Got a call from HBO & Time for Seattle office for SDE roles.

I interviewed at Time Seattle late last year. My takeaway was technically immature folks (washed/managed-out ex-Amazon) with a lack of real leadership. The position I interviewed for was a lead SDE where a large part of the role would be leading a remote team in India. I passed on the opportunity before getting an offer. Pay quoted to me (from third-party recruiter) was 160 base.

I got an offer from them last year when I joined Microsoft (ex-Amazon here). They are heavily investing into Video Streaming platform. They use Node, Angular and JavaScript. Lots of opportunity to grow. It's not a tech company and so average talent is lower than MSFT/Amazon. Culture seemed laid back and chilled. They have no on-calls for engineers, and have separate operations Team responsible for it. My position was Staff and pay was $210k TC ($180k base + sign on for 2 yrs). They offer no stocks and their pay is entirely cash. Bonus target was 30% which was pretty nice.

I've met a few engineers there, you'll definitely shine there but feel like you're picking berries.

What's your experience?

heard hbo sucks to work for.

To be honest those seem to be some shitty step downs....have you considered some of the local startups with potential breaktrough trajectories? e.g: Convoy