23andme Salary Questions.
Hey, what do L4/L5 people make at 23andme? A recruiter is reaching out (regarding a security gig not SWE) and I want to know if interviewing is worth my time. Levels and glassdoor aren't helpful. Thanks TC: 170k
Emailing was not effective; Getting the info took 9 minutes on the call fwiw. Around 125k salary Around 38k RSUs per year. If you're competent, I would look elsewhere.
23andme has a reputation for low compensation (at least 30% lower than other companies), especially for more senior engineering roles. There are no bonuses (unless you count a $50 starbucks card). The stock price after IPO is lagging, and the stock price will heavily depend on the success of drug discovery in therapeutics, which will take at least 5 years from now to know the results. The culture and attitude with senior management is that software engineers are not that important. The salaries and the company culture reflect that. The side effect is that the vast majority of engineers are junior engineers or engineers that specialized in a non-CS domain previously. This is not to say those engineers cannot be great, but the engineers have different backgrounds and depth compared to engineers at FAANG companies. Low initial salary with few opportunities for career growth is a bad combination. You'll see similar comments in other reviews here on blind and glassdoor.
It's correct to say that 23andMe does not pay top dollar for talent. It's the compensation philosophy to target the XXth % of the pay range compared to competitors. Let's say that target is 75% (it's not), that still means that 25% of competitors will give higher TC to any given individual. Is that great? No. And we're definitely losing talent because of it. But there's more to a job than comp. I personally love the WLB, mission, and the very generous PTO and company holidays. (FWIW when I started, the PTO was awful but I've really seen is turn it around.) Leadership is trying to hit on more of the intrinsic motivators in the absence of being able to max out the extrinsic motivators. One gripe I have is the stingy RSU grants. They can definitely ratchet that up and I'm not sure what downsides there are to doing that.
You could just ask them?
It takes minimum 15 minutes to talk to a recruiter. Centralized knowledge is more useful to more people and saves everyone time. If I don't get an answer, I'll update this thread, but I don't like to intentionally waste time.
They are reaching out. Just ask them in the message. It takes about 1 minute not 15. But you do you.