You did nothing wrong. Keep doing what you are doing, spend some time interviewing, it's a great skill to develop. Don't feel like you're cheating on your wife, your current employer is not your wife. If at any point, they realize that they are better off without you they'll sack you, period.
If the companies you interview with really want you they'll make it worth your while. They'll adjust their offer to compensate for all the items you listed, otherwise, they just accept the fact that you can walk at any time.
Excellent point about negotiating. Definitely mention that you will take a hit with housing and taxes if you move, and have them add $12k to the offer. That is peanuts compared to the total offer amount.
Funny: the recruiter was annoyed at his declination email - a phone call was apparently expected. But how does a company decline? "We do not see a fit at this time, but we'll keep your resume on file". Lol
That's giving them too much credit. Most companies don't even respond. That's "industry standard", and is probably responsible for untold amounts of stress and lost productivity(on the part of the jobseeker). No idea how that came to be, but it'd be a dream come true if it were the other way around.
The recruiter was upset he didn't get a chance to browbeat him into changing his mind. The author should stick up for himself because recruiters are not highly incentivized to care about your happiness. If you don't upset future business, that's all that matters to them.
Or the recruiter had tools at his disposal he wasn't even able to employ against a brick-wall "no". The recruiter didn't even have the chance to address the applicant's concerns, which is a bummer. Maybe they liked the applicant so much the recruiter got told "do whatever it takes" and he didn't even get a chance?
It sounds like the poster is happy with his position in life, and he's just figuring that out. I think favorite piece of wisdom that can be applied to this post is to listen to your gut when it tells you not to do something; not the other way around. If you're in a position in life where you're happy, try to coast for a while and enjoy stability.
I didn't gather that the author was happy - it sounds like he's quite stressed all the time and over-analyzing everything and yet not considering so many options at the same time. Just doesn't seem like a fun recipe to me.
I'm in a very similar position to the poster, perhaps even at the same company >.>
In very large organizations, a lot of things just suck. My cube-mate told me "csours, we have some problems around here" and I just laughed for 5 minutes. Yes we have some problems around here. I can think of 10 major things we are doing wrong at any one time...
But yea, you can just coast for a very long time in the enterprise; it doesn't make you feel good though.
I don't really understand this post. The author seems to be doing a lot of handwringing for no reason. Why not just tell the new company "I'm currently employed, so it is unlikely that I would leave my job, but I would be open to it for the right opportunity, if you're still interested"? That way, you both know where you stand, and you have a better negotiating position, since you don't need to take the new job.
This is exactly what I've done in the past. I haven't had any issue. I don't make a big deal out of it, but I do let them know I'm currently happy where I am so, if they decide they are interested in moving forward, they'll have to make it worth my while.
The offer was 20k more than my base salary already. Asking for even more seemed crazy to me. I have controversial opinions on how much money developers make already, probably stemming from my imposter syndrome. Asking for more money did not make me comfortable. If they had offered, I would have had to reconsider. I expected more of a conversation after I declined, but it didn't happen.
Until companies start offering the salary that they are expecting to pay for the position in their initial offer, you're always going to have to ask for more to get it.
There are a few startups (Buffer or maybe Zapier?) that are doing this. Offers are very one-sided, the company has all of the information and you have none. By not negotiating a better offer, you're leaving money on the table. It doesn't help that there's a taboo in our society around negotiation and bargaining.
This. As someone currently entrenched in the Bay Area, my advice is to stay in Texas -- especially if you have dreams of owning a house someday.
Here, that prospect is nil unless you win the equity lottery at some startup, but gambling in serial with your career makes this REALLY hard to pull off.
A six-figure salary in the Bay Area dooms you to renting for the rest of your life, and the rental situation here, with its converted living room bedrooms, roommates, and closet-sized apartments, SUCKS.
The rent is so high here that it feels like you're living paycheck-to-paycheck on a $120k salary.
Well, let's clarify that by saying "if you want to own a house somewhere cool", because it's totally possible to buy a place on $120k. But it's going to be a condo, and in the far east/north bay if you work in SF (Pleasant Hill/Santa Rosa or further) or far south bay if you're in SV (morgan hill or gilroy).
I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the negativity is pretty warranted.
$250k gets you a two-story house with an actual YARD there.
Pittsburgh's tech scene is great now, too: Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Google Pittsburgh, Uber (self-driving car lab), Oculus Research, Duolingo, and a plethora of other startups. There's even seed investors here now! Even Paul Graham, a Pittsburgh native, is getting involved again.
I mention this to someone here, and 9 times out of 10 the reaction is along the lines of "Pittsburgh?! Why would you EVER want to live there?" Oftentimes, the person who cannot conceive the possibility of living a happy life outside of Silicon Valley's bubble either has an inherited house that ballooned in value, or they're still renting at age 35.
You have to play the Bay Area real estate game - which is itself a gamble - but always begins with buying less than you eventually want. This is what gets frustrating talking RE with folks, especially younger ones -- of COURSE you can't buy Barbie's American Dream House in one of the most competitive real estate markets in the world, you're 30 and don't have rich parents.
