I wanted to give back to the community by providing my experience which should hopefully encourage those who are searching for a job right now, and of course to share offer data which has always been valuable to me. I did not do anything special prep-wise, and as you can see I failed a ton even though I spent months preparing full time- I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary that I’d recommend, but I would say to anyone starting their prep who has enough time to do donnmartin/Alex xu before you do any leetcode prep, then read DDIA as you are leetcoding. I didn’t end up having enough time to do well with sys design and I did not have a ton of real-world experience to help me. I’m really hoping that when it’s time to move jobs after this role that I will have the experience to give good sys design interviews without a ton of prep and surface level studying, as it this was pretty rough 😅. Offers: Robinhood IC4 (L2 on levels): $185k base $100k stock Y1, $92.5k following years assuming meets expectation and no promo 10% annual bonus $20k signing bonus $324k TC Y1, $296k.5 + base increase expected, chance of perf based refreshers Y2+ Square L4: $169k base $425k stock over 4 years $10k signing bonus $285k TC Y1, $275k + base increase and meets-expectation refreshers expected Y2+ Mailchimp SWE3: $185k base $130k stock over 4 years 15% annual bonus $??? signing bonus - will update once I hear back from recruiter I think Intuit levels are wrong on levels.fyi based on what recruiter said. Seems like there is SWE 1, 2, and 3 and then senior, not just 1, 2, then senior. I was laid off in November. I began applying only slightly before then due to a life event preventing me from having time to interview prep and such. I won’t list all the companies I applied to, but it felt like any company that payed at least 200k for an L4 I applied to, or really any interesting company that posted a job on LinkedIn from Nov 22 to Feb 23. I also rekindled some conversations I was having with recruiters in May 22 (didn’t end up interviewing then, probably should have) which was also successful. I also reached out to recruiters on LinkedIn and in one case an HM which had a good success rate. Companies I interviewed with: Netflix - failed on-site Etsy - passed phone screen 1, role closed Discord - passed phone screen, role closed Paxos - passed phone screen and HM call, role closed MongoDB - scheduled phone screen, canceled day before I took it due to role closure Datadog - failed on-site, terrible performance due to burnout / not staying fresh with LC when I crammed sys design Zillow - interviewed for senior but down-leveled to P3 (which I barely deserved due to bad interview), stopped pursuing due to low comp and other offers Envoy - bombed phone screen, got a LC hard Stubhub - passed first phone screen (1.5 hour code pair), surprised to hear I didn’t pass second phone screen (45 min LC) Bread financial - passed on-site, never heard back on a new role after first one closed. It was a practice company anyway Fanatics sports betting - failed on-site Millennium - was that even interview? Idk, never got a call back New relic - never got a call back after HM call, was asked weird trivia questions for 1 hour Datavant - failed phone screen, though I could easily pass next time after observing that speed is the main factor Hubspot - passed take home -> layoffs -> role closed Palantir - failed phone screen. I take full responsibility though the interviewer lead me down the wrong path and didn’t realize until the end :/ I also spoke to some recruiters with companies I was excited about but could never get things going, most notably Google, Cruise, Apple, TikTok, Oracle, Seatgeek, SoFi. I am going to accept Robinhood’s offer. I know that Square is likely the safer bet for career stability, and I could easily regret this if SQ goes back up over the next few years, but the team’s work at Robinhood was too good to pass up - in terms of company importance/impact, interest, and skill fit, especially compared to Square’s which seemed to be more maintaining and slowly improving a legacy system. I also feel that taking an L4 Square offer at my YOE would have been a bad career move as it is more L3.5 at other companies. Overall, it was a tough decision but I had to go with what made sense for me improving the most as an engineer. Squares interview experience was top notch and I wish I aligned more with the team as it might have ended differently for me- I really want to work there in the future just not for that team at that level at this point in my career. YOE: 3.5ish New TC: 304
Thanks for sharing! What was your old TC? I am curious if TC is going up or down for candidates when they are laid off and find new jobs.
my new grad offer was rescinded at meta last nov — TC 180k for NYC. my current offer is at TC 130k in madison (lower COL) i have 0 YoE so not much leverage there.
Dang, sorry. You should be living a good life in Madison, though! Hopefully the job market turns around before you are mid-career.
Congratulations on your offers! Do you mind sharing if your Square interview process was mainly around LC or was it something else?
They have home grown LC questions that range widely in difficulty but are not trick questions. They usually have 3 parts I think, so start easy and get more difficult/build on them to solve the next parts. 2 of those rounds plus a past experience deep dive round and a sys design round for L4/L5 candidates. Then HM calls to match with a team.
Thanks btw!
For what it's worth RH mgmt is horrible, wlb is mostly bad to worse depending on the team and future stock outlook is bad.
Congrats! I was also laid off late last year, def a tough time to be on market. had over 30 interviews only one offer. Starting my new role soon. One level up and can match TC.
What team was it for square?
Can you check dm!
How was the interview at robinhood? I have mine in next week so just curious
Hi jsjejcj12, that is impressively a lot of interviews. May I ask if you went to a good university? I ask because I went to a state university and have had no interviews. I have 15+ yoe front/back end.
+1, how did you get so many interviews OP?
To clarify, I was not laid off from Prudential, this is just a friend’s old account
Your LC count. How did u prepare for interview?
Normal stuff - neetcode.io, company lists. My count is 105/130/7 but some of that is from my last move which was 2 years ago