Hey folks, I have an offer from Facebook and from Lyft, and I’m mulling over which one to choose. Any input, particularly on comp, is appreciated! Basics: Current role: L4 SW Eng in Test. Promoted to last year. 6.5 years of experience, all large companies. All SET, nothing as SWE. Role at both FB and L is SWE L4. That’s great, I wanted to make the switch! L’s project is interesting and while I don’t know FB’s project until after boot camp, it’s likely I will be able to find interesting work. WLB can suffer just a little for a little bit until I get to L5. Commute situation will be about the same. FB: 160k base/ 300k equity/ 75k sign on. Target bonus 10%. No cliff, vests quarterly. L: 180k base/ 400k equity/ 25k sign on. No bonus, 1 year cliff. Questions: 1. How is the FB offer, they said I was an upper E4 based on interview performance and that that’s the maximum offer for E4. 2. I ought to be asking more equity from L since it’s currently ‘paper money’, what would be a reasonable ask? L doesn’t have refreshers until after year 2, though I heard you can get some before if you are a top performer. ty! *** UPDATE **** L upped their offer, but they said they have maxed at 480. I still think it’s LOW. Basically 20k a year. Sigh.
I thought every company had cliff
Why is this a question ? FB. Lyft needs to offer 800K equity to make it worth it especially since no refresh
Can you explain a bit more about your reasoning? Setting refresh aside, L is probably close to a liquidation, like IPO. Are you thinking they are overvalued and that the equity will be worth less at IPO? Or because IPO could be so far away vs real income @ FB. 2y of FB refresh would be about 150k I presume, ignoring stock gains during that time.
There's no increased incentive for Lyft. You're really hoping it doubles for an IPO which may not happen. But the time an IPO does happen you'll have a sizable amount in fb. The fact that Lyft carries risk and has less value than FB after refreshers is what makes this a no brainer.
Lyft doesn’t have refresher also whereas fb has yearly refreshers. You need to factor that into your decision. Over 4 years this can easily be 100k difference. Also, to think of it, my goog PhD new grad (l4) offer in 2010 was 127k$ base with 180k$ of rsus. Times have changed.
How was your interview preparation? How many leetcode?
Algorithms course + lots of medium + as many hard as you have the time. Largely mediums though.
FB made 5B in profit out of 11B revenue. To give you context, google made around 7B in profit over 32B in revenue. So which company would u like to join? One that can easily keep paying you more every year or one that loses money and may never make nasty money like FB. I think for most people the decision is simple.
This is a great analogy! Appreciate the data!
But Google’s business is more diverse vs FB. They spend more money in other PAs. If you have one cash cow and don’t invest in other areas, that doesn’t mean you are better than company that spends a lot in other areas.
Thanks all for the responses so far. I agree that Lyft‘s offer needs to go higher. I think another way to phrase my question would be, what does the offer from L need to look like to even begin to compete with the FB offer.
shoot for 600k in stock, +10k in salary. this means ask for 800k in stock and +20k in salary. tell the recruiter that if they can offer you this, they can give you a 12 hour expiring offer (to assure them you won't just go and try to leverage this offer against FB) you won't be disappointed with either, but with Lyft you're joining a company that will have twice as many employees in 1.5 years. there's a lot more room to make an impact here.
You should be able to get $600k in RSUs from Lyft. At that value, I would choose the Lyft offer over Facebook. Currently it's a close call but I'd lean Facebook if you're only comparing comp. In general I think Lyft's business is way more interesting than FB, but I'm biased.
The FB offer is pretty much top of range for E4. You might be able to get $100k sign on.
*Promoted to L4 last year