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Compensation in 2019 – new grad tech offers
- reallydude 7y agoI have never seen a signing bonus. Options, yearly bonus, even rev-share, sure. > There can be other facets of a company that should influence your decision, such as what type of healthcare they offer, Almost universally, company health care SUCKS. Look for major medical. If it's not there, don't bother. Save yourself the 7$ a month they will rebate you, if you opt-out. JPMorgan? Trash. Experian? Trash. etc > What the 401k matching looks like This is important. Generally % of paycheck up to a limit. It does take a chunk from your paycheck, which is you saving for yourself. > whether they offer a mega backdoor Roth, whether they allow auto-sell of your vested stocks, whether there’s an employee stock purchase plan, and whether they offer free food or gym. This is all marginal and rare in my experience. Other than a little gym you can pay for or some snacks (which will eventually be abused and changed if the company is growing) or Kombucha on tap or whatever is not a consideration for me.
- danceparty 7y ago>I have never seen a signing bonus. Options, yearly bonus, even rev-share, sure. Anecdata, but I have worked for two of the big faangm companies and myself and every coworker I am aware of had a signing bonus.
- urda 7y ago> I have never seen a signing bonus. I have had multiple throughout my career and so have my peers. This is actually quite common for engineers and talent on the higher end of the skill bell curve.
- urda 7y agoDownvoter you confuse me. Either you've downvoted it because it is anecdata which is fair or you have discovered your personal market value and would rather not acknowledge that to yourself, thus making the "downvote" the way you can become at peace with that. Signing bonuses are not not unusual at all and, again I can't stress this to the reader any further, they are awarded consistently and constantly to top performing engineers and talent in their fields.
- headcanon 7y agoI've worked at startups in Michigan my whole career and have not seen a signing bonus either. Are these typically exclusive to FAANG companies?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoBetween myself and the people I know in NYC/SF, I would expect signing bonuses in tech, finance, law, and medicine.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoNo, I received one with a startup in none of the above locations after negotiating salary and being ready to walk away.
- jonathanwallace 7y agoI've negotiated a signing bonus for one (small ~50 person) company. You never know until you ask but I would expect it to be rare.
- reallydude 7y agoNot just specific companies, but largely specific areas (which have to compete with specific companies). New grads will, statistically, never see signing bonuses in their career, much less out of school. People paying bonuses for new grads is a sunk opportunity cost and a company should never do it unless it hurts them in some measurable way (cost-benefit analyses are important). I've interviewed hundreds of people in Southern California, some who came out of google (does give signing bonuses) or Amazon (rarely signing bonus) and it has happened that Blizzard tempted some people with a little bonus...but these are uncommon. People who jump company to company (google to amazon and back) don't get bonuses (as rehires), although that's outside the topic of "new grads".
- bluedevilzn 7y agoI joined Amazon as a new grad. Signing bonus was part of the standard new grad offer. > People paying bonuses for new grads is a sunk opportunity cost Sure but FAAMG aren't really trying to pinch pennies. Signing bonuses also usually have a clause where you have to return it, if you don't at least stay a year. Signing bonus as a new grad is a HUGE help to the new grad. When you're competing between FAAMNG, that signing bonus can sway what offer a new grad would accept. > google (does give signing bonuses) I'm currently at Google but I had to negotiate the signing bonus. It wasn't part of my original offer. > People who jump company to company... They absolutely do.
- jonluca 7y agoApologies if this wasn't clear but these are California-centric offers (and can probably be extended to include Seattle and New York). They are not across the US, or across all software jobs.
- nayuki 7y agoI thought you were possibly Canadian because your domain name is jonlu.ca. Then again, CA could also be interpreted as California...
- jonluca 7y agoNope, just another one of those people that accepts higher TLD risk by locating it internationally in exchange for a cool domain. I'm actually Italian!
- davidw 7y agoAnd, indeed, from a region renowned for its cat recipes!
