This is a part of 3 part series post. Read them in order. part 1 https://us.teamblind.com/s/isDNuYPU part 2 https://us.teamblind.com/s/VXz1n07A part 3 https://us.teamblind.com/s/ij5tgwfF ________________ ## background check ## - Some 3rd party services let you decide if it is ok to contact your current employer to verify employment. ALWAYS SAY NO. They let you upload your first and the latest paystubs with the compensation part redacted. You do not want them to contact your company because not everything is set in stone yet. Your current employer can mess things up. - What is in background report: criminal history, national sex offender registry, education history and employment history. - Educational history: They call your school's registrar and verifies month and year of enrollments/graduation and which degree you received. No GPA, but this could vary by services. - Employment history: They call HR phone # of companies in your resume and verify duration of the employment. I've personally haven't seen them checking job role ("software engineer") or level ("senior") but it could vary by services. - In some states, asking for and accessing compensation history is illegal. - You should NEVER lie about your current title, level or pay on resume or to the recruiter. You worked so hard going through interviews and negotiation, you don't want your offer revoked at background stage. Even if you pass the background check and start working, the industry is small and people are well connected. You do not want "I thought he was SDE2 at company Y but he told you he was senior?" kind of conversation. - Background check usually takes a week. In most cases, you don't hear anything unless there is a problem. ## leaving the current job ## - Don't make it dramatic. Keep it dry and humble. - Only after you've signed your offer letter, tell your manager in the next one-on-one: "I have a news to share with you. I've decided to leave the company. My last day will be X (2 weeks from now)". If you've done a good job hiding you are looking externally (and you should keep it secret to everyone, including your closest colleague until offer is signed), give the manager a minute for it to sink in. - Your manager may ask where you are going. If you don't feel comfortable sharing, say "I have multiple offers and I will decide in a couple of days". I personally don't mind sharing where I am going, but your HR may have policy that walk you out immediately if you are going to a competitor. You will still get paid for 2 weeks in most cases because firing you could cost them lawsuit. Some managers pretend they did not hear where you are going and ask you not to share it with HR to give you time to say good bye and do knowledge transfer. - After the one-on-one, send email to your manager and your HRBP with your desired last date. This is your official 2 week’s notice & resignation. - Never accept counter offer. There are many Blind posts on this so I won't go into details. - Let the manager break the news to the team first. It is best this way. Once the email is sent out, share your LinkedIn url with the team in your good-bye email. This way you can stay connected and on your next job switch, you can get help from them on referral and learn about their new employers. - Some people will set up 1:1 with you to understand why you are leaving, how you prepared, what company, new comp/level, etc. Try to help them as much as possible; you were in the same place only a few months ago. Feel free to share some details, but make sure you don't sound bragging or make them feel like they are in a bad place. Also, share this blind post if you found it helpful :) - Avoid burning bridge. You can do so in several ways: leaving immediately without 2 week’s notice, bad mouthing management/team, not showing up before your last day, stealing equipment, etc. This industry is surprisingly small. You want to keep good reputation. In the future, you may want to come back at higher level and the new hiring manager may ask for reference from your last manager. Some of your current colleagues could move to a better place and you may want to get referral from them. I've experienced both cases. You don't have to work extra hours during the 2 weeks; just do what you have been doing. - Give exactly 2 weeks, not more, not less. You want to give enough time to transition the work but it will get awkward being in the office where everyone knows you will be leaving soon. - Take note of/screen shot of before your last day: HR phone number, last paystub, perf review feedback, team member email addresses ## closing ## Thank you for reading this long post. I wish you found this useful. If this helped you in securing the next job, please come back to this post and comment what your experience was like. I've spent about a day writing this. I did it because we, software engineers, collectively have power to dictate our worth. Big software companies literally make billions of $s, thanks to our work. They can easily give better employee benefit/comp, but they won't until they have to. SWE making 300-500k a year is very recent change. Only a few years ago, college grads used to make 80k. Now it is norm for college grads to make 150k at big companies (I know I was shocked too). this is due to us negotiating aggressively using information on Blind, levels.fyi, etc. Who knows? In a few years, we may start seeing companies pay 400k for jobs that used to pay 200k. Go study, interview, negotiate aggressively and get what you deserve!
This is a fantastic post! Although I only read it today, I have actually been doing exactly what's written here for the last 2 months. ~200 LC, Grokking SysDesign, Designing data-intensive applications, (and Designing Distributed Systems). I had 2 initial phone screens last week, 4 between yesterday and today (including second interviews from companies from last week), an on-site tomorrow, and (assuming this week's phone screens went well) another 4 onsites next week. I also recommend Patrick McKenzie's salary negotiation blog post. Classic.
Great post. Appreciate it
nah, i just take PTO, and mail in all my company equipment to the HQ, and never show up again, no 2 weeks notice, no goodbyes, no knowledge transfer, manager just stops seeing me in meetings and theres nothing they can do about it just go dark until my network sees my updated linkedin post 😂
Great post. I appreciate this last part about leaving your company and background check.