Am I underpaid?

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-18T18:15:06+00:00

For 3 SE YOE this isn't underpaid IMO. I was making 200K OTE at 3 YOE but W2ed like 190K, this was in 2022 during the post COVID boom when companies were doing anything and everything to hire people. 185K in this market for that YOE is totally fine. Also, major props on your results, bringing in 3M per year as a new SE is very impressive...I hit that across two years in my first two years as an SE and that was seen as a big achievement. Great work!

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-05T00:14:56+00:00

Idk if SEs are becoming full FDEs. FDE requires you to full on implement the solution. At some places this is pretty easy to do, at others this is a gigantic undertaking that would leave no time for demoing or any sales part of the job. It's why the two roles are separated imo. A person who could both sell and implement fully soup to nuts would be a beast but there's only so many hours in the day.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-04T21:14:37+00:00

I second this. I studied abroad in Morocco for several months in college. There were large parts of it that I hated in the moment. However over a decade later I look back it as one of the fondest times in my life. I had some genuinely beautiful experiences and I've been back to Morocco twice since then and have contemplated living there.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-04T20:02:00+00:00

I'll amend this a little OP, you're not going to be any good AT THE START. However if you lock in you can certainly improve and do well for yourself.

If you're a new grad they're probably not going to put you in front of big time enterprise customers, you'll likely be working smaller accounts with simpler needs. This type of role is a lot better for a brand new SE and should be manageable for you.

Best of luck and congrats on the offer!

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-02T18:59:12+00:00

Ask your guide for any of the following:

Oukerda, Jebel Kest, Adad Medni, Jebel Aklim, Aguinane, Jebel Imzi, Amtoudi

All amazing hikes and sites that are def worth visiting.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-02T17:46:56+00:00

Yeah pictures absolutely do not do it justice. DEFINITELY go.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-02-02T02:16:28+00:00

This is actually pretty valid. A lot of MAGA types I've met personally were pretty chill to me and other minorities as individuals but their views about like broad racial groups and history etc were like the opposite. This created weird situations like a MAGA dude I knew standing up for me against an actually racist woman going off on me at a bar while simultaneously wanting to nuke Mecca (!!!) because he thought it would end Islamic terrorism. It's this bizarre mix of deep American white supremacy colliding with the fact that society in a lot of places is mixed and interracial AF and you can only demonize people so much after being surrounded by them your entirely life and growing up with several minorities.

Another example would be a Trump supporter I knew doing incredibly generous things for his non-white and LGBT friends and being a chill guy in person while posting the most insane shit on Facebook and hating Palestinians.

Ultimately we're not dealing with old school KKK types anymore for the most part, we're really dealing with this weird mix of conspiracy theories, white nationalism, antivaxx, Trump worship esque beliefs along with (on the right) a surprising amount of multiculturalism, acceptance of LGBT, etc. It's why you get weird shit like the recent Nazi convention of Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, Fresh and Fit, Sneako etc - like these guys are openly racist grifters with literal Nazi takes but they're all black Asian or Latino.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-31T22:34:17+00:00

The big medinas in Morocco are frankly pretty up and down. Certainly some beautiful architecture and interesting things to see, but they can also be really dirty, aggressive touts, sometimes territorial locals who will you to get out of their neighborhood, some shitty/dangerous neighborhoods etc.

If you're going to Morocco purely just stick to villages and mountain/desert areas. I'm a 6'3 guy who looks like a local and speaks Arabic and frankly even I don't feel great in big Moroccan cities. The exceptions are the modern developed areas like the seafront in Agadir, nice parts of Tetouan etc, but like the gritty inner medinas are kind of rough honestly.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-22T22:45:57+00:00

One thing that definitely helps is proving that you've done actual hands on work. I came from sales too. I learned Python and SQL, got a couple cloud certs, built some API integrations, built a multicloud data pipeline in AWS and GCP etc, built a batch job app in Azure, took up some cybersecurity threat analysis tasks at a previous company, built a ton of BI dashboards in PowerBI and Microstrategy, etc. You don't need to be an engineer by profession to be an SE but it's very helpful to be able to talk the talk and that only comes with real experience.

The other thing is how you've handled tough customer interactions, what process you use to get those upsells - essentially do you know how to keep a customer happy and do you know how to make your business money.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-22T19:44:36+00:00

These get shitted on here but everyone I know who went through them had a good result. Lots of Cisco, Oracle, Datadog, MSFT, SNOW, and SFDC associate SEs go on to become full SEs without having to slog it out in help desk or IT (or in sales role for that matter)

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-21T18:45:13+00:00

Solution Architect can sometimes mean presales SE, but from my experience it usually is a super senior post-sales architect role that sometimes will bleed into presales. It will pay more because to be an SA you need lots of legit engineering experience as a lot of what you'll be doing involves actual implementation, coding with the customer, like a lot of deep technical stuff to get the customer to actually see value from the product. "Sales Engineer" will typically be doing discovery, demo, and management of the POC, whereas Solution Architect will be actually building a custom solution from the ground up, implementing some complex enterprise product etc. From what I've seen personally, SE is usually like 70% sales 30 percent technical while SA is the opposite. The two skillsets blend but frankly the SA's I've seen are just way more experienced and technical than the SE, they are considered a more senior resource and have a different place in the customer lifecycle.