- NullPrefix 7y ago>Then again, CA could also be interpreted as California... Same way how .io is not exclusively the British Indian Ocean Territory ?
- CodeMage 7y agoOne thing you might want to think of adding to this post is 401k vesting. As an immigrant, I wasn't aware of that and I was very unpleasantly surprised that it was possible to lose a substantial part of my retirement fund contributions, taken out of my salary, after quitting.
- jonluca 7y agoI'll look into it! I wasn't sure how in depth I wanted to go (especially since the Halloway guide that has been posted here on hackernews before is way more comprehensive) but I'll add a note in the 401k section. Thanks!
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoI had no idea FAANG offered paid overtime.
- minedwiz 7y agoThis is new to me, as well. My company (or at least my org) does give free vacation time for any time spent working on-call crap after hours.
- jonluca 7y agoQuite a few friends at Apple have offers that were paid hourly for the first year, and switched to salaried after that.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoSo it was an hourly probationary period? I can't see why one would opt for salaried if hourly was on the table - in my experience I never work less than the assumed salary hours.
- jonluca 7y agoI'm actually not that sure about the rationale. It wasn't optional - their offer said "$52.88/hr for the first 12 months, $110,000 a year after the first year". I'm not sure if it's to incentivize working more the first year, whether it's "probationary" (in case the person doesn't work at all?) or if there is some other form of logic to it.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoBizarre. Maybe it was encouragement to get the employee up to spend as much time as possible to get up to speed? But then again, that's incentivizing burning the candle at both ends when you're the least equipped and familiar with everything to really take advantage of it.
- opportune 7y ago
- headcanon 7y agoI realize California is very expensive cost-of-living compared to the Midwest, but as a developer in Michigan I'm shaking my head at these salaries. The low end in Cali is high end here. Best I could hope for in Michigan even as senior is mid-100's. the highest number I've ever seen thrown around from recruiters was about $170k base, and pretty sure that was close to VP level. Can't complain about the low housing costs though.
- aluminussoma 7y agoThings have gotten crazy here but this information is useful even for experienced hires. A few years ago, I did not realize that new grads at companies were being paid more than I was! I switched companies to fix that. Yes, most of my check still goes towards rent but at least I have a little bit more left over to plan for the future.
- shredprez 7y ago> A few years ago, I did not realize that new grads at companies were being paid more than I was! I switched companies to fix that. To everyone chiming in with how wild the salaries are, this is really the point. If you're doing competent work for less than the local market average, you're paying your company for the "opportunity" to keep working with them. Sometimes that's the right call for both parties. Most times it's not, and OP's transparency helps workers protect themselves from exploitation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vonmoltke 7y agoI more than tripled my total comp in three years by leaving Dallas for NYC.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kevan 7y agoAny more context on the $275,000 offer? Did the returning intern have a PhD in a specialized field, did their name rhyme with Midas?
- tylerhou 7y ago$275,000 first year total compensation because of the large signing bonus. The per-year TC drops a fair bit afterwards: $115 + $60 + 15% of salary bonus = ~$192. Numbers in thousands.
- jonluca 7y agoAs Tyler said that's first year TC only (although with average SWE tenure reaching ~18 months, it's not unrealistic to hop around and integrate a signing bonus into your comp every other year - also depends what stage company you like working at and how comfortable you are with accepting risk). After that it's "only" around $200k, without any raises, bonuses, or stock refreshers.
- kevan 7y agoI understand that it's a one-time bonus and TC drops off after that. I'm still curious what the circumstances were for that specific candidate and whether they had unusual circumstances that gave them more leverage than the usual bachelor degree new grad.
