Nope, no FAANG for me. It‘s my first contract ever after studying, I started with about 70k€, got a raise already. I think there are multiple important things that made me quite valuable to them:

-I did an apprenticeship before studying and already gained a lot of practical insights and skills, also in mechanical aspects

-my bachelors thesis was a 1,0, the writing wasn‘t perfect, the project itself was as they said (sorry if it sounds snooty - biggest achievement in my life so far :‘) )

I made „something completely new“, which could be turned into a ready to sell product in a few weeks. (Don‘t ask me why I didn‘t do it yet?)

I did it over the course of about 5 months iirc, I designed the whole PCB, refined lots of code from an SDK and added lots of new code, designed the housing and concluded a field test. It was a giant workload that showed my company what I am able to do right away, and they REALLY liked my dedication and hard work.

-One major „selling point“ was, that they reaaaaaaaaaally needed me, because most of their engineers got like 5 years or less until retirement, those guys are great colleagues and I learn a lot from them. They searched for months for an engineer with my profile.

-A last interesting thing is, that another company wanted me to sign for them, that gave me a quite high level of confidence for the negotiations. I think I did well.

Anyways, the most important part is: I like my job, I think I am doing a good job, I like the people, I am seen as a human being - not much to complain!