
Farewell, App Academy. Hello, Airbnb – Part 2 - bumbledraven
http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii/
======
pfarnsworth
I hope revealing salaries doesn't get him in trouble at AirBnb. I know I would
be a bit annoyed if he revealed all of this before joining if I were an
employer.

Conflating base salary and RSU packages, especially pre-IPO RSUs, is a
mistake. In my 20 years in Silicon Valley I've learned you simply can't put
too much faith in stock. Stock is great, but it goes up and down. The only
thing that is real is base salary, even bonus isn't guaranteed. Stock or
options are nice, but they are icing on the cake, if you get a chance to cash
out, so combining them with base salary is generally a mistake.

~~~
pjmlp
Are salaries trade secrets on US?

Here usually we talk openly about them.

~~~
virmundi
America is full of fools on this point. We don't talk about salary because, in
the back of our minds, it's a determiniate of our value. This is not true in
most philosophical systems, but it's true in our post-modern materialism.

The end result of our self-censor is a weak labor market. We don't know what
we're worth. Americans, aside from our verbrato, tend to underestimate our
worth. There are people working for 80k with 8 years of experience in advanced
fields like Big Data that don't realize that they bring their companies 200k+
worth of value. They don't realize that their peers with less skills and
marketability are making the same 80k. This makes management's life better:
thicker margins.

When an individual attempts to move past this barrier, especially consciously,
anti-union sentiment pops up. People start to get defensive. Others get
lustful. A reasonable dialogue turns into a battle of the Joneses. Labor
fights Labor.

~~~
ScottBurson
> Americans, aside from our verbrato

"Bravado". I wouldn't correct you except that it took me a good five minutes
to think of the correct word :-)

------
carboncopy
Having failed multiple interviews with Google and other companies mentioned in
this post, it really drives home the huge difference between Haseeb's work
ethic and mine. If I had put forth 10% of the effort he has expended this year
to preparing then I'd have aced the interviews. But I didn't. Instead I spend
most of my free time doing frivolous things that aren't satisfying.

What percentage of HN posters have applied to Google? And how many received
offers? I think it's amazing that he outclasses so many of us after being in
our industry for a year. Good for him.

~~~
soham
Context and disclaimer: I run an intense and successful bootcamp focused on
preparing for Tech interviews. A 100+ people from all over the world have
prepped with us since we started a year and a half ago.
[http://interviewkickstart.com](http://interviewkickstart.com).

We've since learnt a lot about what makes successful engineers. While nearly
everyone who goes thru us (and is actively looking) gets placed somewhere
nice, the people who crack some of the hardest interviews generally fall into
ONE or MORE of the following categories:

1\. They are just bright from the get go. A high IQ.

Haseeb, from the little I've read about him, seems to fall into this category.
They can get by with normal amount of practice viz. brush-up.

2\. They are extremely prepped.

A crude measure of prep, is how many algorithmic problems you've practiced.
Some of these people have crossed 300+ problems. Written code for each. And
repeated it. It takes several months to a year to do this with diligence and
focus.

3\. They have been coding for a long time. Almost precocious-ly.

They have written so much code, that a lot of constructs are now muscle
memory. All they need to do in an interview, is to intuit the solution. After
that, they impress the heck with their coding fluency.

4\. They are competitive programmers for some time

They don't have to be toppers or winning competitions. e.g. Yellow on Topcoder
is sufficient.

5\. They went to a particularly strong and competitive CS program

Some programs in the country prepare you for such interviews. Rare, and
difficult to get into, but they do.

6\. They got a soft interview-panel.

Interviews are heavily dependent on who interviews you. Especially at large
companies, there is a wide variance in grading standard, experience in
interviewing and beliefs, and hence there is a wide variation in talent,
despite centralized hiring committees.

You need a bit of luck anyway, but sometimes you get an entire panel that you
happen to gel with. A little bit of preparation and getting such a panel puts
you over the magic line.

------
fredophile
One thing that struck me as odd while reading this, and the preceding article,
was that he seemed offended at being offered junior roles despite only having
a year of experience. A talented junior developer is still a junior developer.

~~~
w1ntermute
> A talented junior developer is still a junior developer.

Read his biography - the entire reason he has been able to achieve everything
he has in life is because he doesn't have such a close-minded and pessimistic
attitude. Rather than just letting the conventions of society dictate what he
gets and does, he instinctively finds ways to work around them. While everyone
else is busy checking the boxes expected of them, he's already moved on to the
next level.