- jonluca 7y agoB.Sc. from a top 20 university, 10+ competing offers from FLAAG and various unicorns, and no doesn't rhyme with Midas
- opportune 7y agoNormally you don’t actually add signing bonus to your TC. I have heard of similar offers at FB for returning interns with competing offers. There are new grads making even more at Jane Street, Two Sigma, and Citadel
- njn 7y agolol I'm a senior developer, been in the industry since I graduated with a BS in 2010. I'm in NYC. My salary is currently $82k. I'm not doing anything wrong here - the numbers in the article are way exaggerated.
- glass_of_water 7y agoThese numbers aren't exaggerated at all. If you're making $82k in NYC with almost 10 years of experience, you got massively lowballed by your current company. Have you interviewed around lately?
- bluedevilzn 7y agoI have no idea how you live with that salary in NYC. Maybe go to a bar and meet some people in tech/finance, they'd paint you a better picture of reality.
- sys_64738 7y agoYou’d need to live in central Jersey to be able to afford. I doubt you could live on the upper east side for that unless you were living with a partner making 300k$.
- akavi 7y agoPost tax, that's ~5 k$/mo, which is (by choice) roughly my monthly spending as a single/no kids 28-year-old in NYC. It's not a bad lifestyle at all. I personally would feel uncomfortable spending that much if I wasn't also able to save on top of it, but if you disregard that, it's 100% doable
- njn 7y agoYeah, in general I find people to be excessive with their spending. $5k a month sounds like an insane waste to me. I'm pretty thrifty. I feel like tech workers are living in a different world than me. My direct deposit income is something like $2400 every two weeks. That's after my IRA investments, monthly health insurance cost, metro card cost through my job, etc. I work at Columbia University, by the way. I live in a rent stabilized 1br apartment in west Harlem: $1500/mo rent. After that I have no major expenses other than food, and I shop at local grocery stores and cook at home a lot. I make my own bread, because I like to, not because I have to. I always feel like I have more than enough money. I put around $800 a month into savings and investments. I'm even able to travel frequently to Europe, Latin America, and to see my parents in Seattle. I agree with Bradley Kuhn on this one: in general, tech workers are wayyy overpaid.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- aluminussoma 7y agoAs for the more frequent vesting (as opposed to the 1 year cliff): I heard companies started doing that to reduce or eventually eliminate the signing bonus. The theory being that a more frequent vesting schedule will accomplish the same thing. For example, one recent offer from a big tech company was for a 6 month vesting schedule with no cliff. Most are switching to quarterly vesting schedules with no cliffs.
- jonluca 7y agoThat's interesting. Yeah most of my FAANG offers had no cliff (quarterly or monthly). All my unicorn offers were 1 year cliff though :/ I wonder if they'll bake the bonus in. Getting those $100k signing bonuses are pretty nice, especially since some companies give 25% or 50% before you start, which allows you to do a trip. Plus $100k added into a 4 year vesting schedule is a pretty large opportunity cost (assuming you could grow at 7% a year, which is admittedly aggressive, is leaving ~$30k on the table).
- ska 7y agoRSU vs. option is a big difference here too, you can see shifting "signing bonus" into RSU with quicker schedule, but if it's options you can't get out anyway in the short term so they really are oranges vs. apples.
- opportune 7y agoI heard it was twofold: One, monthly vesting is strictly better than less frequent vesting. So once one firm (think it was Facebook?) started offering it everyone else in the same pay scale had to, to compete. Two, the cliffs made it optimal for people to leave right afer the cliff, then take the signing bonus at another company. Removing the cliffs makes it so there is never an “optimal” time to leave
- nylemi 7y agoIn Finland the highest you can hope for as an employed software developer is around 90,000 EUR a year, but average is less than 60k. Signing bonuses I've never heard of and if you get stock options, you usually need to cut your salary expectations a lot. Being freelancer you can get to around 150k-200k though. Of course at these higher figures the effective tax rate increases to around 50%
- pembrook 7y agoWhat are hourly rates like in Finland for freelance devs and product design folk? Curious how they compare to Germany. Since Finland has a much smaller economy, is it difficult to stay employed the whole year on a freelance basis? And do you have to go through a contracting company?
