
Huge career gamble paid off
This is a personal win post.
I'm a '23 grad from top IIT but from non circuital branch. I did my summer internship in a payments MNC as a Quality Engineer and received PPO, but I rejected it since I didn't want to continue in testing. This was when recession was just starting. The money was decent in PPO, but I felt I could get more in a dev role in placements.
When placements came, I interviewed with few big companies, but unfortunately got rejected at some stage. Finally I got placed at Cogoport (yes that same cursed company), with a higher CTC but same base. I was initially happy with it, but as I talked with seniors I came to know about the horrors there, and a month before my joining I decided to take the jump and didn't join. My parents weren't supportive of the decision and I had to fight with them.
I was trying offcampus for a couple of months with a very specific strategy, I got good response but none of them converted to an offer. I finally joined a seed stage startup through my friend as an intern for 3 months. I struggled a lot initially but eventually put in the efforts and learnt and contributed well. The work, culture and people are great here.
Two months after I joined the startup, I got to know that almost half of the new joiners were laid off from Cogoport. And today is my first official day as a full time employee at the same startup I joined as an intern. The base is also the same as the other 2 offers, although CTC decreased but I have immense learning and responsibilities here and I'm sure I'll grow faster than my counterparts in big companies.
Thanks for hearing me out. Have a great end to the year folks


A general advice ; Don’t run behind CTC. Negotiating on base is somewhat better.
In this phase of life focus on learning.

Yeah base in the initial offer was lower, I negotiated to at least as much as the other offers and when they agreed I also went ahead with it

Why not if possible i want all my salary in rsus, i am ok with 5l base and 50l rsus. After rsus of publicly traded company are encashable. Always go behind yearly total comp aka TC. Base is irrelevant is TC is higher

Best of Luck OP. You did really well. Extremely happy for you tbh.

Thanks

Congrats

Thanks