I'm a huge fan of getting out of Silicon Valley. Cashing in on BigCo salary for a few years and then buying a house in TX/PA/wherever in cash is a totally valid game plan. I think it's hilarious that our industry essentially invented modern telecommuting yet uses it so rarely.
As an aside, $250k may get you a nice house in PA, but the salaries are correspondingly lower. If you can't get paid substantially more in the Bay Area there's really no good reason to be/stay/move here since everything's so expensive.
"of COURSE you can't buy Barbie's American Dream House in one of the most competitive real estate markets in the world"
It's not even that though, $1M now gets you what's called a "fixer-upper" in SF -- a euphemism which actually means a house with broken gas lines that you literally risk your life occupying.
It's also impossible to save money here for a future house in a cheaper city when the median rent is $4000/month.
We're talking in circles now. Originally I said a person HAS to leave the "cool" areas of the Bay (SF proper being one of them) if they're looking to get ahead in the housing market. I don't think that point's been disproven here.
What happens if they say no? What are you afraid of? The universe won't explode. You still will have your current job.
But what if they say yes? You did not enable that to be an opportunity. You took things as they are, rather than considering what they could be.
Opportunities are not black/white. It is extremely rare that a company's first offer is their highest. Most companies expect a counter. Each side has to show some of their cards before making a compromise.
The path forward is usually not comfortable. Up to you whether or not it's worth it (sounds like it's not).
> I expected more of a conversation after I declined
Guessing the recruiter felt the same way. "A call would have been nice" was the chance to have more of a conversation! It's where they say "what went wrong?" and you say "it's all great but I did the math and I need another $15k (or whatever) for the move to make sense" and they say "if I can get you $10k will you accept today?" and this is called negotiation.
And don't kid yourself, it's all negotiating about money. I'd work waist-deep in cow feces programming a Facebook clone on an AS/400 with actively hostile coworkers if it paid $2 million/day. Let's be real, there's always a price. Maybe it's not realistic, but it's there.
For me, it's easier to negotiate conversationally. These are my roadblocks for taking the job, how do we solve them together? Let the recruiter get creative. In most negotiations you don't have the monopoly on solutions -- know your must-haves and collaborate with the other party. It doesn't have to be adversarial.
I am not obligated to negotiate, especially if there is the possibility of competing offers. And because of this, a company's first offer very often is their best offer, and they never get a second chance.
The company is not buying trinkets at a flea market. It's trying to rent skilled labor in a competitive market. If you pay me less than I'm worth, I can usually find a higher bidder. So there is the price you can pay to get me to work for you next month, and there is a higher price you can pay to hire me and get me to stop seeking offers from other employers for the next N months.
And the possibility that someone would walk away rather than counter is the very thing that keeps initial offers reasonable for everybody. It is the very same principle behind unionized collective bargaining, without the cartel enforcer of the union. The Nash equilibrium is to always negotiate individually, because you will usually get more money, but the strategy that benefits the whole class (tech employees) the most in aggregate is for most of us to not negotiate at all, and to judge the first offer as the only offer, because that ensures that tech employers always have to open with their best possible offer, or risk losing the candidate entirely.
Fortunately for tech employers, tech employees don't have enough solidarity or a strong enough cartel enforcer to accept any common negotiations strategy.
This thread. Lesson is to be transparent while going through the process, so there's no surprises. And that all said, never feel guilty if it's ultimately the wrong decision for you. Hiring managers and recruiters are used to having to move on if a candidate falls through.
I know $20k seems like a lot of money, but if it wasn't enough to pay for your existing lifestyle in a new location, then it wasn't enough. The fact is that cost of living differs enough from place to place that what you can buy for 80k in one place might only cost 60k in another, but 120k in a third. Housing, of course, is the major culprit in this calculation.
I used to be a pushover in negotiations too. That's how I ended up making $55k when I later found out my coworkers were making $80k. So I applied and interviewed just to get practice with salary negotiating. After a week of trying I got an offer for $60k and I asked for $80 and we settled on $70. A week after being disappointed that I was making $55k while my coworkers made $80, I had a $15k increase. 3 months after that I switched companies and got another $10k increase. A year after that I switched companies again and got another $30k increase. Through negotiation, I doubled my salary from $55k to $110k in 15 months. It was uncomfortable at times, especially with counter offers and threatening to quit, but it's just business, and the other side of the table isn't losing any sleep over trying to lowball you.
Yep, you tell them up front, they'll probably say that they'd still like you to interview, and you take it from there. Then everything is out in the open and there are no hard feelings. If they do freak out on you, you know with absolute confidence that you did nothing wrong and it's entirely on them.
Not that this is the interviewee's fault in any way. But being open makes it simpler.
