

Job searching in Silicon Valley / SF different than other areas? - xdev1010

I'm originally from the bay area but all my professional dev experience has been in a different state. I'm looking at moving back to hopefully take my career to the next level, have noticed the job ads / companies present themselves very differently than they do in my area (where I am now its usually clear in job ads they basically don't give a crap, just spouting off generic bs about years exp, outdated platforms, etc) but the ads in the bay area seem a lot sharper. Basically what I'm asking is, I have found using recruiters in my current state to be helpful to advance my career but not sure using a recruiter in the bay area would be the best approach but I'm also leery of spending a bunch of time talking to smaller companies who may not be willing to pay what I'm looking for (with recruiters its always been very upfront with this), not that I'm looking for anything outrageous, just I have dealt with some startups before who were basically only willing to pay well below market rate. Any insight is appreciated.
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triggit
The market in San Francisco (we still have to compete with the Google/Facebook
etc) demands that start-ups pay market rate. Everyone on engineering team here
at Triggit makes at least six figures. VC funded companies generally build a
lot of budget around hiring, and paying, top engineering talent.

Depending the type of job you are looking for, and the size of the company,
I'd actually encourage you not to use a recruiter. Although we use them, we
don't look at resumes from recruiters nearly as closely as direct applicants -
especially if you do a little bit of legwork and see if you can't find an
advocate within the company.

Just be direct with a company, tell them what you need to make, and they can
pretty quickly tell you yes or no. I'd say target start-ups with funding, or
that are profitable, and you'll find a nice salary waiting for you.

Good luck!

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jtchang
What are you looking for? Are you looking for a startup that is willing to pay
above market? That can be difficult if they are not profitable yet.

