Every Accepted Job Offer Letter on My Path to Facebook
Now that we have reached the end of my Meta journey I wanted to rewind on how I ended up at Meta in the first place. Many of my guides begin from the perspective of a new grad joining a FAANG company straight out of school and how they can set them selves up to be Financially Independent with the ability to Retire Early. But my own journey definitely didn’t start at a FAANG.
I can fill in the gaps at a later time but thought I would give you the bullet point version with every single offer letter I had including the Facebook offer letter.
This is not a comprehensive salary history, it only includes the initial accepted job offers.
Rough Timeline of College + Career
2005: Begin attending the University of Texas at San Antonio with plans to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin the following year. This was out of spite due to Texas A&M asking me to join their summer wait list. [Location: San Antonio, TX]
2006: Transfer to University of Texas at Austin. Pursuing a Liberal Arts Degree in Economics because I couldn’t get into the business school. Career dreams were to go into investment banking and live in New York City. [Location: Austin, TX]
2008: Career Fairs were drying up due to the beginning of the Financial Crisis. Zero chance to go into anything banking or investment related unless I wanted to sell insurance.
Summer 2008: I start an internship at an Austin based e-Commerce company called BuildASign. The internship title was “SEO and E-commerce Business Analyst”. At least it had “Business” in the title somewhere. SEO = Search Engine. Optimization. I extend my summer internship through December 2008. [Location: Austin, TX]
December 2008: Realize that “SEO” and “Internet Marketing” is a fascinating emerging niche role. I intern during my final semester at another Austin tech company called Vertive (now called Offers) to work on SEO. [Location: Austin]
May 2009: Graduate from UT Austin and join Vertive full time as “SEO Coordinator”. [Location: Austin, TX]
February 2010: Return to BuildASign on their Online Marketing team [Location: Austin, TX]
July 2011: Accept a full time role at Indeed as a Search Engine Optimization Analyst [Location: Austin, TX]
March 2014: I accept a job as a Growth Marketing Analyst at Facebook. [Location: Menlo Park, TX]
May 24, 2023: “Last” day at Meta (technically employed until the end of July.
My Offer Letters
Internship #1
Company: BuildASign.com - Austin, TX
Job Title: Project Management Intern (the internship was 99% SEO Intern)
Salary/Pay: $10 per hour
Internship #2
Company: Vertive (Later renamed Offers.com) - Austin, TX
Job Title: Marketing Intern (100% SEO Focused)
Salary/Pay: $15 per hour
Full Time Job #1
Company: Vertive (Later renamed Offers.com) - Austin, TX
Job Title: Marketing Coordinator - SEO
Salary/Pay: $37,000 + $1,500 sign on bonus
Full Time Job #2
Company: BuildASign.com - Austin, TX
Job Title: Online Marketing Analyst (Channel Marketing + Affiliate)
Salary/Pay: $44,500
Full Time Job #3
Company: Indeed.com - Austin, TX
Job Title: Search Engine Optimization Analyst
Salary/Pay: $48,500 + 500 Options at a Strike Price of $19.01 (Indeed was purchased at ~$80 per share)
Full Time Job #4
Company: Facebook - Menlo Park, CA
Job Title: Growth Marketing Analyst IC4 (role renamed to Product Growth)
Salary/Pay: $138,000 base, 10% bonus target, $16,000 Relocation, $12,000 sign on bonus, $88,000 in RSUs (Facebook shares were $66.66 which converted into 1,320 shares vesting over 4 years)
Estimated First Year Total Comp on Signing: $201.8k ($173.8k excluding sign on and relocation)
Full Time Job #5
Company: Nader, Inc - San Francisco, CA
Job Title: Dad
Salary/Pay: $0
Closing Thoughts
I was honestly surprised that I still had all these original offer letters. It was a blast from the past to go through all of these. I wanted to share more about my non-linear career path. Most people at FAANG didn’t start at FAANG, I didn’t. Many are very intentional in their pursuit of a FAANG role, I wasn’t.
I talked in more depth about my journey with Sam Dogen (aka Financial Samurai) on his podcast. We talked about how working at FAANG is FIRE easy-mode, my career journey, navigating life in San Francisco with a child, and a raw conversation about what might be next for me after Facebook.
