Confessions of a Big Tech recruiter – with Blake Stockman

how much can I negotiate CU clearly you're getting an offer you know there's no Baseline broadly speaking wherever you are just try to understand what it is the recruit is working with they're going to ask you to State what your compensation expectations are I think that every candidate is best suited by responding respectfully I would like to see an offer that the company thinks constitutes like the value that I have to bring to the table and sticking with that if any company is not willing to give you an offer because you didn't State your compensation expectations up front they're probably not the right company for you to work at anyways ask them to put you a fair and honest offer on the table also almost every single offer has some room for negotiation what actually happens behind the scenes in Tech recruitment recruiters and hiring managers working at Big Tech and startups do know but they might not share their unfiltered thoughts but this might be different for today's episode Blake Stockman was a tech recruiter at Google then at meta and we worked together when he was at Uber he then recruited for Flex support for y combinator and ran his own recruitment agency after 12 years of being a big Tech and startups recruiter Blake left Tech recruiting behind and is studying to become a lawyer now le this to say I jumped at the opportunity to get some of his raw takes on Tech recruitment today we go into how the tech hiring process works at companies like Google meta and Uber how inuring managers and recruiters work together using the example of myself and Blake at Uber when you receive an offer tips on how to negotiate it and a lot more behind the scenes details if you enjoy the show please subscribe to the podcast on any podcast platform and on YouTube I want to ask you about a truth about tech recruiters so yeah in terms of as a candidate I'm I'm a software engineer on the market I talk with the c with the recruiter at a large tech company are you on my side are you actually looking out to help me or are you someone who I need to win over so basically when you're asking me questions you know should I tell you what I think you want to hear so I can pass your you know your screen get to the interview or can at some point I kind of you know like are you an ally because in the end you you do want to fill that seat probably assuming you think I'm a good fit I will say when I had a good relationship and I genuinely believed that someone was going to be a good hire for the company I would go out of my way to go to bat for that person to try to advocate for that person or maybe would put myself on a Ledge a little bit because I thought this was the right decision for the company and I felt strongly about it I think I'm probably a little bit of like an an outlier there I think especially right now where like a lot of recruiters have just gone through a lot of layoffs and hiring and maybe feel more fragile in their professional standing than maybe we did traditionally I think that the primary thing that I would I it's like any professional relationship and and it has a lot of like asterisks to it you just need to you know be authentic like build a real connection with your recruiter where there's an opportunity to I think be wary around be wary around overly disclosing information that's going to shoot you in the foot like maybe yeah salary expectations uh any any negotiating 101 will tell you not to give salary expect a up front because that's where people will anchor if someone told me that this is an overly simplified uh example but if someone told me that they were going to said their salary expectation was $100,000 and I knew my salary range was $10 to $140,000 eventually I got to the offer I'd be like I know you wanted $100,000 so I wouldn't got you $110,000 because at the end of the day I'm an employee of the company and my job is to Be an Effective Steward of the company so recognize where there is some you know obvious inherent friction in the relationship be authentic in really what you want to get out of the relationship like don't be a robot um because sometimes again you know I would go the extra mile on that extra 10 15% of case when I would sit down with you when you were on the fence about a hiring decision I would tell you my opinion and I actually remember some of these discussions yeah I worked with a lot of recruiters and I'm just going to say that most recruiters were not like you I think the entrepreneurial Spirit came through but you did so you did it both on on you did sit down with Haring manager so like you know when you saw as I was on especially with L experienced hiring managers which I was in the beginning where you actually gave me kind of good advice Outlook because you had placed a lot of people by that time right hundreds of people at different companies and you saw how they worked out so you sometimes it just felt like honest advice one thing I remember which I haven't seen many uh like some recruiters have done this you know I've talked with them but one thing I haven't seen many people do is it on debrief where it was a very like like going back and forth and it trended towards a no you would rarely but inject yourself saying hey I know I'm their recruiter but I've talked with this candidate a lot and I'm also a bit of an outside Observer here's thing here here's like things I'm hearing people be concerned about for example the coding interview didn't go as well the second one but the first one went well and I'm just going to ask like how important is it for the role like you kind of kind of coached the room a little bit and uh once or twice the decision was turned around not because you know like you clearly injected yourself cuz you you felt that something was off and we weren't giving this of a fair look and it was rare but clearly that only happened because you had that trust with with the candidate and and kind of the broader cont again it always felt it only worked because you put the company first right so it would have not I think that was pretty unique to me though too I think I was pretty unique in as a recruiter and how I approached it I think broadly though just to kind of round out the candidate side of it I I think just like recogniz that their professional relationships and really what their goals are is to make the higher CU that's what they're gold on right and so there's some friction there of stewarding for the company but also like hey if you're good for the job great it's one less thing I got to worry about so I think that's important for the candidate side on the like hiring side I don't think I don't think a lot of recruiters do this I think a lot of recruiters because they don't come from technical backgrounds you know they're they're very wary or uh uncomfortable stepping in and having these sorts of conversations um I would push any engineering manager um or any founder to maybe solicit that feedback more actively because it'll like a recruiter talks to these people a lot they can get a sense if there's any like red flags or uh concerns that they should be aware of or if there are some supporting factors in conversations around how excited this person is for the job and what it means to