[carom]

Major metro big tech, toward the senior side of things. Check out [1]. Salaries in the 200s are very realistic. 300s is senior or long tenure with stock appreciation. It is worth grinding leetcode for a few months.

1. https://levels.fyi/

[celdon25]

Ah, thought you were referring to salary, not IOUs. I'll stick with consulting.

[carom]

Common misunderstanding. RSU grants at public companies vest regularly. At Google I had no cliff and my shares vested monthly. With auto sell it was just another ~10k of cash per month. Smaller grants would vest quarterly.

FWIW I consult now and make more than I ever did at a company, so also find a niche and raise your rates.

[celdon25]

Yeah that's my plan right now. I've thought about going back to full time every now and then but it is often too hard to advance and many companies with high growth end up failing. I have a lot of freedom where I'm at now (transitioned to a consultant with more pay and mostly choosing my own hours) and it was hard work to earn it at that company. Sometimes you get in too early and get burned out, sometimes you get in too late to make a difference. Big corporations aren't really for me either and I don't want to move back to a major coastal city, it ends up costing more than the difference in pay.

The company I'm currently with is doing pretty well too and I have a lot of time there so there's always a possibility of advancement there too. Though if there were jobs with 300k cash salary or more that didn't require relocation I'd have to really think about it. There's always a risk that the new job doesn't work out for whatever reason and I've been burned badly by that before. Never fully recovered from the 2016 move to Palo Alto!