TC: 450K
YOE: 10
Edit: just got my comp conversation for 2021 so TC: 580K, YOE: 11. Power of compound RSU refresher.
Not meant to flex, but I recently went through a job search. Decided not to do leetcode because fuck it and I have family. Here are the offers:
- Design startup (e.g Figma, Invision, Sketch): Staff level, 400K (200K + 800K/4)
- Brex: Senior 2, 500K (pick your split)
- Collaboration workflow startup (e.g Notion, Asana, Airtable): staff level, 550K (250K + 1.2M/4)
- Coinbase: Staff level, 420K (230K + 750K/4)
- A hypergrowth startup: Senior 2 level, 400K (half base half stock).
Decided to go with the hypergrowth startup because "I like the stock". I do believe they'll 10x.
Other places I talked to:
- Twitter: refused to match Staff level, adios
- Uber: Same as Twitter
- Citadel: I asked for 700K. They asked me to do a 4 hour psychology test for offer above 500K, adios.
- FB: matched with E6, did phone screen (behavioral), onsite they expect me to solve 2 LC medium in 45 minutes for each of the 2 coding sessions. Adios.
- Airbnb: Bay Area only, adios.
- DoorDash: process moves too slowly.
- A hypergrowth YC startup: took the interview because I know someone there. Did leetcode, adios.
- Stripe: matched at staff level but no offer
Basically the key to optimize this process if you don't want to leet is:
- Need enough YOE & prestige (FAANG-tier companies) to be matched at the staff level where system design outweighs everything.
- Filter out companies paying under 400 - 500K. Turn on "looking for work" without the badge on LinkedIn. Recruiters will flood you, then state your comp range. Some will ghost and that's expected.
- Ask if they ask leetcode upfront, or "algorithm". Turn down immediately, don't waste your time. Failing an interview also hurts your morale badly. I learned it the hard way when I thought my backup was that hypergrowth YC startup then got caught off-guard.
AMA. DM for specific company names if you're interested.
My framework for system design: 1st clarify the domain to design data model, from there design the CRUD API, from there figure out data flow, R/W frequency, persistency requirements which naturally leads to operations/scaling. In short:
1. Data Model
2. API
3. Data flow
4. Scaling
How I judge my own perf: if you get to 4 you're good. If you're stuck at 1 you don't understand the domain and that's bad. 2/3 is 50/50.
Edit: a lot of people ask me how to get better at system design. For me personally I joined a big tech (non-FAANG tier) and consumed A LOT of internal design docs for systems made by other teams. They have real use cases, real tradeoffs & real traffic and better than generic prep materials. This is where big company experience REALLY helps.
Edit 2: I personally try to avoid "been there done that" projects at work unless I need them to build personal equity for proposing a bigger multi quarter/year projects. It's politics basically but that's how I grew in scope. There's a difference between X yoe & 1 yoe repeat X times. Once I've outgrown the team, I'd switch team and eventually switch company. I've always switched companies because of growth issue, not TC issue.
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comments
wtaf. Can you tell us more about this?
- Didn't complete the process with companies that have a lot of candidates and screen accordingly (e.g., Facebook.)
- Didn't get great offers from 2nd tier companies you would know of (e.g., Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash.)
- Got a few offers from startups. Claimed TC is high but almost certainly includes a highly-inflated value on the equity, which almost certainly comes in the form of stock options.
- Bragged about the above in the form of a novella published on Blind.
congrats.. i wish i will be like you one day