> felt guilty enough for turning it down after they had spent time and money on me
In these cases you should never feel guilty about the time and other resource they spent on the process. If they hadn't made you an offer in the end they certainly wouldn't have felt guilty about the time/money/other you had spent.
Exactly. It is part of the process that both parties need to accept. If the outlay/risk is too high for the company then it is not the candidate's fault, the candidate does not dictate the interview process.
The recruiter guilting you is the recruiter acting out their anger that you didn't earn them their $25k or whatever. They get whatever exorbitant cut they do specifically because of the risk that they assume.
I backed out of a new job on a Thursday when I was scheduled to start on Monday. Recruiter was super nasty to me. It was unfortunate to back out when I did, but that's when the offer came in, and they were offering me 65k against 93k.
That kind of conflict is baked into the relationship. It's not their fault, not exactly, but it's their job to handle rejection with professionalism and grace, not by pouting.
Edit: I said "when the offer came in." What I meant was the competing offer that paid ~30k more. Timeline: Company A offers, I accept. I interview at company B. Company B offers me 30k more. I cancel with company A. Hilarity ensues.
What company couldn't be bothered to put an offer on paper until three days before you were supposed to start, and then had the gall to be upset? Please name and shame, that's completely unacceptable.
I was once offered a job with a start date two weeks in the future, and then I got a call the day before I was set to start which told me I ought not bother showing up the next day, because the position had been cancelled. The job was with American Family Insurance, and instead of starting that new job, I instead called my agent to cancel all my policies with them.
So now, I have no reservations whatsoever about accepting a [non-contract] offer and making an appointment to show up for a new job, then continuing to interview right up to my new start date, or even a little while after. If I cancel the day before, the company should simply be glad that I didn't work one day then quit, because then they would have to process payroll and tax forms for the whole year.
Scheduling the first day costs me nothing. That's just a deadline for the company to put their written promise of payment for my labor into my hands. If it doesn't show up, neither do I. The company would then receive a call, and I would say that I was unable to start work because I didn't have a signed offer letter. If I get a better offer in the interim, I might accept it, and let the first company know they were outbid.
So far, I have only ever skipped a "start work" appointment with Deluxe, and I decided not to show up for work because their recruiter lied to me multiple times, and processed me in to a job description radically different from the one I had been seeking.
If you want assurance that I will show up after accepting an offer, give me an actual contract. An "at will" offer letter just says that if I work for you, you will pay me $X, N times per year.
Do not fear interviewing while employed. Do not fear it if you are "at will". Do not fear it if you are under contract. The company is not going to sacrifice a single penny of its profits for your personal welfare, so you have to see to your own financial security. You always have to assume that the contract will not be renewed or extended, or that the next all hands meeting will be to fire everyone. Therefore, you owe it to yourself to seek alternate employment at any time, and accept or reject offers in the spirit in which they were given. An "at will" offer could be for any number of days from zero until your retirement target, and that level of uncertain commitment from your employer is not sufficient by itself to generate any level of certain commitment from you.
You don't have to put bait on your hook, but your line should always be in the water. And if you catch a fish, you can always throw it back rather than eat it.
This. Recruiter's daily job is to talk to people to convince and pressure them for positions that are potentially undesirable (otherwise, the roles will be handled by an internal recruiter or filled very quickly); it is a cold-calling sales job where rejections and cold feet are common, and the final closing are far and between.
Their emotional response to rejections should be equivalent to a programmer's emotional response to debugging a difficult trace-stack error.
However, their job is also to elicit emotional response from their applicant-side to further pressure them if the applicant is sitting on the fence, sure most of you whom have experienced the sales cycle have heard the following: e.g.,
* "I need to feed my family..." (everyone has to make a living to feed their family)
* "[The hiring manager] told me specifically 'make sure to get this guy', we worked really hard on getting this package ready for you..." (every car sales involve printing a standard package, the sales person didn't handwrite a love letter addressed to you)
One time, I've received a particularly nasty call from a recruiter because I made up my mind, turned down a job offer and addressed the e-mail directly to the hiring manager cc'd to recruiter instead of just to the recruiter. The recruiter was upset and said that "[I] burned all bridges now for any alternative negotiations... and that's why I make the big bucks."; never mind that the hiring manager was very polite and replied that "next time, if you are interested; feel free to e-mail me directly". The whole experience taught me that most of the time, the recruiter (agency) is not on your side and some of the time, they're not even on the hiring company's side either; they like everyone else, is frying the fish for themselves.
I really despise all things recruiter. I frequently hang up on them. They are the scum of the industry.
I've had several jobs I've gotten via recruiter and several that were direct hire. In every single case, the direct hire jobs were better (quality of the work environment, treatment, quality of the software and environments .. I'd even dare the say the quality of the team/other employees in some cases).
Another thing about the writer of this article; he mentions his loyalty and how it felt like he was "cheating on his wife". You should never feel loyal to a company. It's not a personal relationship. I talk about it a bit in this writeup: http://khanism.org/society/loyalty/
If you were really married to the company, you could actually get something in the divorce.
