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I originally posted this https://www.teamblind.com/us/s/oAT4EEW3 TLDR I’m an SRE-SWE with 3.5 Yoe, who got laid off from Google, wanted to see how bad the tech market is for mid level engineers. As an update, officially signed an offer with a small high growth startup (leaving name out because it’s tiny and don’t wanna identify myself), with a new tc of 250k base plus equity. In the original post, lots of people were saying > 200k liquid compensation was unrealistic at 3.5 YOE, but I don’t think it is, it’s just a bit tougher to find those opportunities but they definitely exist. I got another offer from a start up for 140k base plus equity, and had a final round (passed the tech rounds) with StubHub and virtual onsite Amazon this week that I cancelled, with StubHub offering 220k and 500k tc pre-negotiation (but with non-public equity), and Amazon for L5, so probably at most 300-320k if I did everything perfectly. Otherwise, I was in some part of the interview process with about around 10ish companies, varying from faang or faang adjacent to mid sized to seed round startups. I was rejected from 5 companies in total, the rest of the interviews were still in progress. Overall takeaway is the tech market is still good, just less geared toward big tech than before. This is also from my biased perspective as someone who has 2 Faangs and a masters + undergrad from a top 25 school. I found the best bet was recruiters that reached out directly on LinkedIn, that led to the majority of the interviews I had. Once I set my status to actively looking, I was getting 1-2 messages a day. Obviously this isn’t something you can control, but making sure you add as much info to your profile as possible helps you pop up in recruiter searches. Overall, I think having Google and Amazon on my resume helped a disproportionate amount. I honestly don’t know if I’m qualified for a lot of the jobs I was interviewing for purely based off of my past experience, but I was able to talk about the work I did do pretty well, and that went a long way towards helping me move along in the interviews. In terms of prep, I did maybe like 50 leetcode questions, for a current running total of like 220ish, and read through parts of the system design books. Given the short timeline and the insane number of interviews I’ve been doing I didn’t have the time or energy to do more, but I never failed a coding or system design interview so I guess it was enough. That said I probably couldn’t have solved a DP problem to save my life lol so also a lot of luck in getting questions I could solve. I think the part that’s not talked about enough though is being able to talk about past experience in an effective way, and thanks to having so many interviews (40-50 over the course of a month) across so many companies (15-20), I got really good at this. Obviously my TC ended up going down, but I’m really excited about the work I’ll be doing, and at least for this year thanks to severance I’ll end up with ~360k in pay for the year so can’t really complain. Yoe: 3.5 Old tc: 300k New tc: 250k + funny money
Congratulations on your new job & wish you luck. But please don’t use generic click bait titles I was hoping to read some generic industry stats
Congrats on the offer, this has been my observation as well. For mid/senior setting LinkedIn to actively looking does result in getting interviews. However , since the market is very competitive you have to make sure to nail the coding/design rounds. You seem to have a good track record of never failing technical rounds.
i’m proud of you
Thanks dad!
You went from Google and Amazon to a "no name" small company with worse pay, which is not very encouraging to be honest. I think the market sucks right now and your post confirms this.
I also chose to end interviews with about 12 other companies, including StubHub, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tik Tok if we’re talking about big names. Meta reached out too, but there was no positions in my area so I had to turn them down because I don’t wanna move. I chose this startup because it seemed really cool, and a 250k base seemed worth it to get a very different skill set from what I’ve gotten at FAANG.
Start up paying mid levels 250k base in this economy doesn’t sound like it will last long but good for you. This is one engineer getting one offer so not really a pulse on the market if you ask me.
Congrats op. What would you say is a good way to optimize my LinkedIn profile?
I added as many tags to every job I’ve had as possible with relevant tech, added clear descriptions, got coworkers to add referrals, basically anything that could add to my profile page, I added.
What area are you in? I'm not getting as many interviews because I'm in LA and don't want to move
I’m in LA too actually. I’ve definitely turned down a ton of interviews because of the location issue so can relate to that. I think the difference is there’s less qualified applicants here so if you do get an interview it’s less competitive than in the Bay Area.
Were able to get interviews for SWE positions for Amazon, Tiktok, Microsoft, etc in LA? It seems like most engineering teams from these big companies are in Bay Area / Seattle / Austin / NYC. Especially for domains like ML. I’m also in LA but I am considering moving to Bay Area since a lot of FAANGS+ don’t have engineering teams in LA.
Congrats! Do you have any recommendations for startups interviews preparation? AFAIK they usually ask more practical questions on interviews instead of leetcode/system design.
Thanks! Honestly every startup has such a different process it’s hard to prepare. I found that leetcode skills help even for other coding problems because I tend to memorize how to use language features so I don’t have to look it up during the interview which gives a lot of speed benefit.
It's good for you because of this... 2 Faangs and a masters + undergrad from a top 25 school.
Damn nice job . You certainly got your way. The job market is certainly not this rosy for anyone without credentials and certainly worse for people who need immigration sponsorship...
Yeah, definitely needing immigration support makes it tough, especially since that rules out a lot of early stage startups
How to find out and apply to early stage startups?