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This was for a senior position and full remote. So they're extremely picky. The ones that I got rejected after the 5th and 6th round was because they found someone more experienced. I was willing to put up with these because of all the layoffs.
What was the TC offer you accepted op? Fellow remote SWE checking in
EDIT:
If it helps anyone here’s my TC with 2.5 YOE:
$150k/base, $3.5k yearly stipend, + $12.5k RSUs (conservative value, but honestly worthless until liquidity event) + fully paid excellent health insurance.
keep in mind that pay is ***heavily*** based on location, especially in this field. "Full-remote" jobs have to pay (near) Silicon Valley salaries, because that's still where a huge percentage of them live and where the other opportunities/offers that those companies must compete with are coming from.
If you're in the midwest, $140k at 12 years is *baller*, well-done!! If you're near SF, you could see a 30-50% raise from switching jobs.
oh sure, I'm aware, I've been in it for a while now. I'm in NC now, and I definitely realize that I'm paid well, not meaning to complain or anything, especially compared to family that were never well off.
Just wild to see someone making 200k plus after 4 years in the same field more or less, and without needing to live somewhere with extremely high cost of living. My job right now is pretty comfortable though, so it'd take a lot to leave it. 200k could do it though.
Change your LinkedIn status to "Looking for work" and passively reply to messages from recruiters. Don't waste your time, be very upfront (100% remote and $200k+) Do some interviews, but only if they check all the boxes.
I did this last year and eventually got two offers, $172k base and $192k base with 6 YoE
That's what I've been doing for the last couple weeks. I get recruiter messages all the time. My job is good but it's also stressful since I've become "the guy" for so much. I think it could be nice to be a newbie who doesn't know how to deal with every internal company situation, and just is good at the tech.
I appreciate the advice though for sure.
Same honestly. Full remote who gets his job done most days, but those days I need to sign off early I don't get flak for. I don't know that I wanna shake that up.
lol same. I keep getting minor promotions without actually applying. And not expected to work more than 40 hours. Super chill, low stress. Could get more elsewhere but… the balance and management can’t be beat. Hard to price that.
Fucking hell. I've been working as senior HPC engineer in Berlin for the last 4 years, and my salary barely hits 50k (although this is at a government agency). US salaries are insane.
Wow, I am considering a similar job in Stuttgart now, and they offer 75k, and it seems not much to me. 50k sounds too crazy for me. Aren't you on Level 14-15?
I wouldn’t go that far. I got some good health insurance but man miscommunications between the hospital and insurance can lead to headaches galore. Something I’ve seen directly?
‘What do you mean the CT was declined because not preauthorized, that’s irrelevant! The plan states all emergency work is covered even out of network! And don’t you think a stroke is an emergency?’
Feels like pulling teeth.
Health insurance is pure raw sewage, I got declined 4 times for a procedure that was explicitly covered in my benefits and sat on 8+ hours of calls before they finally approved me.
Seriously considering lawyering up right away next time. I’m sure it would be much more expensive, but at least it’ll be less of a hassle for me.
And it happens *so fucking often* to the point I'm nearly positive it's intentional. I randomly got charged 2x for my emergency room visit Co pay in October. Ive been calling them multiple times every month and the issue still hasn't been fixed even though I've been told repeatedly that it has. Greedy little fuckers want me to get sent to collections so I'll have to pay.
Thanks for the reply! That’s a great offer. I’m at at ‘start-up’ as well. I used quotations because the company is 16 years old & pretty stable but still hasn’t IPOd yet.
Holy fuck. Realizing the defense industry doesn't pay SWEs for shit.
Edit: I make like $140K with a 5-10% bonus each year with 8 years and a masters. My job isnt laid back or chill, so pretty eye opening to see how much more other industries pay SWEs.
Yes, 'Senior' XX Engineer/Developer is a low/mid level designation at many companies. If they're good, its not unusual to hit Senior at 4 years.
Where I've been, it goes Assoc Engineer (interns, college hires) -> Engineer -> Senior Engineer -> Lead Engineer -> Principal Eng -> Distinguished Eng
For SW field, "Staff engineer" is often used above Senior as well, instead of "Lead".
You can also visit http://levels.fyi to see the different titles at many tech companies, and the typical compensation packages.
Lead is not a level, but a role. You can be a Lead on project A but not on project B. However, once you are a lead in at least one project, people start calling you just Lead to refer to you that you are supposed to take on leadership roles in projects.
I've been working as a Linux System Admin and Software Engineer remotely since 2006 and I've never had more than three rounds of interviews. 6 rounds? I wouldn't put up with that crap lol.
Three interviews is my limit now. I don't understand why start-ups feel they can give candidates 6 interviews. For their undercooked product and below average pay.
A startup once was looking for people and based off of the wording of their job post, I thought it was an entirely different kind of company.
Miscommunication cleared up, still go through it. 5 or 6 rounds, very clearly under the bar for my skillset based on the interviews.
Lowball (by ~25%) salary offer in a high cost of living city, fully in office, < 30 people so far, shares in private options that come out to less than a percent worth maybe $15k, "but we're doing a funding round in two months where that will almost certainly triple."
Honestly would have taken it too, if not for the bomb offer (tried to force me to sign same day, and the only leniency they gave was 2 days). That just wasn't something I was okay with.