Your employer is not like your spouse. Your employer is more like a f'buddy that is into "S" when you are not into "M", who gives you a booty call every weekday at 9AM without fail, who leaves a fat wad of cash on your nightstand every two weeks, and who all your other friends think is a colossal jerk. Also, your employer is anything but monogamous, but expects you to be.
You would dump them in a second, if it weren't for that cash, because that would make you a fool rather than a prostitute.
Yes exactly this. I had the same experience a few months ago.
I interviewed and got a great offer. My company countered with "how about we match the offer AND you get to work on whatever you want". I decided to decline the offer (and stay put) and the recruiter's boss actually called me and tried to pressure and guilt me into taking the offer.
I kept saying to him that it's unreasonable for him to expect me to take offers just because they exist and that he should know better than most that this is a possible outcome when recruiting.
I get the argument that there's money on the line, but there was money on the line for everyone involved. A recruiter should be mindful of the risks so they aren't devastated by the inevitable unwanted outcomes.
Not that anyone was under any illusions about recruiters, but this is how they show they don't give a shit about putting the right person in the right position. Just butts in seats and cashing checks.
Rage. Your employer pays your salary, you do your very best work for them. That is all you owe them. If they expect to make a penny more without you, they will.
You do not owe them loyalty beyond that. You owe negative loyalty to a recruiter, especially somebody trying to guilt you.
I try to subtly steer the direction of the interview process from within my current companies. But it is fruitless, last time I got responses from other engineers that conduct the interviews like:
- "real world problems are not discrete enough to present and solve within 10 minutes" (but the random "average best solution" for a random algorithm question is, and they have 30 minutes to an hour to fumble through it without us telling them they really had 10 minutes)
- this is what we do for everyone (and when we find the right candidate that fits our autistic goals and is also sociable enough for our arbitrary culture fit ideals, we won't have any exercise like it in the actual job)
I just don't get how there is so much media about how bad the interview process is, on here and linkedin, but nobody has an alternative yet. Is hand waiving it away with "we just dont want false negatives" really the absolute to perpetuate this inefficient process?
Just ask for way more money. What would it take for you to get to that more pricey spot? An extra $50k? Just do it. I've seen people get 30 or 50% more on their offer by impressing the hell out of the interviewers. Don't think that the the flight makes you owe them anything. Why do they need to do an in-person interview? I've hired plenty of people out of province with a couple extended Google Hangouts chats as well as code review.
Exactly. Everybody in this industry needs to shift their mindset. You are not a loyal little employee cherished by your boss, you are a contractor with one customer, period. You do not owe anything to anybody, you are free to go with what is best for you as an individual and a professional.
I do not see a real reason why one should be afraid of trying to find a better offer. I do not think it is right to be so emotionally attached to an employer. all they do is give you money to do stuff they don't want to do. It's just business and loyalty should not come into it.
There was once a company giving out free iPads to anyone who could pass their tech screen interview. This was round about the first release of the iPad, so it was quite a big deal - they were expensive and out of stock at local retailers.
I went in, passed the interview, collected my iPad, and at the second round interview had a very strange "so why are you interested in working here?" discussion. I wasn't, I was only there for the iPad.
All my interviews in my past few months have been in this format.
1. Talking to recruiter ( 0-1 hr)
2. InterviewStreet coding challenge ( 2 hrs)
3. Phone Screen - 1 hr
4. Take home coding exercise - 4 hrs
So you are spending 8 hrs just to get your resume looked at. Then comes onsite interview which is another day ( assuming you are not flying out).
All recruiter did was mass email ppl on linkedin. Spending at most 1 hr on your particular case. You have all the right to say no, its none of their business why. I've had Amazon recruiters not even have the courtesy to email me back when I didn't pass ( assuming) their interviewstreet. They don't even tell you why you got rejected when you don't pass the interview so you don't have to either if you don't want to. Just tell them 'it was difficult decision', if you are feeling particularly generous :D.
I have never received any meaningful feedback from prospective employers about why they declined to advance me through their interviewing process, so I feel no reciprocal obligation to give any feedback about why I didn't advance them through my interviewing process.
In fact, if you base it strictly on reciprocity, for some companies, you wouldn't even have to send an e-mail to the recruiter. You could just never contact them again and leave them to wonder. But I consider that behavior to be so beyond the pale in prospective employers that a short, e-mailed note saying "I decline your offer," is the minimum that I would ever do.
This post sounds like every interview cycle I've ever gone through. The self doubt during the process, the surprise at their interest, the pleasantness of the new company, and then finally, the hard part: making a decision. Not sure why this is worth even writing about. Also, I wonder about the sensibility of writing about it under your own name when your current employer now knows you are interviewing around.
You sound like junior guy which probably explain all the drama. Others already pointed out your mistakes in reasoning.
However, since you liked this opportunity so much (SF I assume), you could just ask for more money, however much would make things work for you. Explain your reasoning to them and see what they can do.
