Here's exactly how much I made at Google, Snap, and Cisco in non-technical roles

• Jonathan Javier is a former product operations analyst at Google, Snap, and Cisco.
• He left his $120,000 job to build his startup to help people land their dream jobs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jonathan Javier, the CEO and founder of Wonsulting, an AI-powered platform that helps job seekers optimize their résumés, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles. Insider has verified his income with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I graduated from the University of California, Riverside and always wanted to work in the tech industry in non-tech roles focusing on strategy, sales operations, and advisory.

During that time, I wasn't able to get into the big companies.

Then, I started networking on LinkedIn in the early days of 2016 and talked to a lot of people at companies like Meta through LinkedIn InMail and personal invites. I also went to career fairs and networking events, where I connected with people on LinkedIn ahead of time — this approach helped me stand out and ensured that I wouldn't get lost in the crowd.

I landed my first job at Snapchat through LinkedIn: in the search bar, I typed in "hiring manager" and "operations." I found a recruiter at Snap and I sent her a personalized invite to connect with her. At first, she didn't respond, so I sent another message with my résumé.

Three months later, she said that there was an operation specialist role available. Then I got the interviews. During the interview, I also prepared a case study. I put my résumé, a business project tailored towards the job description in a yellow folder (because yellow is Snapchat's color) and gave it to them. Two hours later, I got the offer from Snapchat.

How much money I made working in tech

Snap: Product operations specialist, $40,000 salary

I worked at Snapchat for about eight months working as an operations specialist. During my time there, I worked on the tagging system and structured the onboarding and hiring process for new vendors and workers.

However, the difficult part of the job was the commute — I had to wake up around 4:35 am, drove for an hour to get to work and drove two hours back home. Also, I worked Sunday to Thursday, which just wasn't sustainable.

After seven months, Snapchat outsourced our positions to another company. Snapchat offered us salaries even lower than what we were already earning if we wanted to stay at the company. While some team members chose to accept this offer, I made the decision to part ways with Snap.

Google: Sales strategy and product operations analyst, $80,000 salary

After my job was outsourced, I made a LinkedIn post about it and it went viral. Then, a hiring manager at Google reached out to me, so I sent him messages, went through three interviews, and landed an offer.

As a product operations analyst, I was the subject matter expert (SME) for the sales pipeline: I worked with a lot of sales teams and taught account executives how to sell Google local services to local businesses around the area. My focus was on teaching them the art of cold calling, like what to say and what to steer clear of.

After six months, I became a product trainer at Google — my manager saw that I liked doing career development workshops, and she thought I could do it for Google, too.

During that time, I hired and trained more than 200 vendors for the sales team and spoke on panels with Googlers regarding career journeys into tech.

Cisco: Go-to-market strategy and operations analyst
$90,000 base salary + $10K bonus + $20K stock options

I left Google for Cisco for two main reasons. First, the compensation increase from Cisco was significant, around 33%. Second, I enjoyed talking with my team at Cisco, who supported both my core role and my side hustle at Wonsulting. They even involved me in the first week of being in the Early Career Network, an early career program where I was one of their leads.

I worked with their sales, customer success, and renewals team to figure out how we could get our B2B customers to stay on Cisco products.

My one old-school — but efficient — interview tip

Showcasing your relevant skills and experience is crucial during interviews. I always look at the job description and preemptively include an anecdote that addresses the "Tell me about a time when…" question.

For example, the responsibility in the job description could be "collaborate with a sales team to figure out problems." In my mind, I turn it into a question: "Tell me about a time when you worked with sales teams to figure out problems," and I share a specific situation of when I did that in my past roles.

This way, I know the whole job description from top to bottom and exactly how my past experiences match the responsibilites.

You need to build your network early on to land your dream job

Building your network early on makes a big difference in job hunting. Before negotiating compensation, I asked peers who worked at other tech companies what a reasonable pay range might be. With that information, I felt much more confident during interviews. It's better than relying solely on websites like Glassdoor.

Also, after building the relationship, I felt more comfortable asking them if my total compensation was reasonable for the experience that I had.

What usually happens is, a lot of folks get the job first, and then start asking around. But not everyone is close enough to share insights with you, so oftentimes they might just not respond. That's why it pays off to build the network early on.

If you work in tech, finance, sales, or marketing and want to share your salary journey, email Aria Yang at ayang@insider.com.