"Next steps" with startup after completing all interview rounds.
Hey All,
I have just completed interviewing at a seed-stage startup that is creating some stuff that I can really resonate with. The company is profitable, has huge growth metrics in the past 18 months, and tons of room to grow. I do have experience building the type of developer platform they are trying to build which is sort of specialized and I think the interviews went really well and according to the JD, after the onsite interviews the next step is an offer.
I received an email the next day asking me to schedule 15 minutes with the CEO and the Lead Engineer to discuss "next steps". I'm used to working at larger enterprises and tech companies, where I deal with recruiters and the interview processes are pretty straight forward and don't diverge much. I am hoping these next steps are to discuss a potential offer and to make sure I'm good to go with moving from a larger company to smaller company. I do have a few questions for the community though.
Assuming they discuss extending an offer:
- Should I prepare to discuss comp? If so, is it unrealistic to expect a similar base comp to what I have now (~190k)? Basically all the senior engineers come from FAANG or mid-sized tech companies like me.
- I'm not actively looking and am comfortable where I am at currently, albeit I am totally uninterested in my work and dread going in everyday, and really like what this company is building. Is there room to negotiate especially with no offers?
- What are some good resources to gauge what sort of equity I should be looking for? I would be one of the first 7 FTE SWEs and a more senior one.
Also, are there any red-flags I should look out here?
![Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Famazon_logo.jpg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Dff5f2302-08be-43bc-b7b1-d381ba508d99&w=48&q=75){kind=logo}
Discussion
(3 comments)- 1
4 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroFor the red flags aspect, I recommend this: "How possible is it to spot red flags about toxic culture during the interview?"
Here's a great thread about startups in particular: "How to evaluate a startup?"
To go deeper, I recommend going through the reverse interview portion of my behavioral interview course starting with this lesson: https://www.jointaro.com/course/master-the-behavioral-interview-as-a-software-engineer/interviews-are-a-2-way-street/
What are some good resources to gauge what sort of equity I should be looking for?
There isn't a great resource for this off the top of my head, but the general advice from YC is 10% for the first 10 full-time employees with it being heavily weighed towards the initial ones. Engineer 7 is early but fairly late on that 10 number, so I wouldn't expect a huge amount. I think 0.25% to 0.5% would be good with >1% being very good.
- 04 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I would not discuss comp on the first call when you receive an offer. Instead, view that as an info-gathering call for you to then figure out next steps:
- Talk about what success would look like in the role (esp if it can be translated into metrics)
- Ask questions about the company's revenue and margins. Do they have PMF? The Really Important Job Interview Questions Engineers Should Ask (But Don't)
- Ask about their general compensation philosophy
BTW, if you need a stall tactic, one thing you can do is ask to talk to a Senior IC engineer on the team. They will still be biased to selling you on the company, but less biased than the founder. And the day or 2 it takes to setup the call gives you more time to respond to numbers or other type of negotiation.
I go a lot deeper into negotiation in the course: https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-insiders-guide-to-negotiating-your-tech-salary-and-compensation/
- 04 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
On the topic of how much equity to expect, in a vacuum, I'd say .1%-1% is reasonable for employee number ~10. The answer depends on:
- Does the startup have product-market fit?
- How much money have their raised?
- How senior/experienced are the founders, especially in relation to you?
- How hard is it for them to find qualified engineers? (like you)
It's definitely possible that the salary comes close to your current comp ($190K), but this depends a lot on how much money they have in the bank and how much they've raised.