~~~
fredophile
On your advice I read the about page on his website (I assume this is the
biography you mentioned). I also checked out App Academy on LinkedIn and Angel
List. Angel List even had the job posting for his old position. I still
believe he's a junior developer. He didn't magically cram more than a year of
development into that year. If anything he did less development. Out of his
one year of experience some was spent as an instructor, not a developer, and
many of his duties as Director of Product were management and not software
development. In fact, he mentioned that as one of the reasons he wanted to
leave that role.

Some lessons are learned by doing things and dealing with the results. He
hasn't been doing this long enough to see the long term consequences of any
decisions he made while developing software at App Academy because those
consequences haven't happened yet. Also, App Academy is a small company with
about 10-20 people. Lots of things that aren't important with 10 people become
very important on software projects with 100 people.

None of what I said means he isn't intelligent or talented. It doesn't mean he
didn't do good work while at App Academy or that he won't do good work at
AirBnB. It just means he's inexperienced. That's not a bad thing but it isn't
something you can change overnight.

~~~
JDiculous
I think you're underrating the significance of the rate at which one is able
to learn and acquire knowledge. I'd argue that this is actually more important
than experience within a large organization with plenty of mentorship.

This guy was able to accomplish a ton in a year, acquiring the technical chops
to get offers at top companies like Google. If he can do that in one year,
imagine where he'll be in another year.

------
hueving
I was surprised by the notion that airbnb is considered a top tier engineering
company. Excuse my ignorance as an outsider, but what interesting engineering
problems are they solving?

From the outside, I see a listing service that processes transactions and
plots things on a third part mapping service. There isn't a complex dynamic
market based auction system or anything like that. Can someone with more
knowledge shed some light on what airbnb does that puts it on par with the
work from Google (e.g. spanner, F5, borg, their SDN stuff, etc)?

~~~
temp20160423
Their comp is obviously top. I was impressed at how large AirBnB's offer is in
every aspect--its base was already higher than the total comp of many of his
other (initial) offers.

~~~
cylinder
Avg one bedroom apartment in SF is 50% of the take home pay on 120k.

------
temp20160423
For people who are currently looking, they should be thankful for this post.
This guy really was a master negotiator and provides lots of hard numbers. The
key is to get some initial leverage (at least one offer from anywhere) and
then keep cranking. If you can get a Google offer, then you can really squeeze
out every last drop.

I think him publicly posting this will cause a lot of resentment at his
company. I wouldn't be surprised if there are PhD's with multiple years of
experience at AirBnB making less in total comp than this guy.

~~~
different
I wonder if you could possibly lie about offers being received.. I mean I
kinda doubt these recruiters all talk to each other or do they?

------
kbob
The author repeatedly mentions $XXX RSUs.

It's been a while since I've worked for a pre-IPO company. Is it common for
companies to give RSUs a dollar value instead of a number of shares and "heck
if I know the valuation"? And how are RSUs different from straight ISOs?

~~~
rawnlq
Typically they also tell you the Fair Market Value of the shares and you just
multiply by the number of shares offered. They aren't options and you just get
them whenever the company goes public. But they are completely illiquid before
then.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_market_value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_market_value)

Quoting them in dollars is probably not too wrong if you believe the company's
valuation won't change much (which is probably true for these unicorns). Even
groupon's valuation didn't drop more than one order of magnitude.

~~~
hkmurakami
_> They aren't options and you just get them whenever the company goes public.
But they are completely illiquid before then._

Many companies now have a buyback mechanism where the employer will buy back
your RSUs at a pre-determined price (often the price per share in the last
priced round).

Although the vesting schedule is the same as if it were options, the contracts
often have a clause where technically the RSUs have not vested, in order to
avoid capital gains taxes on a (fairly) illiquid asset.

~~~
sjg007
Yeah, he will pay taxes on the vested illiquid RSUs on top of his 130k.

------
Bahamut
The two blog posts were interesting reads, especially with the raw numbers
given.

In addition, it also shows how blind most companies are to talent - they're
not interested in discovering the diamonds in the rough unless a company like
Google does it for them.

~~~
JDiculous
Right. Companies are extremely risk-averse because they can afford to be. The
talent shortage in tech is totally overblown.

------
lpsz
I may be misreading. With only a year of instruction and no coding background
previously, he was able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm?