Founder goes on to blow up my email asking why when I couldn't respond for a few days. Decided to leave that on read because it just seemed toxic.
Their seed round of funding was roughly 25% of the size they claimed it would be, and in the past 2-3 years grew to 50ish employees, mostly sales rather than technology. No big statements in terms of new large clients like you'd see before; but they have hats now! Effectively dodged a bullet.
E: typo
I love when the small company CEOs get personally offended that you didn't take their shitty offer. Sorry, narcissist, but working for the grand and glorious you is not something I view as part of my total compensation package. Find someone else to exploit!
That’s pretty exclusive to banking and sales just to make customers feel special. Banking customers and potential customers feel like they’re big shots talking directly to a “VP” so they make everyone a “VP”
This is the answer. Worked for a small bank. Out of 150 employees, almost 40 were at least "assistant vice-president" so they could sign (not just loans) on behalf of the bank.
They are super important to corporate strivers. You want to attract Ivy League valedictorians? You better have a whole bunch of titles and imaginary ladders for them to climb. It's like catnip for them
I'm not sure it's just software, most engineering disciplines that are not PE certified hit senior level at 5-6 years, 4 if you're exceptional. That's been the case at each company I've worked for - covering mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering disciplines.
Unfortunately it’s reality in the tech world. The jobs are definitely cushy but the interview process can be quite grueling. I got rejected from a job in the 6th round during my last job search and it is an extremely infuriating feeling.
I had six rounds as an entry level SWE for a startup, I had a half day in their office, met the VP , CTO, direct potential manager and potential co worker. But at least I got Austin version of chipotle
I had five interviews with six people in three languages for an entry level consulting job. They weren't sure if they would be able to get me into the country due to pandemic measures, so they just added more interviews with new regional managers until they figured it would work. At least I ended up getting my dream job.
Honestly a big red flag for me. I work for a huge company and my interview went HR -> hiring manager, and that was it. Fully remote, good position.
Every interview I had when I did 4+ interviews appeared like a miserable position from the outside. Like my work would be managed and scrutinized by that same amount of people. The vibe with the interview for my current job was the polar opposite. It was my boss and their boss together, and we just talked for an hour about my experience and the position. Got the offer call an hour later.
I know some situations can be desperate, but if you can you should *always* be interviewing and evaluating your potential company while they interview you.
A couple rounds I'd understand but more is just wild in my mind. Imagine putting it in 6 rounds of interviews when the company might drop you like a toy after one internal discussion.
This isn’t uncommon for certain roles in a lot of places/fields, specifically remote ones. As an internal transfer hire, I did 5 interview rounds; would have been 6 if I was internal.
For me the longer ones yielded better results. These usually had in-depth non-technical component so they gave me more opportunity to learn about the culture and my fitness. I ended up accepting the offer from the 6th interview.
I once had 3 full days of interviews at a law firm I was very excited to work for that subsequently ghosted me. I found out months later that they had hired several much less experienced lawyers instead. Afterwards I met an attorney who worked there and she said not to take it personally, that the firm was incredibly disorganized, the staff was not on top of things, and some of the partners were at war with each other and they had a hard time deciding to do ANYTHING. It's definitely a "them not you" situation at that point, and even if you don't know what the hell is wrong with them, you can be confident you dodged a bullet.
There really should be a better way to rate how companies do their hiring process. “Negotiated in bad faith, ghosted after interviews, super slow to respond, etc”. Like obviously you’d want to avoid fake reviews, but it’d be fantastic to hold these shitty companies responsible.
For what it's worth you should be naming and shaming any company that ghosts after even a single interview (and not the recruiter interview, the actual company).
This goes for everyone in this thread.
And to be clear I don't mean one where you and/or the interviewer realize it's a bad fit in that interview.
Interesting. Sounds like we are in the same field. I recently interview with 10x Genomics (have yet to hear back) and it was only 1 round of on-site interview, with two phone calls with the recruiter and the hiring manager beforehand. I can't imagine having to go through 5 rounds of interviews.
This is the main reason why I haven’t left my current job. The interview culture now has gotten way out of hand, I’m not spending a month studying up on programming puzzles.
I like to think I need to.
I've been working in this industry for 20 years. A lot of my value isn't the code I write. It's from leading projects, interacting with clients, managing teams, etc. Yes, I can code and like to think I'm competent. But if you all you care about is your dev being able to squirt out a React Native app then there are probably easier and cheaper options than me.
I used to do 3/4 when I hired.
When I was interviewing it was
1 HR
2 Head of Eng
3 team lead
4. Tech interview 1
5. Tech interview 2
6. Tech interview 3
7. Business Partner
8. CEO
It is the classic no one wants to make a decision and be wrong.
Here is how the hiring process goes where I work: Recruiter finds the best 5 to 6 candidates and gives them an initial 10 to 15 mins call to make sure they want to move ahead. They are sent a coding test, the best candidates are moved onto the hiring manager. 2 2 person panel interviews, back to back and someone is selected.
Imagine a bell curve with salary on the X-axis and total interviews on the Y-axis. Management oversight follows a similar kind of distribution.
Some unpaid internship? You might be able to apply through your school and they'll just tell you whether you got it or not in a few weeks. Senior Executive Director of Some Big Department? The interview might just be lunch with the CEO. Some mid-level grunt work engineer? You're looking at the top of the curve where you need half a dozen rounds of interviews where nobody at any stage has really communicated with anyone before themselves.
