Would you make this potential move? (DoD Contracting to FinTech)

There is loads of “keep the lights on” gig at JPMorgan Chase, plus you have to build your Influence aka kids up and try to make sure people know you or you’ll get a smaller raise & bonus than you otherwise could. You may be better off continuing to check. With the credentials you’ve listed you could potentially somewhere else and get more of a salary increase than that.

What precisely makes banks suck? Idk, coming from environments where 9/10 I have to use a sh*tty VM that's hella laggy just to code, access AWS console, patch servers, it gets to me... lol

But seriously, is it the red-tape? Type of gig? Why, if you were in my position, would you not depart?

I guess it's just since of the perception i've had of C1 that I feel like if I miss out on this oppurtunity, it will be hard to get another one in the future. Being an engineer there, if you were in my position, would you just continue to grind LC and upskill?

I think the biggest thing holding me back as well is the stack ranking I have heard regarding. Im pretty competent as an engineer, but I'd rather not have to worry about a bi-annual evaluation just to remain employed.

Don't jump from DOD to banks. Banks suck. If you are a constant leetcoder you will be better served by continuing to grind LC with your chill gig and trying to get to FAANG.

Here’s my experience and that of plenty of of my colleagues:
-massive variety in technical practices / technical acumen of your coworkers, some teams will be rock solid and other teams will be constantly putting out fires
-huge variety in quality of work, lots of teams at banks are not genuinely doing dev work and more maintaining some infra / business processes. Sometimes that is not communicated until you join. Sometimes the release cycle and on call expectations eat into your nights and weekends.
-there is lots of red tape and bureaucracy for gaining access to thing and releasing changes. Over time the pace will sluggish you down and make you a worse dev
-politics plays a sizable part in performance review and year end comp discussions, delivering is not enough and if you are the type of person who doesn’t like “playing the game” you will get burnt out
-at the big corporate banks there is a high amount of toxic Indian management, if you don’t like Indian gig culture you will not not be happy
-offshore teams (I’m assuming you don’t have to deal with this at DOD)
-at banks SWEs are a cost center and not valued
-large amounts of H1Bs of varying skill, it’s not enjoyable to have coworkers who work 15 hours a day for fear of being sent back home

If you join JPMorgan Chase you will likely have to deal with at least some of the above. You could say that you will run into these issues at all companies and that would be valid, but the key distinction is that real tech companies pay a bunch more. If I were you, I would keep sharpening my leetcode skills and attempt to crack FAANG or palantir (since you have a clearance). Don’t sell yourself brief and join a bank for a small raise. C1 is not an esteemed place. You can also find recent posts on dd regarding the culture shift that has taken place there.

You need to get a firm to sponsor you for one. They have to be willing to pay for your experience investigation. Go on clearancejobs, Google, indeed and attempt to find positions that are cleared. I will say you’d likely have more luck going for a secret clearance first, top secret is more expensive for a company to sponsor.

Why do you want to depart Cap1? Is it RTO? Bi-annual performance review? Curious since I was somewhat regretting turning down my Cap1 offer.

You require to ask this for yourself. Chill role for 6k less and less in office expectations VS. minor more paying (you won’t notice the difference) but equal to career goals. Personally I would keep the chill job, do my career goals outside of gig. Unless they paid 15-20k or more, I personally don’t see the value in leaving .

Ok but you are at Instacart. Are you constantly stressed for your continued employment? Asking because a goal of mine as always been to gig in the private sector but, I see comments like yours and re-consider my position. I will admit, my main reasoning is based off of the merit of the org name (i.e. Instacart, Stripe, Apple) and not necessarily the culture.

Stick to dod; way less stress… that difference in money is not worth dick…

How do I get a Top Secret? I require to get out of here and switch from Cap1 to where you are