- nylemi 7y agoI've been freelancing now for two years and have been in projects 37.5 hours/week without pause except for vacations. There is a lot of demand here. The hourly rate depends. I've been getting 90€/hour except with one client I managed 110 €/hour. I've always made direct contracts with customers, no contracting company in between. But there's a lot of those companies around who would happily help you find projects and sell your time through them so they also get a cut.
- TrackerFF 7y agoI'm from Norway, and we do have salaries in the same ballpark - a tad higher. Even though it's expensive to live here, we're not anywhere near San Francisco, in terms of say housing prices. And there are many other things I also never have to worry about, without getting too political about the issues.
- throwaway122379 7y agoIn Ireland starting is about EUR 40K, Senior would be about 55-60K, about 10-20K more in Dublin but you would spend that on rent alone side note: above 33K tax is 50%+ on each and every euro, about 20% below How does one relocate to the US, sigh
- q2ctf 7y agoWho is the L in FLAAMG? And why is there no N? Facebook L? Amazon Apple Microsoft Google Netflix
- sloanesturz 7y agoMy guess is LinkedIn.
- jimbokun 7y agoWhich is part of Microsoft.
- Adisuki 7y agoLinkedIn I guess, but that's Microsoft already. Redundant.
- opportune 7y agoLinkedIn has an entirely different pay scale from Microsoft
- jonluca 7y agoIt is LinkedIn, and no Netflix because they don't do new grad. Might make more sense to change it to FLAAG
- bfrog 7y agoYes, the geolocal hotspots of the west coast and east coast offer significant pay bumps just to be geolocal. No I don't care. No I don't want to live there, where the Car is King or where you can't own/rent anything bigger than a closet for any sensible amount of expenses. Where the next significant disaster is a big question of "when" not "if". Hire me where I live already, with my network of friends and loved ones. Where my cost of living is low and my lifestyle is easy going. Guess what, I work better when I'm in my home office. I get stuff done. Put me in the most depressing cubicle farm or highly distracting shared space and its a lot less likely. I really don't understand the "you need to go to the office" mentality anymore, especially with how easy it is to have a video meeting.
- hello_moto 7y ago> I really don't understand the "you need to go to the office" mentality anymore, especially with how easy it is to have a video meeting. You're assuming everybody speaks and breathe with the same wavelength as yours over the internet. You be you. No need to judge other people as weird.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoIn my experience, you have to make remote working a high priority in order for it to work well, otherwise remote employees end up treated as second-class citizen. People have to actually base their workflows around it, and not the office. So I can understand if smaller companies can't accommodate it - after all a lot of business simply isn;t managed that well. Large ones definitely should.
- pb7 7y agoThis comment honestly comes across as incredibly whiny. No one owes you anything. If you don’t like how things are done, pave your own way by starting your own company.
- tidepod12 7y agoIt honestly makes me feel a bit queasy when I read posts like this. 22 and 23 year olds making $200k+ a year? For doing what, exactly? Contributing 0.001% of the codebase to an app that sells advertisements? Meanwhile teachers, researchers, nurses etc (of which many also live in SF, by the way) are making pennies and some literally starving to survive. It makes it even worse to see the casualness that people in this thread are talking about $200-300k+ salaries, as if they have no appreciation for the fact that a $300k salary is unheard of even for most people in their 50s, let alone a kid in his early 20s. This is the type of attitude that I fear really makes Silicon Valley outsiders have a good amount of disdain for SVers.
- hello_moto 7y agoWhat are these fresh grad supposed to do? Getting paid less while the companies printing money? Where should the money goes? Having said that, I do understand your point in this statement: > as if they have no appreciation for the fact that a $300k salary is unheard of even for most people in their 50s, let alone a kid in his early 20s. I noticed an increasing number of fresh-grad that feels entitled for a big salary. Their attitude is off the chart...
