|
Hadlock posted:It's possible your CFO wasn't paying attention and/or the intern copy/pasted the wrong equity grant last year. In my experience it's a mistake to assume HR/Finance are competent at their jobs and can be trusted unsupervised asur posted:Can anyone explain how equity cliffs make any sense with additional grants along the way or if my company is doing something unexpected? Total comp after promo with a grant was well above total comp from levels.fyi for the promo level then the cliff comes and the refresh drops me to around the same total comp from levels.fyi. Based on levels data it seems like my company decided to pay me more than necessary for a yearish? Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Sep 12, 2021 |
#
?
Sep 12, 2021 19:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 21:08 |
|
|
10%, 20%, 30%, 40% yearly option vesting. Well, there goes any chance of getting my loyalty 
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 12:13
|
|
|
Xarn posted:10%, 20%, 30%, 40% yearly option vesting. I feel like orgs that structure this way have serious retention issues comp won't solve for, and probably best to avoid. Eg people don't leave Amazon before the cliff for financial reasons.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 14:01
|
|
|
I expect an offer today or tomorrow from a privately held company that I’ve been interviewing with. I’m coming from a publicly traded company that gives 10% RSU bonuses per year. I had some questions about the private company’s options, so I’m meeting with the CFO today. What kind of pitfalls should I look out for? As I understand it, this company’s options are exercisable only when the company changes ownership. Apparently this happened several years ago and employees with those options received a “benefit”.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 14:01
|
|
|
yard salad posted:I expect an offer today or tomorrow from a privately held company that I’ve been interviewing with. I’m coming from a publicly traded company that gives 10% RSU bonuses per year. quote:As I understand it, this company’s options are exercisable only when the company changes ownership. Apparently this happened several years ago and employees with those options received a “benefit”. If there is not a reliable way to turn options into money then I would completely ignore the options when evaluating the total comp.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 14:20
|
|
|
its monopoly money op
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 14:33
|
|
|
If they’re VC funded at some point the investors will want to cash out which is why there’s probably an end goal of getting acquired or IPO, and the will be when the options become real. The CFO hopefully knows how realistic that is in the next X years but they won’t be able to commit to anything. It’s worth knowing if you keep vested options when you quit, if they have an expiry date, and how they decide how much to give people. One place I got these allocated them (below director level) by working backwards from: if we target an X valuation at IPO, and the strike price now is Y, how many options do we give people that they’d end up with roughly one year of salary as the windfall (I guess averaged per position). They would have to justify this and the expected valuation to the board and investors so hopefully it’s not completely made up numbers. Still it’s all monopoly money.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:04
|
|
|
Turned down the start-up CTO role. Any chance I can get an interview at a FANG for a staff level position with just 7 years of experience? From what I've seen, the interview seems gameable given enough prep but the difficulty will be convincing a recruiter to get me interviewed for that level. Maybe some place like Facebook that decides levels after interviews would be good?
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:27
|
|
|
didn't you leave a google a year ago as l4? that seems like overreaching
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:31
|
|
|
Yes but I think with about 6 to 12 months of prep I can memorize everything it takes to absolutely crush a bunch of system design interviews. As people at that level seem to exist on a spectrum of tech skill vs leadership/management, my strategy would be to majorly increase my tech skill via focused education so I can stand out way beyond any other candidates the interviewers have seen.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:36
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Yes but I think with about 6 to 12 months of prep I can memorize everything it takes to absolutely crush a bunch of system design interviews. How are you going to convince the recruiter to set up L6 interviews if a year ago you were L4?
