Pretty happy, L6 offer. Base: 222k, bonus 20%, sign on $50k, GSU $900k (541k first year TC, 491k subsequent) LinkedIn current TC (Sr staff, promoted in recent past): Base 210k, bonus 20%, RSU (vesting in 1yr): 225k TC@ LinkedIn: 477k YoE 15 Joining GCP org in Bay Area Yeah, not A HUGE jump (especially seeing what people claim to make here on blind), but I'm quite happy with the offer, since I just collected the transition period bonus and will collect the next substantial RSU vest before leaving LinkedIn.
How many yoe ? What LOB ?
15 yoe General back-end swe
Wow congos !!!
Wow congrats!!!
You can ask for more signon.
I've accepted the offer after a lot of back and forth. I'm sure there was some room to negotiate further, but I was happy with the overall offer.
I can understand this. Happened to me as well only to realize later that I low balled myself though I was happy with what I signed with.
How was the interview ?? What were some of the difficult areas
Interview was usual: 2 design, 2 coding, couple behavioral interviews. I don't think there were difficult questions, but some of the interviewers were not too skilled at guiding in right direction and I felt I could've done better if they were more clear in what they were looking for. This was specially true with design interviews. I felt they were not looking to quiz or grill me, rather they wanted to gauge my non-tech skills more. The interviewers challenged my assumptions, asked me lots of follow up questions, and there were several good trade-offs discussions. They wanted to see if I can justify my decisions, not necessarily if I can design or code a random arbitrary problem. I think at L6 they expect people to have the basic skills and assume that an engineer wouldn't have been promoted to these levels without the technical skills.. Hence more focus on communication and non-tech aspects.
This is cool to hear that at some point you can stop leet code BS and just talk about problems that aren’t all about O(n) but making trade offs in larger designs.
Did you graduate from MIT?
How did you reach where you are today? What would you advice younger engineers? Change companies less or change frequently?
That's a great question, and I honestly think it is a combination of luck and hard work. I was fortunate to have a great manager at LinkedIn who coached me well. There were constant (and at times frustrating) feedback, yet they were always constructive and my manager helped me bridge the gap. I learnt a ton of "soft skills" at LinkedIn such as promoting your own work, being proactive in communication, making things measurable, etc. I don't consider my self super strong in technical areas (there are far more smarter engineers at LinkedIn at all levels). The leadership and communication aspects definitely helped me grow more than my coding skills. My manager could trust that I could navigate difficult situations often, and put me on projects that became very visible due to needing a lot of conflict management. Advice to younger self: take your career in your hands. Really think hard where you want to be in next 5-7 years, and plot your trajectory backwards (for example I want to work in infrastructure, hence the move to GCP is a step in that direction for me). Sometimes things may not work out, many times they will. Either ways, you'll have a greater probability to success than other average engineers. Take and act on feedback. it's really difficult to get managers who will give very direct, and at times, harsh feedback. If you find one, thank your luck and thank your manager. Be very clear on where you need help to act on the feedback. You'll learn the most when you're put in a difficult situation. Give your best and try to solve it. If you succeed it'll be great. If you fail, you'll learn something which will help you in future when you're in a similar situation. One of LinkedIn's core cultural tenet is that "relationships matter". I have found this to be 100% true. Build strong relationship, network well with people, and build your own brand with them. Valley is a small place, and many of your colleagues will move to other companies over time. A strong professional referral from these colleagues can go a long way when it's personal. My referral at Google could talk about how I worked with the person to resolve a dispute where we both disagreed, and how we went on to become close friends even after that disagreement because both of us were respectful in dealing with each other's viewpoints. Finally, find your "USP", or unique selling proposition. There are a ton of smart engineers in the valley, you don't want to be another "me too" engineer (just like you wouldn't switch to Bing over Google because it doesn't have anything substantially new or different to offer; but use Amazon for product search because it brings that uniqueness). Find what unique strengths and perspective YOU bring to the table, and play to those strengths. It doesn't have to be a technical strength. For example, I come from a small start-up and am used to a much faster pace of work compared to LinkedIn. My pace helped set me apart from my colleagues even if they were much more skilled in other areas than me. Hope this helps. It may sound touche, but it's honestly true.
Wow, that’s great to know. Thanks so much for replying. I’m going to write these things down!
What advice would you give for interview prep for L5/L6 level for someone who hasn’t interviewed in a while. Thanks for the great answers to other questions!
I frankly don't have a lot more to offer on this topic than what blind has already said before. Unfortunately the interview "game" needs to be played, which means doing leetcode, CtCI and Grokking the system design interview. I struggled with leetcode for several months before setting in a strategy, so I know this can be stressful and intimidating for many people like me who had not interviewed in a while. For leetcode, take few weeks to solve medium difficulty questions from different topic areas, such as Arrays, list, trees, graphs, Recursion, DP, etc. Spend no more than 30 minutes to solve a question the first time. After 30 minutes, jump to the discussion section to find the top voted answers and understand them thoroughly. Then, come back after a week or so when the problem is not very fresh in your head and try to solve it again. Based on the first several weeks, ascertain which areas you need to spend most time (for me it was DP and Graphs). Solve as many medium questions as you can in these areas. Skienna's algorithm design manual was a great help for me too. Expect to prep for at least 3 months with leetcode before you start getting a knack. I don't think you'll ever get 100% confidence, so just start scheduling interviews with your "practice companies" in 3 months or so from when you begin your preps. You'll likely not have much of a life for weekends during these prep months, so be done with it in 3 months. Few weeks before your interview, purchase the paid subscription and try to solve the company-specific questions. I kept the sub for 2 months during which I interviewed at several practice companies (Amazon, Airbnb, and some companies in SF that were long commute for me which I'd be unlikely to join) and my target companies (Google, Uber, Facebook). For system design, I found "grokking the system design interview" course to be adequate for a regular/general SWE role. I'm sure they'll expect more if you're interviewing for a role/team focused on distributed systems though, in which case, hopefully your experience in that area will likely help you more than a crash course will.
Thank you, this is very helpful! Do you mind if I PM for some LinkedIn specific questions?
Congratulations!!
Thanks!