Hi, I would be interested in your opinion/experience on the following things and thought they might make good video topics. Topic 1) How does the industry value people coming in from academia. With that I mean people who have a PhD (perhaps plus a Postdoc). Out of experience, these people are highly educated and have extensive experience in executing highly complex projects, leading and supervising people, performing at a high level, think strategically and analytically. Yet, after all this experience, have no experience in the industry. Topic 2) When already in a large tech company. Would changing to a smaller company hurt your career on the long run? Topic 3) Perhaps you could talk a bit about the unspoken rules, when it comes to company politics. That is when you are at a large company and trying to make it within that environment.
Thank you for making such great content! It's been really helpful! I'm currently in the negotiation phase and I was wondering: What is the appropriate way to communicate other competing offers during negotiations? What level of detail should one share with the recruiter about these competing offers? What happens if the first round of negotiation did not yield a favorable outcome? How bad is it to go for a second round of negotiation?
Thanks for making the available for free, but why the need for TWO/THREE signups to get the book? I may enjoy the book, but this funnel significantly decreases the professional perception of your brand and channel, which is really sad. I understand that you and companies like to harvest email addresses "notify of future book updates". Why not make the process more smooth and more professional? Again, I think it is really generous of you to provide such high-quality content and information for free.
The book is sold on Gumroad (gumroad.com/l/IuuuN). For people getting the free book, I send out a discount code over email. That’s it. If you don’t want to provide emails, that’s also fine! I’ll publish most chapters on my blog. Here is part 1: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/10-engineering-challenges-due-to-the-nature-of-mobile-applications/ The rest will take time. And, of course, the book is available to buy off Amazon in a variety of formats. The only entity aware of your identity here is Amazon. This is how most books are published/sold, and I wanted to provide alternatives to this avenue.
I never had anyone want to negotiate this. I doubt your number of holidays can be different from what everyone else gets. Unpaid leave that has governement mandates is clear (eg there are some mandated unpaid leaves for parents or caregivers in the NL). Doable but messy orherwise: mostly due to how stock will (not) vest during that time, or what happens with insurance during the time (this one for the US).
I got an offer for an internship at Apple in Germany. Is there also some room for negotiation for internships? Would be a great topic for a next video :)
Congratulations! For internships, there is zero negotiation room at Big Tech, from all my sources. This is because it is a short enough time to not be worth it for the company to negotiate. Places like Apple usually play in line with similar companies and if you say no, another person will get the offer and they'll accept. You might be able to negotiate a bit if you get a return offer. In general, for new grad offers, you'll have far less negotiation leverage than when you're more experienced: the best leverage is having another offer, in this case.
@@pragmaticengineer Thank you! That's good to know. I actually have already some experience, as I've been studying and working for the last 4 years. Hopefully I'll get a job offer after the internship and I can use those years of experience as leverage. :)
There's usually a very tight deadline between receiving an offer and the offer expiring. Adding unreliability of the whole process timeline, how can anybody have a competing offer at the same time, besides maybe their current salary in another company?
The probably scheduled their onsites to be at the same time. When I was a hiring manager at Uber, many people had competing offers, some up to 4. Those people had the most leverage in negotiations. I'm just sharing what I observed. It's not easy to pull off, and the people who did it came very prepared. Also, at least on my team, we kept offers open for longer (around 2 weeks' time, sometimes beyond). The only exception was if it was our last headcount and we had other candidates who we could make an offer to and would have not been fair to have that other person hanging.
Most of Big Tech I know of doesn't care much about a degree (an exception for intern positions where they tend to recruit from on campus, and for new grads where those with a degree often come with lots of preparation for the big tech interview processes, and recruiters might bias for them). Having had your own startup if often seen as a bonus. I don't think it's a negative though. From the first 20 engineers at Uber, in Amsterdam, 5 didn't have engineering degrees, or any degrees. The problem you'd find with no degree or having worked at a similar company is there are a LOT of applicants for each position. So while it won't be counted against you, if there are 10 others with MIT degrees and/or having worked at another big tech applying for the same role as you are, you might find it challenging to get to a phone screen.