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:40
|
|
|
Jose Valasquez posted:How are you going to convince the recruiter to set up L6 interviews if a year ago you were L4? That's what I'm asking you all. Maybe I could jump to L5 via company switch then jump to L5 via another switch? A direct L4 to L6 hop would be ideal though. oliveoil fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Sep 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:45
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:As people at that level seem to exist on a spectrum of tech skill vs leadership/management, my strategy would be to majorly increase my tech skill via focused education so I can stand out way beyond any other candidates the interviewers have seen. For staff+ roles, the technical background you need comes from working on large projects over the course of many years. You're not going to get that from education, unless you're including work experience as part of education, and even then the timeline you're looking at is measured in years rather than months.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:46
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:For staff+ roles, the technical background you need comes from working on large projects over the course of many years. You're not going to get that from education, unless you're including work experience as part of education, and even then the timeline you're looking at is measured in years rather than months. In that case I'll fail miserably and it'll still be a good learning experience. I don't think I'll look back and be disappointed that I learned a lot.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:50
|
|
|
IC6+ at Facebook is less about technical ability and more about how you've driven projects to success.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 15:58
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:A direct L4 to L6 hop would be ideal though. Why do you think this is possible?
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 16:04
|
|
|
Step 1, become drinking buddy with someone sufficiently high up. Step 2, collect blackmail on the person from step 1 Step 3, cash it in
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 16:46
|
|
|
Xarn posted:Step 1, become drinking buddy with someone sufficiently high up. Is it no longer enough to have your dad be good friends with an executive? drat, the industry really moved on!
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 16:57
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Is it no longer enough to have your dad be good friends with an executive? drat, the industry really moved on! good point - family can do (1) - (3) on your behalf
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 17:01
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:Why do you think this is possible? Because I know it's been done in six months by someone who started out getting paid about half of L4 comp albeit with over ten years experience. I've got about 6-7 (more like 7-8 across all my tech work) years and have some experience leading a project that involved taking an unknown system from another team and: - gathering requirements from all of its client teams - redesigning it for the new requirements, as most needed to be thrown away due to a major deprecation - delegating work to other people for the relaunch and further launches of several features, that all involved going back and forth with legal, security, and privacy teams. Also had to work with teams we were clients of to get them support new features that they considered too low of priority to work on before I convinced them. Storing personal information got us some challenges from the legal, privacy and security teams. One feature was inherently risky to the company's security if not implemented right and I had to work with security to satisfy them we found a way to offer it safely. Maybe I could tell the recruiter about that stuff. Got an S at L3 which implies at least EE L4 which implies I was likely doing at least a modicum of L5 work. Going from partial L5 to L6 doesn't seem like a huge stretch. oliveoil fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Sep 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 17:37
|
|
|
You're going to need a bit more than "some delegating" to make staff at any company where the title means anything. What you're looking for is evidence that you can deliver large and complex projects reliably, a year is going to be enough time to maybe deliver one project of considerable scope. You're definitely not going to get that experience grinding leetcode. Edit: I don't know what those letters mean, but you can't stretch being really good at L3 into L6.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 17:43
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Edit: I don't know what those letters mean, but you can't stretch being really good at L3 into L6. Google's ladders and ratings are kind of weird. You're right that being really good at one level doesn't mean you're doing a higher level's work. The relevant ratings are basically EE - Exceeds Expectations. You can get this by being a good L3 or by doing some L4 work. SEE - Strongly Exceeds Expectations. You get this by performing roughly L4. You generally can't get this just by being a really good L3. S - Superb. You generally get this by performing at L4 *and also* doing some things from L5. You don't get this from just being really good at L3 stuff. It implies someone looked at my work and convinced a committee that I was doing L4 work and even some L5 stuff... Or just L4 work but really good L4 work. Given that I was coordinating with so many different parties (security, privacy, legal, all our clients, the team we inherited the system from, the team I needed a new feature from, and my own team to implement) without supervision, I suspect it wasn't just "really good L4 work" but instead L5 stuff, as L4 specifically includes being supervised (though less than L3). What I am trying to do is turn "some L5 stuff" + "hardcore skill improvement" into L6. I'm not planning to just grind leetcode and memorize answers to common questions but to actually gain the necessary technical skills to pass the interview and do the job. A lot of that "years of experience" most people need to get the technical skill for L6 has been written and shared in detail and I will obsessively collect, organize and study it. oliveoil fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Sep 13, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 17:51
|
|
|
I can only speak for a general case, but every role has aspects where you can learn on the job and aspects that are table stakes for performing from the start. If you were doing some L5 stuff, great! Without knowing specifically what parts of L5 you were already doing and what parts you still had to accomplish, I wouldn't translate that into "I can grind my way to L6".