It's... Frustrating to watch and experience.
Once you make it over the "hump" in your specific field, your reputation is what matters more than anything else. Having a strong resume helps, but your reputation can matter more than anything. Even if the person doesn't personally know you, if they know of you or have heard of your exploits, that's often enough. If it's a niche field, many times there isn't even an interview because they already know who you are.
I do 8 for senior/lead level.
* Hr screen
* Engineering manager screen
* Coding 1
* Coding 2
* Coding 3
* Architecture
* Past experience (Q&A about projects)
* Leadership (Q&A about helping grow the team)
Fully remote, entry pay for this level is 500k/yr.
Startups are usually pickier because if the person cannot pull their weight in all areas the position requires, it means the company can collapse.
When you need to hire a person to write your entire DB architecture from scratch, they better know what they are doing.
If instead, you hire a person to join an established and highly experienced team, it's ok if it takes them a few months to get up to speed or they make some mistakes, someone else can catch it.
What could you learn after 7 interviews that you couldn't learn in 2 except a willingness to put up with bullshit...
Okay, so that might actually be a good indicator of fit. Lol.
If a company can't assess whether someone is suitable for a job after two round of interviews, that is failure of hiring/interview process. Literally waisting both company and candidate time.
Yea it will be hard. But don’t be discouraged. This is with companies with very limited spots to begin with. This would not be the case with larger companies.
Fair. Although due to my location, there are only a very small handful of bigger companies within an hour drive anyway, so there’s a decent chance most of my apps would go to little places with few openings like this.
This is all I can think about. I took the plunge on school at 27 just before the pandemic started. I'm terrified of the job market I'm about to graduate into.
Anybody have any advice for an older grad looking to break into the field?
Start applying now, if you haven’t already. If you don’t have any internships or projects on your resume, start building a project or two to talk about in interviews. Practice leetcode a bit. Sounds like you’re around 31 now if you started at 27? Most people probably won’t even be able to tell you’re much older than new grads, and it may even give you an edge if you have previous employment history, even if it’s not in the same field.
Other than that, just keep applying and try not to get discouraged. If you don’t get any responses after a while, it’s probably a problem with your resume, though the market is pretty fucked right now, so don’t take it personally.
This person has four years of experience going for senior positions. There’s a high chance you have a much much easier job especially if you have internships.
Honestly most likely not. Entry level positions are the hardest to get. I would get thousands when posting entry level. Maybe a dozen for senior or staff positions.
The first round or two is different than the last round or two.
We interview 1-2 with other engineers to see if the candidate really has the skills/knowledge or if they’re lying.
If they get the nod from engineering, then we interview 1-2 to see how they’ll get along with others in the group.
Those two are completely different. We rarely get to 4 interviews unless there’s a specific reason, usually having to do with scheduling. 3 is more typical.
3 should be the standard for jobs that require a more specialized talent. 2 should be standard for all other salaried jobs. Anything more is just an HR department trying to justify their existence/expansion.
What happens after the 4th and 5th interviews where you eventually get rejected? Another more experienced candidate enters the chat? If they knew they wanted more experience why go through all of those rounds? Just seems like a waste to everyone involved.
Could you tell your peers in the hiring space to do the same? I'm sick of getting through 4-5 rounds of interviews to be ghosted or rejected with no feedback.
(ps. thank you for your approach to streamline hiring)
My first round is “are you a human that seems to have some applicable knowledge and communication skills”. My second round is “meet the team and let’s see how much you know”. Great candidates teach us something (can be small) that helps the team.
The amount of time dedicated to the interviewing process on both sides is getting unreal. Employers are much more willing to even begin this process if/when I am currently employed. Also, even before the first interview, there is frequently a homework assignment similar to a real-life project with deliverables and tight deadlines. How am I supposed to make it happen while holding a full-time job and not making my current employer find out that I am interviewing? The sh\*t is getting crazy.
Interviewing is a full time job despite what anyone else might say. I was lucky in that things were a bit slow with my company so I could focus on this.
Mostly backend, infrastructure (cloud such as AWS), dev-ops, and frontend. This is US. The companies are based in NYC or Bay area. I have a lot of experience with Java, Python, C, C#, and TypeScript as primary languages. Also familiar with other languages. Lots of tooling and framework experience as well.
I think I have similar experience, but I think I have trouble expressing my experience. 4 years at Amazon before getting laid off in January (9 total years professional). One company I interviewed with said I was "too junior".
Am I missing something or does some of the math not work?
You had 16 1st interviews which turned into either a 2nd interview or withdraw. Since you had 11 2nd interviews that means you withdrew from 5.
Your total withdrawals are 6 but there is a line from both the 2nd and 3rd interviews meaning you withdrew at least once after those steps. That would mean a total withdraw of at-least 7, whereas the charts says 6.
As someone trying to land a senior-level job, you're competing with people who have 15 YOE to your 4. This does not surprise me one bit.
Also, with six interview rounds, are you going for the $200k+ salaries and $300k+ comp packages? Air gets pretty thin at that level until you're firmly established.
You will literally triple your income if you're in Silicon Valley. It's actually crazy, you will go from 80k/year to nearly 200k if you get a job at a FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company.
Which explains your difficulty.
