[titanomachy]

If you're serious: get a job at a well-known tech company. You might have to move for this unless you're already in a top-tier tech city (NYC, SF, and Seattle, definitely qualify; maybe Zurich, London, Toronto, and Sydney). Work there for two years. Move to a better tech company. You are now worth $300-400k per year.

If you're not already considered top-tier talent, I think Amazon is the easiest way into this right now. They are hiring at an incredible rate, and their engineers are generally considered good hires by Google, Facebook, etc. The lifestyle and working environment is generally considered acceptable if not exemplary.

Also, invest some time to become an expert at technical interviews. They are somewhat orthogonal to everything else that we do, but they are a near-universal shibboleth at top companies and it doesn't take that much time to get good at them. Most of the questions fall into a few broad categories that you can learn to recognize with practice.

This worked for me. YMMV. The key was relaxing the requirement that I stay in my childhood city, although luckily I only had to move a couple hours away.

[balfirevic]

> You are now worth $300-400k per year.

Are you sure this number still applies if you're outside of US (London, Toronto, Sydney)? My understanding is that numbers in Europe are nothing like those in the US.

[thundergolfer]

It doesn't apply to Sydney for sure.

I make $50k-100k AUD less in Sydney compared to Bay Area, with all the same HCOL problems.

A very, very good new grad total comp figure in Sydney is say, $150k AUD. That's $106K in USD, which is less than the salary for a new grad at Google or Facebook in the Bay Area. Throw in RSUs, signing bonus, and performance bonuses, and a new grad is making $50-100k AUD more.

[jacques_chester]

The quirk here is that due to the E3 visa, it's about as easy to hire Australians to work in the US as it is to hire them to work in Australia. So why pay more for folks who stay at home?

[thundergolfer]

> So why pay more for folks who stay at home?

What do you mean by this? I could imagine a scenario where the E3 visa puts positive pressure on Australian Software Engineer salaries, causing them to rise.

[jacques_chester]

Put another way: why pay the same price in Australia?

Most companies want to have folks in the same timezone, preferably in the same office. There's really no substitute for being onsite with your peers.

[jashmatthews]

London and Sydney have insanely high costs of living so recruiting and retaining skilled people means paying high in the first place. In London or Sydney you can make £100k or $140k as a good developer. Google simply pays double that at L5 so you don't think about leaving.

[diN0bot]

Yes, this! I can second this as an engineer who is now a professional consultant, working directly with engineers on both interview and negotiation prep, as well as technical and people leadership coaching.

You want to make the most of not only the various kinds technical interviews you might encounter, but also the behavioral conversations, founder/exec chats, even cover letters are a chance to set an intentional narrative. When you're in the loop with specific companies you can even prepare for specific interview loops and negotiation expectations, and thus have particularly targeted results.

[chipperyman573]

>The lifestyle and working environment is generally considered acceptable if not exemplary.

Isn't Amazon known for having the worst lifestyle and working environment out of all FAANG? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

[titanomachy]

Ugh. Yeah, I've heard too many of these stories not to believe them. Most of the people I know at Amazon say they haven't experienced toxicity at that level, though, and that it depends a lot on your manager.

In the absence of a strong, healthy company-wide culture, managers create their own islands of toxicity or calm productivity. I don't know a simple answer of how to ensure you end up on the right one.