As a hiring manager, I would be concerned that a candidate with such short
exposure to the field and no real projects under their belt would just be too
green to carry their weight.

~~~
w1ntermute
> With only a year of instruction and no coding background previously, he was
> able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm?

That depends on your definition of "norm". The average person could probably
spend their entire life preparing for a Google interview and never get an
offer. Others could enter any field of their choosing and reach a very high
level of competency in just a matter of months. Seems like the OP falls in the
latter category.

~~~
lpsz
No matter how academically bright someone is, practical coding experience is
still highly desirable.

~~~
w1ntermute
It has nothing to do with academics - some people can pick up practical skills
much more quickly than others.

------
keiferski
_In life, you don 't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate for._

Nice job. Thanks for the transparency.

------
GuiA
... well, maybe I should ask for a raise.

~~~
freyr
Usually helps if you have another offer in hand.

~~~
virmundi
Absolutely this. I worked hard for 5 years. I was a trusted member of my
company. I spoke with IBM sales as a tech peer. I was dramatically underpaid.
I asked for a raise, to which I was told the market couldn't bear me.

I was pushed into a project that had me crying to and from work. The stress
was immense, but I thought I had little choice since my health insurance and
house hold income provided everything for my family. I shopped around for a
new job.

I found one that would work, but didn't have health coverage for 90 days. At
this point I had an offer in hand. I told my management, at the time, unless I
got another 20k a year, I'm walking to the other job. I got the raise.

Leverage is not bad. The company that you work for is probably only marginally
committed to your well-being. They are totally committed to their margins. If
you like your organization, but need more, leverage is your friend.

------
santaclaus
Wow, that dude has a pretty crazy life story - his about page was a fun read!
Became a millionaire playing poker, got caught up in a huge scandal, sounds
like a movie.

~~~
u_me_him
Thankfully do to Trump I'm far more skeptical of stories like these. So I
would not so readily believe what he is saying.

~~~
komaromy
He's the real deal. I remember watching the scandal on 2+2 unfold a few years
ago.

------
possibleNoob
Does anyone know what computer science problems hes referring to for
interviews? Does anyone have a resource i can look at?

~~~
e12e
I would also be interested in some more detail, especially: "On the phone
interview, I received a pretty challenging problem—I remember thinking when I
got it that I was going to mess it up. But somehow I solved it with ease, and
all of my outputs were correct."

It's kind of hard to get a handle on what this means; on one hand the poster
is quite obviously remarkably intelligent (ref: bio etc), on the other hand he
has very little CS experience. The reader is left to imagine a problem that is
just within their _own_ reach to solve, while it might have been a very basic
algorithm question...

------
dannylandau
Excellent post! Really enjoyed reading about your experience on the job
market. My brother is going to be interviewing with Google soon, so I will
make sure to share this with him.

------
dabit3
This was an excellent read. I would be interested in hearing more about his
specific skill set and also more info about the technical interviews he went
through.

------
minikomi
Seeing those salaries as a dev in Tokyo is mind boggling. Time to start
looking at remote work options even I think..

~~~
athlos
Never look at salaries in a vacuum; remember what he says about what a 105k
salary would "translate to" 57k in Texas. I don't know if remote working will
change the game, eventually, but since companies today outsource jobs to
"cheaper" cities to pay lower salaries, I find it hard to imagine that they'd
be willing offer the same strong salaries to remote workers, instead of seeing
it as an opportunity to cut costs.

------
sjg007
Thanks for posting this it is very helpful. It's clear you need to prep and
leverage.

------
forrestthewoods
Fucking hell. I wish video games paid that well. God damn.

------
forrestthewoods
What are taxes on non-liquid RSUs like?

~~~
arkem
Taxed as income based off of the fair market value of the RSUs as determined
by a independent auditor's assessment (It's called a 409A Valuation).

In practice most companies will allow you to surrender non-liquid RSUs to pay
the tax withholding so you don't have a massive tax bill from a non-liquid
asset.

------
packetized
Congrats on peacocking. It's absolutely horrifying.

------
sharps_xp
Were I in the same situation as OP with multiple offers, I definitely would've
botched the negotiation part. I wish there was a version of hackerrank for
negotiations.

~~~
sjg007
Stall, redirect, wait. At some point the recruiter becomes your advocate.

Or if just one offer ask for more than you want and would settle for. They
won't rescind the offer and be willing to walk away.

It's also easier to get more options and RSUs because it's funny money not yet
vested and not yet liquid.

------
lowglow
If you've gone to a development school you should rate your experience here:
[https://schools.techendo.com/](https://schools.techendo.com/)

------
ronrogers
App Academy is the most selective dev training program in the world. We've
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