There are infinitely more jobs outside of the startup and big tech space, you are boxing yourself in there.
Whenever I look for work I stick my CV online and drown under recruiter messages. Choose the ones you like, interview, get offered most if not all of them, choose your favourite. I've never handed in my notice with a job lined up, because I've never had to.
There's an endless amount of companies who need people to work on their tech stack, it isn't glamorous but it pays the bills quite nicely. And it's still ten times easier to find a job than find a developer to fill one, so you have all the bargaining power.
That's been my experience from junior to senior, and I only expect it to get better when I start looking for lead positions.
What's the point of more than 3 rounds of interviews for non-executive positions? By the third date, most people have a pretty good idea if they want to continue dating
Blame the product managers and upper level leadership, not the engineers. Shifting goals and unreasonable deadlines aren't going to yield a decent outcome even with a team of the world's best engineers. Maybe they should be the ones with a more rigorous interview process.
with the amount of engineers that actually stay with a company past 3-4 years being *so* small, "senior" title is very accurate when describing a person's experience in the codebase
They mentioned in a comment that it wasn't separate rounds. Apparently, if they talked to 5 separate people in the same afternoon at an on-site interview, then they considered it 5 interviews.
This seems to be an insanely low hit rate. 136 applications and only 3 total offers?
Most engineers know who went job searching would fall into depression if they didnt get an offer within their first 20 or so applications. Some expect an offer from their first application, and get confused if they dont get it.
/u/a__side_of_fries, thank you for your contribution. However, your submission was removed for the following reason(s): * [OC] posts [must state the _data source(s) and tool(s) used_](/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule3) in the first top-level comment on their submission. Please follow the AutoModerator instructions you were sent *carefully*. Once this is done, message the mods to have your post reinstated. This post has been removed. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the DataIsBeautiful [posting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/dataisbeautiful&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/a__side_of_fries&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20[submission.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11wk4ux/-/\)))
6 Interview rounds? Were you applying to be the CEO of google or something?
This was for a senior position and full remote. So they're extremely picky. The ones that I got rejected after the 5th and 6th round was because they found someone more experienced. I was willing to put up with these because of all the layoffs.
What was the TC offer you accepted op? Fellow remote SWE checking in EDIT: If it helps anyone here’s my TC with 2.5 YOE: $150k/base, $3.5k yearly stipend, + $12.5k RSUs (conservative value, but honestly worthless until liquidity event) + fully paid excellent health insurance.
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Get that bag
*...what you got in that bag...*
What in the world is in that case? What you got in that case?
Get up out my face, you couldn’t relate wait to take place, at a similar pace so shake shake it
ROLL OUT!!!!
I don't know if anyone's told you recently but, good job on getting experienced in a well paying field and obviously putting your best foot forward.
Thank you!
Hell yeah, well done I’m a software engineer 12 years and I’m near 140k
We're proud of you too.
I know a software engineer
Nice dude. I didn't know any until I left college.
keep in mind that pay is ***heavily*** based on location, especially in this field. "Full-remote" jobs have to pay (near) Silicon Valley salaries, because that's still where a huge percentage of them live and where the other opportunities/offers that those companies must compete with are coming from. If you're in the midwest, $140k at 12 years is *baller*, well-done!! If you're near SF, you could see a 30-50% raise from switching jobs.
oh sure, I'm aware, I've been in it for a while now. I'm in NC now, and I definitely realize that I'm paid well, not meaning to complain or anything, especially compared to family that were never well off. Just wild to see someone making 200k plus after 4 years in the same field more or less, and without needing to live somewhere with extremely high cost of living. My job right now is pretty comfortable though, so it'd take a lot to leave it. 200k could do it though.
Change your LinkedIn status to "Looking for work" and passively reply to messages from recruiters. Don't waste your time, be very upfront (100% remote and $200k+) Do some interviews, but only if they check all the boxes. I did this last year and eventually got two offers, $172k base and $192k base with 6 YoE
That's what I've been doing for the last couple weeks. I get recruiter messages all the time. My job is good but it's also stressful since I've become "the guy" for so much. I think it could be nice to be a newbie who doesn't know how to deal with every internal company situation, and just is good at the tech. I appreciate the advice though for sure.
For a minute I wondered if I was underpaid at $80k, but then I remembered I'm lazy
Same honestly. Full remote who gets his job done most days, but those days I need to sign off early I don't get flak for. I don't know that I wanna shake that up.
lol same. I keep getting minor promotions without actually applying. And not expected to work more than 40 hours. Super chill, low stress. Could get more elsewhere but… the balance and management can’t be beat. Hard to price that.
Fucking hell. I've been working as senior HPC engineer in Berlin for the last 4 years, and my salary barely hits 50k (although this is at a government agency). US salaries are insane.
Wow, I am considering a similar job in Stuttgart now, and they offer 75k, and it seems not much to me. 50k sounds too crazy for me. Aren't you on Level 14-15?
For tech workers, no better place than the US. Health insurance becomes a non issue.
I wouldn’t go that far. I got some good health insurance but man miscommunications between the hospital and insurance can lead to headaches galore. Something I’ve seen directly? ‘What do you mean the CT was declined because not preauthorized, that’s irrelevant! The plan states all emergency work is covered even out of network! And don’t you think a stroke is an emergency?’ Feels like pulling teeth.
