Credits to my friend Darren for the title of this post
Today, I rejected a substantial offer to join a large tech company as a mid-level SWE. The overall situation was stressful, but the outcome was generally good. I’m staying at my current company with a bumped up total comp. Let me explain the situation and how I got here.
Earlier this year in March, I was unsure of where I’d need to move to. My girlfriend was going through her residency matching process, and while we knew we were going to stay in California (she only applied to in-state programs), we didn’t know exactly where. Could have been anywhere in the state, but generally speaking, we knew it would be either near/in LA or near/in SF.
I didn’t really know what this meant job-wise. If I moved, would I need to find a new job? Would it still be okay to be remote? I had a bunch of questions and didn’t really have good answers. Aside from just this, I had also expressed my interest in progressing both in career and salary the year prior. Not much was done about it then. I figured that if I wanted to bring this conversation up again, I’d need to have something more tangible to bring to the table.
At this point, I did a bit of logical thinking. I generally like algorithmic problems (there are some nods to this in coding), but I don’t really like interviewing. In the case I needed to interview, I better have had some preparation. There were two outcomes: my girlfriend matches in SoCal or she matches in NorCal. I decided to just take as many interviews as I could for interesting in-person opportunities in NorCal. Why? Well,
- If she matched in NorCal, then these would be actual opportunities I could bring to my current employer.
- If she matched in SoCal, then these would be amazing practice opportunities before I got to a location with significantly fewer opportunities.
After a nail-biting couple of weeks, we found out she matched in SF! I’d be staying near home and close to all my friends which was the bright side. However, my girlfriend’s family was far away, and my sister was going to be moving to Irvine in the summer. My sister moving didn’t really bum me out too much, the real issue was that she was taking my niece with her 😢😢😢.
In any case, I started to take a couple of interviews around this April time, as that was the last month I had to get the ball rolling. May would be tough, since I was moving out of Pac Heights and headed out to NY to attend Recurse Center. I didn’t feel stressed this time around. The interviews went generally well. Keeping up with the leetcode daily was such a great way to stay prepped, but also to keep my mind sharp.
By May, I had wrapped up 2 onsites for companies that seemed interesting. They were both large tech companies based in the Bay Area. Without saying the exact companies, I’ll classify them as follows:
- Company 1: Known to pay less, but has better work-life balance, and is in SF.
- Company 2: Known to pay more, but has worse work-life balance, and is ~30 miles south of SF.
Company 1 was the ideal scenario, but unfortunately I didn’t clear the onsite for them. The recruiters also didn’t have much advice or many comments to share with me. They thought that I should have passed, but it seemed like the hiring committee decided to go with another candidate. No worries.
Company 2’s interviews went smoother overall. I cleared the onsite and was moved into a team matching period.
This is where my expectation deviated from reality. I had a 6-week sabbatical coming up to attend Recurse. I thought that there would be no way that a company would wait that long to get a response from me. In a way, I was right. However, this is more or less how it unfolded because Company 2 took that long to team match me. Maybe I don’t have enough experience in the SWE interviewing landscape, but this was a total shock.
I got back from Recurse right at the start of July. Things picked up with Company 2. I had conversations with recruiters, hiring manager, and director of the org I was going to be in. The work sounded interesting, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the WLB I’d be giving up. I started my career at AWS, and that was an absolute drag — a lowlight of my life so far. This company, in my mind, wasn’t too far from that experience.
I was struggling on what course of action to take. I thought hard about why I wanted to leave my current company, and the only real reason I had was because I felt like my output wasn’t matched by my compensation. I wanted more pay and opportunities to grow career-wise; that had been the case since last year. Aside from that, I enjoyed my work. I like the people I work with, and I’m able to really focus on my life while I work here. I also enjoy the benefits of being fully remote, which, with a partner in residency, is a real blessing. I have the flexibility to go to SoCal with her during her vacations to visit family, I’m able to take care of the house when I need to, and I’m able to save so much time in my life by not having to commute a whole bunch.
I talked to a couple of people about what I should do and the general advice was mixed between the two options:
- Take the offer to my current employer
- Don’t say anything, since I want to stay
I was very nervous about option #1 because I didn’t know how the company would react. What if they fired me? What if they just let me walk to Company 2? I didn’t want to end up at Company 2. Looking back, this was a case of imposter syndrome. I always thought I was generally good about it, but it really does find ways to creep into your life as a SWE. I thought that my value to my current company was so low that they’d let me go. This was not the case.
After a lot of discussion and thinking, I brought up the offer to my manager on a Monday. We had a healthy conversation about it, he was empathetic (which I appreciated a lot), and he said he’d see what he could do. My deadline for Company 2’s offer was that same Friday, although I’m sure I could have gotten it pushed back.
Throughout the week I had conversations with various higher ups within my current company. Not a single one “down-talked” my opportunity. Everyone respected me and the offer I brought to the table. In return, I tried to make it very clear that I wanted to stay — this was not a threat to leave, this was a request to be valued higher.
So what’s the end to this story? I’m sticking with my current company. My total comp at Company 2 would have been 1.7 times more than my current compensation. But in return, I’d be back to being a cog in the wheel, working with other cogs, following orders from someone so high up that I’d never meet them. I know these things are team dependent, but I’m not willing to take the risk, especially after my first job experience. Instead, my current company came up to a reasonable spot, from my perspective, and I was extremely happy to stick around.
I’m glad to be at a spot where I can focus on my work again. I’m continuing work on job schedulers and the company’s interested in AI applications. I’ve been asked to take part on some of those new ventures, and I’m really excited to be in consideration. At the end of the day, it’s not really about the money. It’s more-so about your happiness.