When switching companies isn’t worth 300k at Google
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I’m switching companies… for the 3rd time.
Here’s my career so far:
2020: [150k] Amazon (SDE I)
2021: [185k] Microsoft (L60/SDE I)
2022: [300k] Google (L4/SDE II)
What I worry about most
Sure I’m getting a good pay bump but here’s some reasons why it might not be worth it.
When you switch careers, you’ll likely get a pay bump. But you’ll be trading experience for money. You’re trading time because you have to spend time learning a lot of things like internal tooling, team culture, code base structure, and project details. When you’re spending time learning this multiple times, you’ll be missing out on valuable experience when you’re done onboarding.
Following my career choices, I’ll have to onboard 3 times whereas someone else who stayed at the same company might only onboard once. If onboarding takes 4 months, then I’ll spend 1 year not making impact. It won’t feel like I’ll have 2 years of experience, it’ll feel like I’ll have 1 year of experience twice. That is how I’m falling behind my peers.
My Career Bubble
When you have 1 year of experience twice, people will catch on. I might be exposed that I’m over-leveled for the role I’m hired for. Then I may deal with performance issues because I can’t perform as well as someone who has learned the ins and outs of their role because they weren’t company hopping.
The ins and outs I’ll probably struggle with is learning the different design patterns that are commonly used. I’ve also never contributed to a system design and I haven’t led a project. People with similar years of experience as me might have been exposed to a few of those experiences. But I haven’t been exposed to any with my tenure. All because I’m spending more time onboarding instead of making an impact in my role.
So how did this happen?
I didn’t have any big tech internships in university and it feels like I need to make up for lost experiences. I wanted to learn what different company cultures were like and compare which ones I’d see myself long term. Students get this trial during their summers. I didn’t get this at all so I’m making up for it now.
I guess you can say I’m a full-time intern changing to 3 companies in 2 years. But every time I switch it becomes easier for me to think about changing companies when I experience slight discomfort instead of dealing with those challenges for the sake of my long-term career. I have to think if compensation is worth resetting my career progression
For me, 300k compensation is great but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m much more knowledgeable than many other engineers or even some junior engineers. Also, the larger caveat in making multiple company jumps is I’ll have a harder time interviewing for senior roles compared to others who built their engineering skills at the same company over years.
When they’re ready to apply to senior roles at Meta or Netflix, I’ll still be figuring out how to design a system. By then I’m sure their offers will be much more competitive than what I chased after in the short-term at Google.
I’m excited for my new role at Google, but it doesn’t come without its cons. My long-term career isn’t as healthy as it could be and the best way for me to fix it is to stay put.
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Alex Nguyen | LinkedIn