them and what they'll really bring to the table and go that extra mile um so I think from a like manager side don't be afraid to no you should probably give the the code interview more weight than a recruiter's feedback but like it's valuable in borderline decisions and I do think that some of the more effective hires that we made were not the straightforward ones were the borderline ones no no they were almost all borderline ones interesting enough now that I think back this episode was brought to you by DX a platform that helps organizations measure and improve developer productivity the DX team includes notable researchers behind the Frameworks like devx and space so they're constantly asked by 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go to the debrief I do thumbs up thumbs down we have a discussion as an inuring manager I actually I I get headcount I then you know I'll I'll probably talk to you uh at Uber we we sometimes figure out a plan and I'm kind of involved but often times my recruiter does lead me especially when I'm a less experienced injury manager which I was when we first joined what does it look from from your perspective when when you're hiring software Engineers or engineering managers yeah I mean I think at the end of the like every company is different how every company does headcount is different remember at Facebook we didn't get our headcount goal for 2025 I don't think until like February I think it at Uber I think it was like like I think it did like March before we really knew like what our goal was and then it would change like a month later anyways so yeah I me Uber was special that if felt like whatever head count we had if we hired fast enough we just got more yeah so really at the end of the day what Uber was was just hire as fast as possible and that was the initiative you know from from um you know from the top Travis all the way down right from the CEO all the way down but I think um every company is different so normally you'll get your head count right and you'll work with maybe your VP of engineering your engineering director whoever it is that your primary hiring partner is for your hiring group and they'll say hey I have these hires and then they'll say hey they're going to go to these managers and then your recruiting manager will say hey here's your pocket here's your group you know here here's what you're going to support and recruiters will every recruiting team has this nuances the most effective ones that I've seen you generally have more structured direct Partnerships and relationships with your hiring managers um and so you'll sit down with them and you'll figure out uh an action plan everyone need once you get head count every engineering manager is like my hire is the most important and here's why you know so your job I think is a lot of like navigating that and then figuring out how to tackle it so when we would hire software Engineers especially in hyper competitive markets like we were we're trying to figure out where is this person realistically going to accept our offer and what do we need to do to close him or her um uh for you know to to come join the broader organization and so uh yeah so we'll we'll you know get our head count you know figure out what we need to tackle we'll put together an action plan with the hiring managers we'll go out we'll you know start reaching out to candidates filtering through our networks asking for referrals from the team whatever it is we need to do to start to get more people in the door you know fill the top of the funnel um and and a lot of that now is done you can do a lot with tooling and there's a lot of productivity hacks but we I used to we used to have to do it very old school hacker ways um so you fill that top of the funnel and then you just you hope you have a effective hiring process and if you don't you need to figure that out you run it get good candidates through the door try to close them and um yeah and there's a lot of nuance every companies have a different way of going about that process but yeah it's uh it was it was always messy no company has figured it out quite maybe maybe I mean we can talk over a little bit on how it actually worked at Uber at our time obviously things have changed and you know like it's it's definitely not not the same but that was pretty cool because both of us were there I was a less experienced engineer manager in fact I I didn't have much experience when we started so like I'll start from my perspective and then we can fit in on you know like what what what information you had is I I I showed up and my manager at the time already set up a weekly meeting with with with you like every week we get together and so I would get my headcount approved or or not approved but I'm like so like my leadership team needs to give me head counts or at least verbally tell me like okay you know this this year or this next six months you can hire like you have three head counts to fill and with my with my management team I I would decide what that headcount will be is it going to be a senior mobile engineer back end I mean for me this was mostly the the two things and once I had it kind of put it in a table and on our meeting I would tell you like all right Blake I now have clear we're going to start to hire for like these two back in and one mobile engineer uh and then I would kind of like kind of hand it over to you like how how are we going to do this yeah yeah I think that's right I mean we would it was it was tough because we were we were in Amsterdam we could hire from pretty much anywhere in the world and so when someone just gives you hey you got to go hire you know 10 people over the next quarter uh here are your teams go figure it out um it's pretty ambiguous and so you know we would figure out um as a broader you know recruiting team hey where are we able to really effectively recruit from where are and we do a talent map so this is something that I think is really helpful especially starts to do larger hiring projects maybe not so much you know one to one but like when you have a new role you might sit down and be like okay we need to hire a software engineer with this particular set of skills and so if it was for you know our pay payment team was the largest one so we'll say hey we need to find a couple what are the companies that are going to have relevant experience where someone could ramp up really quickly have understanding of our domain knowledge and then we would map out those companies and then we would say okay but which ones do we think also have like really good engineering talent that also you know would plant in really well with a broader engineering culture here um and then we would put together a whole Outreach plan so I think that was really critical um is the pre-planning the pre calibration um making sure that we're aligned that like the candidates that we would bring to your door like are you going to like them or do you going to have you know earlier opinions about them and so I think the point of this is helpful for engineers or people that want to be Founders one day or or um engineering managers is just like The Upfront work of calibrating really understanding um and getting on the same page is uh I mean it will save you weeks if