In my short career I’ve noticed that employers are notorious for underpaying you to the point that people with 3-4 years of experience are getting paid the same as freshers. The management always has an excuse to not increase pay or increase it very minimally. The best way to increase pay has been to keep moving every 2-3 years from one company to the next if switching means at least 1.5x or 2x the current salary.
This means major interview prep requiring solving leetcode style questions, solving system design questions, then some more. I just wanted to how often do you prepare? Are you always interview ready or start prepping a few months before switching jobs?
It’s strange because I have never had leetcode questions. I’m a C++ developer and, when I switch, I’m always asked about my previous jobs, and maybe my experience in C++20 with a few questions like “what objects of the C++20 STL have you used so far?”
I guess it depends on the country (I’m in France) and the language I want to work with (mostly C++ for me but I can do everything else).
I can’t even usually get an interview without passing leetcode bullshit (which sometimes I pass with flying colors and sometimes I bomb even for the same skillset - the quality of the questions can be so variable!).
Wow. That sounds so much simpler and better. I’m in India and it’s typically 4 or 5 interview rounds here of which there’s an online test, a leetcode round, an actual coding round, a system design and a hiring manager round. Almost every company here if you exclude service based shops have copied the interview process from big tech minus the big tech pay.
Employers here are notorious for underpaying people and this is why most pay increases only happen while switching. It’s insane. But the number of people/developers here is so much that you’ve little bargaining power.
I still have 2 or 3 interviews but it’s mostly : one technical interview, one with a manager to see if you could work with others, and one with HR to check if you’re not insane.