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i once had a fantastic interview for a junior. i wanted to hire him, and we couldn't, because my manager decided after interviewing several folks that we didn't actually need to fill that position at all. it is genuinely possible everyone liked you and you didn't make the cut for stupid business reasons, not because of you at all i also had this happen once where multiple people told me they were super excited to lean into the tech i was being hired for my expertise in, and then they just cut me loose after 2 months of interviews
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Jan 27, 2023 20:39
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 14:58 |
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i asked for that feedback in my case. the feedback i got was some bullshit about needing more experience developing in an Agile work environment. it didn't help me get my next job, but it did confirm to me that either: - hiring manager really did want me and business told him to gently caress off - they wouldn't be honest about my shortcomings to help me out in either case it solidified i didnt want to work there. gently caress em, you dont want to work there anyway after they end it like that
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Jan 27, 2023 20:45
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is there a good way to tell raytheon missiles & defense recruiters to go gently caress themselves? i will tolerate recruiter spam from nearly any other defense contractor or national lab, but if you're trying to hire a "weapon flight path engineer" i think in no uncertain terms you you deserve to be told to go pound sand
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Feb 1, 2023 02:21
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i share an office with my partner directly behind me. they have a band poster on the wall desk which has "WAR" (along with other stuff) in giant letters, along with "nothing matters" in block letters above their desk. i use a blurred or autopainted background to stop that from showing up when covid started i went a full year with an animated beach as my zoom background, that was pretty fun
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Feb 14, 2023 17:40
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Truman Peyote posted:very important points being brought up here. one more option is that maybe a bear walks into someone's house minutes before their interview and mauls them before they can join the call, leaving them incapable of shooting me an e-mail to clear up exactly what happened. i don't know how i would recover from this scenario this is why i preemptively ask the interviewee for a doctor's note to explain their absence
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Feb 28, 2023 04:28
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Not exactly interviewing, but career and comp related vent/question. I left a startup a few months ago, exercised all my options on the way out for the low price I got in at. It took 2 months for the CEO to sign it, and then my funds went through the next day. Then it just sat there on Carts, nothing happening. This went on for a month and I emailed the CFO, who emailed the CEO, and nothing happened. I emailed later that week exactly 90 days after I left because I was worried the 90 day limit might cause an issue since they hadn't done poo poo. Crickets in return, but the 90 day time limit wasn't a problem because I started the process early. I triple checked this on Carta to make sure it hasn't been silently canceled or something. Yesterday I filed an issue on Carta (a month after that email) to see if that would get anything done. Finally this morning, more than 4 months since I quit, the CEO clicked the box and transferred the shares to me, and I'm officially rid of those assholes. What was the correct way to proceed forward in this situation, should it arise again? Email for a paper trail is the right thing, but is there a certain point I should just grab a lawyer and have them send an angry letter? Do I just spam the CFO every day? I'm so glad to be out of that place
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Feb 28, 2023 23:43
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echinopsis posted:i barely follow anyone .. is it just asinine or what nonstop stdh.txt
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Mar 4, 2023 19:04
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I've been a dick to a recruiter twice, but both times they were asking me to work for Raytheon Missile Defense. Probably not great practice in case I encounter them elsewhere, but it felt good in the moment.
