I’ve been really on the fence about the cost/benefit of job switching. I’m currently at a FANG company and seem to be within six months to a year from staff level. Once you’re at staff level, you are considered “parallel” to the first level of the management track and can relatively easily transition into being a manager if you are interested. The comp on the manager track is the same as the comp on the individual contributor track (for the same level), but unfortunately other companies still seem to view “manager” as better and tend to make much higher offers or recruit directly for management positions. The company I’m with has a number of other great benefits besides comp (amazing health insurance, parental leave, remote work, etc.) that are not insignificant.

On the other hand, I’ve been bombarded by recruiters so much recently that I finally decided to take one of the interviews to see where I’m at. I barely missed an offer that would have been almost twice what I’m currently making, and I didn’t prep for their interview loop, so I think if I brushed up a bit on my coding I could probably get an offer around that range.

~2x comp for a remote position is hard to pass up, but a lot of companies that are reaching out to me have already had layoffs (maybe not necessarily technical staff yet) or lack the stability that FANG has. I wonder if I would join a new company just to get laid off. A few people from my team who left for other companies have already come back within months. And one of my interviewers just outright derided his own company to me in a long and strangely personal rant at the end of my interview.

So I don’t know. I think I could increase comp and career growth much more quickly by switching, but there’s a lot of risks, particularly for being a remote worker and trying to have a second child during what is possibly a massive economic crash. I think for now I may just stay and see if I can get permission to moonlight on a side project.