Everyone owes it to themselves to test the market once a year. You don't have to take the offer, but the extent to which you consider yourself guilty for doing so is the extent to which your current employer is screwing you. If your current company is in trouble, they will only blink once or twice before kicking you aside.
> If your current company is in trouble, they will only blink once or twice before kicking you aside.
This right here. The company has no loyalty to you, so why should you have any loyalty to them?
I'm very happy where I am right now, but I know that I'm exactly one "pivot" away from getting the axe and having to move to Texas. If a better opportunity comes my way, I'm not going to lose sleep over quitting.
> I sought advice from two of my best friends/coworkers.
Unless you trust them absolutely, it's a risky idea to talk to coworkers about your interviews somewhere else. If your coworkers are already talking about their interviews with you, then it's fine. I mean, there are some very weird companies out there where the managers get so upset at the idea that you might look somewhere else on your own initiative that it's usually best to not talk about job interviews with any coworker. It's one of those things that people do themselves but hold against you once they know you did. Talk about some job frustration during a company party, only to have it recited as an argument against you during an HR interview.
That said, interviewing at places even if you don't have plans to leave is normal and many people do it. It's interview experience and market research in one and it's something your employer may not punish you for, but some do, so keep it private.
Doing this results in the company and HR having an inaccurate view of the organization. How long can a company last when employees don't make frustrations known and instead put on a happy face for display?
You can voice your frustrations and offer ways to improve the organization without volunteering the information that you are interviewing.
When it comes to interviews and dealing with my current employer, I have 2 rules: never tell that you are trying to leave, and never accept the counter offer when you give your notice.
Comment sounds like you didn't actually read the post. He explicitly says he's against the book. I can't fault someone for trying to earn some credit with Amazon.
I have been in this situation before where I was flown out and the company low balled me on salary with 5% pay cut despite the cost of living be way higher. My time and energy was wasted. Trust me, companies do the same things all time to prospective employees. Even for a startup, flying someone out and putting them in a hotel for a night is the cost of doing business and the risk you take for finding the right candidates.
if you didn't tell them how much you want to make, they're going to just guess. and it sounds like they guessed pretty well, if they came within 5% of what you currently make.
amateur hour advice like "never be the first one to name a price" is nonsense. just tell them what you want and see if there's a fit, or not. it's how business gets done 99% of the time.
Yes you are correct. Because sometimes companies think its the project, or the location, or the weather, or who knows what. But if its the money, then you gotta say so.
I actually see it a bit differently than buying a car. To me it's more like an auction where the person only has to actually sell the item if they are pleased with the final price. So if the price starts at $100 dollars and you bid $95 that person will probably not give you the item and wait for a better deal or at the very least sell at cost. That being said, I certainly could have been more assertive and said I will only move if you pay me X amount but then you run the risk of not getting the best offer they can provide because you have given them number. At the end of the day after the company low balled me, I told them I would need more money than that and they wouldn't budge so even so it was still a waste of energy.
> just tell them what you want and see if there's a fit, or not.
What you want. Not what you're making now. For example, I don't currently have any toxic co-workers, but in a move, I take that risk. You've got to pay me enough more to make it worth my while to move.
I've decided that my answer to "How much are you making now?" will be "That's not a relevant number. The two relevant numbers are how much it would take for me to want to take the job, and how much you think I'm worth." (I've never actually tried it, since I've been on my current job for seven years, and I came up with that more recently.)
I guess I'll be one voice in the other direction -- I agree with the friend: if deep down you know you're just exploring, you should cut it off before the in-person if they are flying you out. Interviewing is stressful for the interviewers, too, and nobody wants to pay $400~ and spend a day of their time, too, for you to have a field trip to update your feel for the market.
> Maybe I did nothing wrong and am over-analyzing it.
Yes, that's exactly it.
The recruiter was being a dick by making you feel guilty about declining over email. Even if the recruiter was correct and you should have called, that has no bearing on whether or not you should feel guilty about the process overall.
You went through the process, was presented with an offer, and after evaluating the offer against your current circumstances, decided it wasn't a better deal. That's how it's supposed to work.
I'd say keep on doing what you're doing. If you find that interviewing periodically is a good use of your time, do it.
> Maybe there is a better way to explore other opportunities without ending up on a plane.
Yes, arrange a Skype/call (30-45 mins) with the actual hiring executive, the guy you'd report to.
Have solid questions prepared. Learn some basics about what they are working on, what kinds of problems they need solved, a little about structure and the team.
Assuming there's good tonality in the conversation and you're serious about exploring further-- then move forward to meeting in-person.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 89.9 ms ] threadIf the companies you interview with really want you they'll make it worth your while. They'll adjust their offer to compensate for all the items you listed, otherwise, they just accept the fact that you can walk at any time.
In very large organizations, a lot of things just suck. My cube-mate told me "csours, we have some problems around here" and I just laughed for 5 minutes. Yes we have some problems around here. I can think of 10 major things we are doing wrong at any one time...
