Edit 2: wow this exploded! The feedback I have received really shows that Blind is indeed a positive place overall! To those saying that the offers are fake: I can say with a high degree of confidence that the Sr. offers that I mentioned here are not fake. I’ve talked to multiple people to understand their split and it matches elements from my offer. But I should also mention these folks must have been high balled as the older Sr. Offers are much much lower. Someone mentioned that there is usually some degree of pay-band overlap between levels, and more so in a startup. This makes sense to me and therefore I’m not going to contact the manager or recruiter with this newfound knowledge. I’m however going to bring this up in the perf reviews (after proving my talent). I apologize for not going deeper into the details of my offer/YoE/company in this post to continue remaining anonymous. I’ve already made a separate ‘giving back’ post from another account. I am not ashamed to admit that I got outsmarted by the recruiter. Recruiters are also catching up with the Blind fam. Lesson learnt :) Edit: Thank you folks for your helpful comments! As some of you said, ‘be happy with what you’re becoming’. I’m already happy with what I’m being offered right now and I shouldn’t overthink this after accepting. It does help to know the bands as I can prepare myself accordingly in the performance reviews. Hey Blind fam, I’ve recently received a great Staff level offer at ~450K from one of the Series D startups. I was very happy with the offer and declined offers from both my target companies - FB and Google (with similar TC). My main motivation to accept the startup offer is because of a higher level and an increased scope of work. However I’ve recently come across multiple data points that the same startup is now offering upwards of 550K TC for the Sr. Level instead (with lower YoE requirements as expected). It is a shocker to me as I feel that I have been shortchanged. I still have some time before I join the company, but I am annoyed due to the false information given out to me by the recruiter (regarding EEO and pay bands). Please understand that I’m not feeling low only because I got the bad end of the deal. The company doesn’t have much info on levels-fyi because of which I couldn’t negotiate appropriately and had to share my other offers for them to match that. I’m mostly mad at the recruiter for lying to me about EEO. Any suggestions on how to cope up with this? I’m not planning to rescind the offer FYI. Just want to hear what folks think.
May be staff is not really senior for them ?
I do have more access to the leadership. Also the roles and responsibilities are more at a Staff level @Google.
Really? Staff level at startup to Senior Eng at Amazon was a stretch (we had principal architects come in at senior level).
It’s all about negotiations
If I were you I would try to be transparent and let the hiring manager know that I feel this way. It’s better to sort this out before joining.
I wish that could be an option but I don’t see this going well if I reverse roles. It’s very difficult to provide Blind as evidence that lower levels are being paid significantly more 😬
Let's be clear: you don't have evidence that lower levels are being paid more. You have hearsay. You should have a follow-up conversation with your recruiter if that person told you you're being paid at the top of the band and you don't believe that to be true. It's possible there are reasonable factors in play that you just don't have insight into (it's also possible that your information about people at lower levels being paid more is incorrect).
talk to your manager
If you accepted the offer, they did their job in giving you an amount you were willing to accept and they willing to pay.
This is true, though based on incomplete information
Also he had potentially misleading information, the recruiter told him the bands which doesn't seem to be true.
Are the datapoints from Levels.fyi? Did you take consideration of locations and how many years at the company or yoe those datapoints have? Are you doing remote or joining a location? Are those datapoints for AI/ML? All these will affect the TC so why not just clarify with your recruiter
Data points are from Blind. I interacted with a few folks and they seem trustworthy. The new offers I saw are at the same location or at a slightly lower cost region.
Which series D startup is giving out such large offers? Could you share the split and how you valued the equity portion?
Probably Brex. Brex gives you a number and you get to choose cash to equity ratio. Plus, Brex is series D so probably Brex.
Brex offers $550k for senior? Damn I had a senior offer there but was far less.
It's too late now, mate. You're gonna starve to death.
ITS ALL OVER
Pretty much 😔
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