[salarycommenter]

Individual contributor, Software Engineer.

At Google the recruiter put me in the SRE/SWE track which I was skeptical of and communicated to them. I also communicated about the compensation issues in advance saying if I got a bad offer it wasn't going to happen. Still wasted my time.

It's high for the industry if you consider the entire US or the world. The solution there is pick the right employer. The right ones are not that much harder to get into than the wrong ones especially if you play the interview game. You also need to not get caught location based comp schemes.

It's not high for a big corporation that is doing well. They just want you to think it's high so they don't have to pay and the small fry want you to think it's high because they can't afford it. These are all just line items in a budget.

[sjg007]

So I read your comment history and it looks like you changed jobs quite a bit to get to the higher salary. Do you also focus on a particular niche or are you just a general senior engineer?

[salarycommenter]

I am not doing this as a generalist. I picked a specialization and within that specialization I picked a specific ecosystem and then ground out some seniority in that ecosystem.

Once I had that I could pick from anyone who is invested in the ecosystem.

I don't believe that has actually heavily impacted what I am paid in the sense of the credentialing being worth more to individual companies it has just made it easier to get through hiring filters and interview loops. That has made it possible to focus on companies that pay well.