But yea, you can just coast for a very long time in the enterprise; it doesn't make you feel good though.
Until companies start offering the salary that they are expecting to pay for the position in their initial offer, you're always going to have to ask for more to get it.
There are a few startups (Buffer or maybe Zapier?) that are doing this. Offers are very one-sided, the company has all of the information and you have none. By not negotiating a better offer, you're leaving money on the table. It doesn't help that there's a taboo in our society around negotiation and bargaining.
Here, that prospect is nil unless you win the equity lottery at some startup, but gambling in serial with your career makes this REALLY hard to pull off.
A six-figure salary in the Bay Area dooms you to renting for the rest of your life, and the rental situation here, with its converted living room bedrooms, roommates, and closet-sized apartments, SUCKS.
The rent is so high here that it feels like you're living paycheck-to-paycheck on a $120k salary.
You'd be happiest staying in Texas.
You mentioned Gilroy, the price situation (800k, 4M, 1M, 1M, 600k are the first 5 results) doesn't even look much better than in SF proper:
http://www.zillow.com/gilroy-ca/
Moreover, they don't really have condos in Gilroy.
Detached house (needs work) $359k https://www.redfin.com/CA/Gilroy/7270-Alexander-St-95020/hom...
Condo in Morgan Hill @ $446k: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Morgan-Hill/112-La-Crosse-Dr-95037...
Detached 3/2 SFH @ $500k https://www.redfin.com/CA/Gilroy/374-Walnut-Ln-95020/home/10...
Nice townhouse @ $495k: https://www.redfin.com/CA/GILROY/7664-GENNARO-WAY-9502/home/...
$250k gets you a two-story house with an actual YARD there.
Pittsburgh's tech scene is great now, too: Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Google Pittsburgh, Uber (self-driving car lab), Oculus Research, Duolingo, and a plethora of other startups. There's even seed investors here now! Even Paul Graham, a Pittsburgh native, is getting involved again.
I mention this to someone here, and 9 times out of 10 the reaction is along the lines of "Pittsburgh?! Why would you EVER want to live there?" Oftentimes, the person who cannot conceive the possibility of living a happy life outside of Silicon Valley's bubble either has an inherited house that ballooned in value, or they're still renting at age 35.
I'm a huge fan of getting out of Silicon Valley. Cashing in on BigCo salary for a few years and then buying a house in TX/PA/wherever in cash is a totally valid game plan. I think it's hilarious that our industry essentially invented modern telecommuting yet uses it so rarely.
As an aside, $250k may get you a nice house in PA, but the salaries are correspondingly lower. If you can't get paid substantially more in the Bay Area there's really no good reason to be/stay/move here since everything's so expensive.
It's not even that though, $1M now gets you what's called a "fixer-upper" in SF -- a euphemism which actually means a house with broken gas lines that you literally risk your life occupying.
It's also impossible to save money here for a future house in a cheaper city when the median rent is $4000/month.
But what if they say yes? You did not enable that to be an opportunity. You took things as they are, rather than considering what they could be.
Opportunities are not black/white. It is extremely rare that a company's first offer is their highest. Most companies expect a counter. Each side has to show some of their cards before making a compromise.
> I expected more of a conversation after I declined
Guessing the recruiter felt the same way. "A call would have been nice" was the chance to have more of a conversation! It's where they say "what went wrong?" and you say "it's all great but I did the math and I need another $15k (or whatever) for the move to make sense" and they say "if I can get you $10k will you accept today?" and this is called negotiation.
And don't kid yourself, it's all negotiating about money. I'd work waist-deep in cow feces programming a Facebook clone on an AS/400 with actively hostile coworkers if it paid $2 million/day. Let's be real, there's always a price. Maybe it's not realistic, but it's there.
For me, it's easier to negotiate conversationally. These are my roadblocks for taking the job, how do we solve them together? Let the recruiter get creative. In most negotiations you don't have the monopoly on solutions -- know your must-haves and collaborate with the other party. It doesn't have to be adversarial.
The company is not buying trinkets at a flea market. It's trying to rent skilled labor in a competitive market. If you pay me less than I'm worth, I can usually find a higher bidder. So there is the price you can pay to get me to work for you next month, and there is a higher price you can pay to hire me and get me to stop seeking offers from other employers for the next N months.
And the possibility that someone would walk away rather than counter is the very thing that keeps initial offers reasonable for everybody. It is the very same principle behind unionized collective bargaining, without the cartel enforcer of the union. The Nash equilibrium is to always negotiate individually, because you will usually get more money, but the strategy that benefits the whole class (tech employees) the most in aggregate is for most of us to not negotiate at all, and to judge the first offer as the only offer, because that ensures that tech employers always have to open with their best possible offer, or risk losing the candidate entirely.
Fortunately for tech employers, tech employees don't have enough solidarity or a strong enough cartel enforcer to accept any common negotiations strategy.
