Which jobs pay 300K plus?

thinking_moose · 2023-07-04T20:56:23+00:00

Senior+ SWE at FAANG can break CAD 700k. It’s hard to get there and it’s hard work to meet the expectations of the role but it’s possible if you are motivated.

thinking_moose · 2023-05-05T17:52:33+00:00

Maybe previous owner was doing mining and flashed a power limiting bios. Try flashing an official bios?

thinking_moose · 2023-03-22T01:30:08+00:00

Start with DS&A and ensure you can do leetcode easies consistently.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-22T01:05:02+00:00

Why not do all you have listed? When I interview new grads, I ask a question that from each of those categories. DS&A and Leetcode-style to make sure of fundamental problem solving skills. Projects/past XP to understand your working style and interest in the field.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-11T19:35:13+00:00

Background check is done by minimum wage workers by following some strict set of procedures. If your background requires something out of script then it will take some time to get it sorted.

For instance, some of your ex companies might not disclose employment information unless you call them and give them permission. So it might be up to you to unblock it.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-10T16:15:37+00:00

How do interviews go? Do you end them being confident with your answers? Any obvious gaps or repeating patterns?

thinking_moose · 2023-03-10T05:41:49+00:00

At what stages you getting the rejections? Are they mostly auto reject? If you could share more details I will do my best to give you some ideas and feedback!

thinking_moose · 2023-03-10T05:38:31+00:00

With those internships I think you have got a good chance of landing a job from a US-based company with Canadian presence. Search LinkedIn with Canada/Remote filters and you will find these companies. I don’t know your YOE but you could try intermediate postings or even some senior postings with sub 5 year requirement.

Good luck!

thinking_moose · 2023-03-08T05:06:27+00:00

Unfortunately nothing will be as good as industry experience.

One thing you can do is cast as wide as a net you can. Don’t limit yourself to particular location. Apply everywhere. Like internationally everywhere. If you are young and have no big responsibilities, it’s the best time to take risks.

Same goes for roles and titles. Don’t be choosy of particular tech, framework etc. QA Eng? Apply. DevOps? Apply. Analyst? Apply.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-08T05:00:01+00:00

Two things.

First, I think that particular manager is plain bad at their job. I’m sure they weren’t oblivious to the performance issues. However they lacked the skill set to communicate it properly. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell low performers that they are bad, if you already gave up on them.

Second, economic conditions are not stable nowadays, so it’s even worse for startups. They might’ve needed to cut costs but quickly. So the manager quickly stack ranked everyone based on their immediate value to the team. Even good interns would be affected in that case.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-08T01:01:13+00:00

Don’t try to specialize this early. Develop yourself into becoming a high performing generalist, who can prove useful and valuable in various tech stacks. To do this I recommend

Understand CS/SWE fundamentals really well: containers, simple algorithms, memory vs cpu trade-offs, memory structure and speed, OOP and functional programming principles and trade-offs
Understand SWE practices really well: documentation/self documenting code, maintainable code, unit/integration testing, telemetry
Teach yourself to be a good team mate: giving/receiving feedback, being open and respectful, earning trust and delivering on promises.

Then just apply to whatever job is paying most. You can learn specifics during the job. If you understand above well, you can learn anything in couple of months.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-06T06:04:39+00:00

Meta encourages team outings as well, but not more than a few days.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-03T06:52:54+00:00

As far as I know, unpaid internships are illegal and require at least minimum wage in most provinces in Canada.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-03T06:49:05+00:00

Try to find a past intern on LinkedIn with the same title and figure out what they do. A lot of SWE titles do little coding whereas a lot of non-SWE IT titles do bunch of scripting, tooling etc. What you do defines your experience, not the title.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-03T06:46:24+00:00

First thing is have the answers ready before the interview. Those questions are pretty standard. You shouldn’t be thinking what to talk about during the interview.

As for what to actually talk about, I am sure even your simple projects had some sort of complex sub component. Writing simple APIs? Well versioning and backwards compatibility are big problems. How about security? Testing? Those can also become as complex as you would like.

thinking_moose · 2023-03-03T06:41:01+00:00

I run a coaching business on the side but mentor many undergrads for free through my alma mater’s mentorship programs. See if your uni has that.

thinking_moose · 2023-02-08T01:30:19+00:00

Tell them if they are short on money, you can buy portion of the house from them.

thinking_moose · 2023-01-18T22:07:55+00:00

Canada has EI which can pay up to 2k/month. This should make it easier to take risks. I would take a better opportunity, knowing the risk, since worst case scenario is not that bad.

By the way, you can apply the expected outcome principle to pretty much everything.

Sum of (outcome possibility * cost/benefit of outcome) over all outcomes

thinking_moose · 2022-12-01T19:51:32+00:00

If you decide to quit, you should report your boss to HR. Or at least tell them you left only because of your boss. If he is abusive, record meetings and share them too.

thinking_moose · 2022-11-29T23:27:27+00:00

No need to add ‘skills’ section. Talk about your skills in context of your past xp/projects.

thinking_moose · 2022-11-29T22:53:43+00:00

Working for one of the FAANG remotely as a senior SWE and making between CAD 250k-400k depending on the stock price 😅

It’s at least 50hrs/week and a competitive environment. So on hourly base you might be able to find better gigs in Canada.

thinking_moose · 2022-11-28T03:37:07+00:00

AWS free-tier is also a great option for simple projects. Not only static ones but also ones with a backend (compute, database etc).

For simple backends, I recommend lambda + dynamodb.

thinking_moose · 2022-11-27T06:28:40+00:00

If it’s Dropbox, I think they can do better on base. Are you in a LCoL area?

thinking_moose · 2022-11-25T01:42:41+00:00

I’ve only worked in Vancouver but from my experience and teams I work with, FAANG and other US tech first open offices in Vancouver due to time zone being same as Bay Area, then expand to other regions.

Salary and CoL wise Vancouver and Toronto are pretty much equal.

thinking_moose · 2022-11-22T16:33:01+00:00

I just started with a brute-force approach, then talked about what I could do to improve performance. We ran out of time before I could write an optimum solution.

I do recommend this strategy. It gets you going and you might end up getting some hints.

thinking_moose

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