TL:DR
I went through the interview process for Pluralsight in September of 2017 for the position of Software Craftsman. The interview consisted of a coding challenge, a 1 hour interview, and a 5 hour in house working interview. I told them how much money I made at my current job at the outset of the interview process and when they made an offer they made an offer 27% under what I’m currently making. I really wanted to work at Pluralsight but I declined the offer since it was so far under my current income.
The point I want to make here is that if you are a well compensated engineer and are interested in working at Pluralsight you should know ahead of time that the financial component of the offer can be lacking. In my case it was extreme and I could not accept. So be aware of this if you are applying.
Full:
I started the interview process by going to lunch with a friend of mine who had been working at Pluralsight for about three months. This was not a formal interview but just an opportunity for me to come up and check out the company and the culture. I participated in the company lunch at no cost to me and then spent the afternoon with my friend giving me a tour and interacting with his team. I was very impressed with the company and culture and told him I would be very interested in a position with the company.
I got in touch with a recruiter at the company that started my in the interview process. I told them my current salary and what I was looking for and we started the process. The interview process consisted of:
- Coding challenge done at home
- One hour video interview (about 1 week after getting the code excercise)
- 5 hour working interview (about 1 week after the video interview)
- 1 hour with the engineering director
- 1 hour team lunch
- 2 hours of pair programming
- 1 hour of a team interview in person
After all of this I left the campus with assurances from the team that I would be getting an offer in 24-48 hours. And they were right. The next day the recruiter reached out to me with news about the offer. I was really excited. Everything I had seen at Pluralsight had convinced me that it was a great place to be and I was really excited to have gotten to this point in the process.
All of that turned to utter shock when they made their offer. The salary came in 27% under what I was currently making. I felt utterly disheartened. I literally spent 15 minutes with the recruiter just perplexed that they would even make that low of an offer. I told them that I really enjoyed the whole process but that there was just no way I could accept that offer. They said they would go back and try to rework the deal to make it more appealing and I said that it was the only way I could even consider it.
After that exchange I was dismayed. I couldn’t believe that they had come in so low. Had they thought I was lying about my income? I decided to write a letter to them making my case for working there. I described how I felt about wanting to be there, I also included salary analysis using ADP data I have access to that contradicted their offer amount, and I included the offer letter from my current job to prove my current salary. I also said that I would be willing to take a 9% hit on my salary to come work there because of how great I thought everything else was.
The recruiter called me back at the end of the day, I was really hoping that my letter had helped convince them to bring up their offer. And it did, they now only wanted me to take a 22% drop on my salary. I was polite and listened to the entire offer to do what they call total compensation analysis, but working together we calculated that when looking at total compensation the gap was even farther. I concluded by asking if there was any other way we could get these numbers up and the recruiter said that there weren’t. In probably the easiest and hardest career decision I’ve had to make I turned down the job. I just couldn’t take a 22% drop in income to work anywhere.
I guess after this whole process I’m just still perplexed that they could let me go through that whole process with idea that I would be willing to take a 22% or greater cut in my salary. I don’t know a single person that would willingly make that decision. I wanted to work at Pluralsight, the engineers on the team wanted me there, and I got my hopes way up. I was really crushed when that offer came in. Just crushed. I even tried negotiating reasonably with them offering to take a salary cut to work there and it was like they were unwilling to negotiate fairly.
So buyer beware, if you enter into an interview process with Pluralsight you should know what to expect by reading this and not assume that you will be treated fairly when the offer comes in.