Yes, salaries like in the US are not possible in germany. I know a Buisness Informationen Officer at SAP, a good friend. He pays 160k/year for his architects, but the normal developer start from 45k and seniors make like 80k-90k including equity and they take mostly young people, because they are cheaper. He needs to pay like 200k/Dollar for Seniors in the US, more than for an architect in germany.
Would you have any insight into how to apply after an internship for a new grad ? Let's say someone is in their last year of studies and they do an internship at company X, then want to apply to big tech. Is it preferable for them to work a bit longer for company X after the internship to have a stronger application for instance ? Thanks !
It's difficult to get in as a new grad to Big Tech, as most new grad spaces are reserved for returning interns. So there are relatively few new grad openings, and those are highly competitive. Having internships or relevant experience helps. I'd advise to apply to several companies, and prep for the interviews (there's a lot of resources on TH-cam and e.g. here: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/preparing-for-the-systems-design-and-coding-interviews/).
hi i am currently going through aws amazon solutions architect final loop interviews in brussels? any tips for me? how much salary can I expect?i have overall 10 years of experience
I think he explained in a prior video that the stakes are pretty high here. Getting rid of an employee is very expensive work, to the point where companies would rather "turn down a good candidate than hire a bad one" as you'll see quoted everywhere.
Unless you have a competing offer, you probably won’t be able to negotiate. You can try, but without some leverage you won’t be able to do much. The “default” new grad offers for big techs are usually pretty good and fair in my experience.
A new grad don't have leverage to negotiate, maybe unless you do multiple internship on other reputable tech company or did some new project relevant with the hiring company. You could try make an offer but understand where you are in terms of experience and stay humble. I've seen some new grads try to negotiate as if they are a cofounder, rejected, and make a rant on LinkedIn. Boy, that's a speedrun for nationwide HR redflag.
Is it ethical to mention the amount of benefit from competing offers from other companies when negotiating? Or we just said something along the lines of "I currently have offers from A, B, and C with total benefits higher than what you offer..."
@Ridwan Afwan Karim Fauzi it is completely fine to do so, in fact, if you have other, higher offers, it's a great way to negotiate. It shows you are transparent. Let's say you have an offer from Amazon and Spotify, and really like the Spotify position better, but the Amazon offer is higher. You could write to the recruiter "I really liked the people, and I'd be excited work here. However, as full transparency, I have an offer from Amazon with $XX base salary, $YY stock. Would you be able to increase the offer to get closer, or match this offer? This would make my decision much easier."
I had an interview with the recruiter at Uber at amsterdam location. I can tell that a lot of things match in the video, but recuiters are very rigid on the salary range. I remember they asked my expectation and then lectured about the culture in the company where they dont negotitate or talk about money. Weird.
Every recruiter will be different, as will their style. Recruiters at Uber are usually given a number: to change it, they have to go back to the central team. Uber is far less flexible in negotiating than many similar tech companies. I personally think comp is important, and lecturing or talking down to someone is not okay. But this goes back to my first point on everyone being different: recruiters, hiring managers etc. 🤷♂️
I've been away from TH-cam as I finished writing my book, Building Mobile Apps at Scale. It's free to download as a PDF until 31 May. If you're interested in how big tech companies from Uber to Pinterest build large mobile apps with large teams, or industry best practices from cross-platform to feature flagging, grab it here: www.mobileatscale.com .
Great video as always! I have question, as a new grad with no competing offers, should I still try and negotiate? Will it lead to the offer being rescinded?
Once an offer is extended, you can definitely give negotiating a go. One round of negotiation - aka asking for one or more things to be changed - are always fine in my view (as long as you keep it professional). In the worst case, the company says “we cannot change our offer”. It’s worth a try in my view!
@@helloworld7313 Nice! Building a career in Software was written by my former colleague Dan Heller. I'll get around to books as well. For now I have a list of all my books (pretty much my bookshelf: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/my-reading-list/ ).
When I have multiple offers and I do tell them. Should I show them the competing offers ? Also you mention only one negotiating round, so should I avoid asking anything further if they don't get back with a much better offer than original? Also, what can we do if the board doesn't approve the equity?? Hope to get answers! Love the channel keep it up! 🔥
What about when the recruiter calls you to ask you a day or two afterwards to see "how the interview went" and measure your interest? What happened in the background in that case? Did the panel approve? Disapprove? Do they approve but want to measure your interest before the take it to the next step with an offer?