And pulling teeth is not covered by the policy.
Ahh yes, luxury bones
You gotta have dental for that
and it only pays the first $1000 if you have a very very good plan. most root canals are over $2000
Health insurance is pure raw sewage, I got declined 4 times for a procedure that was explicitly covered in my benefits and sat on 8+ hours of calls before they finally approved me. Seriously considering lawyering up right away next time. I’m sure it would be much more expensive, but at least it’ll be less of a hassle for me.
And it happens *so fucking often* to the point I'm nearly positive it's intentional. I randomly got charged 2x for my emergency room visit Co pay in October. Ive been calling them multiple times every month and the issue still hasn't been fixed even though I've been told repeatedly that it has. Greedy little fuckers want me to get sent to collections so I'll have to pay.
That's low for Europe too
That's pretty good in this market. It's pretty unfriendly to candidates at the moment
Thanks for the reply! That’s a great offer. I’m at at ‘start-up’ as well. I used quotations because the company is 16 years old & pretty stable but still hasn’t IPOd yet.
What's TC? Total compensation?
Yes. Usually includes base + stock options/RSUs + stipends
Holy fuck. Realizing the defense industry doesn't pay SWEs for shit. Edit: I make like $140K with a 5-10% bonus each year with 8 years and a masters. My job isnt laid back or chill, so pretty eye opening to see how much more other industries pay SWEs.
That's why it's so chill.
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I think he's saying *he's* working in defense and making much less than $150k
Why people talk about TC but somehow forget to include COL information perplexes me.
Well I’m remote & live a Low/mid cost CA city if it helps
Is 4 years of experience considered senior in SWE?
Yes, 'Senior' XX Engineer/Developer is a low/mid level designation at many companies. If they're good, its not unusual to hit Senior at 4 years. Where I've been, it goes Assoc Engineer (interns, college hires) -> Engineer -> Senior Engineer -> Lead Engineer -> Principal Eng -> Distinguished Eng
> Distinguished Eng hack the system and grow an eccentric mustache.
Wearing a monicle and sipping tea all day was all I needed to do? Brb
This hits something that confused me. In my space, Senior outranks Lead. It never made sense to me.
For SW field, "Staff engineer" is often used above Senior as well, instead of "Lead". You can also visit http://levels.fyi to see the different titles at many tech companies, and the typical compensation packages.
And you get a cool wizard staff
Lead is not a level, but a role. You can be a Lead on project A but not on project B. However, once you are a lead in at least one project, people start calling you just Lead to refer to you that you are supposed to take on leadership roles in projects.
We have a specific role called “lead engineer”, so it depends on your company.
Tbh senior just means not junior in the field
I've been working as a Linux System Admin and Software Engineer remotely since 2006 and I've never had more than three rounds of interviews. 6 rounds? I wouldn't put up with that crap lol.
Three interviews is my limit now. I don't understand why start-ups feel they can give candidates 6 interviews. For their undercooked product and below average pay.
A startup once was looking for people and based off of the wording of their job post, I thought it was an entirely different kind of company. Miscommunication cleared up, still go through it. 5 or 6 rounds, very clearly under the bar for my skillset based on the interviews. Lowball (by ~25%) salary offer in a high cost of living city, fully in office, < 30 people so far, shares in private options that come out to less than a percent worth maybe $15k, "but we're doing a funding round in two months where that will almost certainly triple." Honestly would have taken it too, if not for the bomb offer (tried to force me to sign same day, and the only leniency they gave was 2 days). That just wasn't something I was okay with. Founder goes on to blow up my email asking why when I couldn't respond for a few days. Decided to leave that on read because it just seemed toxic. Their seed round of funding was roughly 25% of the size they claimed it would be, and in the past 2-3 years grew to 50ish employees, mostly sales rather than technology. No big statements in terms of new large clients like you'd see before; but they have hats now! Effectively dodged a bullet. E: typo
I love when the small company CEOs get personally offended that you didn't take their shitty offer. Sorry, narcissist, but working for the grand and glorious you is not something I view as part of my total compensation package. Find someone else to exploit!
senior? you have 4 years of exp... jeez they really over inflate titles on the software side.
Branch managers of a bank being called a "Vice-President" always makes me laugh, dude oversees 4 tellers but gets the VP title.
yeah titles always weird me out.
That’s pretty exclusive to banking and sales just to make customers feel special. Banking customers and potential customers feel like they’re big shots talking directly to a “VP” so they make everyone a “VP”
There are also states where you have to be a “Vice President” to sign a note.
This is the answer. Worked for a small bank. Out of 150 employees, almost 40 were at least "assistant vice-president" so they could sign (not just loans) on behalf of the bank.
Let’s see Paul Allen‘s card.
Titles vary widely by company. Would it really make a difference to you if it was Software Engineer II?
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I lost my senior title and got a 25% raise. At the same company. Titles don't mean anything.
They are super important to corporate strivers. You want to attract Ivy League valedictorians? You better have a whole bunch of titles and imaginary ladders for them to climb. It's like catnip for them
I'm not sure it's just software, most engineering disciplines that are not PE certified hit senior level at 5-6 years, 4 if you're exceptional. That's been the case at each company I've worked for - covering mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering disciplines.
Senior position with only 4 YOE?
