TL;DR: I'm moving from HCOL (NYC/SF) to LCOL area (Midwest USA) to be closer to family and bought a house for 350K. My spouse is getting a COL adjustment (salary is getting cut) so I thought I would try to get a higher paying job to makeup the difference. I ended up doing better than I thought. Old TC: 275K New TC: 420K YOE: 5 TL;DR from @enBT65: Study leetcode, system design and pay for mock interviews, then interview at the most famous tech companies and take the highest offer. — — — I’ve always wanted to write one of these posts and now I can! As the TL;DR says, I’m moving to a LCOL area to be closer to family and my spouse is getting a pay cut in salary due to cost-of-living adjustment. I’ve been at my current company for a while, so I figured I would try to get a new, better paying job to makeup for what they’re losing. This post is going to outline how I was able to get four 400K+ TC (first year) offers in a LCOL area. This post is mainly aimed at other people in LCOL area to show what kind of offers are possible with enough interview prep, negotiations, and luck. Though other people may find it interesting/useful as well. The Offers: Datadog SE2: 190K base/450K RSUs/100K sign-on bonus First year TC: 400K 4 year avg TC: 300K Google L5: 200K base + 15% bonus/490K RSUs/50K sign-on bonus First Year TC: 440K (due to RSU vesting schedule) 4 year avg TC: 350K (not including refreshers) MongoDB Senior SWE: 200K base/800K RSUs/30K sign-on bonus First Year TC: 430K 4 year avg TC: 400K (not including refreshers) Airbnb Senior SWE: 215K base + 20% bonus/650K RSUs/50K sign-on bonus First Year TC: 470K 4 year avg TC: 420K (not including refreshers) It was a tough pick between Airbnb, MongoDB, and Google. There were things I liked about each of them. I ended up with going with Airbnb due to a mix of comp, WLB, team fit, and interesting work/impact. They were also the most cash-heavy offer, which I put a premium on - especially during this current economy When I first started my job hunt, I had Google in my sights due to the allure of FAANG. I tried to get Google to match Airbnb, but the offer I listed above was the best they could do even with VP approval. Also, MongoDB has unlimited PTO and 20 weeks parental leave and has really interesting tech. But I went with Airbnb because there were more experienced people to learn from on the team. I don’t know why MongoDB is shit on so much on Blind. It’s a great company - look at their Blind score. More people should check them out. One thing to note is that now is definitely a tough time to interview. Multiple companies are going on hiring freeze and have high interview standards. Tech screens/onsites I failed: - Uber - Multiple startups Companies that stopped my interview process due to hiring freeze/slowdown: - Meta - Lyft (onsite canceled) - Stripe (I passed the onsite for L3 and was in team match when they told me they were slowing down hiring and wouldn’t be moving forward with me) Interview Prep: Leetcode, Blind 75, Grokking system design, Youtube videos for system design, etc. I pretty much just did what everyone else suggests on Blind. I prepped for about 1-2 months before I started applying to my top choice companies. I studied for a couple hours in the evening after work and a bit more on weekends. I have a kid so don’t have too much free time. A couple days before an onsite or tech screen, I would search Glassdoor for all the interview questions that company asks and made sure I practiced them. Another thing that helped me a lot was paying for mock interviews (both coding and system design) with FAANG engineers. I dropped 1k+ on mock interviews, which sounds like a lot, but it was really worth it. The interviewers gave great advice and helped prep me a lot, especially for the Google interviews. I also paid for Algo monster because they have good guides for learning the more difficult algorithm patterns (Graph, DP, sliding window, etc). And I subscribed to Leetcode premium so I could get the tagged company questions. I paid quite a bit for interview prep materials, mainly because I didn’t have a lot of free time and wanted high ROI. It was worth it in the end for me, but YMMV. If you're short on money, I would just stick to LeetCode, Youtube, and maybe Grokking the System Design Interview and the System Design Interview by Alex Xu. I also interviewed with some startups before applying to FAANG, though I probably wouldn’t do it again. I felt bad using them as interview bait when I knew I wouldn’t take their offers. Some of them really liked me and wanted me to join. Next time I’m just going to stick with mock interviews to not lead anyone along. I didn’t really practice behavioral. I’m pretty personable and I don’t have trouble getting along with interviewers. Though I did take some time to list out all my accomplishments, projects I've led, major features, personal anecdotes, etc. for the experience interviews. Since I’ve lead projects from start to finish before and I’ve been a part of multiple product launches, I have a good amount of stories and that helped me get leveled for senior at most companies I applied to. Interviewing: I started out interviewing with some startups first and progressed to larger companies when I felt more confident. It was definitely tough trying to schedule interviews while working full time and with a family. I would take tech screens during lunch or towards the end of the work day. I took an entire work week off so I could cram as many on-sites as possible in one week. It was brutal but helped me get multiple competing offers at the same time. It helped that my current company has really good WLB, so I was still able to do my work while interviewing. Negotiations: This was the most crucial section. Many of the companies I interviewed with pay based on the location and adjust for COL. I knew this going in, but I was curious if, with enough negotiations, I would be able to get close to SF/NYC pay. One thing to note is that most of the offers I got were out-of-band and required VP/Director approval. And the main reason I was able to get this was a mixture of good interview performance, competing offers, and confidently telling the recruiter what I wanted. Both Mongo and Google wouldn't budge on their top-of-band offers, but when Airbnb came back with a really strong offer, they both tried to match with out-of-band offers. I got downleveled to mid-level at Datadog, but even then, they gave me a top-of-band offer plus a 100K sign-on so that the first year TC would be 400K. I wish I could give really in-depth negotiation advice here, but I really feel like I got lucky in many ways. Look up “Haseeb Qureshi salary negotiation” for some really great in-depth negotiation advice. What I’ll say is that it’s really all about leverage. Interview performance, competing offers, and how badly the company/team wants you to join all factor in. Also, knowing what TC range I wanted and confidently asking the company for more worked out well for me. Google’s initial offer was 330K first year TC. I simply told them that they were my lowest offer and that I was targeting the 400-420K range. They then came back with 390K first year TC. That’s a 60K jump just for asking for it. Though I did have to show them my Airbnb offer for them to get to 440K. But when it comes to getting high offers in LCOL area, FAANG isn't the way. People will always apply to FAANG, so they don't have a reason to pay more. It's going to be smaller companies that're trying to pull talent away from FAANG that will pay the most. Had I gotten a senior offer from Datadog, I know I could've gotten a high 400k offer from them. Also, a lot of startups are offering same pay regardless of location. The highest base salary I was offered was 230k, and had multiple offers with bases ranging from 200-215k. Conclusion: When I first started looking for a new job, I was hoping to get a 350K offer, but I really wanted 400K+. I knew it would be tougher since many companies pay based on location, but it's definitely possible. In the end, I got a 470K offer. And with refreshers, that could go be 550K+ in a couple years. I’m both very excited and kind of mind blown. To give some perspective, that’s equivalent to ~1M in SF/NYC when adjusted for COL (okay maybe not 1M. But it's pretty damn high). Our household income is now 750K, so we’ll be living nicely in our new home. ——— I know this post is a bit of a flex but I do want to give back to the Blind community because I couldn’t have done this without all of you TC degenerates. So feel free to ask any questions and I’ll try to answer when I can #engineering Edit: Google offer screenshot
Congrats OP
Congratulations
This is insane. Congrats OP
I am always so baffled by Datadog leveling. Google L5 but SE2 here?
I was kind of surprised too. And apparently they downleveled me due to my "experience" interview where I go in depth on previous projects. That's usually the interview i excel at. I was pretty bummed too because I matched with some really cool teams, but I didn't want to take the down level.
is datadog stable? Had a heated discussion with recruiter the other day. I am sde2 at amazon and want to uplevel when moving to datadog since otherwise it will reset my promo. Plus Datadog isnt as stable as Amazon in upcoming recession so not worth trying without substantial upside. I atleast want to appear for staff loop. The guy was like no no no.... we cant even try....
Congratulations 🎉
This is quality post I am happy to see here. Protect from removal.
I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
Congratulations 🎉
Congrats OP. Do all these offers are for remote?
Yeah, I was up front with every company that I was only looking for remote positions. No one had an issue with it. Google said i would have less team match options but I was fine with that.
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Why is it so G*damn difficult to move money out of India
That’s great man, you can go on super saving mode now and not have to worry too much about your future
Sometimes I feel this kind of post is for advertising some books/websites/services
if they work to make the difference, they come out relatively cheap