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Mar 17, 2023 15:39
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i just got off a call with an academic who i thought was looking for a founding engineer. instead, i got a PI who was talking down to me for an hour for being more interested in building the software their mega-lab is trying to push out than publishing papers in a field i have no experience in. i was told they wanted a software dev, and when i said i wanted to work on a greenfield project, they got defensive about why i didn't say i was excited to publish papers. when i said i can't give a hard number i'd be happy with without knowing the full position and responsibilities, they got aggy asking what other things i needed to take into account. when i told them it depends on if they want someone autonomous designing the systems or just a machine they feed a prompt and get back code, they basically threw up their hands and said "well what do you want?" idk dude, you're the one signing the checks, it's your bullshit project, i thought you'd know what you needed. it's nice to get reminders of how much i hate dealing with academics, and especially how awful megalabs are at academic institutions
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May 18, 2023 20:57
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AWWNAW posted:just got a written offer for major figs and it requires a drug test?!?! I got this at my current job, the recruiter didn't bother to tell me until the process was nearly over. I was very pissed because I would've just quit smoking weed for a few weeks had he just told me up front
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Jun 24, 2023 20:11
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raminasi posted:other than the aforementioned rich people coddling, it exists to weed out people so addicted or stupid that they can't pass a piss test they get to schedule themselves. they're not gonna pull your hairs or anything. i got hair tested for an internship in college. gently caress those people, gently caress that job, gently caress hair tests
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Jun 25, 2023 13:12
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I have a call with an internal recruiter in a few days. The job posting had a salary range associated with it. When they ask my salary expectations, is it reasonable to just say the number at the top of that range back? Or do I need to cut a few thousand from my number to not come off like a prick? I am only interested if they actually are willing to pay the top end of that salary range, so I'm just trying to find the best way to say that number given they have already listed the range. If that number is unreasonable, I won't take the job, but I would like to be as tactful as is appropriate
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Jun 27, 2023 03:22
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I worked at a startup pretty much from their Series A to their Series B and bounced. It was the most productive 2 years I've ever had, and I learned an incredible amount that was been great for my CV. It also paid like poo poo and most of their hires were C-tier budget hires, a good third of whom have since been fired less than a year later. The company changed dramatically when they closed Series B (with a strange VC firm who only ever did seed rounds previously), so be prepared to watch things rapidly shift. Good experience, glad I did it and it's on my resume, not something I would do again unless I got more control over the work and a better stake in the company
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Jul 12, 2023 15:56
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i log on every day with my closed ear headphones and my modmic stuck on the side and nobody has given me a wedgie over zoom yet
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Jul 18, 2023 01:21
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what is it called where there's a kanban board, but we have sprints too, but sometimes the board doesn't carry over so you spend all standup trying to figure out where the tickets went and just ignore the backlog entirely?MononcQc posted:ghost riding the WIP lmao
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Jul 21, 2023 05:26
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my last job offered ISOs at O(10 cents) a share and by the time I left a little under two years in i had exercised all of them to the tune of between 2-3k. Current FMV is around a dollar, series B closed about a year ago, it felt like an okay gamble to me I guess my question is, am I an idiot? In case of an exit, anything that's over a dollar is like a nice $15k surprise minimum. I know dilution is gonna happen, they doubled the shares with the Series B, but $3k on tech salary seems like an acceptable gamble to me so long as the exit is above like a quarter a share. To be clear, this does not offset the lost earnings from making $Series_A salary when i could've been making double that elsewhere
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Aug 18, 2023 23:09
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I reached out to a recruiter I had luck with in the past, and she sent me a posting for a blockchain job. How does anyone still have funding for this poo poo
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Aug 28, 2023 16:43
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i had an interviewer for an embedded role in college get mad that i wrote binary search "like a software engineer instead of like an electrical engineer." i think he meant recursively instead of iteratively but it felt like a dig and he didn't qualify anything when he asked the question
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Sep 13, 2023 23:30
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ADINSX posted:the system sort of rewards bringing out the worst in people in a way I find difficult to describe i know you said difficult to describe but I'm very curious what you mean. the only person i knew at Amazon made about half a mil TC and got laid off recently, but they were a researcher. i have sworn to never work at Amazon on moral grounds but have recently considered it as a short term gig to bank house + "gently caress you im financially independent and work when I want to" money before i gently caress off to Chicago or something
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Sep 14, 2023 23:48
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I had a phone screen last week where the interviewer asked me what my salary expectations were, at least "ballpark." I told him I couldn't give a number without knowing responsibilities/expectations/equity comp/benefits/etc, and he continued to push that he needed a number. I said a number, and I suspect that it was too high for this position. That was okay in that case, it's a Series A startup that I was okay walking away from by the end of our conversation. But I have a phone screen this week for a position that I DO want (barring red flags in the process). I don't know the right way to navigate that question should it come up again. This job is much more established (post-IPO quite successfully), so I think the number I gave before would be within range. I'm mostly interested in how to deal with a recruiter being pushy about not saying a number first. For a more established job, is it kosher to ask for a salary band for the level they're hiring you at?
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Sep 18, 2023 21:49
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Thanks goons. I'll try to firmly defer if push comes to shove. I have the benefit of being in a job right now and it's safe for another year, but I really hate this place + the uncertainty, and the new gig is both a staff role and somewhere doing work similar to what I studied in grad school. Worst case I keep up my current gig and keep looking
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Sep 19, 2023 00:15
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interviewing job doesn't have a site in SF, but they do have several offices in major cities, including Seattle and NYC, so they should be able to pay appropriately. levels.fyi has senior roles in the bottom and top ends of the 200s, but i don't know how well that translates to my specific location or how accurate that really is
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Sep 19, 2023 18:18
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I didn't have to give a number, but the recruiter turned around and gave me their range and said "this covers both senior and staff." The upper end was lower than I expected/would leave a job for, but not so low as to be incompatible if they give a nice stock incentive + bonus, so maybe I'll get a proper negotiation in at the end with my current rate as leverage. Looking forward to the rest of the interview process, the HR guy told me they'd almost certainly want to move forward and I have a lot of extremely relevant experience.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:43
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Interviewer just asked me, "If we asked your references at X and Y to rate your performance, what do you think they would rate you from 1-10?" How am I supposed to say anything other than 10? That question confers almost no information. Then they asked if they could get a reference for my performance at my current job. Who is giving a reference for anything other than "Yes they work here" at their current position? Isn't that just loving myself at my current role by letting someone I work with know I'm interviewing?
