Zillow offer evaluation for TPM
Received an offer for Technical Product Manager position at Zillow in Irvine: Base: 135k Stock: 125k (4 years, after 1 year vests quarterly) Sign in: 15k + 10k after one year I’m a data engineer, 7ye, for last 3-4 years did teams coordination as well. Offer seems low for me, what do you think folks?
Congrats! Is it quarterly vest per year? So TC would be 135k+31.25k+25k for 191.25k for Y1, 166.25k for Y2, etc... No annual bonus? What type of package were you hoping for? Guess the wild card is stock/equity and what that will actually be. Base of $135k for OC for PM (non-Snr) I feel that’s not bad for the area. It would be higher in LA. From various posts it does seem that at least in Seattle Zillow does competitive pay against Amazon and Microsoft, don’t know if it translates to OC since the only top tier would be Google and Amazon for Irvine (at least in Amazon the pay is same between Seattle and Irvine and Google pay is higher for same level at Amazon). FB is in LA but all PM roles in Bay Area :(. Other post on blind on Zillow does seem there’s some negotiation in the area of RSUs and sign-on but seemed base they don’t like to move. Are you current PM or transitioning? Do you have a PM title? 135k maybe right for someone new to the role with relevant work experience for the area. Also Zillow stock has a good pull back so price maybe good right now :). For comparison Amazon L6 Sr PM (these guys are typical MBA grads transitioning into PM out of school) are around $200-$230 TC (base caps out at around $160, TC can be more based on stock appreciation, and those vesting are back loaded). So total comp is not too bad especially for OC/Irvine area (the risk is equity side) but the base plus sign-on are locked. Outside of Google and Amazon, pay is really not that high in general for OC/Irvine (this isn’t Bay Area or even Seattle for that matter). If you know of other good pay for PMs in the area please share :). FWIW I’ve read the WLB at Zillow is pretty great! :) Best of luck! Keep us posted what you end up doing! If you join may hit you up for a referral — lol Also add the Zillow tag and maybe get some more responses :). Also did you read this related post it has info about the Irvine office (comp is for SDE so not relevant though): Check out this post! "Zillow after 4 year cliff (Compensation)" https://us.teamblind.com/s/PKcx2qU5 Also this old post for Sr PM Salaries at Zillow Check out this post! "Zillow Senior PM pay scales (Career)" https://us.teamblind.com/s/8yqzeze3 Looks like the key with negotiation with Zillow is having a good competing offer and push for as much as you can get. They can be competitive with the other tech companies in the Seattle area so they should be able to match anything down here too. Good luck!
Thanks very much for the reply. Vesting - wait 1 year, after that every quarter. As I understood no annual bonus. I was hoping to get 180k base, at least 160k. And at least 150k rsu. I’m currently transitioning from senior data engineer, but have 4 years of experience leading tech teams of various size. Are you saying it makes sense to choose stocks instead of rsu these days? Saw the articles but thanks for sharing them! Sure, I’ll keep you posted guys, have another interview tomorrow at Hulu, let’s what they’ll offer (if any). In case I’ll end up in zillow I would love to give referral.
Oh so talked to Hulu maybe five years ago and at the time their PM (non-Snr) base was around 135k with some equity and the belief the company would “take care of them” which is BS. The numbers you listed I’ve seen for Zillow but for engineers. As important as we think PM work is, engineering salary will always be higher. Doing the transition to PM from engineering WILL be a salary HIT. In general the PM salary is one level lower than Engineer salary. Keep in mind base at Amazon caps out at $160k so $180k base for PM would need to be like director level at most other companies. Sorry should have clarified what I mean by stock. So in general tech companies will issue options or stock grants it seems that more established companies will do stock grants and from experience I think stock grants are better as they will have value unless the stock goes to zero which would mean the company also goes to zero in which you have bigger problems :). Options when they go under water they are worthless of 4 places I’ve been I never had options pay out (maybe my bad luck with timing :)). I have had RSU and ESPP payoff well though. My comment on stock was just the overall price is low so hopefully they factored in the lower price when they calculated the stock price. You can ask what appreciation they expect in the stock. Amazon for instance likes to factor in 15% appreciation in their offers. But good luck with your interview! See what they are offering and you can use it as leverage.
Talked to Hulu, it seems it went well and it seems they want to beat the offer. Waiting for their reply next week.
Great! TIP: You can ask for expected salary range in CA. Not sure if you know but with recent CA law passage it’s illegal for companies to ask for your salary history many people know this part but also part of the law is that CA employers are now required to provide expected salary range upon request.
Mind sharing the interview exp w/ Hulu and Zillow? Curious how it’s structured and what they ask! TIA!
Sure. Zillow was a 3-4 hours interview with multiple people, folks were asking to describe data pipelines which I’ve already build, some behavioral questions like how you handle communication with difficult people, etc. From tech perspective all SQL questions were very simple for an experienced data engineer which is expected for this role. Hulu was full day interview with both engineers and managers, questions were mostly on data architecture and SQL. Again, I would say they were not hard but I ended up not getting an offer with them so maybe I was wrong somewhere.
Thanks for sharing! Curious — Is SQL being standard for PM interviews or is it because of your background?
Is that 125 over 4 years?
I think so, still didn’t get details. But most probably yes.