It’s rare, but some locations and teams do it. At Uber, I’ve known contractors for short-term projects. It’s not a great experience IMO as contractors have limited access to internal systems and it makes it hard to understand how things work and be productive.
I share things I have hands-on experience with on this channel. PMs, DS and design is not this topic, unfortunately. At Uber, the salary bands for these disciplines where very similar to engineers. For DS it was identical (so senior DS would make the same as a Sr Engineer), as well as for PM (a PM would be an L3, same as an SDE1, while a Sr PM would be an L5, same as Sr Engineer or Engineering Manager 1.
I recently had an offer at fb and it was way above what my current employer was paying at the time but on the lower end of what I saw on line (probably their standard offer). Since I didn’t have any leverage I at least negotiated a small sign on bonus for some equity I had and even 401K vesting. I suppose I could have bluffed but I was not ready to walk away. Also the recruiters told me I need data if I want to negotiate with compensation team
Instead of working on my exams, I am now thinking about my hypothetical offer from a big company. Man do I day-dream big.
12:07 what an insights on how to negotiate a signing bonus. Trivial when you say it, but never thought of it before.
Thank you so much for this information, video upload time could not have been more perfect. Got an offer from Facebook today! :)
Nice, this is really good content. Such explanations of processes behind the scenes are really interesting. The example emails are also really nice
you're doing gods work, dear sir! Thank you!
This content is valuable and relevant to a number of industries. Good work!
This is top notch content. You helped me so much, thank you!
Really helpful video, thanks for sharing insight on the process.
Hi, I would be interested in your opinion/experience on the following things and thought they might make good video topics. Topic 1) How does the industry value people coming in from academia. With that I mean people who have a PhD (perhaps plus a Postdoc). Out of experience, these people are highly educated and have extensive experience in executing highly complex projects, leading and supervising people, performing at a high level, think strategically and analytically. Yet, after all this experience, have no experience in the industry. Topic 2) When already in a large tech company. Would changing to a smaller company hurt your career on the long run? Topic 3) Perhaps you could talk a bit about the unspoken rules, when it comes to company politics. That is when you are at a large company and trying to make it within that environment.
Thank you for making such great content! It's been really helpful! I'm currently in the negotiation phase and I was wondering:
What is the appropriate way to communicate other competing offers during negotiations? What level of detail should one share with the recruiter about these competing offers? What happens if the first round of negotiation did not yield a favorable outcome? How bad is it to go for a second round of negotiation?
Thanks for making the available for free, but why the need for TWO/THREE signups to get the book?
I may enjoy the book, but this funnel significantly decreases the professional perception of your brand and channel, which is really sad.
I understand that you and companies like to harvest email addresses "notify of future book updates". Why not make the process more smooth and more professional?
Again, I think it is really generous of you to provide such high-quality content and information for free.
The book is sold on Gumroad (gumroad.com/l/IuuuN). For people getting the free book, I send out a discount code over email. That’s it.
If you don’t want to provide emails, that’s also fine! I’ll publish most chapters on my blog. Here is part 1: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/10-engineering-challenges-due-to-the-nature-of-mobile-applications/ The rest will take time.
And, of course, the book is available to buy off Amazon in a variety of formats. The only entity aware of your identity here is Amazon. This is how most books are published/sold, and I wanted to provide alternatives to this avenue.
I wish I have seen this 1 year ago :sweat-smile:
GREAT VIDEO
How about negotiating extra holiday or approval for extra unpaid leave?
I never had anyone want to negotiate this. I doubt your number of holidays can be different from what everyone else gets.
Unpaid leave that has governement mandates is clear (eg there are some mandated unpaid leaves for parents or caregivers in the NL). Doable but messy orherwise: mostly due to how stock will (not) vest during that time, or what happens with insurance during the time (this one for the US).
Very detailed, thx
I got an offer for an internship at Apple in Germany. Is there also some room for negotiation for internships? Would be a great topic for a next video :)
Congratulations! For internships, there is zero negotiation room at Big Tech, from all my sources. This is because it is a short enough time to not be worth it for the company to negotiate. Places like Apple usually play in line with similar companies and if you say no, another person will get the offer and they'll accept.