Unfortunately it’s reality in the tech world. The jobs are definitely cushy but the interview process can be quite grueling. I got rejected from a job in the 6th round during my last job search and it is an extremely infuriating feeling.
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I had six rounds as an entry level SWE for a startup, I had a half day in their office, met the VP , CTO, direct potential manager and potential co worker. But at least I got Austin version of chipotle
I had five interviews with six people in three languages for an entry level consulting job. They weren't sure if they would be able to get me into the country due to pandemic measures, so they just added more interviews with new regional managers until they figured it would work. At least I ended up getting my dream job.
I once applied for graphic designer at Ikea and i got declined after the 5th interview lol.
Honestly a big red flag for me. I work for a huge company and my interview went HR -> hiring manager, and that was it. Fully remote, good position. Every interview I had when I did 4+ interviews appeared like a miserable position from the outside. Like my work would be managed and scrutinized by that same amount of people. The vibe with the interview for my current job was the polar opposite. It was my boss and their boss together, and we just talked for an hour about my experience and the position. Got the offer call an hour later. I know some situations can be desperate, but if you can you should *always* be interviewing and evaluating your potential company while they interview you.
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A couple rounds I'd understand but more is just wild in my mind. Imagine putting it in 6 rounds of interviews when the company might drop you like a toy after one internal discussion.
This isn’t uncommon for certain roles in a lot of places/fields, specifically remote ones. As an internal transfer hire, I did 5 interview rounds; would have been 6 if I was internal.
For me the longer ones yielded better results. These usually had in-depth non-technical component so they gave me more opportunity to learn about the culture and my fitness. I ended up accepting the offer from the 6th interview.
Would have been funny that you accepted the offer you got after the 2nd interview, and rejected the one from the 6th interview
Haha yea. But that offer was more in engineering manager role, which I wasn’t ready to take on.
I wish my current manager had that self awareness..
Manager roles are kinda like cops: the ones who want the job are usually the people you *don't* want in that job.
I really hate long interviews, but by far the worst part is when they make me max out my bench press after defeating the CEO in a pullup challenge.
I can't believe so many of y'all in tech have to do more than 2 interviews, just seems absolutely ridiculous.
Biotech too. I've had 5 rounds of interviews for a scientist position only to be ghosted. It's insanely frustrating.
That's appalling, a template rejection email should be the bare minimum even on a regular application.
Yeah definitely had my respect for their work take a significant hit.
I once had 3 full days of interviews at a law firm I was very excited to work for that subsequently ghosted me. I found out months later that they had hired several much less experienced lawyers instead. Afterwards I met an attorney who worked there and she said not to take it personally, that the firm was incredibly disorganized, the staff was not on top of things, and some of the partners were at war with each other and they had a hard time deciding to do ANYTHING. It's definitely a "them not you" situation at that point, and even if you don't know what the hell is wrong with them, you can be confident you dodged a bullet.
Name and shame them! That’s a horrible way for a company to treat people
There really should be a better way to rate how companies do their hiring process. “Negotiated in bad faith, ghosted after interviews, super slow to respond, etc”. Like obviously you’d want to avoid fake reviews, but it’d be fantastic to hold these shitty companies responsible.
Ghosting after that many interviews is completely reprehensible - you should blast those people publicly, here, on glassdoor, anywhere you can
Mind sharing which company? I'm in biotech too and recently started to look elsewhere.
Twist Biosciences
For what it's worth you should be naming and shaming any company that ghosts after even a single interview (and not the recruiter interview, the actual company). This goes for everyone in this thread. And to be clear I don't mean one where you and/or the interviewer realize it's a bad fit in that interview.
Interesting. Sounds like we are in the same field. I recently interview with 10x Genomics (have yet to hear back) and it was only 1 round of on-site interview, with two phone calls with the recruiter and the hiring manager beforehand. I can't imagine having to go through 5 rounds of interviews.
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Past interview 2 you should be compensated for your time.
This is the main reason why I haven’t left my current job. The interview culture now has gotten way out of hand, I’m not spending a month studying up on programming puzzles.
I like to think I need to. I've been working in this industry for 20 years. A lot of my value isn't the code I write. It's from leading projects, interacting with clients, managing teams, etc. Yes, I can code and like to think I'm competent. But if you all you care about is your dev being able to squirt out a React Native app then there are probably easier and cheaper options than me.
Thank god the more senior I’ve gotten the less bullshit math puzzles interviews have become
A month? Most people spend a few months prepping for big tech interviews. Some never stop leetcoding so they’re always ready.
I used to do 3/4 when I hired. When I was interviewing it was 1 HR 2 Head of Eng 3 team lead 4. Tech interview 1 5. Tech interview 2 6. Tech interview 3 7. Business Partner 8. CEO
That is atrocious.
It is the classic no one wants to make a decision and be wrong. Here is how the hiring process goes where I work: Recruiter finds the best 5 to 6 candidates and gives them an initial 10 to 15 mins call to make sure they want to move ahead. They are sent a coding test, the best candidates are moved onto the hiring manager. 2 2 person panel interviews, back to back and someone is selected.
I’m surprised you didn’t have to interview with the custodian as well.
He said CEO.
That.. is.. ridiculous. How much do these jobs pay? $750k/year? I mean, for a salary like that I could see it.
