2025 Job Search: 2 Month Long Results
Interview Experience
UPDATE: Updated diagram. Background: 7 YOE, Ivy League grad. Backen
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UPDATE: Updated diagram. Background: 7 YOE, Ivy League grad. Backend Generalist Engineer Worked at 2 tech firms before this. Applied on Linkedin 15 companies. Applied at company sites 2 companies. And started interview process directly from 1 email. No referrals or anything. Just regular apply online. 'Phone Interview' includes all the mid processes like codesignal, etc. Ended up taking the offer from the interview I started with email. Choices for cancelling most onsites: needing to relocate, expectation to work 996, expectation to work hard on weekends, team likely to be offshored, feeling sick/unwell, burnt out, not interested in company after having offer or not interested in the work My email is clogged with interview requests. Meta, Decagon, and Valon seems most desperate. And a lot of AI grift startups, private firms. So I guess technically I have a lot more companies I can interview. But those are just waste of times for me. And while Meta pays top tier, I absolutely do not want to work there from hearing the work culture. Even my manager recommends not going there no matter what. Says it's "hire to fire" place. Thoughts on job market. It's rough. During the pandemic, I had over 92% response rate with tech companies and essentially 100% response rate with nontech companies. To be fair, I am applying for senior level positions now so more difficult. Also noticed compensations accross the board are becoming even more compressed compared to last year. It's been falling since the pandemic. If you aren't in AI/ML or some niche field, your compensation is NOTICEABLY lower on initial offers now (despite the fact people inside those companies are really benefiting from stock appreciation). I hear (don't know if true) Meta went from like 450+k offers to 360k initial offers nowadays for E5. And noticed almost every company is offering SIGNIFICANTLY less RSU grants now. And a LOT of front loading so the back (after first year or two) is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. The "excuse" is "refreshers" can match it up BUT there were always refreshers (and were often higher) back when companies gave 4 year 25-25-25-25 vesting schedule. Overall, the entire tech market compensations are crashing outside AI/ML. I couldn't negotiate mine because I burnt out and did not have good competing offers. Approximate total compensation to make it anonymous: $475k. If there's any questions on job searches or whatever, feel free to ask. For the two companies I got
rejected at phone screen... it sucks because I had offers at both almost 2 years ago. DoorDash and OpenAI (didn't want to work at either regardless). And the companies I got
rejected to at applications, all but one I landed interviews before in the past. My priorities in life is interesting relevant work, decent culture, having to work only a few weekends at most, in office 2\~3 days, during weekdays not being all nighters but instead generally ending at 5, engaged coworkers, no offshored team members. Don't really care as much about compensation after 300k so there's that. Have forfeited offers much higher (delta of \~200k) before for other life priorities (though looking back, opportunity cost was millions because who knew you could make money off nonprofits (OpenAI) but whatever).