not months uh uh down the road um it saves you a lot of back and forth um and really gets you ahead of the curve and and by by calibration uh what do you mean yeah yeah I mean uh if I if you just say hey here's a job description go find me some engineers and then I go out I bring you some candidates you're going to tell me hey I don't like these for this reason or this or I like them for this reason I now actually remember when we were calibrating yeah yeah exactly so I would um and then sometimes I might ask you I might be like hey G go find me five Engineers that you're really excited about or that like if you could get them to like interview at Uber like you would hire them like today and like why is that and so uh I would have you bring some of those and then I would go back with my team and then we would go find a bunch and then we would sit down we like great we'd comment we spend 30 minutes an hour however long we needed to to get on the same page because recruiting time is expensive recruiting is very um operationally involved again it's becoming more and more automated there's easier ways to calibrate you could use AI systems to accelerate this process but there's there is some good old school calibration that needs to happen because again recruiting is a partnership function recruiting can't do anything on its own and the manager is very very limited in what they can do on their own so you need to get those functions on the same page yeah and I think one thing that I felt worked well and it's kind of always hard to tell if I was in a bubble if every company works like this but as I understand at a lot of places at large companies there's like recruiters and there's managers and it's kind of transactional as in like oh managers get head count every now and then and when they do they go to recruitment they're like bring me these people you know they kind of get something maybe not what they expected but they do it and and they go away and they they don't talk with them like what happened with you and me and like engine managers and recruiter and your recruiting team is we actually worked together for a longer time we we we figure it out we did treat this as a partnership I think you know my manager Charles he really always he actually he taught me is like you need to treat recruitment as as your partner like you're equal like you're not better than them because I think especially at Uber at a tech company like engineering was a little bit you know like higher in the I I don't know in terms of how we were like compensated or seen or or valued and so like he stressed his partnership which was true and I remember that when we put together we were doing this calibration we were trying to find senior engineers and we realized we we can't really find as many as we'd like at least not in the near vicinity you know I think you came to to us and said like all right here's we actually have like people who don't necessarily meet a senior bar but they can grow into it and look at their career directory like could we actually compromise on some of these and then we could have more more candidates more diverse candidates and I I remember like being very pleasantly surprised like oh really cool so now you're telling me but but then I was thinking like you should be telling me because you know the market better than I do you actually Scout these people and as a manager I just remember that there I had this thing in my head who I'd like to hire and then reality just comes along like like those people will either not respond or or when they do come in the door they have like crazy salary requirements that even we couldn't match even though uh we we were there so I I felt that as soon as I as a manager I was like let me treat this partner in fact let me learn from you it actually helped my Recruitment and being more realistic and more flexible and adapting to whatever the market was and then I I actually remember that I think it might have been your recruitment team like brought some idea saying like oh hey why don't we do a recruitment trip to I think Brazil because there was a lot of really good Tech Talent there and it's like what is the recruitment trip and then you told me like okay here's how it works so there was a lot of like like surprisingly I I think we like as soon as we started to work together like that I feel we got a lot of value out out of this is is was this like a common thing in your experience at at larger companies or is this how all the better teams work or or they work differently yeah you know Google was again I this is this is like decad old information now at this point with Google but like Google was very removed they had one broad software engineering pipeline you know and like I would get a candidate that had interviewed with Engineers across all these random teams very unlikely that any of those people would ever interact with this person ever again so very like emotionally removed interviews and then you're like okay I've got a candidate and then there was a team we would send it to who would say hey this person's probably a fit for these teams and then I would send an email to the managers they'd respond if they want to jump on a call so like it was very very removed and I remember again to go back to like why did I go to Uber like I think I ever I think I only saw The Hires that I made like one time if ever after they started at the company you know so it was like so removed and um any of the Partnerships were happen at a very very high level but not between managers and recruiters and I always remember I thought that put us in the back foot when things started to change around Google um uh around the market around how many other exciting compan companies were out there like uber at the time right and so um that was really interesting to then see like uber we were very directly involved we recruiters were tied directly to particular teams we would have these regular sync ups and I think that made me a lot more effective in navigating really difficult closing scenarios where I couldn't say hey we're Google accept our offer I'd be like hey come work for Uber and all the baggage we bring along but here's why it's a really really good place to be um and then we would you know lean on our partnership I would talk in depth about why I uh what would make you know like your team for example like really really great or why it might not be the right fit so I can then help that person navigate and I think the best recruiters are able to have that honest conversation and navigate some of the complexities around like what make makes something like not the right fit as well and I think for Founders like when you're when you're recruiting it's very easy to to say all the best parts of what make your you know what makes your company exciting but like being able especially for early employees about like hey here are the risks here are the challenges here are the things that I'm worried about and I want your help solving these how might you solve these problems let's dive in let's jump in about that that can also be a signal for them if it's the right fit because that's what the real day is going to be like it's like solving real problems not just focus on the outcome of closing them and then