It seems standard way to get a great compensation is to sit down and exercise all the run-of-the-mill algorithmic questions because that will matter the most in the end. Further optimisation could be made by being less fearful about negotiating the offer. Asking for 10% more would never hurt [1].
I am not a fierce critic of BigCo. interviewing practises but it seems a little disappointing that coding side-projects, contributing to open source, and writing mean so little in getting hired.
This is true. I have around 6 years of experience and when interviewing recently I tried two approaches:
1) Not preparing myself by reading on data structures and algorithms. Just relying on my solid experience to carry me.
2) Spending couple of hours evening before interview to quickly go through data structures (array, linked list, hashmap, stack, queue, binary trees), algorithms (searching binary search trees, merge sort etc) and writing quick implementations of couple of most common algorithms you get asked about during interviews (just to have fresh "muscle" memory to be able to quickly write an implementation on the whiteboard with confidence).
Approach 1) did not really work well for me. After I switched to 2) the interviews got much better for me and offers started coming.
So I'd suggest even if you are very experienced and have a decade of experience, don't rely on that being enough. Spend a day before interview refreshing your memory on computer science fundamentals, try to memorize Big O cheat sheet. And you will be much more likely to get offer.
I think having a tier 1 college degree matters the most even in getting an interview, atleast here in India. This is from my experience of seeing increasing job posts having tier 1 college degree as requirement and colleagues I know having good college degree having no difficulty in getting interviews(github code, portfolio etc really doesn't matter)
I guess I need to move to Silicon Valley. These numbers are insane for two years and an undergrad degree. I have 32 years experience and I don't get these kinds of offers. This is either complete BS or the guy is a savant. Something smells fishy here.
Don't do it. Silicon Valley is more favorable for the inexperienced, in part because they are a blank slate that can be more easily coached. His interviewing skills could be too notch regardless of number of years of professional experience. On top of that, there is a huge bias with interviewers to expect much more interview performance from those with more years of experience. The local industry favors the young in so many ways.
Also, don't forget about the cost of living. With 140k per year salary, about 10 percent of that (for me) was money that didn't go to taxes or bills. I have 15 years of experience (and I look young).
It's definitely a different kind of experience, so if you're feeling adventurous, do it! Just don't expect it to be fun, and be sure to do your own homework on whether there is a realistic market for a company's product if it's a startup (especially if it is Pre-Series-B). And, for the love of all that is good, don't work for any CEO under age 25. They are probably not the next Mark Zuckerberg.
They seem a bit higher than what I would normally expect for 2 year experience; sometimes a successful startup and some salary negotiations can give you a boost.
And there are some other downsides, you work very long hours in a company of 70%+ men. I think quality of life in South Bay for most isn't as nice as much less affluent places. It depends on your cup of tea, I guess.
Taxes: https://imgur.com/a/s3SVY (Not sure if imgur links are allowed here, but I couldn't find a website that would let me calculate an estimated paycheck and share the link)
Nope definitely not fishy. I'm 2 years out of college and $180k salary + 250k RSU. SF is expensive these days. And also remember California grabs 9% of your income so it goes down by a lot
These numbers are real, at least for Silicon Valley. There's nothing fishy when you take into account the cost of living here and the constant demand for engineering talent that's up to date.
> Male. Two years of professional experience. Bachelors. Non-ivy league school. Previously from a unicorn startup. I'm mentioning these because people ask, not that I think they matter.
Being an alumni from unicorn startup is my guess on why he got these offers.
People are obsessed with salaries and positions which I think is unhealthy. But what I find ironic is that I have always heard the rich talk about how money can't buy happiness or how you should take risks from people who have some kind of backing - monetary/family or like here how background doesn't matter, even with evidence like unicorn or referrals.
From a practical point of view, SF is expensive to live in so being 'obsessed' with salary might just be practical. Being able to know the range your in is also good, regardless of location, for not being taken advantage of, especially if you're young and new to the business world.
I think beyond salary, maybe you meant money in general or the social status that having a lot of it confers. That can be a particular obsession that is not healthy for a person or society in general.
Also, there are people obsessed with titles as status, which can be funny. A former co-worker made a stink about not getting a 'promoted' to a certain title level. At her next year's review, she finally did and she was ecstatic. She was doing the same job with the same duties and getting paid the same. But she had the title.
It always strikes me as odd at how much HN complanies about hiring practices in tech. Spend a few weeks with Leetcode and CTCI and you have a decent shot at salaries in this range at the BigCo's (depends on location of course).
What other industry has it's interview process so transparent with such high rewards?
If you have a job and any kind of social life, going through 200~300 questions like OP is going to take you more than a few weeks.
