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Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2
- Bahamut 11y agoThe two blog posts were interesting reads, especially with the raw numbers given. In addition, it also shows how blind most companies are to talent - they're not interested in discovering the diamonds in the rough unless a company like Google does it for them.
- JDiculous 11y agoRight. Companies are extremely risk-averse because they can afford to be. The talent shortage in tech is totally overblown.
- santaclaus 11y agoWow, that dude has a pretty crazy life story - his about page was a fun read! Became a millionaire playing poker, got caught up in a huge scandal, sounds like a movie.
- GuiA 11y ago... well, maybe I should ask for a raise.
- freyr 11y agoUsually helps if you have another offer in hand.
- virmundi 11y agoAbsolutely this. I worked hard for 5 years. I was a trusted member of my company. I spoke with IBM sales as a tech peer. I was dramatically underpaid. I asked for a raise, to which I was told the market couldn't bear me. I was pushed into a project that had me crying to and from work. The stress was immense, but I thought I had little choice since my health insurance and house hold income provided everything for my family. I shopped around for a new job. I found one that would work, but didn't have health coverage for 90 days. At this point I had an offer in hand. I told my management, at the time, unless I got another 20k a year, I'm walking to the other job. I got the raise. Leverage is not bad. The company that you work for is probably only marginally committed to your well-being. They are totally committed to their margins. If you like your organization, but need more, leverage is your friend.
- kbob 11y agoThe author repeatedly mentions $XXX RSUs. It's been a while since I've worked for a pre-IPO company. Is it common for companies to give RSUs a dollar value instead of a number of shares and "heck if I know the valuation"? And how are RSUs different from straight ISOs?
- rawnlq 11y agoTypically they also tell you the Fair Market Value of the shares and you just multiply by the number of shares offered. They aren't options and you just get them whenever the company goes public. But they are completely illiquid before then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_market_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_market_value Quoting them in dollars is probably not too wrong if you believe the company's valuation won't change much (which is probably true for these unicorns). Even groupon's valuation didn't drop more than one order of magnitude.
- hkmurakami 11y ago>They aren't options and you just get them whenever the company goes public. But they are completely illiquid before then. Many companies now have a buyback mechanism where the employer will buy back your RSUs at a pre-determined price (often the price per share in the last priced round). Although the vesting schedule is the same as if it were options, the contracts often have a clause where technically the RSUs have not vested, in order to avoid capital gains taxes on a (fairly) illiquid asset.
- sjg007 11y agoYeah, he will pay taxes on the vested illiquid RSUs on top of his 130k.
- marme 11y agothey have a value because the IRS requires the company to value the shares at fair market value and you pay tax on that value as regular income at the end of the year
- pfarnsworth 11y agoI hope revealing salaries doesn't get him in trouble at AirBnb. I know I would be a bit annoyed if he revealed all of this before joining if I were an employer. Conflating base salary and RSU packages, especially pre-IPO RSUs, is a mistake. In my 20 years in Silicon Valley I've learned you simply can't put too much faith in stock. Stock is great, but it goes up and down. The only thing that is real is base salary, even bonus isn't guaranteed. Stock or options are nice, but they are icing on the cake, if you get a chance to cash out, so combining them with base salary is generally a mistake.
- pjmlp 11y agoAre salaries trade secrets on US? Here usually we talk openly about them.
- mwfunk 11y ago"Here" is not very specific, so I'm not sure how to interpret that. :) I wouldn't say it's a trade secret, but for whatever reason, talking openly about salaries in the US does carry a stigma of unprofessionalism. I don't attribute that to any single cause- I think the attitude comes from a combination of good and bad influences. I don't know if it's a net positive or negative- I suspect it's a wash. People also don't talk about salaries in social situations (IME). That's much more understandable, I think- it's just a lose-lose situation. If you make more than whoever you're talking to, it's awkward. If you make less than whoever you're talking to, it's awkward (for different reasons). It's usually not a topic that people would want to talk about outside of a professional context because either one person is going to feel bad, or the other person is going to feel like a jerk, or both. Or they're both sociopaths, in which case, whatever floats their boats.
- pjmlp 11y agoHere in Europe, usually the people that don't talk about salaries do so, because they are constrained to reveal the values or don't want to constrain others in the room. But usually among friends, people are generally comfortable mentioning them.
- dannylandau 11y agoExcellent post! Really enjoyed reading about your experience on the job market. My brother is going to be interviewing with Google soon, so I will make sure to share this with him.
- dabit3 11y agoThis was an excellent read. I would be interested in hearing more about his specific skill set and also more info about the technical interviews he went through.
- sharps_xp 11y agoWere I in the same situation as OP with multiple offers, I definitely would've botched the negotiation part. I wish there was a version of hackerrank for negotiations.
