Optimizely v/s Yelp
I recently received an offer from Yelp to join as a software engineer and work on search related problems. I also managed to get an offer from Optimizely from their Data Infrastructure team as a distributed systems engineer. Yelp has given out an initial comp package as 120k base and 115k RSUs over 4 years. Optimizely hasn't given out the exact comp yet but the recruiter mentioned that their range is 135-140k base with some stock options. Trying to decide how Optimizely is doing and what those stock options could be worth. Yelp seems adamant about not budging on comp any further. Work Ex: 1 year Update: Optimizely base : 145k, and 10k options.
Both sfo?
Yea
My roomie is joining Optimizely over Microsoft Seattle. When asked him his reasons were bay, big data, good startup. He s SDE2 joining next month for 145k base.. hope this helps
And ideas on his stock options and what they are valued at ? The recruiter told me it's a Software Engineer 2 role as well though. Did he have any competing offers.
He had Microsoft and one more company. I think he has got 20k options.
Your Yelp offer is good offer for 1 yr exp. Yelp search team can be a bit boring though because they just rarely have something new to work on. Old system + old technology. Good thing about Yelp is it’s very good for junior engineers like you to grow. From what I know Optimizely is not doing well in the business. Not sure about technical challenges.
I'd go for Yelp
Are you judging on compensation or the company standing?
Go with Yelp if company culture is important to you. They have many teams to choose from once you're there for awhile. Don't know about Optimizely but my experience interviewing with Yelp has been incredibly positive. Everyone was super nice from the start and almost all of my interviewers took the time to send me a congratulations email after I received an offer. The HM spent an hour going over a bunch of my questions. Everything was transparent and clearly communicated. For a junior engineer, you can thrive and learn a lot in such an environment.
I'd probably go with Optimizely. Yelp is a much older company, and you'll probably pick up newer technologies at Optimizely. Distributed systems will probably set you up for better opportunities afterwards too. That said, company culture at Yelp is very good.
Yeah the interviewers at Optimizely seemed to work on cutting edge distributed system tech. From my Yelp interviews, it didn't feel like the problems or the tech we're very novel.
There are some very interesting problems at Yelp in some teams but it is team specific.
I'm in the same boat as you are. Trying to decide between optimizely and another bigger company with a search related role. Optimizely is paying more so that's the main reason I'm considering it. Altho the search role seems to have new tech like elasticsearch,flink, rust. Optimizely role seems like it would give me a wider range of problems to work on since its a smaller company.i would expect chaos tho knowing it's still growing. That's something you might want to consider too.pm me if you decided anything.
I have experience as an Optimizely engineer. kilj, ebmania, anyone else: feel free to PM me, happy to chat.
Another big difference is working on a consumer mobile product versus a b2b product. Search team is doing some big overhauls this year. Should be fun.
Years of experience?
1 yr, updated the post