[patryn20]

I was so fortunate to get in at a startup paying $90k/y usd in 2004.

Now I’m poorly paid compared to the people I “mentor” at $160k + bonuses with no RSU. But at least I’m working on stuff I care about.

I hear these fresh college grads getting $300k offer that have the right university on their meaningless tech degree they drank 24/7 to achieve, and I just want to scream. In three years I’ll be rejecting them for positions writing the software that makes their current employer run.

I’ve nixed so many Amazon and Facebook employees in the interview process that couldn’t answer anything about basic programming skills. Their answers were just “I’d use this off the shelf solution”. Well sorry, but we create that off the shelf solution or an alternative. So you actually have to know how to use binary arithmetic. Bye bye brat.

[smsm42]

Amazon has over 30k engineers. I'm sure there are mediocre ones among them - thousands probably. But for a lot of tasks in the company of Amazon's size, "I’d use this off the shelf solution" is exactly the right answer. Sometimes it isn't, but there would be thousands of places where it is.

> I hear these fresh college grads getting $300k offer that have the right university on their meaningless tech degree they drank 24/7 to achieve, and I just want to scream.

But why? Assume everything you say is right and somebody makes a lot of money undeservedly. Why should it make you scream? You're not paying that money. Some rich idiot does. Why be upset about it? Are you envious? Wasn't what you're doing your own choice?