I'm extremely happy to finally post and share. Thanks to Blind, I became motivated to go after the TC dream. I prepped hard, interview lots, failed lots, improved more, and finally succeeded. Landed the dream job and dream TC. Blind was _tremendously_ helpful. Knowledge truly is power. I'm here to give back. This is part 1. Part 2 is about how I prepped and interview tips. https://www.teamblind.com/post/NHYYGwXw Background info: + Prepped for 4 months. + Interviewed with 8 companies at the senior level. Offers from 5. + Of those 5 offers, downleveled in 3 of them. Senior at 2. + All offers are for Seattle. The offers: Flexport - SDE 2 $160k base, 10% performance bonus, 31k RSUs over 4 years ($14 per share at $8B valuation) Coinbase - IC4 $165k base, 5% bonus, 75k annual equity grant, sign on bonus is 10% of base or can go higher by providing a document from another company showing a competing cash bonus. LinkedIn - Senior software engineer (despite 'senior' in the name, it's a TC package that's not 'true' senior) No numbers. Accepted other offer and ended process before numbers were given to me. Meta - E5 (senior) $209k base, 15% bonus, 800k RSUs over 4 years, $95k sign on Airbnb - L5/G9 (senior) Approximately $450k TC - no breakdown to keep anonymity. I recommend searching for other Blind posts which provide breakdowns. Rejected by: + Google + Stripe + Uber My insights & tips: + Interviewing, especially for senior, is hard. You'll see posts on Blind of those who ace interviews with minimal prep. The reality is those people make up 10% or less of us. Average people like me must prep for long periods of time, fail, reflect and prep more, then finally reach success. + You will fail. Failure is only bad if you don't learn from it. From each failed interview, including downleveled interviews, I was able to reflect and learn something significant from it. I patched the weak areas of my interview game. Only in my very final interviews did I actually ace every round. + Every round of interviews matters for senior. Every round. I read posts on Blind saying "coding is less important" or "system design matters most" or "behavioral doesn't matter". Inaccurate. I was rejected or downleveled from senior when I underperformed in any of the interviews. This occurred across companies. Coding rounds, behavioral rounds, technical project deep dive rounds, system design rounds. All of them matter. + Luck is a major factor. Many variables are at the roll of the dice. Improve your odds by prepping and interviewing more. + Given all of the above, it's a journey. Do not expect success immediately. Do not let initial failures demotivate you. Do not bank all your hopes on 1 or 2 target companies. Plan for the journey. + If I can do it, so can you. + The easiest way to negotiate is to get 2 (or more) equivalent competing offers and share the details with the opposing recruiter. Doing so forces each company to present their maximum offer. + Interview pipelines can take an awfully long time. From initial recruiter contact to accepted offer, 4-6 weeks is common. Ask me anything, except for interview prep or interview tips. The latter will be in part 2. Post coming soon. YOE: 6 Old TC: $230k New TC: $450k Extremely happy to have the dream job and dream TC! Woohoo! :) #flexport #coinbase #linkedin #meta #airbnb #google #stripe #uber #offers #ama
Congrats, grind is all worth it at the end.
Thank you! Yes, grind was worth it at the end!
How did you time all the offers for negotiation? A lot of companies only give like a week
Same question... how to deal with exploding offers? How to time offer part?
This is a common pressure tactic. 2 things helped me here. First, I tried to line up interviews to be within a 2 week window. Then when I had offers from the first, I told them I'm waiting to hear results from the others. This usually gave me an extra 1-2 weeks on my deadlines. It would be have really hard to extend any futher. Also realize that companies don't actually want to retract offers from candidates. Again, it's a pressure tactic to force you into accepting. However if you ask for extensions with good reason, they're happy to provide them because they don't want to lose you either.
Are you single?
Did you choose Airbnb or is that where you worked before?
I chose Airbnb.
Flexport share price was $10 at 4.5b valuation but only $14 at 8b? Wow, that’s big dilution. They were quoting $22 using secondary market price to sell the offer
Did you get referrals or just cold apply? If cold apply, how long until recruiters reached out?
I had referral at Google. They reached out immediately. Seriously, within 10 minutes. Meta a recruiter reached out to me in LinkedIn. All others I cold applied on their website. Half the companies got back in 1 week. The other half took 2 weeks. 1 company took 3 weeks.
I am thinking about interviewing again but have done LC and system design prep in the past. Did you do interview prep in the past? 4 months seems like a long time for a prep unless it was from scratch? How many hours a week was in that 4 months?
How in the world do you manage 8 on-sites? Are you taking multiple weeks off of work? Crazy
I actually quit my job and then interviewed. Gave me all the time I needed. I was confident I could land a job offer. This confidence came from reading and learning from Blind.
Also, 2 of the interviews were much earlier in my prep cycle. I failed them. That lead to more prep, before scheduling the remaining 6 over a 2 week window.
Which companies asked for competing offer letters proof and which ones just took your words, during negotiation ? Did you actually send them copy of competing offer letters?
None asked for proof. Prior to interviews, Google recruiter mentioned they'd want to see proof. But I didn't get that far with Google. All other companies took my word. Didn't ask for proof in any way.
No, I did not send offer letters. I simply shared the offer breakdowns over phone calls.
I don’t dream of labor lol
Different people, different goals and motivations. I enjoy my career. I love the challenges of software engineering. I aim to grow in level and talent. All the while, I now work at a wonderful company with swanky benefits, excellent pay, great culture, great people, cool products. I realize what I have. It's the dream for me.
don't be obtuse, most of us are doing this to retire early in the only country in the world you can get 400k TC after 5 YOE. most of us "don't dream of labor" either, that's why we're using capitalism to hustle now, invest and live off passive income rather than only being allowed to retire at 65 in some "socialist" country
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Were you L5 at your old company?
No. L4 at old company. However, I believe I was performing at the L5 level.