Ask HN: Are there any tech companies throwing $$ at candidates these days?

44 points by artemisyna 4 years ago | 45 comments

Companies throwing $$ at for recruiting has been part of the normal ebb-and-flow of the tech industry for the past few years. Even as one company slows down hiring, another, usually pre-IPO company, is there to take its place.

However, with interest rates going up and funding going down, things seem to be tightening up.

So HN - Do any of y'all happen to know of any tech companies throwing $$ at candidates these days? I know the big tech companies are still pulling good numbers, for the ones that are still hiring, but I'm curious about the exceptional offers that we used to hear about a few years back. Have those completely dried up?

(Not actually asking for myself so much as to get a pulse on things.)

anon_070522 4 years ago |

No, they have not dried up; about a year ago, I changed jobs, effectively doubling my already six-figure salary. I'm currently in the interview process again and from my experience so far, while I don't think I'll be doubling my salary, I do expect the position I end up taking will probably pay $30,000-$50,000 more than I currently make without any sort of jump in title.

YMMV; I'm a senior cloud engineer with 8 years of experience (all non-FAANG), though no academic CS background. Another caveat: starting right before COVID, I made the decision to only ever work remote, so all my experience with the job market in the past few years is only with 100% remote positions.

xdfgh1112 4 years ago | |

So what happens when you work remote for like 250k? Do you just retire after five years? Trying to get my head around US salaries.

darioush 4 years ago | | |

You pay 35% taxes so that's like 150, then you max out retirement and you're left with like 130. You spend 50-70k and then save 60k a year which is like 1 year of your pre-retirement expenses (not including any children, just like a couple or single person)

So yeah definitely not retiring in 5 years unless you are already 55.

This also means you didn't do anything flashy or crazy with your money or lose it in markets.

jsiaajdsdaa 4 years ago | | |

In my case, you pay most of it to tax, mortgages, and all of the very expensive things wives like to buy.

knert 4 years ago | | |

250k is a good pay in America but you won’t be retiring after five years. Income tax usually takes 25-35% off so your take home is 162k-187k. It’s easy to spend 10-15k/mo on expenses (mortgage, cars, gas, utilities, child care, food, clothes, medical, paying off student loans, retirement, savings, etc.). Then you’ll want to do things like take vacations. It gets eaten up pretty quick here.

ctvo 4 years ago | | |

Seems quite easy to calculate? What's your estimated cost of living per year, what's your savings rate re: your salary, what do you need to safely generate that cost of living passively based on investments until your estimated last year of life? Are there any extraordinary costs (health care in the US for example) you'd need to be responsible for after early retirement? With those numbers in hand, for most people, no, you don't retire after working 5 years at 250K per year even in an extreme low cost of savings locale.

orangepurple 4 years ago | | |

Rents for decent apartments in most US cities over 200k population are between 2000 and 9000 dollars per month

Dracophoenix 4 years ago | |

Where did you find these remote positions?

toomuchtodo 4 years ago | | |

LinkedIn searching for the “#remote” or “remotework” tag

https://remoteok.com

https://4dayweek.io

https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

https://weworkremotely.com

https://awesomejobs.io

https://remotewide.co/

(not op, no affiliation with anyone on this list)

anon_070522 4 years ago | | |

I've had 3 fully remote positions in my career so far and I found them in the following ways:

1) filtering listings on AngelList ---> the job before last

2) searching "remote" on the "Who is Hiring?" threads here of HN ---> my last job

3) looking at the job listing page of companies whose work interests me who I've heard have remote-friendly or -only cultures ---> my current job and most of the places I'm currently applying

zdware 4 years ago |

Market is very hot still and in favor of the candidate, atleast from my perspective. But I have 10+ years experience.

k__ 4 years ago | |

A few weeks ago I saw $600k/y for a MEV engineer. So, yes, probably very hot.

anony23 4 years ago | | |

From what I understand about the MEV scene this seems low.

atonse 4 years ago | | |

What is MEV?

lumost 4 years ago |

Job market is hot, but the great race for comp seems to have died down. Big tech is still offering good money.

Things will probably swing if/when the next great tech co IPOs successfully. Eyes on stripe, bricks etc.

artemisyna 4 years ago | |

Yeah, the places that go for "the great race for comp" is sort of what this question was trying to get at.

synicalx 4 years ago |

My employer is currently spending a MASSIVE amount on recruitment globally, and we're still having a hard time hiring especially in California. We've got ads on every social media platform and job network, we've got booths at every career day and conference, we've hired extra recruiters on contracts AND subbed out to boat loads of 3rd party recruiters, and I'm pretty sure we've even started producing video ads for YouTube.

Our offers are pretty generous I would say, not FAANG levels but way above "average" + good bonuses. We're not a "bad" company to work for either - high staff retention (some are nearing 20 years), good Glassdoor feedback, really generous with the WFH equipment (we've all got more monitors than we know what to do with), and I would say we're an almost universally liked brand all over the world. And despite all this, so far this year in our team we've managed to hire 2 people for the 8 vacant spots (with 6 more spots over 12 months). I hear from other teams it's basically the same story, they're even getting people quitting one week before they start due to a slightly better offer.

tl;dr - I think there are still companies out there making obscene offers to some candidates, especially the senior and above tier ones. I wish they would stop because I'd also like to hire some people.

__turbobrew__ 4 years ago | |

Do you mind sharing the company name? I’m interested

synicalx 4 years ago | | |

I'd prefer not to, at least publicly. I've dropped an email address in my bio - feel free to ping me there if you like.

faangiq 4 years ago | |

“Generous but not FAANG level” for some crap startup no thanks.

synicalx 4 years ago | | |

Yeah definitely not a startup.

Most places don't pay FAANG money, hence why FAANG's are so popular and hard to get into.

EDIT: The more I think about this, the weirder this comment is. Did you not see the bit where I mentioned some staff have been around for 20 years? What kind of startup is more than 20 years old?

spicyusername 4 years ago |

I'd say the market is still very hot.

Just got an offer for 20% more than my current salary after a few months of interviewing. I probably interviewed at 15 companies or so.

There were a seemingly endless number of mid-to-senior operations and development positions available, so I only had to apply to companies I wanted to work for. I saw plenty of both remote and in-person.

The only challenge was finding an increase in pay. I have 10+ years have experience, so many mid-range individual contributor positions were capped too low.

tru3_power 4 years ago |

Still very hot. What makes you feel things are “tightening” up?

version_five 4 years ago | |

There is more of this kind of thing around recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31292298

Meta may be isolated but it's big enough to make the market feel a bit shakier.

shitlord 4 years ago | |

Rumors of hiring freezes and reneged offers on Blind

empressplay 4 years ago |

There may be less money for new companies but 'established' startups still seem to be getting lots of that sweet, sweet VC cash. In for a penny, I guess

samstave 4 years ago |

NetSec, CISSPs, OpSec, basically anything security.

kgc 4 years ago |

Zoom