Silicon Valley engineer negotiated a starting salary from 120k to 250k | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley engineer negotiated a starting salary from 120k to 250k

businessinsider.com

22 pointsandreywww34 comments

It's also not 250k in cash. It includes stock which may or may not be worth what he thinks they are worth when he cashes out. My take away here is that base salary is comparable from company-to-company, but stock is given away like free lunch.

Also, it takes a certain personality to go out in public and brag about this kind of stuff. I think he's trying really hard to build his online persona. :)

It's briefly mentioned in the article but I don't think ya'll realize Haseeb is a (in)famous ex-poker player. He made high quality training videos, and did very, very well in poker. He was also at one time Daniel Cates's (junglemans) roommate (and life coach? lol) who is probably one of the strongest poker players in the world.

All these other things were for sure the real factors into the negotiation/hiring. The bootcamp meant almost nothing (besides the 6m+ experience showing he could train people to code like he's proven he could train people in poker).

Genuinely curious: Don't famous/extremely-good poker players make a ton of money playing the game? How does 200k/year compare to the kind of money this guy could have made if he remained in Poker?

having an expected value over 200k/year playing poker would probably place someone in the top 50 players, worldwide, in my estimation. I would say it's a lot easier job to be a software engineer than keep up with the discipline required to maintain such an edge. 10 years ago it was a totally different story, there was a LOT more easy money around. The level of play has advanced quickly and the boom has been over for years.

You'd have to move outside of the US to play online. Playing in person is very slow and a terrible lifestyle doing it professionally.

I forget the story behind Hasseb, but wasn't he considered a scammer or dishonest? Is that what you mean by "(in)famous"? A quick google search reminded me that Cardrunners drop him.

Anyway, everyone gets a fresh start. However, he'll have to be proficient at shipping code (instead of chips) and be productive if he's to keep his job/compensation level.

Don't worry. He'll be in management before his first product ships.

This can't be real, right? Only 12 weeks of coding experience at a bootcamp and he was able to ace the interviews at those companies? Do they cover formal CS in these bootcamps?

This is real. Keep in mind, Qureshi taught the algorithms lectures at this bootcamp for what looks like 6+ months after he graduated.

So 3 months of training and 6 months of memorizing algorithms. That's worth 130K + 25k signing bonus(let's leave RSU aside)?! The guy never built a real production system, never shipped a product, wasn't an online tech celebrity, nothing. Something is very wrong here.

I agree something is wrong; We're all underpaid.

Memorizing algorithms is all a lot of big companies care about, it does seem. It feels like it wouldn't be a predictor of success in any way, but hey maybe they're right.

I think they're leaving out a significant chunk of his experience.

I'm sure he's self-taught with a lot of the algorithms, so there was a lot of hard work he had to put in to ace those interviews.

Well, that made me sick to my stomach.

Why? Because you didn't put in the time to learn how to properly negotiate? Negotiation is a skill that can be learned, just like engineering.

Well, he got really successful through his connections. There wasn't that much negotiation involved.

That's just how the real world works, in 99% of the cases. You need to know your stuff, but past a certain point, it's almost always better to expand your network + meet new people than to put in an extra hour honing your craft.

People don't just magically get handed a $200-300-500k job. You tend to get recommended by someone, through someone you know (i.e. friend, acquaintance).

I tend to agree, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. More so in this case, he won a popularity contest. I will recommend people who I believe have the appropriate experience but this guy hardly has any.

Can we go ahead and retire the whole meritocracy idea then?

Hmmm. Where do you get that from this article, or his blog post?

Sure, he did get the 23andMe interview from a friend. But Google? and AirBnB? and Yelp? and Uber? and Twitch? Man, that would be a lot of connections.

Ben Horowitz carefully orchestrated a bidding war when it came time to sell his company. Qureshi "cracked the coding interview" and then orchestrated a feeding frenzy of a bidding war.

A well-played hand. ;-)

What's a good resource to learn? Also what other than money can/should be negotiated?

why? He makes $130k with a $30k signing bonus?

The RSUs are illiquid assets for private companies like this. Maybe he can get cash on a secondary market or keep them for bank in an IPO. This shouldn't make you sick..., 130k is a pretty average software engineer salary in SF Bay area.

The information about referrals for better compensation packages was really useful.

If $130k is the actual salary then the title needs to be edited

It is kind of semantical, when the RSUs vest they have to be counted as ordinary income on your taxes.

But with a private company like AirBnB, he can't just sell those shares on the stock market, and MAYBE he could sell them for cash on a private site like EquityZen.

He is set up to make a big profit! It is a nice compensation package and is also great bargaining power for his next move!

But at the same time, it is not cash and what he actually makes is pretty average.

Why? I believe you know the answer but I'll bite. He's not experienced in building software and yet he commands that much in salary. He can pass tests with flying colours though. I don't think he'll last that long at the company. It will be a grind and not well-suited to his personality.

He has sample projects, functional games actually. Portfolio pieces specifically made to rosy up his portfolio. And he aced the programming interviews by being fresh with that material.

He also had great referrals, and counteroffers.

And wound up with a pretty average salary.

I am envious of the illiquid RSU package, but the 130k salary is pretty average.

He didn't get a "Senior Staff Architect" title. He didn't get "Principle", he landed a software engineering role at an average salary with an awesome signing bonus and RSUs.

This is what you are supposed to be armed with. Portfolio, referrals, counteroffers.

Are you concerned that AirBNB's code will suffer? It won't. Are you concerned that he will burn out? More credentialed engineers burn out.

This is just misplaced jealousy plain and simple, someone else optimized their time and leveraged inefficiencies in this system in a way we already know already works.

I have a distinct feeling these bootcamps are "teaching to the test".

I would really like to know what it is like to work with this guy.

>> He first learned how to code by joining a 12-week coding bootcamp at App Academy, >> He killed his Google interview and was offered a $162,000 a year package.

If this is really true, then maybe it's worth going to these coding camps even if you already know how to code and have been doing so for 20 years.

The ability to interview will only get you so far though.

At that rate he would be a colleague of mine, and I wonder if he would actually bring anything to that table.

I have worked with plenty of people who come from non-tech backgrounds and are phenomenally productive, and he may be one of those people.

Either way I would pay to be a fly on the wall during his 3-month review.

I couldn't get past a phone screen with them because they wanted 10 different ways to tell what your current shell is ( from the command line ) and I could only think of 5.

Personally, I prefer to code up an algorithm, even if it isn't perfect, and then do instrumented testing; for me the fun part is tweaking and optimizing.

Similar - couldn't make it past the phone screen. Got killed by a DP problem which in hindsight was quite approachable but my CS fundamentals weren't very fresh in my mind at the time.

So in addition to the hazing you have to endure before you work at one of these big tech companies, you also have to face a 3 month review that could very well end up in you being canned? I thought the entire point of the hazing was to prevent false positives? I'd like to know how many Google candidates don't make it past 3 months for "performance reasons".

>> you also have to face a 3 month review that could very well end up in you being canned?

I think that this (3-ish month review) is true pretty much anywhere, if even as an informal process.

edit: clarity

WTF! That's it. I'll one-up this guy!

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