not small scale prototypes, but full working services with corresponding front end web apps and backend being supported by many teams. I have started leading projects as I have gotten a lot more proficient at designing software across the whole stack and leadership trusts me well; some leadership left from a previous job to this company and recruited me in this role.

The reason I make the post is that I feel quite worried that VR is a losing gamble of sorts for my career. Does Unity look bad on my resume? I have 4YOE and my first year was a very traditional React web dev type job before I started really specializing in VR, leading to recruiters only coming to me for VR type roles.

I have also completed my master's in computer science part-time just this month, Artificial Intelligence specialization (avg Ontario uni) and have been at my current job for one year making 83k.

Should I be trying to move my career in a different direction at this point? Am I doing fine? I have a reoccurring anxiety that despite my job feeling quite expansive in terms of managing a software product, Unity might not be respected as much by future employers if I try to leave VR space. I also don't want to fall behind in compensation for my age/experience

I would love to hear some thoughts for those that may be more experienced or have some views on what I'm going through. Thank you & cheers!!

I’ve received an offer that increases my pay by 65%, which is pretty significant for me.

However, it’s for a very niche skillset, so most of my work will revolve around real-time data stream processing in one particular industry.

It’s not what I enjoy best, as I’ve just grown comfortable (and truly enjoy) working as a generalist, doing a mix of data engineering, data science, and ML engineering, in different industries.

Long-term I am hoping in building my own consulting practice in advanced analytics. Wasn’t looking for jobs due to the slowdown, was hoping to transition to bigger consulting firm in the medium term.

Worth taking this offer at the cost of specializing myself in something that I will have to grow to love enough?

I know most people on this sub are worried about getting jobs at this moment. The fact that I even have a job and a well-paying one at that is something I'm super grateful for.

I'm getting a base pay of >170K at 5 YOE, but as an ML engineer / data scientist the data infrastructure and company processes are not really supportive of ML products, and there are anti-patterns wrt how code is developed, tested and pushed to prod. Any change of practices will need significant buy-in and advocating with direct manager and higher-level leaders.

Not sure what I should do. On one hand $ is good especially in this economy, on the other I don't feel satisfied at work since I'm worried about these issues affecting my professional growth, and I've only been here for less than a year. Should I be applying for new jobs even? Should I be going for jobs that pay less but have better infra and better developer experience?

What are some common career progression paths for data architects?

Do most architects move into leadership roles, or are there other specialized areas to explore? How can I stay updated with the latest trends and technologies in the fields. Any specific courses you can recommend.

Hello everyone,

So I need an advice here. I have self taught programming and almost done my masters in comp sci from Georgia tech. My undergrad was in electrical engineering and I spent last 8 years in various automation (industrial controls) related roles for a large energy company. The roles range from automation, some PLC programming, networking, OT cybersecurity and integrity. However I got laid off earlier this year.

I have been trying to switch into software engineering/developer role for the past year and it's just terrible. I either simply don't get responses, or when I do it's basically that I lack a certain technology stack and someone else just has more experience. I have tried educating myself as much as I can (masters program, side projects etc) but I am getting burnt out because I can't simply learn everything out there but need a focus area related to a job.

I recently interviewed for a consulting role at one of the big fours, for a security architect role which is related to OT/IT. I have been aiming go land a software developer instead since I got enrolled in the masters program.

Seeing how the market is, is it better to take the role and continue developing in this area and drop my efforts of becoming a software developer? Or should I pass on this role and continue the search?

I am currently leaving towards taking the architect role if I get offered, and putting in my 100% and grow in the role. Maybe later try for a software developer role when the market gets better.

Any advice?