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Hacker News

I see many questions on compensation here and would like to help answer some of them with the limited data I have. I'd like to shed some light on what the industry is paying and also encourage people to negotiate hard. I went on an interviewing spree recently with the big companies for an SWE position and would like to share some offer numbers. The numbers below are all annual figures. I have two years of professional experience.1) Google - 140k base, 107.5k RSUs, 50k sign on, 15% bonus2) Facebook - 160k base, 75k RSUs, 70k sign on, 10% bonus3) Lyft - 170k base, 180k RSUs, 20k sign on4) Dropbox - 162k base, 114k RSUs, 10k sign on5) Airbnb - 152k base, 75k RSUs, 13.5k sign on6) Palantir - 150k base, 51k stock options, 25k sign on, 25k bonusTWO years of experience, figures above are ANNUAL.I chose FB in the end because the TC was among the highest and I resonate with FB's move fast culture. I enjoyed talking to FB interviewers the most and they made me feel very welcome. Lyft's offer was great but it's not public after all (yet) and I'm more risk adverse. Also, the commute up to SF everyday will kill me.Curious to know which you would have chosen if you were in my shoes.EDIT - many commenters are asking similar questions, I'll answer them once and for all here:1. How did you go about having so many overlapping offers?I did my phone screens early and arranged all the onsites together at a later date. There was a huge gap between some of my phone screens and onsites. I set recruiter expectations early and told them when I would make a decision. I held some offers for close to a month.2. What's your background?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.3. How did you prepare for the interviews?Sadly, do lots of LeetCode. I wouldn't say my method was very optimal as I spent two months and did around 200-300 questions before the interviews. Did all the easy questions, half the medium and a fifth of the hard ones. It's important to get both quantity and quality such that you can identify the pattern of questions on first sight and know what technique to apply. Cover a variety of topics. Don't have the mentality that you won't be tested on DP. Till this day I still do LeetCode for fun as I enjoy doing them. It has become a lifestyle for me. I also used mock interview practice sites. I didn't practice much system design questions as I felt that I was pretty strong in design for my field.4. Are you bullshitting?You can believe what you like since it's anonymous after all. Some commenters do agree that such numbers are possible, and they're totally right.5. Did you get rejected anywhere?Yes, I got rejected by Asana and Instacart at the onsite stage.6. Why didn't you apply to Microsoft, Amazon, Apple ?I did. I applied to every big company out there. But the application process of large companies is so noisy that chances of getting noticed are so low. Thankfully I had FB and Google referrals else I doubt I would have gotten a reply at all.

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