You might be able to negotiate a bit if you get a return offer. In general, for new grad offers, you'll have far less negotiation leverage than when you're more experienced: the best leverage is having another offer, in this case.
@@pragmaticengineer Thank you! That's good to know. I actually have already some experience, as I've been studying and working for the last 4 years. Hopefully I'll get a job offer after the internship and I can use those years of experience as leverage. :)
There's usually a very tight deadline between receiving an offer and the offer expiring. Adding unreliability of the whole process timeline, how can anybody have a competing offer at the same time, besides maybe their current salary in another company?
The probably scheduled their onsites to be at the same time.
When I was a hiring manager at Uber, many people had competing offers, some up to 4. Those people had the most leverage in negotiations.
I'm just sharing what I observed. It's not easy to pull off, and the people who did it came very prepared.
Also, at least on my team, we kept offers open for longer (around 2 weeks' time, sometimes beyond). The only exception was if it was our last headcount and we had other candidates who we could make an offer to and would have not been fair to have that other person hanging.
Does big tech also hire conservative in terms of degree? will a masters help more instead of side projects or even having your own startup?
Most of Big Tech I know of doesn't care much about a degree (an exception for intern positions where they tend to recruit from on campus, and for new grads where those with a degree often come with lots of preparation for the big tech interview processes, and recruiters might bias for them).
Having had your own startup if often seen as a bonus. I don't think it's a negative though. From the first 20 engineers at Uber, in Amsterdam, 5 didn't have engineering degrees, or any degrees.
The problem you'd find with no degree or having worked at a similar company is there are a LOT of applicants for each position. So while it won't be counted against you, if there are 10 others with MIT degrees and/or having worked at another big tech applying for the same role as you are, you might find it challenging to get to a phone screen.
Why am I watching this anyways, to get jealous? I don't think this is relevant in Germany, AFAIK FAANG pays like 80k for engineers here...
Yes, salaries like in the US are not possible in germany. I know a Buisness Informationen Officer at SAP, a good friend. He pays 160k/year for his architects, but the normal developer start from 45k and seniors make like 80k-90k including equity and they take mostly young people, because they are cheaper. He needs to pay like 200k/Dollar for Seniors in the US, more than for an architect in germany.
Would you have any insight into how to apply after an internship for a new grad ? Let's say someone is in their last year of studies and they do an internship at company X, then want to apply to big tech. Is it preferable for them to work a bit longer for company X after the internship to have a stronger application for instance ? Thanks !
It's difficult to get in as a new grad to Big Tech, as most new grad spaces are reserved for returning interns. So there are relatively few new grad openings, and those are highly competitive.
Having internships or relevant experience helps. I'd advise to apply to several companies, and prep for the interviews (there's a lot of resources on TH-cam and e.g. here: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/preparing-for-the-systems-design-and-coding-interviews/).
@@pragmaticengineer Thank you !
hi i am currently going through aws amazon solutions architect final loop interviews in brussels? any tips for me? how much salary can I expect?i have overall 10 years of experience
Nice content but the quality looks really blurry, like upscaled, not actual full HD.
Its very strange that such a big tech giant has typo in the subject of offer letter
I wrote up the text that’s similar to what my offer letter was. The typos were probably me!
I’m a person, not a tech giant :)
Jesus! It takes this many steps to hire one employee! Feels grossly bloated.
I think he explained in a prior video that the stakes are pretty high here. Getting rid of an employee is very expensive work, to the point where companies would rather "turn down a good candidate than hire a bad one" as you'll see quoted everywhere.
Woah there hold on I still cannot invert a binary tree.
Hi, I just got an offer as a new grad from big tech. Is it worth negotiating as I am only a new grad? (I didn't do an internship)
Unless you have a competing offer, you probably won’t be able to negotiate. You can try, but without some leverage you won’t be able to do much.
The “default” new grad offers for big techs are usually pretty good and fair in my experience.
A new grad don't have leverage to negotiate, maybe unless you do multiple internship on other reputable tech company or did some new project relevant with the hiring company.
You could try make an offer but understand where you are in terms of experience and stay humble. I've seen some new grads try to negotiate as if they are a cofounder, rejected, and make a rant on LinkedIn. Boy, that's a speedrun for nationwide HR redflag.
Is it ethical to mention the amount of benefit from competing offers from other companies when negotiating? Or we just said something along the lines of "I currently have offers from A, B, and C with total benefits higher than what you offer..."
