Haseeb Qureshi

To add to point #3, (information is power), I would advise any candidate to do research into approx. salary ranges for the type of positions they've applied to and the geographical area in which they are located.

The author does lament the general trend of "pay secrecy" in part 2 [2] of his previous article on how he landed a job at Airbnb[1] but it's worthwhile to point out here. Almost any offer/salary does not exist in a vacuum but within the context of the current salary ranges (i.e. the market) for similar positions and also different positions.

Look at it this way: If I tell you that apples are 2 Simoleons (§) per lb, is that a good price? There's hardly any way to know, given that I quoted it in a fictional currency.

But if you know that oranges are 10§/lb, bananas are 5§/lb and that you can get a job at the grocery store selling them making 20§/hour, that gives some context to not only the prices of apples, but also the relative value of different produce and the ability to afford it. This is the essence of a market economy, which the job economy is an instance of.

Sites like Glassdoor and other efforts to share salary information[3] (even if they may be subject to reporting bias) are a good way to give you more information about the relative value of any offer, which will be another tool in your kit for negotiation. Read as much as you can, as in my experience it will be well worth your time.

1. http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-i/

2.…

FYI, he's actually quite technically talented. Let's assume less and RTFA more.

http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii/

Excerpt:

... many people are drawing the conclusion that I primarily got a job at Airbnb by being really good at negotiating, or gaming the system, or something like that.

If you have ever done a software engineering interview, you would know that this is completely absurd. There is no way to negotiate or charm someone into passing a software engineering interview. Much less 8 of them.

If you don’t know the ins and outs of object-oriented programming, database design, asymptotic analysis, binary search trees, or how to improve the cache efficiency of an algorithm, then you’re not going to pass a computer science-heavy interview at a top company. You don’t even have a shot at it.

The moral of my story is not “get really good at negotiating and you’ll get a great job.” Negotiating is important, and I certainly encourage everyone to negotiate!

But first, get good at the thing you’re doing. Then worry about negotiating.

I moved to San Francisco from Austin, Texas about a year ago because I decided I was going to earn-to-give. Since then I’ve been relentlessly trying to build a new career for myself, so I could earn more and donate more to charity.

Entering into App Academy, barely knowing the basics of Ruby, I came into the office and grinded every day, spending 80+ hour weeks just coding and studying. I’d come in at 9AM in the…

Definitely agree with you here...as a current faculty member, but someone who has been largely self-taught in recent years, I have to keep reminding myself that I myself needed the structure and artificial deadlines of homework and finals to get into the groove, to get to the point where I could get a job in which I learned more skills at a significantly faster rate (daily professional deadlines tend to do that to you). Not everyone starts out as a self-learner.

Recently, a guy named Haseeb made some news for scoring a job worth $250K at Airbnb even though he was an English major who was not even a year removed from his bootcamp entry date. People were pissed but if you read the guy's story, you'd see that he's not your regular bootcamper...he was a millionaire as a teenager after teaching himself how to play poker...and this is how he describes his bootcamp experience:

http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii/

> Entering into App Academy, barely knowing the basics of Ruby, I came into the office and grinded every day, spending 80+ hour weeks just coding and studying. I’d come in at 9AM in the morning and leave around midnight, 7 days a week, sleeping in a bunk bed in SOMA in a 200 square feet shared room.

How many students at even the best colleges can describe themselves as working that hard on anything (well, other than athletes)?

A substantial portion of Google engineers don’t have any degrees. Here’s one person who got a job offer from Google after doing App Academy and them being an instructor there. Lambda School is more than twice as long as App Academy so presumably they cover more.

https://haseebq.com/how-to-break-into-tech-job-hunting-and-interviews/

> Despite having first learned how to code almost a year before, having a background as an English major and former professional poker player, I was able to land a total of 8 offers including Google, Uber, Yelp, and Airbnb (where I ultimately joined). In this three-part blog post I’m going to describe my advice to a job-seeker trying to break into the tech industry.

I think you already know that practically, it is pretty much impossible that you will close the gap at your current company. The fact that such a large gap has persisted over multiple years demonstrates that your management doesn't reward performance in a competent manner.

If you land a position at a Big 4/5, you can expect to make 300k+ (total comp), and still retain flexible work hours, PTO, etc. Competition for dev talent is fierce, and with good interview / negotiation skills, it is possible to make integer multiples of your current comp without sacrificing perks such as a good team and flexible hours.

Also, read this: http://haseebq.com/how-not-to-bomb-your-offer-negotiation/

Colleges and universities are corrupt dinosaur institutions that indoctrinate students in subjects that working devs basically never use, like calculus, Java, and recursion. COVID can't kill them off fast enough. People like Haseeb Qureshi[1] amply demonstrate that you don't need a fancy degree to break into the top echelons of FAANG. It's 2020, not 1920: just do a bootcamp, self-study using one of the free open-source curricula,[2] and projects/a high-quality portfolio are all you actually need!

[1] https://haseebq.com/how-to-break-into-tech-job-hunting-and-interviews/

[2] https://github.com/ossu/computer-science