Recently quit my job at Facebook and will be joining Google soon. Got a lot of good information from the Blind community with regards to interview process, compensation, expectations, etc. and wanted to pay that forward.
E5@FB (ML profile, no masters/PhD, worked there for 6 years)
Base: 190k
Unvested equity: 400k
Interviewed for L6@Google
2 coding rounds
2 ML design rounds
1 Googliness and Leadership (behavioral)
Pretty sure coding and behavioral went great. ML interviews went good-ish. I was optimistically expecting an L6 offer.
Got an offer for ML Engineer, L5@Google (couldn’t negotiate level)
Base: 198k
Bonus: 15% = ~30k
Equity: 558k -> negotiated up to 775k, in return for cancelling loops with Amazon/Twitter
Sign on: ~30k
Humble tips:
- Interviews are not crazy hard, even if you don’t get nowhere in first half of the interview, don’t worry about failing — that way, you might have a chance to get to the right solution in final 15 mins (it’s not easy I know. meditation helps)
- Be honest, in interviews and in negotiation. It does require you to really know yourself, your motivations for leaving, what you’re seeking in a new job, priorities, long term goals — these are good things to know (again, meditation helps); but will make your life easier by smoothing communication + negotiation.
- Try to never give out your current TC or numeric expectations. If you do, set high expectations, like 40-50% more than what you want.
- Don’t lie your numbers. If you do, firstly, inform yourself of levels and pay ranges and secondly, be consistent, write them down, the process might go on for 30-40 days and good recruiters write down *everything* that you might have said to them, *ever*.
- You don’t always need competing offers to negotiate. There are many other kinds of leverages — in my case: (a) my option that I might just stay put at FB (b) enthusiasm of the destination team’s manager (c) the fact that I was considering cancelling interviewing at other places for higher offer.
Happy to answer more questions, and to hear feedback on what I could have done better.
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comments
Another big factor for me is a manager that can give me thoughtful feedback, and that’s also helpful in getting a promo. I talked to my prospective manager at Google three times, and I got a feeling that he has a good understanding of the path form L5-L6. He has plans to create an open L6 position sometime end of next year, which further corroborates that.
So I decided to trust that.
While prepping did you:
Do mock interviews? If so, how many?
Do any LC questions or similar practice?
I found ML design interviews harder than rest, because there are many pitfalls: it’s super open ended, easy to digress (especially when you and the interviewer have different pictures in mind and you’re going deep technically). If you wait to check with the interviewer whether you’re going in the right direction it could be read as lacking independence.
I did no mocks (I was too overloaded with work tbh). I treated interviews as regular closed room meetings with a manager or colleague - I think that imagination took some pressure off me.
I did ~10 mostly medium LC questions, before the interview. Some more details about this is in the first comment thread.
How were the ML rounds? What level of detail/math was expected in those rounds?
I am mostly struggling with how much to cover.