trying to figure out of it's the right fit when you go in with transparency and openness you're more likely to land on it being the right fit for everybody um and it also being something it will stick with you like they'll stick with you for a long time um and so the partnership that we had I think with the back and forth around uber and some of the teams um I think that that's why some of the hires that we made are still there right like we go on that Brazil trip like some of those people are still like the they're the leaders now of the office which is crazy see almost all of them this is like seven years later they've all grown into like senior staff engineers and and yeah that was that the Brazil trip which again it came from I want to stress as far as I remember it came from yourself and the recruitment team I don't know exactly who but it was like oh let's do this and we're like oh we don't know about this yeah I think it came from other members of the team but we we were all involved and I think uh it was very very interesting to like see some of my colleagues like really Drive some of that and I think some of the results I was a skeptic of it like uh ability to work but it I I it it worked really well and the folks that we hired um uh are exceptional clearly you know have come stand outs in that culture and I do think this speaks to exactly what you were talking about before sometimes you hire people with real potential um who can grow into roles and I think you have this freedom to do this a little bit more at larger companies you can't do this when you're hiring you know two or three Engineers you know total for your whole company but when you're hiring for like a larger team like that you can make these tradeoffs that like can pay very large dividends down the road so and and this and that trip was a great example of exactly that I think totally so can we talk about how hiring decisions are really made in the sense of you've been in so many debriefs you know with hiring manager discussions but once an engineer goes through the interviews talks with the engineering team you know we we know there's the with software Engineers the usual most companies coding interview well there's the recruiter screen coding interview system design hiring manager interview and when that person you know like they do pretty well on all of those oftentimes it's it's it's not necessarily an easy decision I I've been on many of those those hiring uh committee decisions or or even hiring manager decisions what have you seen in terms of how do hiring managers de tide uh is it is it hiring managers or is it groups and how much input did you have as a recruiter to Champion people for example yeah uh the larger the company the more decentralized the hiring process is right so like at Google and and Facebook you have committee after committee and review after review that look over large packets you know you're talking earlier about Cloud flare like looks over every offer before it goes out like larger companies can sometimes have layers and layers of reviews and approvals and you need to basically validate your hiring decision all the way up the chain um this could be really painful I think for candidates and also for the manager who's like hey I've been trying to find this person for like 3 4 months like oh yeah and they're not going to start for another month and then it's going to take them a month to ramp up and then we have this so like I always found those types of processes to be very In Contention with rapidly changing business priorities and so that's why a lot of startups and I think more effic like companies that were more efficient at like really scaling like uber really brought it like as close to the manager as possible with like one layer of removal and of like approval basically just as a gut check making sure that you're not just making desperate decisions but making effective decision oh yeah and so we would do debriefs right so that was our Standard Process I have generally carried these through and I use them even with my earlier stage startups that I used to work with where you have your hiring process of who's inter like who's interviewing what and what subject matter we want to dive into and you can talk more about how hiring processes work but like basically you get all these people into the same room you put out there hey I'm a yes I'm a no I'm unsure you have a broad discussion and then uh I also find that it's really really effective to do written feedback so that people can come review it uh asynchronously and then have more informed uh valuable discussions instead of just like resuscitating like notes live and so um you come in you make those everyone discusses but really at the end of the day you know it's not it's not the engineer on the next team over who's helping you with a particular you know skill set uh interview it's not um you know the senior engineer on your team uh who you know has a broader understanding of architecture than you do um it's you as the manager who has to own that decision both the positives of making that particular higher and maybe any tradeoffs you have to make cuz it's very rare that everyone's going to perfectly fit what you're looking for we're talking about human beings after all right like not robots and so um I found that the biggest thing you can do from a candidate side is just like be honest with the hiring manager about like where your strengths are um and like where you're trying to grow don't try to you know BS your way around it um and uh cuz that's the person who's really going to have to own the decision and go to bat for you um and and who's going to either give it the inevitable yes or no um if you are on the manager side of this remember like when you're interviewing people very rarely is everyone going to be a thumbs up yes across the board this is a perfect hire let's make it I think that was maybe 20% of The Hires that we would make is where everyone is unilaterally yes so the thing that I would talk to a lot of the managers about is like okay here's this candidate you have all these signals again they're imperfect they're quick snapshot conversations and as anyone who's managed people before knows it can take months or even maybe a year before you really understand people's strengths and weaknesses as a professional yeah so how can you possibly get that in a short interview um but here's these signal points let's make a trade-off discussion here like knowing what you know about the team knowing what you know about this person how it all fits in like what do you want to do and so um how hiring decisions get made I I think it really lands on like how desperate is the team to hire how cleanly do you fit in with the like the overall need um more and more it's becoming about particular specialized skill sets or having broader like architectural understanding of what it is that you're actually building not just being the fastest coder or like quickest hacker you know so um I think it's more about like Nuance broader understanding and like being able to navigate those trade-offs so happy to dive into like any particular area that you find interesting there but like a lot of the times people want to think that it's like I have the skills for the