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:06
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:A lot of that "years of experience" most people need to get the technical skill for L6 has been written and shared in detail and I will obsessively collect, organize and study it. L6 isn't about technical skill at all. it's about having the soft skills to navigate projects to success. no competent interviewer is going to recommend you at L6 when your only relevant experience is at L3/L4 no matter how much you grind interview prep
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:11
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:Without knowing specifically what parts of L5 you were already doing and what parts you still had to accomplish, I wouldn't translate that into "I can grind my way to L6". Good point! Honestly, I suspect it was L5 for "leadership" as Google's ladders consider "leadership", impact, and technical complexity. The impact was nothing impressive. As for technical complexity, it was basically an enterprise CRUD app with a few moving parts. Only real complexifiers were the security and privacy issues. And my technical knowledge is garbage, frankly. It's my biggest weakness. I don't have 7 years of technical knowledge. I have "1 year, 7 times" of technical knowledge. I can code but if you asked me which database we should use for anything beyond a CRUD app, or anything that needed replication, I wouldn't be able to answer. And that's a big reason why I think this might work for me. If I'm already L4 to L5ish with garbage technical skills, where will I be when I have actual good technical skills?
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:16
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Got an S at L3 which implies at least EE L4 which implies I was likely doing at least a modicum of L5 work. I do not think that it is appropriate to count an S at L3 as a "partial L5". You _might_ be able to get re-hired at L5, and could almost certainly do it at L4. Do that and quit trying to cut the big hog. Learn from your past mistakes here.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:20
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Good point! Honestly, I suspect it was L5 for "leadership" as Google's ladders consider "leadership", impact, and technical complexity. Everything about your recent posts is screaming "how do I prepare for an interview such that I can hire into a role I'll knowingly underperform in". Having worked with people who managed to do that, I would never assist someone in walking down that path.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:21
|
|
|
 Bruh Ouch Okay so L6 is out. I'm waiting for recruiter to get back to me for rehiring without interview at L4 and if that works out then maybe I can find a 20% with some independence? Get to know my surrounding work area and then tell my skip that I'm bored and ask if there's anything with more autonomy? If they say no, start looking at the areas their peers work in and repeat? If none of that works then I can probably get L5 at Facebook or somewhere with six months of technical studying?
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:27
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:I've got about 6-7 (more like 7-8 across all my tech work) years and have some experience leading a project that involved taking an unknown system from another team and: Leading a small engineering project including coordinating amongst various stakeholders internal and external got me L4->L5 at Big G. I think it really depends on having a larger scale project and maybe large quantifiable revenue impact (or, for infra, quantifiable engineering hours saved across a business unit) to go L5->L6. To be rehired at L6 you are going to have to show that not just was your project of a significant size but you can also speak to questions such as: Were the requirements a straightforward build to spec or did you have to resolve conflicting design goals? What kind of unit, system, and integration testing did you design and implement? How complex was the launch and how much planning did you have to do for launch and production operations? Did your launch require coordination across business units or companies? Once code-complete how long did the migration take? What kind of defect rate did you have post-launch? What kinds of reliability targets did your new service need to hit and how did you hit them? What is your release cycle and rollback plan like? What is your service's monitoring and alerting story? And so on and so forth ...