A lot of people complain because this is the very example of cargo culting, you hire people who went through the same questions and reject those who haven't, even though it has no bearing on their ability to do the job.
Imagine you discovered an opportunity for arbritage in currency exchanges, for example. A normal person might quickly act to start printing money before the market corrects and the opportunity ends.
Meanwhile, programmers have noticed that being able to solve algorithmic quizzes with a smile is a free ticket to an oversized salary. Their collection reaction? Disgust and defiance!
As you say, people in other professions would probably be happy to replace their black box interviews with a set of relatively uniform tests. All a programmer has to do to get a job is ring up a recruiter and then complete some algorithmic challenges. From the perspective of the programmer, why do we want to replace this?
I complain about it because it's absurd. It's also actually not that transparent, because for all it supposedly is there is still the bias against age, gender and a number of other things that no matter how Leet your Code interview is will get you rejected.
I'm in the southeast. 24, self-taught, no degree (I was able to make it through Triplebyte, though I'm not persuaded that actually means anything). 2009-2015 IT/helpdesk/sysadmin, and 2015-2017 more dev/devops, all with a local medium (~350 employee) retail-ish business that grosses about $30m annually if I had to guess. I quit this year for a number of reasons (depression), but I mainly worked on automation. A collection of scripts I wrote (and documented!) saves about 30 days' worth of the team's time annually. I made $22.50/hour. The numbers in this post are unfathomable to me.
A friend of mine dropped out of CC with a 1.9 at the age of 20. During/after he did 4 internships at top-tier companies making $8-9k a month in each one.
Now he’s choosing between FB, Google, Microsoft, a few other unicorns, and a tiny startup all with offers over $160k TC.
He’s incredibly smart, no question, but at the end of the day it’s all a game. For him, all it took was his first internship at a top-tier company to land future interviews and months of practice to get offers.
Switch companies more frequently. Each time you do, you'll make more.
The trick is, you're worth whatever the market is willing to pay. But the only way to find out is to go out on the market. Most people stick with the same job for years, meaning they only check their worth a few times. Hence low salaries.
I live in the UK, to me these numbers are insane. How are these salaries at that work experience possible? Is the pay increase from then on slow? Are these salaries sustainable for the industry long term? I know experienced professionals who would be considered successful in the UK who finish their careers nowhere near this level of salary (not programmers but certainly engineers). I’m astounded.
Anyone could write up such a Blind post. And when it comes to anonymously bragging via lies on the internet, there is no shortage of prior art.
To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the growth rate of engineering applications to these bigcos has declined over the past few years. A decline in the supply of candidates relative to demand, among other factors, could lead to an increase in compensation per offer.
That being said, I'm still leaning towards this post being BS.
But you get these posts on HN quite often with similar numbers. I'd assume all of them are not lying or using fake data to brag. If only some of them are telling the truth then the numbers are real which is why I tend to believe them.
So SFO/Bay area is that expensive. Most people don't think of that and assume that SFO requires modest 20% increase in cost of living. Absolutely not true. So before you get floored with these numbers you need to divide them by almost a factor of 2 for the corresponding standard of living.
10 years ago I was working for VMware in Palo Alto as an intern and my salary was $5.5k per month. They offered me a permanent position for $75k per year, but I decided to move back to Finland. I would say that those numbers in the article sound believable. Housing costs in the bay area are crazy.
Housing costs shouldn't really factor into what the company is willing to pay staff though. It costs the company the same amount regardless of how much it costs the employee to live.
These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. I live in Zurich, Switzerland and I have a similar salary (~200K) but the high cost of living (which, I assume, is similar if not lower than the Bay Area) make my salary comparable to an "ok" salary in other European countries. Just to give you an idea: the overall cost of school + a nanny for 2 kids under 6 is around 70K year in Zurich.
As other have mentioned, the sign up bonus is quite awesome, but I assume is not the standard in the US either.
There was a question on gender and race in the article comments. I am wondering how much does this play in the numbers game? Do tech companies ask this in their application process (in SF, USA anyway)? Are they even allowed to? Can they find out? Do they have recruitment teams sniffing out applicant's social media to find out?
Sidenote: One of my favourite replies on the article comments:
I just get a 403 page instead of an article, probably because I browse via a DigitalOcean IP address.
If this is enough to get me blocked, that's hilarious given that this company's product is supposed to be "anonymous work talk" - if they like anonymity so much why am I not allowed to browse from whatever IP address I like?
EDIT: And furthermore, all it takes to find out if a company uses Blind is to type in the company name and see what it says. That's a pretty blatant privacy leak right on the company's home page.