My biggest salary negotiation was part phone, part email. But the relationship was collaborative, so it worked.
I'd love to hear those controversial opinions.
Not that this is the interviewee's fault in any way. But being open makes it simpler.
In these cases you should never feel guilty about the time and other resource they spent on the process. If they hadn't made you an offer in the end they certainly wouldn't have felt guilty about the time/money/other you had spent.
I doubt anyone on the other side lost sleep over it.
I backed out of a new job on a Thursday when I was scheduled to start on Monday. Recruiter was super nasty to me. It was unfortunate to back out when I did, but that's when the offer came in, and they were offering me 65k against 93k.
That kind of conflict is baked into the relationship. It's not their fault, not exactly, but it's their job to handle rejection with professionalism and grace, not by pouting.
Edit: I said "when the offer came in." What I meant was the competing offer that paid ~30k more. Timeline: Company A offers, I accept. I interview at company B. Company B offers me 30k more. I cancel with company A. Hilarity ensues.
I was once offered a job with a start date two weeks in the future, and then I got a call the day before I was set to start which told me I ought not bother showing up the next day, because the position had been cancelled. The job was with American Family Insurance, and instead of starting that new job, I instead called my agent to cancel all my policies with them.
So now, I have no reservations whatsoever about accepting a [non-contract] offer and making an appointment to show up for a new job, then continuing to interview right up to my new start date, or even a little while after. If I cancel the day before, the company should simply be glad that I didn't work one day then quit, because then they would have to process payroll and tax forms for the whole year.
Scheduling the first day costs me nothing. That's just a deadline for the company to put their written promise of payment for my labor into my hands. If it doesn't show up, neither do I. The company would then receive a call, and I would say that I was unable to start work because I didn't have a signed offer letter. If I get a better offer in the interim, I might accept it, and let the first company know they were outbid.
So far, I have only ever skipped a "start work" appointment with Deluxe, and I decided not to show up for work because their recruiter lied to me multiple times, and processed me in to a job description radically different from the one I had been seeking.
If you want assurance that I will show up after accepting an offer, give me an actual contract. An "at will" offer letter just says that if I work for you, you will pay me $X, N times per year.
Do not fear interviewing while employed. Do not fear it if you are "at will". Do not fear it if you are under contract. The company is not going to sacrifice a single penny of its profits for your personal welfare, so you have to see to your own financial security. You always have to assume that the contract will not be renewed or extended, or that the next all hands meeting will be to fire everyone. Therefore, you owe it to yourself to seek alternate employment at any time, and accept or reject offers in the spirit in which they were given. An "at will" offer could be for any number of days from zero until your retirement target, and that level of uncertain commitment from your employer is not sufficient by itself to generate any level of certain commitment from you.
You don't have to put bait on your hook, but your line should always be in the water. And if you catch a fish, you can always throw it back rather than eat it.
Their emotional response to rejections should be equivalent to a programmer's emotional response to debugging a difficult trace-stack error.
However, their job is also to elicit emotional response from their applicant-side to further pressure them if the applicant is sitting on the fence, sure most of you whom have experienced the sales cycle have heard the following: e.g.,
* "I need to feed my family..." (everyone has to make a living to feed their family)
* "[The hiring manager] told me specifically 'make sure to get this guy', we worked really hard on getting this package ready for you..." (every car sales involve printing a standard package, the sales person didn't handwrite a love letter addressed to you)
One time, I've received a particularly nasty call from a recruiter because I made up my mind, turned down a job offer and addressed the e-mail directly to the hiring manager cc'd to recruiter instead of just to the recruiter. The recruiter was upset and said that "[I] burned all bridges now for any alternative negotiations... and that's why I make the big bucks."; never mind that the hiring manager was very polite and replied that "next time, if you are interested; feel free to e-mail me directly". The whole experience taught me that most of the time, the recruiter (agency) is not on your side and some of the time, they're not even on the hiring company's side either; they like everyone else, is frying the fish for themselves.
I've had several jobs I've gotten via recruiter and several that were direct hire. In every single case, the direct hire jobs were better (quality of the work environment, treatment, quality of the software and environments .. I'd even dare the say the quality of the team/other employees in some cases).
Another thing about the writer of this article; he mentions his loyalty and how it felt like he was "cheating on his wife". You should never feel loyal to a company. It's not a personal relationship. I talk about it a bit in this writeup: http://khanism.org/society/loyalty/
Your employer is not like your spouse. Your employer is more like a f'buddy that is into "S" when you are not into "M", who gives you a booty call every weekday at 9AM without fail, who leaves a fat wad of cash on your nightstand every two weeks, and who all your other friends think is a colossal jerk. Also, your employer is anything but monogamous, but expects you to be.
You would dump them in a second, if it weren't for that cash, because that would make you a fool rather than a prostitute.
I interviewed and got a great offer. My company countered with "how about we match the offer AND you get to work on whatever you want". I decided to decline the offer (and stay put) and the recruiter's boss actually called me and tried to pressure and guilt me into taking the offer.
