I recently went thru a virtual onsite loop with Riot Games, and they reached out today to extend an offer. Curious to know what everyone thinks of the numbers and if I should negotiate (dumb question I know). I specifically told the recruiter I'd want to target the lower end of the senior band. He said I aced my collaboration & communication interview, as well as I gave strong senior signals on my subject matter expert interview but said my values B interview partially lacked senior signals (?) and my take home test review interview didn't go well because I screwed up telling them the time complexity of my program (even though I used one of the most efficient data structures for the problem). The recruiter told me I'd be in the "learning" band of P2, which is the lowest band of P2. Idk how one mess up could correspond to me being down leveled this significantly. I'm slated to be promoted to 62 in the next 6-12 months if I stay on my current team. Thoughts? What values should I counter with given the numbers on levels.fyi? Offer: Base: $152k Bonus: 10% bonus + 15% long term incentive bonus Dual vest equity over 4 years: 22.5% of base salary => $34,200 over 4 years 0/30/30/40 TC: $178k YOE: 3.5 #gaming #riotgames #tech
“Values B senior signals”?
No idea how they gauge senior signals off of a values interview tbh
Values B is a little misleading in name (I do some of these). It's not purely Values, but it probes into deeper stories around how you approach problems as well as your ability to personally be a leader and steer the ship when needed. Values A (phone screen) is the one that's moreso like "Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses" etc. I have seen V-B unfortunately anchor a lot of downlevels because the interviewer is the most senior in the entire panel. It's almost a bar raiser round in a sense.
What does the dual vest equity mean?
Basically two part: - Vest time is over 4 years and isn't equally distributed (0/30/30/40) - Something about relying on a liquidity event? Like Riot having a large influx of cash to pay back on successes to employees. I still have to do some research on this because I'm not entirely sure how it works either.
Do you have any target %s for the bonuses? How high can they go up to?
Your current tc is 150k? 🥜
Oops, updated it. It's technically $178k. Still 🥜
Always negotiate, easy to get a sign on. Considering your YOE and current TC you don’t have much leverage. Unless you really communicate that you love your current job.
How would one ask for a sign-on bonus?
Just ask and provide a reason for it. Usually sign on is for covering income your giving up like RSU or annual bonus so it covers that gap. The reason could also be like hey I’m saving up to buy this house soon.
What is a “long term incentive bonus?”
Essentially a cash grant that vests annually. Simulating an RSU vest schedule - since Riot doesn't exactly have RSUs right now (this is only partially true, we do get RSUs now as well but they are peanuts; 10% of base vesting over 4 years with nothing really until year 2+.
Say you have soon to vest RSUs, they can offer them as a sign on bonus at least. (Apart from the other things like more base, etc.) In essence, any strong points for your counter is what the recruiter needs. i.e: competing offer, RSUs, still pending interviews which you will stop if offered a better deal, etc etc
Base range for P2 (in LA) is 120 to 165k. For learning, you likely won't be able to negotiate up further. However, you may be able to wiggle on that proficiency with your recruiter/HM still. 3.5 YOE should be grounds for Proficient or Advanced P2 as long as you are able to demonstrate that you've worked independently on small to medium sized bodies of work. If you can negotiate that proficiency, that will automatically budge the comp up. Equity/LTI/Bonus is non negotiable per level. If they won't budge on the level then try to negotiate a sign-on. The max sign-on is typically ~30k at any level. DM for any more questions you have about Riot, and congrats on your offer!
Thanks a ton for your insight!!
How long did you wait until you got an offer?
What was your hackerrank like? I'm taking it soon. DM me if you'd like
Try to get base to 160