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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2500 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 2, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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I don't understand. You said FAANG caps out at around 350. But you're at FAANG and made more than that in years 3 and 4.

What are you saying, that you're staff and not a senior swe or that you're counting stock appreciation as part of your compensation?

Your compensation should be calculated based on the value of the stock options at the time they were paid to you, not their value at the time you exercised or sold them.

Consider this: your comp went down, because of a double whammy of cliff and stock market crash. You should now be in a steady state, with each annual refresher replacing the previous expiring one. You expect your compensation to go back up, because you expect the stock market to come back up. But that means that you will make much more if you switch companies now. Here is why:

When you were getting refreshers for past 4 years, the amount was determined by assigning some cash value to it, and then dividing by the current (at the time) stock price to get the number of shares. For example, if you were making $140k in base, and the company wanted you to make $160k a year in stock. Assume the stock price is $100. In a steady state, you have stock vesting from four refreshers, so each refresher should provide a quarter of $160k, ie $40k. Thus, they take $40k, multiply by four year to get the total value over four years to get $160k, and then divide by stock price of $100 to get 1600 stock units as a refresher size.

Now, in the steady state, if the stock suddenly jumps from $100 to $200, your comp is now $140k + 2*$160k = $460k, so you’re happy. However, your next refresher will be only 800 stock units. Conversely, if stock falls to $50, your total comp falls to $220k, but next refresher is 3200 units. The point is that if the new stock price is stable, in the next 4 years, your total comp will converge back to $300k, with $160k in stock.

Now here is a thing: if you switch companies right now, your total comp should converge to $300k immediately, because with the big new hire grant you’ll be obtaining, you’ll compress 4 years of refreshers into it. Moreover, if the stock goes back up slowly over time, the new hire grant will be worth more than 4 refreshers, because it will entirely be granted based on the bottom stock price, while the refreshers will be granted at consecutively increasing stock prices.

This also means, by the way, that your current company will likely offer extra out-of-cycle grants to good performers in order to retain them, so that they don’t simply jump ship. They will not announce it publicly, but if you ask for it privately, you might just get it. I recommend first getting a competing offer though.

There is also one thing I forgot to mention: that promo to senior in 2-3 years? You can get it tomorrow if you switch companies, a nice diagonal promotion. Happened to me and many people I know.

Glad to hear someone is doing well. I make about $7k a month after taxes right now as a SWE manager, which is not bad at all for Russia, but I gotta emigrate and hot fucking damn, Europeans treat their IT like dirt. 350 for senior SWE? More like 100 if you're super lucky and 60 if you're not. And these 60 turn into 48 after the taxes are paid. Getting my $7k back would require finding someone willing to pay 120. I really hope I can win the diversity lottery this year and move to the greener pastures across the pond.

I really wish someone had told me how much software engineers made in the US when I was younger. I was good at math and liked programming as a kid, but didn't know about computer science until after I started university, and I had no idea they made a lot of money until about three years ago when my friend moved to California and told me what the starting salaries were. But even then, I didn't know how much they increased once you had some experience until a few months ago. Why isn't this better known?

In Sweden if you're having a salary of 60, you're actually getting paid 80 and get to keep 42. ^^

Work in London for a FAANG or in Switzerland.

It was nice of Putin to start the war right before FAANGs entered a contraction phase.

An easier (not easy) way to migrate into the US instead of betting on the DV would be to get Canadian citizenship (trivial compared to getting US citizenship) and then try though the TN visa path, albeit that is a decade long con, but us poors outside the US have to think in those timeframes if we actually want a shot of getting into the US without being within the 99.999 percentile of programmers or being millionaires.

Yes. If you're young, educated, speak English, and have a good job offer, you'll have enough points to be granted permanent residency, after which you get Canadian citizenship after five years I believe. We have a points system that favours economic immigrants and a much higher immigration rate than the US has relative to our population.

Even if you don't have quite enough points, I think you can get a two year work visa pretty easily and then having Canadian work experience gets you more points which allows you to apply for permanen residency. There are probably other types of work visas you can get too, because I know people who have been here for years who don't have their permanent residencies yet.

This. I work for US company and we have people from Canada working for us (remote). In my 2 previous jobs, we also had people from Canada and even interns from Canada working for us. If the company is remote-friendly, hiring somebody from Canada doesn't seem to be a big deal (I'm sure there's some paperwork to be done but looks like it's not too bad if I see Canadians hired all the time). If you can get into Canada, the chances of getting a job is the US are much higher, and as far as I heard, Canada's immigration policies are easier to deal with than in the US. Also, Canada has its own IT companies, though I don't know how the pay is there, probably worse than in FAANG.

Yes, American visa policy is all about luck, there's a reason why illegal immigration is so high. L-1 is the only visa that has a straightforward path to permanent residence, and it still requires a certain shuffle through another country.

The DV odds are very much against me. Last year the chance to get selected was about 1 in 100, 2 in 100 if both spouses applied.

Congrats! Could be some tricky decisions ahead, but it's a nice problem to have. Are the finance roles as a technologist, or a trader/researcher? Do you know how much of the comp is bonus, or how variable the amounts are?

What kind of background do you need to be a quant?

Depends on where in finance, I think? Banking is rough, absolutely, but in quant funds 45-hour weeks are common, at least in the UK.

It's more hours than @null's current setup, and in-office would be different from WFH, but it doesn't have to ruin your life.

Yeah, must depend where you work, I guess? 45ish was always what I saw offered, and at least for the ones I know about, their people usually do leave on time.

For what it's worth, I know a variety of Jane Street London Office employees and for all of them they either have a great work-life balance, or genuinely love the job, put in more effort/take seniority promotions, and therefore get paid more for more hours, but they enjoy it so it doesn't matter. Hours are usually like 8-5/6ish (depends on whether you're tied to the trading hours or doing behind the scenes work). One person I know moved into their crypto team, so because the market is 24/7 they work Saturdays, but get Mondays off instead. NYC might be different though!

If you do manage to get a Jane Street job, of the 5 staff I know who started in the last 4 years, none have left (and the pay is...impressive), so I'd definitely consider it.

Just differing circles- I don't know anybody who works at a FAANG on the technical side (a couple in marketing/sales). Everybody I know who works at JS did maths at my university, they hire (graduates at least) from an extremely small talent pool in the UK. I'll try and figure out a way that I can help without doxxing myself!

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