I kept saying to him that it's unreasonable for him to expect me to take offers just because they exist and that he should know better than most that this is a possible outcome when recruiting.
I get the argument that there's money on the line, but there was money on the line for everyone involved. A recruiter should be mindful of the risks so they aren't devastated by the inevitable unwanted outcomes.
You do not owe them loyalty beyond that. You owe negative loyalty to a recruiter, especially somebody trying to guilt you.
- "real world problems are not discrete enough to present and solve within 10 minutes" (but the random "average best solution" for a random algorithm question is, and they have 30 minutes to an hour to fumble through it without us telling them they really had 10 minutes)
- this is what we do for everyone (and when we find the right candidate that fits our autistic goals and is also sociable enough for our arbitrary culture fit ideals, we won't have any exercise like it in the actual job)
I just don't get how there is so much media about how bad the interview process is, on here and linkedin, but nobody has an alternative yet. Is hand waiving it away with "we just dont want false negatives" really the absolute to perpetuate this inefficient process?
I went in, passed the interview, collected my iPad, and at the second round interview had a very strange "so why are you interested in working here?" discussion. I wasn't, I was only there for the iPad.
1. Talking to recruiter ( 0-1 hr)
2. InterviewStreet coding challenge ( 2 hrs)
3. Phone Screen - 1 hr
4. Take home coding exercise - 4 hrs
So you are spending 8 hrs just to get your resume looked at. Then comes onsite interview which is another day ( assuming you are not flying out).
All recruiter did was mass email ppl on linkedin. Spending at most 1 hr on your particular case. You have all the right to say no, its none of their business why. I've had Amazon recruiters not even have the courtesy to email me back when I didn't pass ( assuming) their interviewstreet. They don't even tell you why you got rejected when you don't pass the interview so you don't have to either if you don't want to. Just tell them 'it was difficult decision', if you are feeling particularly generous :D.
In fact, if you base it strictly on reciprocity, for some companies, you wouldn't even have to send an e-mail to the recruiter. You could just never contact them again and leave them to wonder. But I consider that behavior to be so beyond the pale in prospective employers that a short, e-mailed note saying "I decline your offer," is the minimum that I would ever do.
Guy interviews new job, weight up the pros and cons, decided against it.
However, since you liked this opportunity so much (SF I assume), you could just ask for more money, however much would make things work for you. Explain your reasoning to them and see what they can do.
This right here. The company has no loyalty to you, so why should you have any loyalty to them?
I'm very happy where I am right now, but I know that I'm exactly one "pivot" away from getting the axe and having to move to Texas. If a better opportunity comes my way, I'm not going to lose sleep over quitting.
Unless you trust them absolutely, it's a risky idea to talk to coworkers about your interviews somewhere else. If your coworkers are already talking about their interviews with you, then it's fine. I mean, there are some very weird companies out there where the managers get so upset at the idea that you might look somewhere else on your own initiative that it's usually best to not talk about job interviews with any coworker. It's one of those things that people do themselves but hold against you once they know you did. Talk about some job frustration during a company party, only to have it recited as an argument against you during an HR interview.
That said, interviewing at places even if you don't have plans to leave is normal and many people do it. It's interview experience and market research in one and it's something your employer may not punish you for, but some do, so keep it private.
When it comes to interviews and dealing with my current employer, I have 2 rules: never tell that you are trying to leave, and never accept the counter offer when you give your notice.
amateur hour advice like "never be the first one to name a price" is nonsense. just tell them what you want and see if there's a fit, or not. it's how business gets done 99% of the time.
and no, it doesn't go without saying. you need to say it. tell them your requirements. do it without them asking.
what if you wanted to buy a car, but the dealer wouldn't tell you the price? what would you do? offer them MORE than what you think the car is worth?
What you want. Not what you're making now. For example, I don't currently have any toxic co-workers, but in a move, I take that risk. You've got to pay me enough more to make it worth my while to move.
I've decided that my answer to "How much are you making now?" will be "That's not a relevant number. The two relevant numbers are how much it would take for me to want to take the job, and how much you think I'm worth." (I've never actually tried it, since I've been on my current job for seven years, and I came up with that more recently.)
Yes, that's exactly it.
The recruiter was being a dick by making you feel guilty about declining over email. Even if the recruiter was correct and you should have called, that has no bearing on whether or not you should feel guilty about the process overall.
You went through the process, was presented with an offer, and after evaluating the offer against your current circumstances, decided it wasn't a better deal. That's how it's supposed to work.
I'd say keep on doing what you're doing. If you find that interviewing periodically is a good use of your time, do it.
Yes, arrange a Skype/call (30-45 mins) with the actual hiring executive, the guy you'd report to.
Have solid questions prepared. Learn some basics about what they are working on, what kinds of problems they need solved, a little about structure and the team.
Assuming there's good tonality in the conversation and you're serious about exploring further-- then move forward to meeting in-person.