[inertiatic]

Working for a UK company here, although remotely from another country, making around $90k as a lead engineer in a somewhat specialized field.

Seeing as salaries are constantly rising due to WFH being so common, and with anecdotal data from this thread, I'm feeling I might be underpaid (closing in on 10 years of experience on top of CS diploma and an MSc).

So my side question is, how do you target high paying positions without having to go through a LC type interview in a FAANG company? Recruiters who reach out to me on Linkedin avoid the salary question usually.

[wikibob]

You hit leetcode until you can do mediums in 20 minutes.

[mettamage]

This. It’s less bad than you think.

learning styles:

- text

- videos

- tutor

- with random person from the web (eg pramp)

- with a buddy

(And all include practicing problems)

Pick the learning style you like most. It isn’t so bad.

[inertiatic]

I can realistically do most mediums quite quickly, missing an edge case here and there without a test-fix loop like LC provides. On LC and in Python I find most of the medium problems trivial. This is not my problem.

My problem is I find these interviews dehumanizing, and they reflect on how the work is afterwards. I like my work, and I like working with people who like their work and are there because they're good at doing what the work is, not because they could do what most second year undergrads could easily do. I've been historically targeting positions related to certain field, and I'd want to be hired because of what knowledge and experience I've built up.

Still, my feeling is worsened by how long these interview processes take (multiple sessions of the same thing basically), and how you can fail arbitrarily because of slight mistakes. Which means, even if you know you'll pass 80% (quite good) of your LC medium focused interviews, if you take 5 of them in a row, you have a 32% of not failing one. It's a numbers game, obviously, but that doesn't mean the human playing it doesn't experience feelings of stress and frustration.

[wikibob]

Sometimes to reach a goal we want in life, we have to do things we find unpleasant.

It is what it is. There’s a time to change the world, and a time to just put in the work.

Software interviews are a pretty low on the list of impactful things to take personally.

30 years ago to reach the equivalent level of compensation required being born into a family that got you into the right prep school, taught you to aim for Law or Medicine, carefully controlling your grades for 18 years, getting through 4+3 years for law and getting into a top 10 school to be able to get into a white shoe firm, or 4+4+5 years for Medicine.

Now, for us nerds who like computering, quite literally a few months of leetcode can catapult you into $500,000 per year at a top 5 in the world company.

Those who want it enough find a way to get it done.