Google L3 target TC

New
Somebody87

New

Somebody87
Feb 8 18 Comments

Good news: I passed HC with Google, now recruiter is finding me a team to match with as an L3. This is my first Big Tech™ experience, so I'm still in disbelief that I've made it this far.
Bad news: The recruiter asked me for an idea of what TC I'm looking for so there's something to give to the Powers That Be when they create an offer. Since this is new territory for me, I do not know what to say.

I've got ~10 years of experience, but nothing near the scale of Google (small/medium businesses + programmer for the military). I don't want to undervalue myself, but I don't want to sound pompous either. Also, I'm getting matched for a remote position and live in a relatively low-COL area (not near any Google offices), so I can't just use the numbers from Blind/Levels.fyi because those are heavily slanted towards high-COL offers.

Any suggestions for what I can say? Is there some formula I could use to adjust the numbers I see here and elsewhere to compensate for the difference in location? Would I have better luck if I weighted things more towards stock vs base pay? I imagine any offer from Google will beat what I'm currently getting at my Small Tech™ company, but obviously I'd like to maximize what I get.

Current TC: 130K, all base pay, no stock grants and bonuses are almost non-existent
#google

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 18 Comments
  • Uber
    cjrifnfic

    Go to company page Uber

    cjrifnfic
    This is ridiculous even for google standards… 10 years of experience being down leveled to L3? I’d try to see if you could push for L4. If L3 aim for 220
    Feb 8 1
  • Microsoft / Eng
    google???

    Go to company page Microsoft Eng

    google???
    hey i am in same boat, so are you joining google
    Feb 18 4
    • Congrats! How hard was it to find team/ how long did it take to team match? How many tm sessions did you have?
      Mar 8
    • New
      Somebody87

      New

      Somebody87
      OP
      Not long at all. Had 2 team match meetings about a week after the offer, clicked with both of them but thought I'd enjoy/do better on one of them, so I told the recruiter. Turned out that manager *really* clicked with me and had already called the recruiter and gave the greenlight by the time I emailed the recruiter.

      I'd heard time and again that there was a lot of luck involved in the process. This was yet another lucky break, I've heard other people take a long time to match.
      Mar 8
  • BMW
    tgval

    Go to company page BMW

    tgval
    How many LC did you do
    Feb 8 2
    • BMW
      tgval

      Go to company page BMW

      tgval
      You can also filter levels based on location and generalize from that
      Feb 8
    • New
      Somebody87

      New

      Somebody87
      OP
      Hardly any, actually. I stumbled across the Google Foobar challenge and completed the whole thing, which got me in front of a recruiter. I literally spent the day before interviews freaking out because I couldn't do the Three Sum problem on LeetCode without hints.

      I think I just got REALLY lucky. None of the questions from the interviewers were particularly hard, nothing at all on the level of the Foobar questions. Plus in the pre- and post-interview chats I found I had things in common with most of the interviewers and we clicked really well, so that probably improved their opinion of my performance.
      Feb 8
  • AT&T
    DiCj38

    Go to company page AT&T

    DiCj38
    So you live in Minneapolis and you work for target?
    Feb 8 5
    • AT&T
      DiCj38

      Go to company page AT&T

      DiCj38
      Haha no worries! What’s the foobar challenge?
      Feb 8
    • New
      Somebody87

      New

      Somebody87
      OP
      You can Google it (ironically enough) and find out more, but it's a series of coding challenges. If you search for the right kinds of stuff it'll invite you while Googling. I was looking up how to do a bunch of stuff in Python to learn its syntax and the invitation popped up, so I went for it. It's a similar setup to Leetcode - you put your code in the interface and it runs test cases against it. I got a lot of graph traversal problems, but I think everybody gets a random set out of a bigger pool of problems.

      If you get far enough it gives you the option to have a recruiter contact you. I didn't think anything would come of it, but it bypassed the initial phone interview for me. Still had to do Google's gauntlet of 5 interviews in a day, but 5 is better than 6, right? 😅
      Feb 8
  • Hey congrats on the offer OP. How were the interview questions? Were they from LC? Med or Hard?
    Feb 26 0