job and I either did or did not get the job why is that I think there's a lot lot more Nuance so is going on behind the scenes that doesn't really get talked about openly did you notice that large tech company like the startups behave very differently in terms of hiring or is there just more subjectivity is it more based on the you know fewer people making decisions yeah yeah I think the the pros and cons of a hire and how it fits in and how much impact a bad hire can make or how much impact a good hire can make is so much larger the smaller the company it is oh interesting and so I do think that there is an inherent like introducing of bias for sure into hiring process um and I think that a lot of companies uh struggle um struggle with this part of it for sure of like making really effective informed decisions that are not based in bias but like actual like rooted like how good do I think this person is really going to be in this job but yeah I I do think a lot more um there is a lot more risk aversion I think at earlier stage companies initially and then they get really desperate when sometimes it takes them a while and I think they overcorrect and that's where they make hiring mistakes this is the second this is second time you're you're mentioning a company being desperate you previously said don't make desperate hiring decisions but clearly you've seen that the companies do can you talk about how this happens because sounds like you've seen a bit of a pattern here it happens um you know I think when you're facing a big push or a big deadline right sometimes as a company realize oh we have this huge opportunity here but we need to hire someone to actually you know build out this project or take on this product area or whatever then you put together a recruiting process then you either whether it be you're doing it yourself or you bring on a recruiter by the time you actually spin it up and probably get going it might be a week or a couple weeks or a month right depends how effective or how high priority it is need to warm up the pipeline to do reach outs Etc you got to calibrate you got to start bringing people into the pipeline run your processes so it can take a very long time until you start to actually get in the door and then you have to actually get them to start um now there are more candidates on the market now than there were you know a couple years ago I think just of the nature of tech hiring right now but it does take a while and so I think that what will happen is that especially earlier managers or earlier Founders that haven't done a lot of hiring before you know going with these expectations of what the process will look like and then they end up finding themselves 2 months later later 3 months later maybe they made an offer the person took a different job or you know they didn't quite navigate the trade-off decisions effectively or maybe just didn't find the right person which happens right so then you're kind of facing this like well we've got this okay person that we think would work at least for this maybe this context um and if we don't hire them maybe we don't ship this product which could be feel like life or death Everything feels like life or death early in your company right so um that's where desperate decisions are made and I think the downsides of a bad hire for a company um at an early stage they're very very high they're very very high so um that's where yeah that's where desperation comes in and let me add one more desperation which you might remember it's a weird type of desperation maybe this was specific to Uber if we did not fill our head count allocated with hires by the end of the year we would lose it yes so basically this created this really weird thing and and I was in a situation in Amsterdam we we had a lot of head count and we were like lagging behind we were not on track to fill it so at the end of the year as a manager you like you clearly we initially worked with the recruiting team saying hey can you give me more candidates let's get in more interviews let's like have Engineers like work Less on projects push back on projects so we can actually hire but as a manager we did face a decision of like okay there's a person who's kind of maybe maybe yes do we hire this person and then will help fill the head count or will we just lose the headcount which feels again I I don't think this happens right now but uh uh back then this this was a thing it was such a weird situation to be in yeah yeah I think cuz then you have to remake your case of why you want to hire that person in the first place or why it's important yeah do think headcount discussions are very very very political right it's everyone fighting over limited resources particularly right now where it's not a boom Market in particular sectors like AI it is but like broadly across the board it's not as much of a boom Market as it used to be I think very rarely making desperate decisions leads to good outcomes I and that's why you generally at larger companies have layers of checking to make sure that this is actually a really good business decision broadly um and and and that's I think the primary purpose of exactly what that's supposed to you know supposed to serve um I would just advise anyone if you think the primary reason the primary and secondary and maybe even tertiary reason you're making a hire is oh God we need someone in the seat you're going to probably regret it yeah probably regret it yeah o over time it usually goes I guess but it's this was more of a case when when I personally was a less experienced manager and I didn't see I think once you do those mistakes you you learn from them you do but maybe you can learn ahead of time and not make them in the first place so now that we we've gone through the you know the hiring committee decision is settled on a yes one way or the other it's a very exciting time as a candidate you're getting on you know you get the email you get the call saying hey we want to extend an offer for you and then you know we're setting up this call which is in your lingo it's it's the closing what happens on this call which is recruiter candid think about it as a final call uh you know recruiters think of as a hiring manager as a closing call the goal of the company is to have the person accept um what typically goes through H how's you prepare and and you know like what does Spiel look like because you've done this so many times yeah yeah I think um the preparation for that a recruiter is going to go back to their Finance team if they have one or the founder if they don't right and they're going to tell them hey this is what you can pay you know here's the salary whatever here's the equity that we're going to offer hopefully the the recruiter has a good understanding of the equity hopefully they can speak to it um I'm assuming those Equity as a part of the package I think it's pretty pretty standard in most technical offers these days second yeah yeah at least in the startup sphere um and I think that uh I I I'm a nerd so I like to really understand the equity and speak to it and how it plays into the market and maybe how we got our valuation at flexport I used to like I talked to our fpna team and I was like hey we want I want to get information of like fpn