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Oct 4, 2023 20:00
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Ranking your proficiency in a language at all sounds like an extremely "still in school" thing to do, just peak Dunning-Kruger. Is there ever a case where adding "I am an ADVANCED Python knower, but only INTERMEDIATE in C++" is beneficial over just adding the most impressive Python project to your resume and mentioning that you know C++? It just comes off as bad resume building to me, even if they weren't wrong about their abilities
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Oct 24, 2023 13:29
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Its a Rolex posted:Interviewer just asked me, "If we asked your references at X and Y to rate your performance, what do you think they would rate you from 1-10?" How am I supposed to say anything other than 10? That question confers almost no information. These guys from the start of this month emailed me back this morning after reiterating that they "wanted to move quick and he would take my interview to his team immediately for review". The email, first thing on a Friday morning, said they were impressed with my interview and wanted me to do the take home challenge, due on Monday. As part of that challenge I needed to implement a system for optimizing a particular kind of device. Then I needed to use that system to solve an almost entirely unconstrained design problem to "make that device" and send them those results, too. Then I needed to give a plan for testing and validating that design in the lab that I provide them with. It's due on Monday, but if I need an extra 24 hours for my simulations to run and get a better answer (they did not provide licenses to industry design software or compute resources) that would be okay. They also plaster their NDA all over all documents and made me sign an NDA before the interview, so I think I'm just gonna focus on the panel interview I have this afternoon elsewhere instead of doing free design work on my weekend for a team that ghosted me for almost exactly a month
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Oct 27, 2023 16:27
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Is there any red flag outright to very flat org structures? I'm interviewing at an R&D joint that sounds incredibly flat, where "You may be asked to work on something very different or outside your area of expertise because we all wear many hats, but saying 'no' is always allowed," and "work is determined by proposals from all members of the team" AFAICT they sound like they believe very strongly in some sort of "converging to local optima per person leads to a global optimum of output" organization, which sounds like it would work well until you get someone who doesn't pull their weight on the team (for any number of reasons) Also there's always work that nobody wants to do, but it still has to get done, so I don't believe "saying no is always allowed" is true in any meaningful sense when asked to do work
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Jan 11, 2024 16:22
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corona familiar posted:I think you touched on some good points already. I would try to determine how they make decisions internally. For example, which decisions can you make as an individual? As a subset of the group? Are there any that a consensus or vote of the entire group? Is there someone that is seen as an implicit BDFL / decision maker / person who blesses things? How long does it take to reach a conclusion on different decisions? How do you surface criticisms in the group? How do you resolve conflicts? This is very helpful, I have a couple more calls left and want to ask these sorts of cultural/environmental questions so I know what I'm looking at. I should have a final wrapup call with the CEO and I think answers to these questions will help frame how that conversation goes. There's lots of "this is R&D so how do I get paid" questions as well. Given that they're very technically driven, understanding the trajectory of the organization as a whole is very important
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Jan 11, 2024 17:57
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ultrafilter posted:Valve's been doing that for a while and they're famously ineffective and toxic. i was trying to remember the famously libertarian toxic workplace and it was this
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Jan 11, 2024 17:58
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I'm waiting for the founder to get back to me to schedule time to discuss the offer they put together. Their current stage is seed, looking to start series A soon, and the equity offer seems way off to me. In the initial offer email, the founder mentions I can trade salary for equity (I will not), and I think they're hoping I'll either cave on salary (it's low but palatable rn) or give in to nearly no equity. Is there any good resource to reference when I ask for an improved equity offer? I have level set in the past by this: https://www.holloway.com/g/equity-compensation/sections/typical-employee-equity-levels which tracked with my previous experience. But if there's another, more definitive reference people like, I'll take it. The initial number has left a bad taste in my mouth, and I realize it's their job to extract as much work for as low a price, but "lower your salary for more equity" feels disrespectful
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Jan 16, 2024 16:00
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Thanks, CFP. My BATNA is good enough, and they know this, so I feel comfortable attempting the conversation. Requesting the equity increase with a longer time to vest, or an extra vesting event at year 5, or something along those lines sounds like it would be effective to assuage concerns they have expressed to me. What is the proper way to ask about how my shares vest w/r/t the company being acquired before I have fully vested? Is this something that can also change, or is that fixed from company policy? Similarly, is the strike price a reasonable number to ask for? Presumably the price is low enough I can exercise as they vest, but confirming that would be helpful. I don't remember when that number was revealed to me the last time around.
