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Comment by just2n | Hacker News Reader

I don't know where you're getting those figures from, but they're off by more than a factor of 2 based on information I have from friends in Google and previous disclosures here on HN by Googlers. Google won't pay most new hires out of school much over $100k in the bay area, and they adjust based on living expense. AFAIK the higher end of junior compensation is close to $200k, which is where you start getting into the entry senior level salaries. There certainly are engineers at Google getting paid $350k in base + bonus compensation but they're not people who only know how to do basic competition problems and enough theory to get a 4 year degree.

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For new grad (B.S.) software engineers this year, the standard offer is ~160k total compensation amortized over the first four years, including signing/target annual bonus but not including any raises or stock refreshers that may happen.

I'm graduating with an M.S., starting this summer. Using competing offers, I negotiated up to 190-195k amortized over four years, including 215-220k in the first year (because of signing bonus). I ended the negotiation a little early because of stress and likely could've pushed 210k amortized.

My resume isn't anything special, but I practiced enough to be good at the whiteboard interviews. The best-of-the-best new grads are probably getting close to 250k, but there aren't many of them.

There might be a few that accidentally fall into unicorn jobs, but best-of-the-best are right about in your range. There's just not enough data on potential hires to create that kind of valuation, and if they are best-of-the-best, they'll rapidly rise.

Off topic from parent. But which companies were your competing offers from?

I failed to negotiate recently with other offers.

Facebook. From what I can tell, Google's negotiating strategy is to offer max(their initial offer, highest competing offer+10k). The only people I heard of them not doing that for were those getting absurd amounts of stock from Snap, pre-IPO (like $300k+ worth at estimated IPO price over four years).

Any particular resources you'd recommend for getting good at white boarding?

Elements of Programming Interviews until you can do Leetcode mediums with a good success rate. Then grind Leetcode, try to work your way up to hards. Practice EPI problems with a friend on a physical whiteboard throughout. I did this for a month leading up to my interviews and it helped immensely.

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