it's a finance planning and and and and Analysis basic I think they're like they they're like Financial Wizards man they're just like forward projection you know thinking about like and they and they really understood the company value right like walked up to them to understand all this yeah and we would and we and we had our recruiting team trained on how to speak to and sell the valuation we were not going to beat Google and Facebook and Uber and even other competing startups that offered more money flexport did not give the largest packages so we had to tell a story about the startup where it was going why it was going to be big and so like we we taught our team and I think this was effective cuz we got it we I mean again our Baseline was 20% offer acceptance when I started there um and so we trained the team how to sell equity and so um not all recruiters are going to be able to to do that not all recruiters are going to have a good understanding of the financial projections and Futures and valuation nuances but like what an engineer should know is that like you're going to get the base level information hopefully your recruiter can speak to things like the strike price the you know where's the valuation coming from when is the company going to raise again just like you cuz you're you're basically deferring cash compensation to be an owner in the company so ask about ask questions you would want to know as an investor if you're willing to go do some like day trades on the side over a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollar shouldn't you take that kind of you know dedication and nuance and understanding and like understanding the equity which is a Maj you're basically deferring cash to invest in this company that's that's a lot of what you do when you go work for a startup so uh if they don't have the information be polite but just ask them if they if you can speak to someone who can give you that information sometimes as the engineering manager they'll give you their authentic take a lot of the times how they think about it for themselves right cuz it's going to be their job if you join they're going to have to help you navigate these compensation conversations so uh get this information and then sometimes they'll connect you to the CEO or someone from the finance team to talk through it but this is important information I think a lot of people gloss over it and or don't understand it because it's messy it's scary it's Unique um and uh yeah pretty gray so uh but yeah I I I do think that a when I was a recruiter we would prep get the information understand what the offer is lay it out there and then we would always set up another call okay when can you talk to the hiring manager or you know what do next steps look like can you accept this offer what is your timeline and so I think being able to ask his questions to really understand the offer but then also be ready for them to ask you for when you're making a decision whether it be on the spot a couple days 2 weeks from now um and that's very situation specific yeah now one thing that I think is on everyone's mind is who is who is in the situation is how much can I negotiate because clearly you're getting an offer you know there's going Baseline and you know normally this will be tricky question if you were working for a company right now because you know I I couldn't be certain if uh if you're you're talking to the company or not but now that you're not in the profession for now at least what what looking from a candidate's perspective as a recruiter clearly you wanted to close the the candidate what leverage do candidates usually have and and we can talk a little bit maybe about like seniority uh how how that weighs uh into these things so if you had to advise someone who has like I got an offer it looks good but I like to make the most of it how how does a good professional negotiation look like ones that you've seen succeeded and what are maybe some pitfalls that actually you know people don't succeed yeah so I I'll say first off some of the laws around transparency and compensation at least in the United States are changing very quickly we have uh new laws coming in place in Illinois um just uh uh this next year about pay transparency we're seeing this already that it's been in place in California for a few years it's been in place for New York for a few years and so you should be able to get some baseline understanding of like what's the actual range that I'm working with and I think that's a good starting point it's just like understanding and if they don't have it you should be able to ask for it uh again this is very like region specific it's very if you're in the United States it's very State specific um broadly speaking wherever you are just try to understand what it is the recruiter is working with um they're going to ask you to State what your compensation expectations are I think that uh every candidate is best suited by responding respectfully I would like to see an offer um that the company thinks constitutes like the value that I have to bring to the table and sticking with that um and if anyone if any company is not willing to give you an offer because you didn't State your compensation expectations up front which I've never ever seen by the way but like they're probably not the right company for for you to work at anyways so uh ask that to put you a fair and honest offer on the table um also almost every single offer has some room for negotiation there are some exceptions sometimes interns don't have an ability to negotiate uh things like that but most offers have room for negotiation so just be prepared for that if you're interviewing at a bigger company or if you're interviewing at multiple companies and have the privilege of getting multiple offers the best thing you can do is uh get all that information in the same place go to the company you're most excited about and get them to compete get them to like step things up cuz what I would do when I was a recruiter is and this is true when I was a uber and pretty much every other place I would take in all this information and I'd be like hey uh give me all the the information that you can or that you're willing to disclose by your other offers if this is where you want to be that's the big commitment I get tell me you want to be here I'll take all this information I'll go to our finance team and I'll make them get you the best and final offer that you can then make your decision so uh I think for negotiation tips don't go first more offers is better as far as like getting better compensation um and and take your time so you really understand exactly what it is that the company's offering yeah and and I guess it's good context to understand that the recruiter is not the decision maker but they can they can do you know when you're respectful they will try to help you you've already gotten the offer yes we like as as an engine manager like we don't want to lose the candidate if if we can close this candidate at that point I had no incentives I had no goals I had no I never had any sort of structure tied to my performance that was associated with paying people less money in fact when I ran a recruiting firm I was paid a percentage of the salary um now I took my