- tidepod12 7y agoI don't blame the grads themselves (other than the lack of appreciation for what is a large salary), it's more commentary on SV culture (and society as a whole) that so much absurd amount of money is just being thrown around to people in the bay area, meanwhile throughout America our healthcare system is in shambles, teachers have to take second jobs to pay bills, etc... edit: and for the record, I'm one of those "new grads" making a self-admittedly absurd amount of money for what honestly amounts to a relatively meaningless contribution to society. Yea, I take the salary (and try to donate a good bit of it), but it still makes me feel uneasy that I'm being paid this much in the first place.
- balfirevic 7y agoIf you are any kind of software professional in US (hell, even teacher, researcher or nurse) I assure you that whatever you are currently making looks equally absurdly large for majority of human population.
- durron 7y agoSalaries at FAANGs are hard. I received an offer (New England based) for an L6 position from one this week and was shocked at the package. After getting off the phone and doing more research, I realized there's a chance I'm being lowballed, and I should negotiate for more if I choose to go to said company. I've done pretty well in my career so far, but even taking the initial offer would almost double my salary.
- sys_64738 7y agoBut Boston is ultra expensive. Like a mini NYC.
- gigatexal 7y agoGiven how expensive college is these days you’d almost have to get such a role to pay you a bonus and a high six figure income and stock options to have a chance of paying it all off.
- NeptuneNancy 7y agoMake sure you understand the (at least in the US) tax implications an offer might entail. For example, when your stock vests, you owe income tax on the value of the stock on its vesting day, even if you don’t sell it. (Tax when you sell is capital gains.) You will probably find yourself paying estimated taxes as a result. (Not an accountant, just someone who’s spent time trying to guess what the stock in my husband’s company might be worth at vesting for the coming year in order to figure out what we might have to pay in estimated taxes, and to figure out where that money might come from as you might be in a position where you can’t sell it to cover the taxes!)
- dharmon 7y agoLest anyone leave confused, this only applies for privately-held companies. If you are entertaining an offer from Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, etc., when your shares vest, the default option is usually "sell to cover", which means they will automatically sell shares to use as a tax withholding. Everything will be on your W-2, no estimated taxes needed.
- pxx 7y agoTypically this withholding is not sufficient, as it's done at bonus rates, which is less than your marginal. You can always elect to withhold more base salary though.
- NeptuneNancy 7y agoNot necessarily. My husband’s company that I was referring to was publicly traded, although much smaller than Google or Facebook. They took care of payroll taxes due on the value of the vested stock; we paid the income tax to the IRS quarterly. The value of the stock was included in his W2, however if we waited until we filed our taxes we would have incurred penalties, on top of a hefty tax bill. Companies like Google may handle things differently, and companies that deal in RSUs may as well. My point still stands that you need to understand the tax implications of your offer.
- dharmon 7y ago
- linguae 7y agoThe salaries for the FAANG companies are dramatically higher than even other large Silicon Valley companies. Over four years ago my first job after graduating with a MS in computer science was at an old-school Silicon Valley giant. My offer was $100,000, roughly $2,500 of stock that vested over 3 years (with a one-year cliff), and I negotiated a signing bonus that was a little less than $4,000. While the salary was about at par with what FAANG companies offered at the time to those with similar credentials, the rest of my compensation was a far cry from the offers I've heard of from the FAANG companies. Given the large differences in compensation (which makes a big difference when trying to save for a house in this area), I wonder how older Silicon Valley giants are able to compete with FAANG companies? Startups can justify lower compensation since there is the possibility the startup would be very successful. I wonder for giants if the difference largely boils down to interviewing processes? I do know that getting into a FAANG company is difficult and requires many months of grinding LeetCode, whereas not all Silicon Valley companies have difficult interviews.
- throwaway66920 7y agoThere’s no need to compete. Talent identification is hard and most people are approximately the same.