- sjg007 11y agoStall, redirect, wait. At some point the recruiter becomes your advocate. Or if just one offer ask for more than you want and would settle for. They won't rescind the offer and be willing to walk away. It's also easier to get more options and RSUs because it's funny money not yet vested and not yet liquid.
- fredophile 11y agoOne thing that struck me as odd while reading this, and the preceding article, was that he seemed offended at being offered junior roles despite only having a year of experience. A talented junior developer is still a junior developer.
- w1ntermute 11y ago> A talented junior developer is still a junior developer. Read his biography - the entire reason he has been able to achieve everything he has in life is because he doesn't have such a close-minded and pessimistic attitude. Rather than just letting the conventions of society dictate what he gets and does, he instinctively finds ways to work around them. While everyone else is busy checking the boxes expected of them, he's already moved on to the next level.
- fensipens 11y ago> close-minded and pessimistic attitude I would call it healthy skepticism.
- w1ntermute 11y agoThen you won't be getting a 250K offer from Airbnb with 1 year of experience any time soon.
- fensipens 11y ago130K + something that at some point may be sold for a currently unknown value.
- fredophile 11y agoOn your advice I read the about page on his website (I assume this is the biography you mentioned). I also checked out App Academy on LinkedIn and Angel List. Angel List even had the job posting for his old position. I still believe he's a junior developer. He didn't magically cram more than a year of development into that year. If anything he did less development. Out of his one year of experience some was spent as an instructor, not a developer, and many of his duties as Director of Product were management and not software development. In fact, he mentioned that as one of the reasons he wanted to leave that role. Some lessons are learned by doing things and dealing with the results. He hasn't been doing this long enough to see the long term consequences of any decisions he made while developing software at App Academy because those consequences haven't happened yet. Also, App Academy is a small company with about 10-20 people. Lots of things that aren't important with 10 people become very important on software projects with 100 people. None of what I said means he isn't intelligent or talented. It doesn't mean he didn't do good work while at App Academy or that he won't do good work at AirBnB. It just means he's inexperienced. That's not a bad thing but it isn't something you can change overnight.
- lowglow 11y agoIf you've gone to a development school you should rate your experience here: https://schools.techendo.com/ https://schools.techendo.com/
- lpsz 11y agoI may be misreading. With only a year of instruction and no coding background previously, he was able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm? As a hiring manager, I would be concerned that a candidate with such short exposure to the field and no real projects under their belt would just be too green to carry their weight.
- w1ntermute 11y ago> With only a year of instruction and no coding background previously, he was able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm? That depends on your definition of "norm". The average person could probably spend their entire life preparing for a Google interview and never get an offer. Others could enter any field of their choosing and reach a very high level of competency in just a matter of months. Seems like the OP falls in the latter category.
- lpsz 11y agoNo matter how academically bright someone is, practical coding experience is still highly desirable.
- w1ntermute 11y agoIt has nothing to do with academics - some people can pick up practical skills much more quickly than others.
- hackerboos 11y agoSounds like he knows how to invert binary trees [1]. So the rest will come later... [1] - https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en
- minikomi 11y agoSeeing those salaries as a dev in Tokyo is mind boggling. Time to start looking at remote work options even I think..
- athlos 11y agoNever look at salaries in a vacuum; remember what he says about what a 105k salary would "translate to" 57k in Texas. I don't know if remote working will change the game, eventually, but since companies today outsource jobs to "cheaper" cities to pay lower salaries, I find it hard to imagine that they'd be willing offer the same strong salaries to remote workers, instead of seeing it as an opportunity to cut costs.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- packetized 11y agoCongrats on peacocking. It's absolutely horrifying.
- carboncopy 11y agoHaving failed multiple interviews with Google and other companies mentioned in this post, it really drives home the huge difference between Haseeb's work ethic and mine. If I had put forth 10% of the effort he has expended this year to preparing then I'd have aced the interviews. But I didn't. Instead I spend most of my free time doing frivolous things that aren't satisfying. What percentage of HN posters have applied to Google? And how many received offers? I think it's amazing that he outclasses so many of us after being in our industry for a year. Good for him.
- sjg007 11y agoYeah the takeaway is that you have to prep. As bad as that is, it is a solvable well contained problem.