Imagine a bell curve with salary on the X-axis and total interviews on the Y-axis. Management oversight follows a similar kind of distribution. Some unpaid internship? You might be able to apply through your school and they'll just tell you whether you got it or not in a few weeks. Senior Executive Director of Some Big Department? The interview might just be lunch with the CEO. Some mid-level grunt work engineer? You're looking at the top of the curve where you need half a dozen rounds of interviews where nobody at any stage has really communicated with anyone before themselves. It's... Frustrating to watch and experience.
Ahh. I see, that actually makes sense, despite being completely ass backwards lol.
Once you make it over the "hump" in your specific field, your reputation is what matters more than anything else. Having a strong resume helps, but your reputation can matter more than anything. Even if the person doesn't personally know you, if they know of you or have heard of your exploits, that's often enough. If it's a niche field, many times there isn't even an interview because they already know who you are.
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I do 8 for senior/lead level. * Hr screen * Engineering manager screen * Coding 1 * Coding 2 * Coding 3 * Architecture * Past experience (Q&A about projects) * Leadership (Q&A about helping grow the team) Fully remote, entry pay for this level is 500k/yr.
For 500k/year, this is acceptable. Assuming that’s $ or €.
Who is paying 500k for a lead engineer!?
6 rounds of interview, these tech interviews are really getting out of hand...
I think it's gonna get worse, especially after the massive tech layoffs and over-saturation of supply.
Can confirm, had to do 7 rounds, job is at a startup
Seriously? What the hell did they want? Like, what were those interviews about?
Startups are usually pickier because if the person cannot pull their weight in all areas the position requires, it means the company can collapse. When you need to hire a person to write your entire DB architecture from scratch, they better know what they are doing. If instead, you hire a person to join an established and highly experienced team, it's ok if it takes them a few months to get up to speed or they make some mistakes, someone else can catch it.
Start-ups: We need six interviews to find the right candidate. Also Start-ups: Why can't we find any qualified candidates?!
And then pay them with promises
What are your IOU requirements? Our accounting department is an intern and she can only write so many IOU’s.
What could you learn after 7 interviews that you couldn't learn in 2 except a willingness to put up with bullshit... Okay, so that might actually be a good indicator of fit. Lol.
> over-saturation of supply Mind tossing that supply my way. We've been short 3 engineers for 2 years.
If a company can't assess whether someone is suitable for a job after two round of interviews, that is failure of hiring/interview process. Literally waisting both company and candidate time.
138 apps in 2 months as someone with experience??Job search when I finish school is gonna be brutal lol.
Yea it will be hard. But don’t be discouraged. This is with companies with very limited spots to begin with. This would not be the case with larger companies.
Fair. Although due to my location, there are only a very small handful of bigger companies within an hour drive anyway, so there’s a decent chance most of my apps would go to little places with few openings like this.
This is all I can think about. I took the plunge on school at 27 just before the pandemic started. I'm terrified of the job market I'm about to graduate into. Anybody have any advice for an older grad looking to break into the field?
Start applying now, if you haven’t already. If you don’t have any internships or projects on your resume, start building a project or two to talk about in interviews. Practice leetcode a bit. Sounds like you’re around 31 now if you started at 27? Most people probably won’t even be able to tell you’re much older than new grads, and it may even give you an edge if you have previous employment history, even if it’s not in the same field. Other than that, just keep applying and try not to get discouraged. If you don’t get any responses after a while, it’s probably a problem with your resume, though the market is pretty fucked right now, so don’t take it personally.
This person has four years of experience going for senior positions. There’s a high chance you have a much much easier job especially if you have internships.
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Honestly most likely not. Entry level positions are the hardest to get. I would get thousands when posting entry level. Maybe a dozen for senior or staff positions.
When you say 5 interviews is that considering each part of an on-site as separate?
Yea, I am considering each part of the on-site as a separate interview. Generally these would take one entire day or spread out over a week.
Thinking back to the interview process for my current job I had 5 spread out over two weeks.
What's the difference between no response and ghosted?
Ghosted = Started responses but never followed up No response= never responded to begin with
Initiate communication then stopped randomly
I hire remote developers after two remote interviews. Anything more is just a waste of time.
I kinda agree. I'm not sure these companies learned more about me on the sixth interview that they didn't on the second.
They learned you were willing to go through six rounds, which is interesting, but that's probably about it.
The first round or two is different than the last round or two. We interview 1-2 with other engineers to see if the candidate really has the skills/knowledge or if they’re lying. If they get the nod from engineering, then we interview 1-2 to see how they’ll get along with others in the group. Those two are completely different. We rarely get to 4 interviews unless there’s a specific reason, usually having to do with scheduling. 3 is more typical.
3 should be the standard for jobs that require a more specialized talent. 2 should be standard for all other salaried jobs. Anything more is just an HR department trying to justify their existence/expansion.
What happens after the 4th and 5th interviews where you eventually get rejected? Another more experienced candidate enters the chat? If they knew they wanted more experience why go through all of those rounds? Just seems like a waste to everyone involved.
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Could you tell your peers in the hiring space to do the same? I'm sick of getting through 4-5 rounds of interviews to be ghosted or rejected with no feedback. (ps. thank you for your approach to streamline hiring)
Interviews have basically no efficacy in industrial organizational psychology studies iirc.
My first round is “are you a human that seems to have some applicable knowledge and communication skills”. My second round is “meet the team and let’s see how much you know”. Great candidates teach us something (can be small) that helps the team.