- zuhayeer 7y agoBtw, http://levels.fyi http://levels.fyi for FAANG salaries
- ryandrake 7y agoWhy would we trust voluntary self-reported data to be representative? There’s got to be massive sampling bias here. Wouldn’t human nature to brag and overstate bias these averages on the high side?
- bt848 7y agoJust pegging to my own personal experience, the L4, L5, and L6 total comp amounts on levels.fyi are pretty low. I guess it is because they are blended from many different sites. Looking at just the ones from SF, MV, and Sunnyvale they are consistent with my own experience and the self-reported internal salary survey Googlers conducted amongst themselves.
- siscia 7y agoOf course this will vary widely, but how much can people living in the bay area, working for FAANGS expect to save every month? Can somebody share an estimated figure?
- bt848 7y agoIf you are renting you can expect to save exactly nothing because landlords simply raise rents to whatever level the market will bear. OTOH if you can control your housing cost inflation then you might be able to save. Note also that "savings" are often strongly tied to share price performance. If you were a mid-career senior engineer who signed a standard $600k/4yr RSU deal at Nvidia in 2014 then by 2018 you were sitting on potentially $8 million.
- filoleg 7y agoDisagreed. Even with post-tax earnings of $15k/mo and paying $4k for housing in SF (which is more than what literally anyone I know living there pays for their housing), you are still getting $11k left over. Sure, let's subtract another $3k from that number for various little expenses and a bit of fun money, and you have $8k/mo saved up. That's a far cry from "nothing".
- bt848 7y agoThe median 2br rent in SF stood at $4,630 earlier this year. $4k is the all-in price for a $550k mortgage + property taxes + insurance if you buy a house. Of course, you can't buy a house at that price. If literally nobody you know pays $4k/mo for housing that says more about the population of your friends than it does about the economy of the Bay Area.
- scarejunba 7y agoThat's the marginal median 2 br rent. Very few people living here for the last 3 years or longer pay that much. The true median 2 br rent is much lower. I'd venture to say even maybe a third lower. EDIT: I can't respond to the comment below, so here's the other thing: rent control guarantees no rent changes, but you don't need it. Personal landlords don't change rent that much, often they prefer keeping tenants and handling cost pass-throughs rather than raising rent to maximize revenue. I live 4.5 years on a $1.5k rent / 1 br in Portola that terminated only because I moved away from the Bay (back now).
- SubuSS 7y agoOne counter intuitive case where quarterly vest is actually better than monthly: tax harvesting in usa. I am no tax expert, but my read of the IRS rules put restrictions around when you can buy or vest the next batch after doing a harvest. This comes in very handy if the company goes through a rough patch.
- junar 7y agoThe main pain is more paperwork, some of the time. It won't have an appreciable effect on your taxes, unless you * Sold X shares are massively underwater, and * Within the same period, vested Y shares, where Y is a large fraction of X
- einpoklum 7y agoI'm fascinated by the phenomenon of the signing bonus, which in many other countries Doesn't exist. Do people really get a lump of money just for agreeing to come work there - while they could just leave on day 2 (or day 1) and pocket the thing? Or - is it like a higher first salary? Also, if the position is highly sought-after - isn't it a bit weird that a signing bonus is offered?
- JoshTriplett 7y agoSigning bonuses often have a requirement to stay for a certain amount of time (or you have to return it). Some signing bonuses help compensate for losing bonuses or unvested stock at a company you're leaving. Signing bonuses are also great from a company's perspective, because they're a one-time payment that may get you to accept a lower salary. From the employee's perspective, they may be good or bad depending on your needs; consider carefully if you'd rather negotiate for a higher salary instead.
- sys_64738 7y agoYou need to divide a signing bonus by three to average it over your average time at the company.
- theaustinseven 7y agoOften the money will be given with some agreement to pay it back if the employee leaves before a certain date(and other variations on that theme). It usually compensates for giving up a yearly bonus or the expenses of switching jobs.