professional obligation pretty seriously to like not like abuse that position but a recruiter does not have professional incentive to pay you less their professional incentive is to get you in the door if they're making you an offer their job is to get you in the door so help that if you want to go work there or if you're really Le seriously considering it work with them professionally to like make that happen but make them go first when it comes to compensation negotiation you've worked at a lot of startups and and you previously mentioned you know like finding great startups how can engineers and Engineering managers um or or even exx find create Founders or startups to work at do you have some advice on on how you can scout those things out yeah how to how to find good Founders how to find good companies yep yeah so first off I wish there was one place where every startup could go and post all of their jobs and you can make an effective decision it's very disperate uh probably not LinkedIn probably not link interesting tell me more well you have to pay a lot of money to post an effective job on LinkedIn like they charge companies thousands and thousands of dollars just to even put up a job in the first place and so if a company is spending thousands and thousands of dollars to post a job you know like I don't know they're probably larger right yeah um there are good jobs on LinkedIn I found a job through Linkedin is how I found flexport but like the market is changing um and especially the earlier and earlier of a startup that you're really interested in like if you really want like small gritty startup they're not going to be posting on LinkedIn large companies probably are later stage companies probably are but not the really early stage ones and those are probably more easy for people to find anyways the larger startups um earlier stage startups uh W comor has a great website worker startup.com they've built it to where their Founders are have like permanent access they can run a lot of their recruiting searches entirely through there and so you can go on there I would contact people on there all the time to try to get people to come work at different ycu startups that I was helping or you know that we thought would be unique fits for those individuals and so um I think every candidate who's interested in working at a startup should start at workast startup.com now again these are only YC companies this is not going to be everything but there are a lot of great YC companies all over the world doing all sorts of things so there's number one next you can look at a lot of the best Venture Capital firms a lot of them have uh job Pages or have lists of recent Investments that they're making and so you can go to their career site and like find great repositories of like great startups that like the best Venture Capital firms are working at I don't think that working with a really big brand name VC is everything but it's certainly a sign like it's certainly a piece of information that you can rely on there's probably something there if dreon Horwitz is writing a $10 million check to someone there's probably something there because they spent time if they're going to they're not just giving out $10 million these days so if there's if it's there's probably some reason I I think that um a lot of these conversations that you're going to have again like you're about spend a lot of your time working on on a very very hard thing um with people so I think every person who's taking a startup seriously um make sure you really get to know these people you know like it's it's you are exposed to so much more of the hardship and the ups and downs and whole journey of it the earlier of a startup you go to and so uh and it's much easier to take that Journey on when you actually like the people around you and so uh when you are evaluating startups you have to think about it on an interpersonal level as well as a professional level um because you're all working to make the other like to to have each other succeed and you need to have each other's back it's a little bit like going to war you know like you really like you really really need to um and so I think uh that's important when like you're evaluating but I as far as like where to even find these people I think those are really good places to start um a lot of this is through networking uh a lot of this is through referrals so just trying to connect with a lot of these people different Venture Capital firms have talent teams that work in house that are constantly trying to find people to go work so maybe you can try to connect with them directly um but you kind of have to hustle and you kind of have to go out and do your own research because these early hires every everyone approaches it differently and there's no like single place that you can go and as someone who's used LinkedIn a lot as a recruiter what advice would you give people to kind of you know update their LinkedIn right like the first time you're like I'm kind of going to be open on the market I'm not going to like put an open to work and I have a job but i' I'd like recruiters to find me how did you find either both software Engineers but also engineering leaders that you kind of like felt worthy enough to you know message basically what what advice would you give people to like you know make yourself a bit more attractive or or maybe Supply indicate to recruiter as like hey if you message me I'll probably respond yeah I don't know if I I never really thought too much about if someone would respond because if I'm there I should probably just send the message and see and I think most recruiters are probably just going to send the message and see now if you're on there like don't contact me unless you know like I'm probably not going to message you cuz I think you're being kind of a jerk so I'm probably not we see some of those sofware engine I see them less these days but it used to be big a few years ago in the market was hot yeah just don't be a jerk it's fine if you don't want it if you're not interested respond hey thanks not interested or just don't respond right very simple um but I think for your LinkedIn profile just put the basic information put what you built put what you're excited about put the basic technologies that you've worked with some companies care about that some don't put the domain that you've worked in sometimes I would work with fintech companies and they really wanted people with like particular fintech experience sometimes I work with people that you know wanted uh operational experience like uber like you're building software that's like moving the real world around so like how are you doing that um so you know put put some of that contextual information outside of like I build software but like what type of business problems have I really had to understand to like go build effective uh stuff around so I think um don't write an essay but like put the basics and be a human being and uh uh that will help recruiters find you when you want to be found so solid advice thank you and what is an Inspire what is an inspiring story about recruiting someone uh that you have an inspiring story uh I mean that Brazil trip was pretty pretty special I think for a lot of reasons um I'll