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Ask HN: Moving to SF. Which offer should I take?

1 points by fananta ↗ HN
I'm fortunate enough to have a few job offers, all at the same level and relative same comp (base + stock).

Some of these companies are public which makes the comp more liquid and some are not.

The offers I have are from Instacart, Flexport, Square, and Uber. How would you rank them?

7 comments

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halfbrown
Square, Flexport, Uber, Instacart... in that order. The reasons are myriad, but they include a combination of long-term viability, visibility within the market, stability in (or of) their industry, executive team (including the "gossip" surrounding it), and the social cachet a job at each place would look to a future employer, among other reasons.

Good luck out there!

lhorie
I'd ask:

1) what type of person are you financially. If you're risk-averse, stocks are preferable since they let you convert into different investment vehicles earlier, whereas if you're risk-tolerant RSUs and options are a bigger gamble - the latter much more so

2) having talked to the teams, which one seems most interesting

I wouldn't worry too much about gossip/social cachet. Speaking as someone who does technical interviews at one of the companies you mentioned, I can say that for engineering positions, interviewers at future employers will only really be interested in whether you can do good engineering work.

halfbrown
Mostly what I was referring to regarding the gossip/cachet (which I admittedly didn't elaborate on) was the negative buzz that still circles around Uber. Another decent sized scandal could really tank things internally, which would likely affect their workforce.
lhorie
(Disclaimer: I work at Uber, my views are my own, etc)

I joined a few months before Dara took over as CEO, sort of right in the middle of the storm; long story...

Anyways, to be honest, I think the company has done a lot to get itself back on track since Dara took over. There was extensive investigation about employee misconduct after the Fowler incident (culminating in some 200 cases being reviewed by an independent firm, with substantiated cases resulting in termination) and training policies were implemented; the 2016 data breach cover-up incident resulted in the head of security being fired; espionage programs were shut-down; and the company is in full cooperation w/ investigations about the Tempe SDV killing incident.

With all that said, I don't want to sound like I'm defending Uber, just giving my two cents as an insider, given that media tends to focus on the shocking negatives but not necessarily on the follow ups.

I think more than considering how media portrays a company, it might be more fruitful to consider its size, since smaller companies have different dynamics than larger ones, and might be more suitable to one's preferences/experience than the alternative.

halfbrown
I would agree that a lot has been done, and believe me... I wasn't dumping on Uber. I still use the app myself. I'm just saying from a practical viewpoint, it's a serious consideration to be made if someone is moving to a new job.
lhorie
I think it's fair to be worried about that, but conversely, given that I believe Uber is legitimately getting its act together, and the recent Wall Street ratings of its stock, I think now might be a particularly good time to make a bet on it.

Personally, when I joined, I made a similar bet based on what I could gather about its growth trajectory at the time and a belief that corporate scandals eventually get closure.

I'm a bit on the risk-tolerant side, so RSUs two years ago with IPO rumors flying around and bad public perception seemed like good timing. With the current landscape, I think Uber is less risky than two years ago, and I even agree that Square might be more attractive to a more risk-averse person, but yeah, at the end of day, I think it still boils down to personal preferences/risk tolerance.

malandrew
Uber, Square, FlexPort

I would rank FlexPort higher for growth potential, but my understanding is that they have a gnarly large Ruby on Rails legacy codebase that I wouldn't want to work on. If I'm wrong here, please correct me.

I don't think Instacart will do well long-term.