I just left a company that got aquired by a big US security company, I was offered a 140k bonus (50/50 cash/stock, under the condition of staying min. 2 y) if I stay (because they knew I was probably leaving). The Bonus was several times more than my annual salary (Eastern Europe). Despite all the day dreaming about the numbers I declined and left. Why? Because after 2 years there I was already burned out, had no time, was getting calls at 5am, had to be available 24/7. I was miserable and had no life and for what? “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” - Thoreau. Now I only work 10h a week and am so happy and relaxed, I earn enough to cover my living costs and can use the rest of my LIFE to do whatever I want.
Just wanted to share that because I often see people here obsessing about money, but what's the point of it if you can't live?
[+] [-] shubhamjain|8 years ago|reply
I am not a fierce critic of BigCo. interviewing practises but it seems a little disappointing that coding side-projects, contributing to open source, and writing mean so little in getting hired.
[1]: https://medium.com/we-are-yammer/how-i-negotiated-for-an-add...
[+] [-] richardknop|8 years ago|reply
1) Not preparing myself by reading on data structures and algorithms. Just relying on my solid experience to carry me.
2) Spending couple of hours evening before interview to quickly go through data structures (array, linked list, hashmap, stack, queue, binary trees), algorithms (searching binary search trees, merge sort etc) and writing quick implementations of couple of most common algorithms you get asked about during interviews (just to have fresh "muscle" memory to be able to quickly write an implementation on the whiteboard with confidence).
Approach 1) did not really work well for me. After I switched to 2) the interviews got much better for me and offers started coming.
So I'd suggest even if you are very experienced and have a decade of experience, don't rely on that being enough. Spend a day before interview refreshing your memory on computer science fundamentals, try to memorize Big O cheat sheet. And you will be much more likely to get offer.
[+] [-] amalfra|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woolvalley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChicagoDave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nuzzerino|8 years ago|reply
Also, don't forget about the cost of living. With 140k per year salary, about 10 percent of that (for me) was money that didn't go to taxes or bills. I have 15 years of experience (and I look young).
It's definitely a different kind of experience, so if you're feeling adventurous, do it! Just don't expect it to be fun, and be sure to do your own homework on whether there is a realistic market for a company's product if it's a startup (especially if it is Pre-Series-B). And, for the love of all that is good, don't work for any CEO under age 25. They are probably not the next Mark Zuckerberg.
[+] [-] cjhanks|8 years ago|reply
But recall: $1 USD (SFO) != $1 USD (Almost anywhere else).
And there are some other downsides, you work very long hours in a company of 70%+ men. I think quality of life in South Bay for most isn't as nice as much less affluent places. It depends on your cup of tea, I guess.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...
[+] [-] gonehome|8 years ago|reply
Silicon Valley salaries are pretty decent and I’ve heard of new grads getting 100k signing bonuses at Facebook.
[+] [-] joshuamorton|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HN15718653|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nunez|8 years ago|reply
Taxes: https://imgur.com/a/s3SVY (Not sure if imgur links are allowed here, but I couldn't find a website that would let me calculate an estimated paycheck and share the link)
Rent: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/d/apts-housing-for-rent/search/...
Car Insurance: https://imgur.com/a/3UgPw
Public Transit Options (https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/49dfm6/poor_public...)
[+] [-] volgo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] make3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevindeasis|8 years ago|reply
TLDR the author had 2 years experience
1) Google - 140k base, 107.5k RSUs, 50k sign on, 15% bonus
2) Facebook - 160k base, 75k RSUs, 70k sign on, 10% bonus
3) Lyft - 170k base, 180k RSUs, 20k sign on
4) Dropbox - 162k base, 114k RSUs, 10k sign on
5) Airbnb - 152k base, 75k RSUs, 13.5k sign on
6) Palantir - 150k base, 51k stock options, 25k sign on, 25k bonus
[+] [-] hkmurakami|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisisit|8 years ago|reply
> Male. Two years of professional experience. Bachelors. Non-ivy league school. Previously from a unicorn startup. I'm mentioning these because people ask, not that I think they matter.
Being an alumni from unicorn startup is my guess on why he got these offers.
People are obsessed with salaries and positions which I think is unhealthy. But what I find ironic is that I have always heard the rich talk about how money can't buy happiness or how you should take risks from people who have some kind of backing - monetary/family or like here how background doesn't matter, even with evidence like unicorn or referrals.
Edited for some clarity.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|8 years ago|reply
Also not having money will often cause unhappiness.
[+] [-] JBlue42|8 years ago|reply
I think beyond salary, maybe you meant money in general or the social status that having a lot of it confers. That can be a particular obsession that is not healthy for a person or society in general.