- soham 11y agoContext and disclaimer: I run an intense and successful bootcamp focused on preparing for Tech interviews. A 100+ people from all over the world have prepped with us since we started a year and a half ago. http://interviewkickstart.com http://interviewkickstart.com. We've since learnt a lot about what makes successful engineers. While nearly everyone who goes thru us (and is actively looking) gets placed somewhere nice, the people who crack some of the hardest interviews generally fall into ONE or MORE of the following categories: 1. They are just bright from the get go. A high IQ. Haseeb, from the little I've read about him, seems to fall into this category. They can get by with normal amount of practice viz. brush-up. 2. They are extremely prepped. A crude measure of prep, is how many algorithmic problems you've practiced. Some of these people have crossed 300+ problems. Written code for each. And repeated it. It takes several months to a year to do this with diligence and focus. 3. They have been coding for a long time. Almost precocious-ly. They have written so much code, that a lot of constructs are now muscle memory. All they need to do in an interview, is to intuit the solution. After that, they impress the heck with their coding fluency. 4. They are competitive programmers for some time They don't have to be toppers or winning competitions. e.g. Yellow on Topcoder is sufficient. 5. They went to a particularly strong and competitive CS program Some programs in the country prepare you for such interviews. Rare, and difficult to get into, but they do. 6. They got a soft interview-panel. Interviews are heavily dependent on who interviews you. Especially at large companies, there is a wide variance in grading standard, experience in interviewing and beliefs, and hence there is a wide variation in talent, despite centralized hiring committees. You need a bit of luck anyway, but sometimes you get an entire panel that you happen to gel with. A little bit of preparation and getting such a panel puts you over the magic line.
- ronrogers 11y agoApp Academy is the most selective dev training program in the world. We've developed this course to give you inside knowledge about the boot camp .A Farewell speech or farewell address is a speech given by an individual leaving a position or place. They are often used by public figures such as politicians.Custom essay writing service(http://www.essayguardian.com/ http://www.essayguardian.com/) is the better service that helps students in their academic fields.
- keiferski 11y agoIn life, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate for. Nice job. Thanks for the transparency.
- hueving 11y agoI was surprised by the notion that airbnb is considered a top tier engineering company. Excuse my ignorance as an outsider, but what interesting engineering problems are they solving? From the outside, I see a listing service that processes transactions and plots things on a third part mapping service. There isn't a complex dynamic market based auction system or anything like that. Can someone with more knowledge shed some light on what airbnb does that puts it on par with the work from Google (e.g. spanner, F5, borg, their SDN stuff, etc)?
- temp20160423 11y agoTheir comp is obviously top. I was impressed at how large AirBnB's offer is in every aspect--its base was already higher than the total comp of many of his other (initial) offers.
- cylinder 11y agoAvg one bedroom apartment in SF is 50% of the take home pay on 120k.
- whazor 11y agoI guess recommendation, machine learning, infrastructure (multiple servers over earth), fraud detection. From the outside they also have messaging, an automatic pricing feature, and I remember them announcing that they want to offer extra services, like a day trip.
- hobofan 11y agoThey are solving a lot of the infrastructure problems that come with microservices. They also do that with a stack that has much less JVM in it than Twitter and Netflix, which makes working there much more appealing for some people.
- temp20160423 11y agoFor people who are currently looking, they should be thankful for this post. This guy really was a master negotiator and provides lots of hard numbers. The key is to get some initial leverage (at least one offer from anywhere) and then keep cranking. If you can get a Google offer, then you can really squeeze out every last drop. I think him publicly posting this will cause a lot of resentment at his company. I wouldn't be surprised if there are PhD's with multiple years of experience at AirBnB making less in total comp than this guy.
- different 11y agoI wonder if you could possibly lie about offers being received.. I mean I kinda doubt these recruiters all talk to each other or do they?
- forrestthewoods 11y agoFucking hell. I wish video games paid that well. God damn.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoWhat are taxes on non-liquid RSUs like?
- arkem 11y agoTaxed as income based off of the fair market value of the RSUs as determined by a independent auditor's assessment (It's called a 409A Valuation). In practice most companies will allow you to surrender non-liquid RSUs to pay the tax withholding so you don't have a massive tax bill from a non-liquid asset.
- possibleNoob 11y agoDoes anyone know what computer science problems hes referring to for interviews? Does anyone have a resource i can look at?
- e12e 11y agoI would also be interested in some more detail, especially: "On the phone interview, I received a pretty challenging problem—I remember thinking when I got it that I was going to mess it up. But somehow I solved it with ease, and all of my outputs were correct." It's kind of hard to get a handle on what this means; on one hand the poster is quite obviously remarkably intelligent (ref: bio etc), on the other hand he has very little CS experience. The reader is left to imagine a problem that is just within their own reach to solve, while it might have been a very basic algorithm question...
- veli_joza 11y agoThere's InterviewBit[1] that helps you prepare. You don't have to sign-up to read problem descriptions. [1] https://www.interviewbit.com/all-problem-list/ https://www.interviewbit.com/all-problem-list/
- sjg007 11y agoThanks for posting this it is very helpful. It's clear you need to prep and leverage.