I recently got an Associate Software Engineer offer from BlackRock and am really considering to move. I don’t hate my job at Amazon right now, but I have zero interest in what my team does. There’s also very little room for career advancement in my team; there are some L4s that have been in the team for almost 3 years. For SDEs working in BlackRock or Finance industry in general: 1. How has your experience been? Is WLB good? Do you do interesting work? 2. Is BlackRock safe to join right now? I know that they recently had a layoff— does anyone have any insight as to whether there’s be more? Current TC: 148K Future TC: 160K #blackrock
Looks like you've already decided. "Future TC:"
Lol good catch. I’m really leaning towards accepting the offer.
BlackRock is doing ok and probably will weather the downturn relatively better than Amazon. We do have RTO though if that's an issue for you
Good to know that the company is doing ok right now. RTO is not an issue. My team at amazon right now are in the office pretty much 2-3 days a week 🤷♀️
not an SDE but work with them - WLB depends on team/product but in general is fine for juniors. i really don’t expect more layoffs, blackrock is widely known as one of the best firms in finance to work for during downturns
Good to hear that! Thanks!
What team? I used to work there out of college and most of the smart people leave pretty quick. If you’re looking for career progression, idk if blk is where you wanna go unless you want to transition to finance. Most go from blk to amz, not the other way around lol
That’s fair. How was your WLB in BlackRock compared to google? I’m looking to have that sweet 40 hours workweek instead of having to work overtime on weekends
1 experience has been good, WLB is pretty good for SDEs, “interesting work” is a no lol unless you are super into finance. 2 it’s safe to join, their general approach has seemed to be laying off low performers
Can you confirm that Blackrock doesn’t periodically (e.g. anually) remove the bottom X% performers? This seem to be the trend in big tech companies, but my recruiter convinced me that it doesn’t happen in Blackrock. Curious about your experience
Yeah that doesn’t happen at BlackRock, I have seen people being fired for literally not being online at all / not coming in at all (literally being paid to do nothing and openly telling people they were doing nothing) but it’s not that deep, youlll be fine.
Not a SDE as well. Been in BlackRock for around 5 years. Have seen 2 cuts so far. Agree that BLk Is generally quite good to employees. That said, progression is highly dependent on which product you’re working on.
Are these cuts distributed equally between levels, teams, and job function? Or does it target specific team & level?
Definitely not equally distributed. Departments with higher growth potential are definitely more sheltered. That said, while management does take into account performance, business units and growth is the main deciding factor when it comes to cuts.
BlackRock laid off 3% in January 2023
No More happening soon
Kinda depends on if you like finance as a general topic
Yeah, I think I’d definitely like it more than what I’m doing right now at amazon. But I just wanted to make sure switching to a different company right now is safe..