Twitch Irvine vs. SF Office?
I'm currently interviewing for SWE roles with two teams at Twitch. Haven't gotten offers yet, but I was wondering if anyone with experience at either Twitch office could share their experience with the culture at each office? Is the work-life balance good? How's the mentoring for L4s, and how fast can you expect to progress to L5? I heard the SF office offers a higher salary for similar positions because it's a premium location; how much higher would an offer with the team in SF be than the one in Irvine? Also, if anyone specifically has experience with the Twitch Creator platform team vs. the Twitch Music team, I'd love to hear what your experience has been like. #officelife #culture #twitch
10 to 15% seems right but I would argue that the CoL in Irvine is way cheaper than the offset. You can get a pretty spacious 1bedroom within walking distance of the office (and the mall) for ~2k. Like with any company I think your promotion to L5 will be based off how well you integrate with your team and manager. Irvine office subculture is rather more chill, you'll know every face you walk past. I like Irvine, you can actually get around here and if a house is on your radar then it'd be much more feasible here.
Thanks for the feedback! I was wondering how big a deal the CoL difference is right now since everyone’s working remotely anyways. Do you think remote work will be an option at Twitch after Covid ends, or is it better to go into the office, considering the culture? Could you expand on how the Irvine office is more chill? It it just cause there’s less people at the office so everyone knows each other? Are the employees younger? Is the product less stressful? Are people playing videogames at the office? Sorry for all the questions, i’m really curious because Irvine is much closer to home for me and it’d be a much easier transition location-wise, but 10-15% salary seems hard to pass up since CoL doesnt seem to be a factor right now, and the recruiter mentioned there might be the possibility of remote work after Covid ends if I negotiated with the team manager.
Twitch is gonna go fully remote even after COVID ends. The SF office is worth coming into, but other offices are probably not imo. Either way HR is very flexible so your preferences will be accounted for.
^I agree with all this. Great input.
Pay will probably be about 10-15% different. Creator platform works on our home-grown streaming software Twitch Studio. Twitch Music has a really interesting roadmap that I can’t talk about, but it’s an area of growth for Twitch. You may feel a little isolated in Irvine, but it is our 3rd largest engineering location behind SF and Seattle. I would probably pick the Music team, personally.