I had been suffered with a bad manager for 3 years and he even backstabbed me when I did an internal transfer. Even if I joined the blind 5 years ago, I did not use it much. I started to use it a lot since last summer and I was surprised that there are so many people who are grinding on leetcodes, and unbelievable TCs are real. There are so many insightful posts about interviewing, negotiating skills and career advices. As I'm benefited by the blind community, I also want to share my story as well. I was very lucky when I joined Microsoft. That means it was my very first onsite interview in my life, and I accepted the offer. Apparently, I didn't have much experience on interviews. So as I applied and interviewed many companies since last September, I have gained some experience by interviewing real interviews. I applied 30+ companies without any referrals. I interviewed with 16 companies overall. I failed one phone screen interview, and I went to 11 onsite interviews out of 15 companies, because those 4 of them had their own reasons. (ghosted, no headcounts, downleveled). I've seen lots of humblebrag posts in the blind with super high TC multiple offers. Unlike them, I could not get any offers until I hit the 7th onsite interview. At the end, I got 3 offers out of those 11 onsite interviews. As I interviewed more, I felt more comfortable with those onsite interview environments and got better with interview skills. I believe that that is the reason why I got more offers at the end. Arranging introductory phone screens with recruiters, technical phone screens, onsite interviews and actually participating all of them with preparation is boring and painful process. Getting rejects are the worst parts and it really hurts. The key is to never give up and keep the positive mood as much as possible. As you know, it is not easy. After getting 3 offers, I read some posts on negotiations and this one (https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/) was the best one. I negotiated with 2 companies which I really liked. I tried to be polite as much as possible among all conversations I had. Negotiation is the real thing. Surprisingly, my initial offer TC was 24% increased after some negotiations. You should try negotiate when you have offers. Thank you blind and keep grinding LC! TLDR: a bad manager + hit cliff + blind posts made me to interview hard and got offers after that TC before cliff: 170K TC after cliff: 130K New TC: 220K
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Heard congress distributing wealth
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