- cactus2093 7y agoYou have to pay it back if you don't stay for at least 6 months or a 1 year, so there's not an issue of people leaving day 1. It's also been most common for new grads I think. Presumably, to help them get a jump start on student loans and get set up comfortably coming out of college, which is of course a bigger problem in the US than anywhere else. But it seems to be becoming more common for mid-level and senior engineers as well, in these cases I think it's basically a loophole to make up for the fact that bay area engineering positions are continuing to get more competitive to fill, and for whatever reason companies don't fully want to acknowledge this and increase their official pay bands faster.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- akhilcacharya 7y agoI should really stop reading these posts, but perhaps the worst part is people denying these people exist. Once someone at my undergrad didn't believe my very average new grad TC... the information gap is insane.
- craigzucchini 7y agoI don't know why I ever bother reading things like this. On one hand, I'm not driven by money, so it doesn't motivate me. On the other, my perspective of having been in software for about 4-8 years depending on how you count, and struggling to get to net zero—an amount of only about 10k cad—is just sort of crushing when I realize someone fresh out of school can negotiate a 100k signing bonus and more yearly salary than I've ever been offered. It's just this sort of awful sinking feeling knowing that I'm sort of on the periphery of an industry in which most people are making more money than they know what to do with. That said, I'm happy that people get paid well to do something they love, but that can often be very depressing. Not always certainly, but damn if you've never looked out from behind your screen at the sun shining and thought a little less of the React component or whatever saas thing you work on. It's easy to forget that many of these articles, and particularly posts are Blind, are just just riddled with people posturing about the same thing. Edit: I should add the emotional response I tend to have given my circumstance, I do think it's way better to have transparency than not.
- hellofunk 7y ago> most people are making more money than they know what to do with Well, if they are in SF (which many of them are), they know exactly what to do with all the money: pay the rent and share pizza with their 6 roommates.
- craigzucchini 7y agoThat's also easy to forget ;) 115k ain't going too far in that respect. The U.S is a different place as well, and even that 100k signing bonus won't go that far in replacing student debt. I was surprised that he's a USC grad with a .ca TLD. Edit: At an 11k surplus every month, I take the above comment back.
- hello_moto 7y ago> and even that 100k signing bonus won't go that far in replacing student debt Better than "zero" signing bonus. $100k takes how many years of saving money? This signing bonus is "free money" provided you stay with the company within the agreeable period.
- probinso 7y agoIts depressing that companies would rather ratchet up pay than give better vacation, family care packages, or flexible schedule / location policies.
- rdtwo 7y agoIt’s funny because these salaries aren’t even that unreasonable just that most other wages have remained stagnant for 20 years in the us
- abledon 7y agobased upon some of the work you've shown on your blog https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/illegal-streams https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/illegal-streams I'm glad they are compensating you fairly. Most people could not do this type of mental work.
- marketing_MCS 7y agoExploding offers (offers that expire 5 business days or less from the day you receive them) are unfortunate but they exist, and not just from companies that are not ideal places to work. There’s not much that can be done in these cases besides ask for an extension, and if you don’t receive one, spend some time figuring out whether your expected value increase from more recruiting will be worth turning it down. This is a pretty good summary, IMO. I hate exploding offers as a candidate, and also dislike them as a hiring manager. Unfortunately you do get some candidates that hum and haw, drag their feet, or shop your offer around for something better. Which is their prerogative, but it wastes your time and delays your hiring process. I think honest and open communication is key here. Don’t go silent on the offer, or be vague - tell them you have another interview, and you want to wait to see if you get an offer. If they don’t want to give you an extension and try to strong-arm you it’s a pretty good sign that they know they’re under-offering (and, also, gives you some insight into the nature of the people involved). Still, it’s not a clear-cut signal to walk away, and I like that this section captures that nuance.