I am based in Barcelona, where as you may know salaries cannot compare to California. Cost of living is much cheaper accordingly. I just got two offers: one here in Barcelona for a start-up and another for Google in Poland. I would like to hear Blind's opinion:) even if the compensation is laughable for those of you in other cities. ML hardware startup in Barcelona: 45k€ base Equity to be defined. Google in Warsaw. Engineering productivity L3: 30k€ base 15% Bonus 50k$ RSU/ 4years TC approx: 45k€ Current junior level compensation at King in Barcelona: 30k€ base. 10% Bonus Promotion around the corner with expected 15% raise. TC:33 k now. Perhaps 37k next year I am leaning towards start-up because work seems pretty interesting, but I am kind of worried I may lose my chance to work at Google.
Google is worst at explaining the compensation structure. The way to actually compare other pay structures vs Google’s is to add following components: 1. Medicare and other life insurances are free 2. Offered Bonus is on par. Which means if you perform one level better you will get 20% bonus, and if at plus two levels you would get 25% bonus. 3. Education reimbursements, free food and gym allowance, few international trips with generous caps all add up. 4. If your country has any form of superannuation, it is over your base salary and not accounted in the offer. Most companies quote Total Comp includes the top bonus, insurance and Medicare, and superannuation. 4. Lastly but most importantly, the access to most brilliant minds. You can’t put a value to this. Startup is a great idea if you are getting a bigger role and more complex challenge to solve. If you are joining as another engineer, chances are you are not going to be better off. At Google you have access to most sophisticated infrastructure which needs only your passion to learn.
Thank you very much for your time and your answer. I totally didn't know about point 2. The recruiter mentioned it could go up depending on my ability to exceed the expectations. Some of the benefits are really cool. I have one kid and there is many interesting things. At my current company I have a subset of the benefits Google has, I like it a lot, but at the same time they sometimes feels unfair with my family. Example: me to be eating free food at the office while my wife needs to cook for her and our child at home. Me going on a business trip with generous cap while my wife and kid need to stay home. There is some cool stuff like childcare benefits , and ability to bring your family to fun events and so on. That is quite positive. My other concern is around relocation, start-up requires no relocation because it is in the same city I live in. Google is asking me to move to Poland by February, with my wife and kid. I wouldn't mind it so much if they could wait until summer when my kid finishes kindergarten. And yes, in the start-up the challenge looks more complex: extending and optimizing their machine learning compiler. Vs Google where it would be Engineering Productivity in the Cloud team (the challenge is also interesting, but I think not that challenging). In terms of role, the start-up is willing to hire me at mid-senior level whereas Google would be L3. To be honest, my biggest fear here is around opportunity cost. 1. It is been quite a tough and long process to get the offer from Google. I do not want to waste it. 2. It is rare to see a company working in the kind of problems this start-up is facing. Specially in Barcelona. Not sure if I will ever have this opportunity again. I was thinking that I could join startup in February and then if things go wrong I could contact Google to see if they are still willing to hire me (maybe I need to redo some steps of the process, but I don't think I would need to do them all)
Barcelona is scarily expensive. If the TC is the same, go for Poland.
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Google of course. No doubt. You can join startup anytime. Goolge interview is hard. Try to negotiate more TC with G. Congrats.
Thanks :) I was thinking maybe having received an offer from Google makes the process easier the second time. It was indeed hard but I feel I can do better next time