say recrui is a pretty thankless job and I'll you you know it's very emotionally draining you spend a lot of time going to bat for people whether it be your managers or your candidates and no one really stops and says thank you too often but that that uh trip to Brazil I didn't go but our call always came back there was only two of us that were really kind of helping the candidates navigate the actual process and offer negotiation so was pretty complicated to make that all happen and I remember uh one of the individuals when we made the offer and he accepted uh he came up to me after he started and he told me hey thank you so much like you changed my life you changed my family's life this is a big step for me move me forward um and I don't know what was going on in his life where he felt like he needed to make that change so much or move away from his home country and move across the world to Amsterdam right like huge change I've done it and you know it's it's it's really really hard um and a lot of people do it to move to the US or you know now to Amsterdam so I remember when he came up he said thank you he told me the story um and it sticks with me cuz like maybe people just don't say thank you you but like I really think what it was is that um I was respectful I cared I put in the extra effort I tried to tell him why this would or would not be a good move for him I didn't try to sugarcoat it and ended up being the right decision for him and so I think that's great like you're helping people navigate one of the most consequential things in their lives their jobs right and I think giving it their respect and um uh time it deserves like has a lot of value so I that one I guess good takeaways if if you're hired somewhere go stop by and say thank you to the recruiter because when you say it I actually realize you say it's a thankless job and as an injury manager who I I was working with you I'll be honest like I didn't say thank you too much to you maybe I did I I but you know it kind of just hit me now like it does feel like a thing cu the the hiring managers can of take you for granted which I'm just going to say that I did now you still recruit I would apologize right like sorry it's not that I didn't appreciate you but I never thought it was just you know it's part of a job like you know you helped me hire yeah good job high high five and I think as as a candidat uh like it's easy to complain and I I've heard so many Engineers complain about recruiters but I've never really heard people be thankful even when they and they don't see the stuff that that you do for them so yeah yeah whatever and whatever it is just remember again this is a people business right like we're working with people on all sides it's very messy it's very difficult um yeah I don't think a thank you would hurt but I do think that when you take that extra step that's the type of thing that make people remember you that will go to B for you um you know there's one piece of advice I always like to give people is that careers are long you know uh people will remember the um they will remember how you made them feel they won't always necessarily remember all the things that you did and so if you give people good Impressions where they have a good General Vibe and emotional connection to you as a person they will be willing to go to bat for you in the future they will become the network that you'll rely on to go get your next job I'm getting responses now and help from people who are willing to go to bat and help me find uh really interesting internships as I'm jumping into this new career right they have no reason to respond I'm going to be a legal intern in a different department potentially in different companies and them entirely they only were doing it because I left positive Impressions on them or at least I'd like to think that I did and so whatever it is whether it be a thank you or uh just um being uh cordial and professional and kind uh in your professional interactions it goes a really long way in ways that you can never predict awesome and with this uh let's wrap up with some rapid questions uh if you're okay with that I'll ask question and then you'll tell me whatever comes to mind what was the most successful cold email reach out that worked for software Engineers there was this one guy at Uber and he would email out hey this is Chris from Uber I'm interested in chatting let me know when you're free and he got more responses than anyone else trying to be crafty or creative or unique or sell he was hey this is Chris from Uber let's chat and like a lot of people you know like hey great Chris let's chat dude what's going on so yeah I remember that Chris Chris Adams what a guy I I asked this to from from a few recruiters and I sometimes got the same complaint that some recruiters put so much time in effort they researched they did Super personalized and then they did have that person which and by the way when those recruiters tried this it didn't work for them G did you ever read a three paragraph long recruiting message telling you all the nuances no there you go no even I didn't what was the hardest role to recruit for throughout your recruiting career technology role we were hiring a chief data officer for flexport and no one had the same idea of exactly what a chief data officer was supposed to be and even our data analytics team was like why do we need a chief data officer like like what what does that mean and let me tell you when no one can tell you why you're hiring someone no one will be able to make the hiring decisions so still uh doesn't keep me up anymore but yeah Chief dat officer at flexport that was that was a lot what what is a book that you would recommend and why a book that I would recommend and why um I'm a big science fiction fan I think we all spend so much time reading professional books diving into Prof I mean this is a professional podcast you're making right sometimes you got to get out of it a three body problem is a amazing science fiction novel Hugo Award winner was on President Obama's reading list three body problem go read it I I I read it I could not agree more I have some friends who tell me they find it very slow to start but I don't know I think it's part of the book it's it's just if you're an engineer you have an inquisitive mind you like to understand how things work the book goes in a deep depth trying to explain science fiction and that just to me it's impossible to to put down if if you started it and you went you gave it a chance yting with you so that's the book this is awesome Blake this was very nice to reconnect talk a little bit about the the good times and just going deep into recruiting thank you so much for sharing all these details yeah my pleasure happy to help it was really nice to reconnect with Blake and thanks to him for sharing these behind the-scenes details so candidly good luck to Blake and finishing law school though I have a seeky suspicion we'll see him around in the tech industry even after he graduates if you've enjoyed this podcast please do subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube and if you're interested in what the tech recruiting job market looks like check out the Deep types from the pragmatic engineer Linked In the show notes below