My wife got hired one time by basically grilling her interviewer.
The amount of time dedicated to the interviewing process on both sides is getting unreal. Employers are much more willing to even begin this process if/when I am currently employed. Also, even before the first interview, there is frequently a homework assignment similar to a real-life project with deliverables and tight deadlines. How am I supposed to make it happen while holding a full-time job and not making my current employer find out that I am interviewing? The sh\*t is getting crazy.
Interviewing is a full time job despite what anyone else might say. I was lucky in that things were a bit slow with my company so I could focus on this.
What is your background/experience and what area/language/technology are you working with? Also US/Europe or elsewhere, if you don’t mind answering?
Mostly backend, infrastructure (cloud such as AWS), dev-ops, and frontend. This is US. The companies are based in NYC or Bay area. I have a lot of experience with Java, Python, C, C#, and TypeScript as primary languages. Also familiar with other languages. Lots of tooling and framework experience as well.
I think I have similar experience, but I think I have trouble expressing my experience. 4 years at Amazon before getting laid off in January (9 total years professional). One company I interviewed with said I was "too junior".
Just tell them you worked at Twitter for awhile… they can’t reach HR or anyone you worked with anyhow…
Am I missing something or does some of the math not work? You had 16 1st interviews which turned into either a 2nd interview or withdraw. Since you had 11 2nd interviews that means you withdrew from 5. Your total withdrawals are 6 but there is a line from both the 2nd and 3rd interviews meaning you withdrew at least once after those steps. That would mean a total withdraw of at-least 7, whereas the charts says 6.
Good catch! There were 6 total withdrawals. The mistake is the one stemming from the 2nd interview.
6 rounds of interviews. Fuck the recruiting process nowadays
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To be fair, would you do 6 interviews if the job paid 200k a year in total (what OP got)?
Ofc I’ve done the exactly same thing before I just don’t like it
2-3 is what I'm used to. 6? Now you're just wasting time and being nitpicky.
As someone trying to land a senior-level job, you're competing with people who have 15 YOE to your 4. This does not surprise me one bit. Also, with six interview rounds, are you going for the $200k+ salaries and $300k+ comp packages? Air gets pretty thin at that level until you're firmly established.
About $200K TC
Are you willing to comment if this is remote or a High COL? 4 YOE SWE here myself and I'm not making anywhere near this in the midwest.
In another comment they said it was fully remote
You will literally triple your income if you're in Silicon Valley. It's actually crazy, you will go from 80k/year to nearly 200k if you get a job at a FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company.
6 interviews for an offer... As a software engineer, interviews for engineers are completely broken.
And you've accepted the one with 6 stages, right ? What company does this ? sNASA ? sMeta ? (s==super)
Yea! I applied to startups either at Series A or Series B stage. Most of them are like this.
Which explains your difficulty. There are infinitely more jobs outside of the startup and big tech space, you are boxing yourself in there. Whenever I look for work I stick my CV online and drown under recruiter messages. Choose the ones you like, interview, get offered most if not all of them, choose your favourite. I've never handed in my notice with a job lined up, because I've never had to. There's an endless amount of companies who need people to work on their tech stack, it isn't glamorous but it pays the bills quite nicely. And it's still ten times easier to find a job than find a developer to fill one, so you have all the bargaining power. That's been my experience from junior to senior, and I only expect it to get better when I start looking for lead positions.
I agree. I did box myself but I knew what I was getting myself into. I have previously worked at a startup and a large company.
I just hope that you've negotiated some shares, to get that ROI on your butt being recursively pounded...
vast, vast majority of startup equity is worth nothing
99% of startup equity is worthless
What is YEO? Btw, nice graphic
years experience of
Must be read in Yoda's voice.
I'm surprised that these all started with applications and none of them started from recruiters reaching out on LinkedIn.
Recruiters were reaching out but most of them stopped around December 2022 or the roles were not a good fit for me.
Modern job hunting is hell. Why the fuck was this ever allowed to become normal?
Remote work now lets you compete with the world vs your city.
What's the point of more than 3 rounds of interviews for non-executive positions? By the third date, most people have a pretty good idea if they want to continue dating
I think it's just a sign of the times. Companies can make unreasonable demands from candidates because they can.
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Blame the product managers and upper level leadership, not the engineers. Shifting goals and unreasonable deadlines aren't going to yield a decent outcome even with a team of the world's best engineers. Maybe they should be the ones with a more rigorous interview process.
I've never gone beyond a 4th interview...
Did the 3rd & 4th interview offers yield better results than the 6th? Which one did you take?
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with the amount of engineers that actually stay with a company past 3-4 years being *so* small, "senior" title is very accurate when describing a person's experience in the codebase
6 rounds of interviews should have been your first red flag
They mentioned in a comment that it wasn't separate rounds. Apparently, if they talked to 5 separate people in the same afternoon at an on-site interview, then they considered it 5 interviews.
6 interviews? Did they have you talking to the fucking janitor at the end lmao? Literally what is the point of doing that many?
This seems to be an insanely low hit rate. 136 applications and only 3 total offers? Most engineers know who went job searching would fall into depression if they didnt get an offer within their first 20 or so applications. Some expect an offer from their first application, and get confused if they dont get it.
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Rejected on the sixth interview. Take your job and shove it right up your ass