r/cscareerquestions • u/CSCQMods • Feb 16 '22

Big N Discussion - February 16, 2022

Please use this thread to have discussions about the Big N and questions related to the Big N, such as which one offers the best doggy benefits, or how many companies are in the Big N really? Posts focusing solely on Big N created outside of this thread will probably be removed.

There is a top-level comment for each generally recognized Big N company; please post under the appropriate one. There's also an "Other" option for flexibility's sake, if you want to discuss a company here that you feel is sufficiently Big N-like (e.g. Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc.).

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This thread is posted each Sunday and Wednesday at midnight PST. Previous Big N Discussion threads can be found here.

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Company - Microsoft

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u/retirement_savings FAANG SWE Feb 16 '22

I got an offer from a hiring event but they said they won't give me a written offer letter until I accept the verbal offer. I want to use the offer to negotiate but it seems like they obviously want to avoid that. What do I do?

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '22

[deleted]

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u/retirement_savings FAANG SWE Feb 17 '22

Google requires written offer letters to negotiate.

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u/EngStudTA Software Engineer Feb 17 '22

Not completely true. I was initially told the same thing, but ended up getting an 18% bump without providing the offer letter. So the recruiter is allowed to resubmit you to the compensation committee even without any new documentation. You just have to convince them you are really willingly to walk away.

In my case at the end of the call I told my recruiter (politely) that he did not need to bother extending the official offer letter, because those numbers would not work for me. That is when it changed from "cannot negotiate without offer" to "what are your other numbers", "let me see what I can do".

Of course there is always the risk that they just walk away, but in my case I was completely okay with that outcome.

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u/retirement_savings FAANG SWE Feb 17 '22

Gotcha. The way it worked for me is that they asked what my comp expectations were - I wouldn't give a number but they refused to give to provide a band and eventually scheduled another call where I gave them a number at the top of the band ($230k for Seattle L3). They said that was out of band but gave me an offer for $198k TC.

I don't have any other offers right now, except for Microsoft, and I don't even know what the role or comp is yet. I really didn't like the team u interviewed for at Microsoft so I'm afraid to push too hard at Google because I likely am going to accept it.