Offer is similar - L8 Senior Staff at Affirm vs Stripe L4 both TC $650k (250k base, $350k stock, $50k sign-up) Affirm: Vests monthly with no cliff, yearly performance grants, refreshers every two years, the initial grants are 3 years and 2 years, unlimited PTO and 26 away days (company wide days off to recover), very generous perks including $9k/year in Twic wallets to spend on tech/food/wellness, stock is going down recently quite a bit from all time high Stripe: one year RSU grants with cliff, seems to have strong refresher program and performance grants, 21 days PTO, remote eligible role, looking at LinkedIn and my network the company attracts really strong talent and some of the smartest people I know Current TC: $450k, 10 yoe
To me I’d be choosing between better engineers vs unlimited PTO. How work driven are you?
I love work and 21 days PTO at stripe would be plenty - doubt I would ever take more at Affirm
Unlimited PTO is a scam. You get scared to take more days out, and it can become a bad look. I only heard of one case where someone would take about 2 weeks off every 3 months, but only because they put in a lot of work during each quarter Everyone I know on unlimited PTO takes less PTO than me (25 days)
L7 is Staff at Affirm. Senior Staff is L8, you might want to confirm the level with them
You’re right! Corrected!
Stripe’s vision is grander. Are they planning to IPO soon? Maybe the biggest IPO ever.
But that increase in stock price won’t impact comp. I think stripe has a model of TC stays same regardless of stock price move. Personally, I think both are great companies and you can’t go wrong on either.
Even after your RSU is vested? That sucks.
Yoe and level at Amazon?
+1
Stripe has $3k for Twic wallets (for any “lifestyle” spending) fyi.
3k per month?
No, $250 per month. Not super important, but since you included Twic stipend in the Affirm TC, I thought I’d mention that Stripe has a (lesser) version of that too.
Affirm doesn’t have yearly bonus!! The HRs tell that but in reality it is 0% bonus, you only get bonus if you are rating is exceptional.. So consider this factor while finalizing the offer
Check the price at which stock is provided. Also think you vest from 2nd month.
Yes it looks like stock is down quite a bit but price is based on 90 days trailing
Yeah around 130 bucks for January. So like 40% drop.Your TC is then significantly lower.
So if you join on March 30, the rsu grant will be based on average from Jan 1 to March 30 ?
Dec 1 - Feb 28, the 90-Day Trailing Average Closing Price during the 90 consecutive calendar day period preceding (but excluding) the first day of the calendar month in which you commence employment
Affirm 250K for HCOL or LCOL?
On paper Affirm seems like a sweeter deal. Congrats on cracking the interviews Care to help us lesser mortals on how to follow your footsteps?
Getting interviews is relatively easy at this point, I applied to most companies without referral. Lined up 9 companies and went through 4 on-sites, cancelled the remaining on-sites after I got strong offers at interesting places. Some tips: Do on-sites back-to-back. You’ll get better every day. Really liked tryexponent and educative for prep material plus the obligatory refresh on DDIA book. As for levels, all companies are different - Staff at Stripe is Senior Staff at Affirm, so make sure you’re not interviewing at the wrong level or underselling yourself, also if you’re interviewing with multiple places you don’t get emotionally attached which makes for far better negotiation
How deep did you have to get into paxos, raft and such leader election algorithms? Multi leader, single leader or leader less set up, maintaining global counters through logical clocks or vector clocks etc? Finding that quite dense and since it is not part of my day to day job, just wondering if it is necessary to get that level of detail over such concepts