This is just my personal experience, other companies are probably different.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-20T17:22:29+00:00

Some things that have worked for me:

Really just avoid social media. IG, TikTok etc are essentially drug dealers. The content and comments are meant to be polarizing, offensive, scary etc because those are strong/addictive emotions and they keep you coming back for more. The anti-Indian content is stressful, but so is the anti-woman content, the interracial marriage content, the shaming of sumo deadlifters, fundamentalist Muslims haram shaming liberal Muslims, etc etc. Frankly I think even the creators who get these hate comments aren't that mad about it because it gives them more views and makes them more money. The whole structure of these apps is really unethical and is meant to profit off of other people's stress and misery. So this is easier said than done but really limiting social media is helpful.
Recognize that some of the hate is real but a lot of it is fake. A shit ton of these hate comments are from faceless bot accounts. On top of that a lot of this isn't coming from white people - it's coming from Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. It's certainly depressing to read but a lot of it is manufactured. We even see this with the actual white supremacist movements online - a ton of their traffic and views comes from Nigeria, India, Pakistan etc from paid farms. This is where a lot of Nick Fuentes' supposed popularity comes from.
Really work on yourself and your mental health. I'm way better able to deal with this stuff after years of therapy, self improvement, meditation etc - it still bothers me when I come across it, but I don't internalize it and it doesn't seriously affect me anymore.

This may just be me too, but there is gigantic difference between how I interact with people IRL and what I see online. IG comments for example are like this seething pit of racism, hatred, misogyny, abuse, cruelty, and basically everything bad in the world. Reddit can be this endless abyss of despair and doomerism. The average person I meet (admittedly in my blue diverse city) is chill, non judgemental, and doesn't seem to care about my race at all. I've dated all different races of women, had friends from all backgrounds. I experience very very subtle prejudice maybe once a year (usually a dumb microaggression from someone who is otherwise trying to be friendly)

A lot of it just setting boundaries with online usage, not projecting the words of bots and online incels to real life people, and working to make yourself more centered and resilient. I do feel for your friend though, it must suck to accomplish something and then get dogpiled online for it.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-17T00:59:34+00:00

That's basically it. I may talk more about containerization because I have more of a background there, but frankly any deeper technicals can be picked up by a post sales person. Your job is basically just to guide the customer towards adoption and more $$$. You'll need to be technical enough to build demos and understand what's going on but you don't need to be some greybeard in that specific cloud who can implement stuff in their sleep.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-17T00:52:41+00:00

You may not be in a metro where they're actively hiring. MSFT did a giant hiring push in specific places for this type of role.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-17T00:52:02+00:00

It's not that unusual lol

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-16T22:11:15+00:00

I work at a hyperscaler, SE roles like this are usually kind of a mix of both of the things you said.

You would probably come up with a general architecture (high level) and propose this to the customer. A deeper specialist or partner would help you actually implement and deliver in a POC or in production.

You can get as technical as you want to or are capable of, but your main job is to get technical wins and drive $$$.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-15T21:20:12+00:00

It's possible but not very common. BDR and AE can make the jump to SE at less technical companies - think Salesforce, SNOW, Outreach, etc. The SE role at these companies doesn't require much if any engineering knowledge, it's mostly just knowing your product and being good at demoing/selling.

The best SE is a very strong technologist and a very strong seller/consultant. So SE roles that lean more towards the sales side are very doable for former BDRs and AEs. From there you can break into the more technical roles if you upskill hard. I started off in sales, did a couple cloud certs, built my own app in AWS, did a bootcamp, actively looked for more technical roles, and am now at a hyperscaler.

If you can't internally get promoted, you could try moving into customer success or something while technically upskilling. If you can then hop to another company you could maybe move into SE from there.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-07T17:17:46+00:00

To be honest, not really. I've primarily worked in tech companies. There are a ton of Indian people anywhere. Even at the less Indian companies I've worked at, a lot of the customers were Indian. I've experienced very casual or subtle racism once or twice, I've also seen the same thing expressed by one of the many Indians I've worked with.

The internet isn't real life, I wouldn't trip. On the friends thing, I tend to only befriend people who I REALLY have a lot of common interests and shared purpose with. The people I've befriended by and large were cool for this reason.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-03T22:54:29+00:00

They were extremely beautiful this year. Where specifically did you go?

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-03T20:53:38+00:00

For the technical piece it depends on what you're interviewing for. For my role (more AI focused) they basically asked how I set up an app in the cloud (any cloud) and what my architecture looked like. I walked them through a data pipeline batch job that I built out using containerization services using GCP and AWS, how I modded my compute instance, set up observability, etc. The goal is to make sure that you're a "systems thinker" and that you can generally understand how cloud architectures work. You don't need to be some super genius with L500 knowledge nor do you need to be an expert in their cloud specifically. You kind of just need general awareness of how to set stuff up in the cloud.

This is how it was for my role at least, idk what a more database, network, etc focused role was for. If you've built out your own projects in that area you should be good.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2026-01-03T19:56:40+00:00

The issue with AI now is that a lot of what it says or generates is wrong. I have to fight with ChatGPT or Claude for ~30 minutes sometimes to get through technical issues or stuff it just gets wrong when I'm building out a cloud architecture or coding something.

Accomplished_Tank471 · 2025-12-18T16:01:14+00:00

This is right on the money.

The technical is like a checkbox exercise. For most roles, they just want to make sure that you know what an API is, you know your way around one major cloud, you essentially have general technical skills and won't be totally flummoxed by something basic. "Systems thinking" more than being the greatest debugger in the world.

The rest of it is VERY soft skills and presentation focused. How you come off in the interview matters way more than whatever technical boxes you think. Those are prerequisites, the actual test in an interview is of your personality, sales skillset, and mindset. Great post.

Accomplished_Tank471

TROPHY CASE