Also, there are people obsessed with titles as status, which can be funny. A former co-worker made a stink about not getting a 'promoted' to a certain title level. At her next year's review, she finally did and she was ecstatic. She was doing the same job with the same duties and getting paid the same. But she had the title.
[+] [-] 40acres|8 years ago|reply
What other industry has it's interview process so transparent with such high rewards?
[+] [-] hocuspocus|8 years ago|reply
A lot of people complain because this is the very example of cargo culting, you hire people who went through the same questions and reject those who haven't, even though it has no bearing on their ability to do the job.
[+] [-] jaredklewis|8 years ago|reply
Imagine you discovered an opportunity for arbritage in currency exchanges, for example. A normal person might quickly act to start printing money before the market corrects and the opportunity ends.
Meanwhile, programmers have noticed that being able to solve algorithmic quizzes with a smile is a free ticket to an oversized salary. Their collection reaction? Disgust and defiance!
As you say, people in other professions would probably be happy to replace their black box interviews with a set of relatively uniform tests. All a programmer has to do to get a job is ring up a recruiter and then complete some algorithmic challenges. From the perspective of the programmer, why do we want to replace this?
[+] [-] sidlls|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mchaver|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerflad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akhilcacharya|8 years ago|reply
Now he’s choosing between FB, Google, Microsoft, a few other unicorns, and a tiny startup all with offers over $160k TC.
He’s incredibly smart, no question, but at the end of the day it’s all a game. For him, all it took was his first internship at a top-tier company to land future interviews and months of practice to get offers.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
The trick is, you're worth whatever the market is willing to pay. But the only way to find out is to go out on the market. Most people stick with the same job for years, meaning they only check their worth a few times. Hence low salaries.
[+] [-] corruptbytes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonbarker87|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousgal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ken47|8 years ago|reply
Anyone could write up such a Blind post. And when it comes to anonymously bragging via lies on the internet, there is no shortage of prior art.
To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the growth rate of engineering applications to these bigcos has declined over the past few years. A decline in the supply of candidates relative to demand, among other factors, could lead to an increase in compensation per offer.
That being said, I'm still leaning towards this post being BS.
[+] [-] akhilcacharya|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardknop|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytelus|8 years ago|reply
So SFO/Bay area is that expensive. Most people don't think of that and assume that SFO requires modest 20% increase in cost of living. Absolutely not true. So before you get floored with these numbers you need to divide them by almost a factor of 2 for the corresponding standard of living.
[+] [-] hpaavola|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstanley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koevet|8 years ago|reply
As other have mentioned, the sign up bonus is quite awesome, but I assume is not the standard in the US either.
edited: nannies -> nanny
[+] [-] austinpray|8 years ago|reply
For anyone else that was confused
[+] [-] cyberferret|8 years ago|reply
Sidenote: One of my favourite replies on the article comments:
> Can you share your gender and race?
>> OP is a female dwarf paladin
[+] [-] diiaann|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akhilcacharya|8 years ago|reply
I’m just sad I can’t get even a fraction of that at my Big4.
Source - multiple friends at FB.
[+] [-] aroundtown|8 years ago|reply
My first job after graduating 10 years ago was for 45k per year.
I have had an awful lot of bad luck since graduating and have yet to be paid more than that since.
Every job I've had paid progressively less, always took them cause I needed the job.
My last programming job paid $14 an hour.
Can anyone offer advice on breaking out of the cycle of terribleness?
I'm a US citizen, bachelors in CS, live in Tx.
[+] [-] jstanley|8 years ago|reply
If this is enough to get me blocked, that's hilarious given that this company's product is supposed to be "anonymous work talk" - if they like anonymity so much why am I not allowed to browse from whatever IP address I like?
EDIT: And furthermore, all it takes to find out if a company uses Blind is to type in the company name and see what it says. That's a pretty blatant privacy leak right on the company's home page.
[+] [-] richardknop|8 years ago|reply
1) Google - 140k base, 100k RSUs, 50k sign on, 15% bonus
2) Facebook - 160k base, 75k RSUs, 75k sign on, 10% bonus
3) Lyft - 165k base, 180k RSUs, 20k sign on
4) Dropbox - 160k base, 115k RSUs, 10k sign on
5) Airbnb - 150k base, 75k RSUs, 15k sign on
6) Palantir - 150k base, 50k stock options, 25k sign on, 25k bonus
[+] [-] striking|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuamorton|8 years ago|reply
Here's archive.is: https://archive.fo/FF094
[+] [-] cakkineni|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NiklasMort|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramtatatam|8 years ago|reply
Have been interviewing people, many with 5+ years of experience and in my opinion it is not too difficult to spot somebody who is not fit for the job.
So well done again.