So right now I’m interviewing for a few companies. My top 3 are Square, Dropbox, and Shopify. Here’s pros/cons of each that I saw so far: Dropbox - My favorite - Culture seems the best from asking around - Got an IC3 offer (waiting on numbers but prob around $350K) - Everyone I talked to loved it and had great things to say - Modern stack - Love their product and use it. I can see them scaling a lot into other fields - Relatively easy to move around the org Square - Targeted for IC6 (which translates to $390K or about $40k more than a Dropbox IC3 give or take) but more importantly is a leadership/architectural role vs Dropbox being feature work - interviewing there now. Got 1 person left who got sick - They’re on Ember and have no plans on moving to React - They’re on self hosted env and move to cloud is kinda in the works but not really. But it’s on internal K8S. So not terrible - Lots of documentation/testing which is awesome (I like docs) - easy to move across teams. Not so many silos - Everyone is super nice too. Loves the mission of the company. Everyone I spoke to has been at the company for 5-10y. Vs Dropbox is usually 6mo-3y - Lots of micro cultures - some are super friendly/hang out with each other, some are 9-5. They do seem more on the “serious” side - finance so slightly less room to experiment. PCI compliance and such Shopify - I worked for 3 Shopify partners and I know their ecosystem inside out - I stared a few Shopify stores - LOVE what they did to e-commerce and strongly believe in them - have a Web3 team which I kinda worked with at m6 last startup and I’m excited about that space - would be my first choice if not for the teeny tiny salaries ($218K for L7 staff engineer, which is a stretch vs $390K for IC6 (senior+?) at Square or $350K IC3 (senior) at Dropbox). I don’t know why this is considering their size. Also, someone from Dropbox who interviewed me suggested I apply for an IC4. Which would open me up for architectural work. Not to mention a $450K ish salary. But I’m a little scared to ask because I don’t have the written offer yet with numbers. And it might require more interviews which I may or may not screw up. Dunno how that works. I’ve decided to ask after I get a written offer. I should be speaking to the hiring manager for my team soon and in parallel getting the written offer. So any advice on that appreciated. Would love your thoughts/experiences about these companies. Also taking suggestions for other companies. In case something falls through or whatever. My priorities, in order: - Company culture - friendly, hang out with each other, little red tape, no conflicts - interesting tech challenges, I especially like FE infra work - modern tech stack or moving towards a modern tech stack: React, TypeScript, strong CI/CD, micro services. - salary of course. Not the biggest factor, but Shopify’s $200K is hard to compare to the $300-$400ks of others…. - remote culture: I’d like to work out of counties like Nicaragua. I think finance companies are especially not a huge fan of this - Web3/blockchain related. Not a whole lot of these out there in big tech…so not the most important thing Thanks guys!!
Make it a poll
Hmm not sure if I can convert it. But most importantly I want to know *why* someone would pick a certain choice.
Except Shopify. ————————— Preference overall: SQ > DBX > SHOP Domain wise: SHOP (internet) > SQ ( blockchain & fintech) > DBX ( not a fan of SAAS especially DBX products which have little to no market fit )
Why not Shopify?
Poor pay
Id go Square > Dropbox > Shopify
Any reason why Square?
Highest pay, good culture, remote friendly. Dropbox is pretty solid as well. I wouldn’t expect Dropbox stock to go anywhere where as Square I could see being more volatile. So a bit of a personal choice if you want to take that risk.
What's your yoe? Although you don't have the offer yet, I'd probably pick square, they may already pay the highest, and their stock is very low right now. And culture is also great! Skip Shopify.
My YoE is a bit hard to gauge since I’ve never worked in big tech. Mostly corps and startups. But technically 12. But judging by my Dropbox offer and Square targeting I’m probably a Senior in big tech world. Salary isn’t my top priority. Remember, I come from the super lucrative world of early stage startups 🤣. So pretty much anything is a major raise. Besides, I’m sure I’ll uplevel much faster in a culture I like. My biggest concern with Square is that they’re still on old tech. Also, haven’t asked, but being a financial company I don’t know how keen they’ll be on me working out of country. Dropbox was kinda vague on it “up to your manager”. Shopify - yeah……it’s a shame :/ they are on the outside my favorite company by what they’ve created. But even though I don’t care that much about salary, I dunno if I can justify a 2x difference.
If I were you I'd go with Dropbox
Yeah it’s where I’m leaning now. Salary and position aside I feel I fit into that culture the most. And they have cool tech problems. I can see myself having an architectural position in a year or two where I get to work on stuff I really enjoy. Vs Square…I don’t practically know if my hands will be tied in an architectural role. I just haven’t gotten a solid sense either way yet.
Dropbox > square >>>>> Shopify
Dropbox > Square?
Square>> dropbox (no shopify) I heard from the dropbox team, when I interviewed in feb that they are struggling to compete with Google drive and icloud because of network effect. I interviewed with their mobile app team.
Good luck to Shopify getting talent with those salaries 😂😂
FYI, SQ brought a policy that allows employees to Work from outside US up to 45days in a year. However, they have a list of countries where it's allowed. So, checkout if that list has your home country.
Yeah. I think Dropbox has something like that as well. There was a list where they have legal entities. But Nicaragua is not on that list :(
None
What’s your pick? Also started reaching out to a few other internal recruiters. Not that I have a better preference than Dropbox atm, but you never what can fall through. Also I interviewed with Square yesterday, and although it is indeed a very different culture feel from Dropbox I would not be disappointed in working with it if Dropbox fell through.