@Ridwan Afwan Karim Fauzi it is completely fine to do so, in fact, if you have other, higher offers, it's a great way to negotiate. It shows you are transparent.
Let's say you have an offer from Amazon and Spotify, and really like the Spotify position better, but the Amazon offer is higher. You could write to the recruiter "I really liked the people, and I'd be excited work here. However, as full transparency, I have an offer from Amazon with $XX base salary, $YY stock. Would you be able to increase the offer to get closer, or match this offer? This would make my decision much easier."
@@pragmaticengineer thank you!
The video was great! I really enjoyed the structure, especially going through what happens behind the scenes.
I had an interview with the recruiter at Uber at amsterdam location. I can tell that a lot of things match in the video, but recuiters are very rigid on the salary range. I remember they asked my expectation and then lectured about the culture in the company where they dont negotitate or talk about money. Weird.
Every recruiter will be different, as will their style.
Recruiters at Uber are usually given a number: to change it, they have to go back to the central team. Uber is far less flexible in negotiating than many similar tech companies.
I personally think comp is important, and lecturing or talking down to someone is not okay. But this goes back to my first point on everyone being different: recruiters, hiring managers etc. 🤷♂️
I've been away from TH-cam as I finished writing my book, Building Mobile Apps at Scale. It's free to download as a PDF until 31 May. If you're interested in how big tech companies from Uber to Pinterest build large mobile apps with large teams, or industry best practices from cross-platform to feature flagging, grab it here: www.mobileatscale.com .
Excellent information and presentation. Subbed!
What software did you use to edit?
This was super helpful.
damn super informative . luv u
this is gold. thanks
Great video as always! I have question, as a new grad with no competing offers, should I still try and negotiate? Will it lead to the offer being rescinded?
Once an offer is extended, you can definitely give negotiating a go. One round of negotiation - aka asking for one or more things to be changed - are always fine in my view (as long as you keep it professional).
In the worst case, the company says “we cannot change our offer”. It’s worth a try in my view!
I have the same two books on your bookshelf, DDIA and Building a Career in Software(if i remember the name correctly)
idea for next video: talk about these two books and your top take aways?
@@helloworld7313 Nice! Building a career in Software was written by my former colleague Dan Heller.
I'll get around to books as well. For now I have a list of all my books (pretty much my bookshelf: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/my-reading-list/ ).
Great content! Your channel is super insightful. I'm looking forward to read your book!
When I have multiple offers and I do tell them. Should I show them the competing offers ?
Also you mention only one negotiating round, so should I avoid asking anything further if they don't get back with a much better offer than original?
Also, what can we do if the board doesn't approve the equity??
Hope to get answers! Love the channel keep it up! 🔥
What about when the recruiter calls you to ask you a day or two afterwards to see "how the interview went" and measure your interest? What happened in the background in that case? Did the panel approve? Disapprove? Do they approve but want to measure your interest before the take it to the next step with an offer?
Great video! Is it possible to do a daily rate contract with a big tech?
It’s rare, but some locations and teams do it. At Uber, I’ve known contractors for short-term projects.
It’s not a great experience IMO as contractors have limited access to internal systems and it makes it hard to understand how things work and be productive.
@@pragmaticengineer yes, I've had those same issues... Makes sense for short term
Thanks =)
You’re doing god’s work
Super helpful! Thank you😊
Can you please do a comparison video of the salaries of product managers, designers and data scientists?
I share things I have hands-on experience with on this channel. PMs, DS and design is not this topic, unfortunately.
At Uber, the salary bands for these disciplines where very similar to engineers. For DS it was identical (so senior DS would make the same as a Sr Engineer), as well as for PM (a PM would be an L3, same as an SDE1, while a Sr PM would be an L5, same as Sr Engineer or Engineering Manager 1.
I recently had an offer at fb and it was way above what my current employer was paying at the time but on the lower end of what I saw on line (probably their standard offer).
Since I didn’t have any leverage I at least negotiated a small sign on bonus for some equity I had and even 401K vesting.
I suppose I could have bluffed but I was not ready to walk away.
Also the recruiters told me I need data if I want to negotiate with compensation team
Not sure if I could have done much better without the leverage