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Jan 17, 2024 03:12
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Is "how many shares comprise the company" a question that it's reasonable to expect an answer to in negotiations? I have my share number and a percentage, so I backed out the total number of shares. This got some pushback that my number isn't right, but the answer is more complicated than just a single number, and then the phrase "employee equity pool" got thrown around with another percentage and the "lawyers" were invoked a lot. My fear is that I get told my stake was relative to some smaller proportion of the whole, which the founder seemed to be "concerned might be the case." If this is the case, and they correct it, it feels like an enormous red flag and I'd have many colleagues who didn't catch this sleight of hand. These seem like reasonable things to expect a straight answer on in a 1:1 with a founder. Am I right to feel like they're being purposefully opaque? Are these questions really that difficult? When extending an offer it's concerning that the person extending the offer [claims] to not know where the numbers come from or really have a good grasp on the financial state. Last time I spoke with a founder for a job I took they were pretty straight up about my stake and the strike price, so I'm a bit on edge
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Jan 17, 2024 22:07
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I'm not asking for the full cap table, I would expect pushback on that A simple "is this X% of the whole company, or X% of the employee equity pool?" is all I asked, and couldn't get an answer. They're the ones who brought up that this was even a possibility
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Jan 17, 2024 22:18
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I am clearly missing something, and not trying to be a dunce here. I am asking this in good faith. I do not understand how the following question does not have a simple enough and innocuous answer: "You offered me X% of something which you allege works out to Y shares. The total number of shares by my calculation, according to those values, is roughly Y/0.X. This is equivalent to me getting a payout of X% of whatever we sell the company for assuming there's no dilution modulo taxes and all that nonsense. Is this calculation correct, or is X% actually X% of Z% of 100%, and my payout is (X*Z)%?" What harm is there in telling me what the total volume X is a fraction of, especially given that I know Y? The total number of shares is entirely arbitrary beyond a scaling factor for how much ownership a single share confers. I am not asking how many shares does the founder hold, nor how many shares are allocated to be given away in the future. For all I care there are two bins, mine and everything else, and in order to make an informed decision, I need to know the ratio between the size of these bins. What is the danger in informing me, transparently, of the size of the other bin (or an equivalent value)? Either it's redundant with X% and count Y, or my stake is not equivalent to X% in the common understanding of that phrase
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Jan 17, 2024 22:59
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e- misread DC's post
Its a Rolex fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 23:15
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id be in first 20
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Jan 17, 2024 23:37
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CarForumPoster posted:See why they cant tell you? This makes sense, but the bigger issue is really this: DELETE CASCADE posted:v good post, but i think in this dude's specific situation it is worth attempting to resolve the order of magnitude ambiguity. it could be a signal that the founders are trying to gently caress him, as founders have been known to do Dilution is going to make it so the percentage isn't actually X%. But if my lottery tickets are already reduced an order of magnitude in value out the gate from what the founder implies they're worth, I'm not really happy with the deal. Likewise, they couldn't tell me the cost to exercise the shares or a valuation. They were very short on any sort of numbers to help me understand anything about the offer, other than lots of "lawyers need to figure it out." I accept that things have amorphous edges and you can't commit to things in case you're wrong. But when you can't tell me how much the lottery tickets will cost or whether they're worth X or X/10 it does not instill confidence. In your $0.50 vs $0.10 question, I still don't know which I'm getting there either.
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Jan 18, 2024 14:40
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just wanna follow up from last month that the equity compensation was not relative to the employee pool, but rather total stake. i turned it down because the offer was not competitive and i have personal poo poo that's gonna make job hopping a bad idea before the summer. founder was amicable and I have a verbal offer to join them when i do start looking again i also picked up a copy of venture deals and will read it before i start interviewing in earnest. thanks goons.
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Feb 16, 2024 03:14
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best of luck, OP. may your answers be bar raising and STAR-struck
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Mar 15, 2024 03:18
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 14:58 |
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Sorry, we only hire 10x engineers
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Mar 28, 2024 19:28
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