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:30
|
|
|
did you ever get therapy and crap for the gamblin
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 18:44
|
|
|
The guides here are a pretty good description of what staff+ positions involve and what the path from senior might look like. It's hard to give specifics, though, because at that point in your career your role is going to depend a lot on your organization and your skills and interests. I think a pretty good check for whether you're at that level is thinking about how hard it would be for you to switch jobs with one of your peers. That's not trivial for an L4 or an L5, but it's definitely doable. At higher levels, it gets to be a lot more intimidating.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:05
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:Maybe I could tell the recruiter about that stuff. Got an S at L3 which implies at least EE L4 which implies I was likely doing at least a modicum of L5 work. Sorry to dogpile but I don't think this kind of thinking is true either. Exceeding expectations at L3 might mean you're an L4, sure. But this doesn't really hold up for the L5 -> L6 promotion, since you're basically expected to do a different kind of work. Why do you want to be an L6 so badly, anyway? It's a FAANG so you're getting rich anyway and L6 is just more work.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:28
|
|
|
bob dobbs is dead posted:did you ever get therapy and crap for the gamblin no I just ran out of money thats why i need a job ultrafilter posted:The guides here are a pretty good description of what staff+ positions involve and what the path from senior might look like. This looks helpful. Thank you! Pie Colony posted:Why do you want to be an L6 so badly, anyway? It's a FAANG so you're getting rich anyway and L6 is just more work. 1. Big salaries for coders are gonna collapse within the next few years imo. Gonna take bigger impact to justify big comp packages. The days of a junior or even a mid-level getting paid like a doctor are almost over. So are the days of a senior getting paid like two doctors. 2. If I got hired at L5 today then I'd be making what, $350k/yr? If I got hired at L6 today I could be making $500-600k/yr. The comp tiers are way different. I was making $280k/yr when I left. It's almost not worth doing L5 for just 25% more. Just forget about climbing the ladder and start a side business. Because regardless of L4 or L5, you'll be working decades before you retire and your lifestyle won't change. The extra $70k/yr pretax is like $35k/yr after taxes. It's peanuts. But L6 comp is roughly double L4 comp. That's worth serious, focused self-improvement.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:36
|
|
|
gently caress how did I "just barely" get no-hire for L6 two years ago and then get no-hire for L5. Maybe I should try for L7 instead!
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:40
|
|
|
oliveoil posted:And my technical knowledge is garbage, frankly. It's my biggest weakness. I don't have 7 years of technical knowledge. I have "1 year, 7 times" of technical knowledge. oliveoil posted:I was making $280k/yr when I left. Jesus loving Christ the economics of our industry are so hosed up
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:43
|
|
|
One of things you need to figure out is whether you actually want to do an L6's job. It pays more than an L5, but moving from L5 to L6 isn't really a promotion in the same sense that L3 to L4 or L4 to L5 is. It's really more of a lateral move, and if you go in not expecting that, you could be in for an extremely unpleasant surprise. I'm sure that you don't even have enough information about what the job entails to answer that first question. Not doing that research and pushing back when you're explicitly told that you don't have the information is really not a good look for an L6 hopeful.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:44
|
|
|
you actually completely ran out of money, not like, "can retire" money to like 150k? this seems like a better argument for getting a therapist or some poo poo than i actually posed lol
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:51
|
|
|
hubris aside, do you even actually want an L6 job? are you purely chasing dollars? it can be stressful and ambiguous and frustrating because its more project management than tech implementation. i've heard that googlers tend to think that L5 (senior dev) is the sweet spot of responsibility, clarity, and comp. i see the same pattern at my non-goog company.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 19:55
|
|
|
is this guy just chasin gambling losses, but for his career? is that it?
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 20:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 21:08 |
|
|
Guinness posted:hubris aside, do you even actually want an L6 job? are you purely chasing dollars? it can be stressful and ambiguous and frustrating because its more project management than tech implementation. Honestly, as an L5 I think L4 might even have been the sweet spot. It's nice being able to pass off dealing with bs to someone higher up. I don't live in the bay area though so the extra money is not changing my life in a meaningful way
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2021 20:12
|
|