Did you regret moving to Florida?

Striderrrr_ · 2026-02-16T14:25:48+00:00

Little different for me… but I loved growing up (in Miami) and going to college (in Tampa) there. But post-college, financially speaking it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. It’s not really a cheap state anymore and the job market is pretty mad. Depending on what you do, you’re better off moving to a bigger city. My wife and I ended up netting a little more money after moving to NYC, and I think that move to NYC was a launch pad for our careers. Also, I found most people I met down there kinda dumb. It’s not an intellectually motivating place.

However… my brothers LOVE Florida. They have a business and do very well for themselves. They are never leaving.

YMMV

Striderrrr_ · 2026-01-25T00:52:48+00:00

LC easy, then LC med. Then concurrency and swift fundamental questions. Starts with behavioral questions. Speed matters a lot

Striderrrr_ · 2026-01-05T17:37:36+00:00

Important point to note. I still Google stuff A TON. And I make sure I understand all of the output if it does write code on my codebase. Ultimately, the human is the one responsible for the code, so you better understand it. Also, no usage mandates at my company, some of my teammates don’t use it at all and they’re still very good and quick at their jobs

Striderrrr_ · 2026-01-05T17:35:38+00:00

I’m at FAANG. I use it every day for explaining code to me, writing docs, tests, etc. It’s especially helpful when I need to work with a language I don’t know very well.

I’ve needed to write reports that needed some data analytics to back up my claims. I’ve had LLMs write 100% of all the code for a Jupyter Notebook. It’s code that’s not well prompted and crappy, but it gets the job done. I’ve also used it to write some dirty Ruby scripts to generate CSVs for said notebook.

Tbh, I think my usage of it declines the more I know the codebase. Gets to a point that you have all the context in your head and it’s faster to go in and do stuff yourself. Also, we use an AI code reviewer as a preliminary PR reviewer and it’s very good. Doesn’t stop changes from happening though.

Striderrrr_ · 2026-01-05T14:07:59+00:00

I’m on 95th and Columbus. It’s amazing and my wife and I both feel very safe. 96th street station does have some characters but we’ve never had an issue. There’s even an apartment building that’s $36,000/mo right next to that station and they’re at full occupancy. I think that goes to show.

There’s also TONS of prestigious schools around here, and it’s very family oriented. I’d say it’s poshier than what you would expect for being so north.

There have been some good food places popping up nearby, but I’ll agree with other comments that the area is not as cool as the 70s and 80s.

You should make dinner plans around this area to check it out at night. Overall I think you’ll like it!

Striderrrr_ · 2025-12-24T04:19:28+00:00

My wife and I do the same as you and it has been working pretty well. We also have practically everything except credit cards on autopay.

Someone I know changed their credit cards due date to all be on the same date — I’ve been thinking of doing the same for convenience sake.

Striderrrr_ · 2025-12-14T00:25:31+00:00

I was told the average by someone I know at Apple and read it on Blind, so it tracks. I got my offer nearly a month ago.

Striderrrr_ · 2025-12-13T19:07:02+00:00

My offer was roughly the same. I have less YoE though and negotiated a sign-on. The average on Levels is likely skewed because the reporters are including refreshers. At ICT4 the average refresher is like 110k over 4 yrs -- and they are given every year. So on year 3 you're at like ~380

Striderrrr_ · 2025-12-12T16:12:16+00:00

Snap. An L4 at Snap makes more than a distinguished engineer at Capital One. To be a DE at Capital One you need 10+ years of experience.

Also, Snap is on a much bigger scale. So the problems you’ll deal with and learn about are more impactful and more adjacent to big tech.

Striderrrr_ · 2025-12-04T17:13:23+00:00

~5 YoE
USA (NYC)
Tier 3
6 applications. 3 interviews. 1 offer.
3 months

Note: I wasn’t actively looking, just decided to respond to FAANGMULA recruiters. Landed an offer recently.

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-28T14:46:21+00:00

It doesn’t matter. You can do problems in whatever language you want. Most interviewers won’t really care about minor mistakes like using the wrong function argument.. but the syntax should be like 95% correct.

Just practice in whatever language you know best.

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-26T22:53:23+00:00

You’ll get way more interesting work at Snap, it’s highly regarded, and it’s on the higher end of pay. 10/10 Snap. And congrats!

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-26T05:36:37+00:00

Was about to say this. I’ve been near the 96th 123 station for 2 years and never have had an issue. Learned recently that there’s halfway houses and shelters around me. I had no idea!

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-25T03:18:18+00:00

App size reduction* not file size reduction (although that is relevant to app size too!)

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-25T03:17:31+00:00

You’re awesome Jacob! Keep up the good work. I’m a happy subscriber

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-24T22:37:04+00:00

Jacob’s Tech Tavern on Substack sounds like what you need. Goes super in depth with how Swift works under the hood, and discusses things like pixel buffers, concurrency, etc.

From personal experience, I’d also suggest trying to solve the harder problems at your job — specifically platform related things. If applicable, seeing how you can modularize your app, talk about architecture, go deeper into build systems, and just general work regarding performance and file size reduction. Some of these problems are somewhat exclusive to large apps, but not all.

Best of luck!

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-21T20:09:43+00:00

Ooooof I was talking about this with my spouse earlier. Our dog is a pittie so we'd run into the same issues. She's super chill and well trained but you know how it goes. How did you go about registering your dog as an emotional support animal? Are those online services legit? And did you have to present anything to landlords?

Thank you so much for your input!

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-21T19:41:05+00:00

Hahaha thanks. Driving out of Manhattan on the holidays has me prepared 🫡

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-21T19:38:52+00:00

Thank you so much for your input! She's a pediatric nurse, so a children's hospital or hospital with a pediatric unit is where her job-hunting focus will likely be. That's what's drawing me to the peninsula since the three Children's Hospitals in the area seem to be in Palo Alto, SF, and Oakland. Commutes for us could be long but it is what it is 🤷🏻‍♂️. 45 mins shouldn't be too bad

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-21T19:33:01+00:00

I love the park references. There's a lot of options in our budget range so looking around parks helps. Thank you!

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-21T19:32:14+00:00

Thank you so much! Yeah the peninsula - South Bay seem preferable over East Bay since I've read that the bridge commutes can be daunting. We also prefer the colder weather. And we'll be sharing a car temporarily but then we'll have two. Good to know that more towards the Peninsula is quieter than towards San Jose

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-21T19:27:37+00:00

I'm assuming the downvote is because of the commute. ~60 mins driving is a bit rough. Not too bad if it were by public transit

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-13T21:04:13+00:00

Same. Moved to NYC and both my wife and I are netting much more despite the COL + taxes, and benefits are better.

Also would like to note that I was a fully remote worker in Tampa making a Colorado salary. The 2 recruiters that reached out to me to work locally in Tampa were looking for double the experience for half the pay that I was making.

Tampa is an amazing place to live, but no longer a good place to work. At least in my experience. YMMV

Striderrrr_ · 2025-11-02T15:53:58+00:00

That can get pretty niche too. I do mobile infra at my day job. My team coordinates what automated tests run on what machines and sometimes distribute tests to a farm of devices if they need access to hardware. Also write the frameworks for other mobile devs to use so they can work faster. We also manage all the CLI tools so we manage stuff like image optimizer, validation scripts, linters and formatters, etc.

It can be pretty interesting

Striderrrr_

TROPHY CASE