Is Brex a good company to join?
I found out I’m getting an offer for a Senior Software Engineer role, but the recruiter gave me a range to ask for instead of giving me a number. Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on Brex. I currently have a full time job as a Senior Software Engineer at a Fortune 500 company.
Discussion
(3 comments)- 0
2 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroYes!
Brex is easily one of the hottest unicorns, coming in at a $12.3 billion valuation. It's one of the breakout stars of YC and is often shared as a success story to emulate. Almost every recent YC company uses Brex for their banking, including us! It's an extremely good product, and I'm very confident they will go public within 5 years.
If the package on paper beats your current compensation by 50% or more, I think Brex would be a good option. There is risk in the equity, but as I mentioned before, it's smaller compared to most startups as Brex is pretty far along. Fintech is also an incredible place to be as it's very scalable, and you can't go wrong holding billions to trillions of dollars of other people's assets (I worked at Robinhood so I would know).
As usual, it looks like the recruiter is playing the negotiation game with you. If you remotely like your current job in any way, make sure to play it up. Make it seem like they need to pry you away from your current role, so they're pressured to give you a high number. Once you get that initial number, you can have more concrete negotiations and get more detailed feedback from the community. If you're more risk-averse, you can also let the recruiter know that you would prefer more cash instead of equity.
Check out the negotiation course if you haven't already: [Course] The Insider's Guide To Negotiating Your Tech Salary And Compensation
Congrats on the offer!
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2 months agoThoughtful TarodactylTaro CommunityDo you feel that this is true even after Brex's layoffs? After reading the news about the layoffs, slower growth rates, and higher expenditures, it made me take pause on the company's true value. How would you recommend thinking about layoffs and a bad year in the context of evaluating a late stage startup?
- 12 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
I don't think it's fair to use layoffs as a measuring stick - Virtually every company (including FAANG) had massive layoffs from late 2022 to now.
Brex is definitely overvalued right now (like almost every other tech unicorn), but the tech industry tends to recover faster than people think, and Brex is filled with incredibly talented people to make that happen.
How would you recommend thinking about layoffs and a bad year in the context of evaluating a late stage startup?
For layoffs, it's tricky as you need to differentiate between them being a necessary obstacle to overcome on the path to thriving (Robinhood had 3 waves of layoffs but is doing great now, look at the stock price) and them being a sign of the company's inevitable downward spiral and death (e.g. if AMC did a huge wave of layoffs, it's because of that). I believe that Brex is in the first camp, but I'm obviously biased as I'm YC and I love their product.
More thoughts on evaluating a company's quality here:
