How to negotiate your salary package

If you don't have a strong BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), you're not going to get very far with just asking.

"I received your offer for $X. I really enjoyed the interviews, meeting the team, and am intrigued by the problems I'd get to solve with them. Unfortunately, I have a competing offer for $1.25X from another company and I need to make sure my family is provided for. If you would match it, I'm excited to join, but if your offer is firm at $X, I'm afraid I won't be taking it."

If they really just need someone to hold down a chair, they'll probably not budge. If they really want specifically you, they're more likely to bend if they believe that's their only move.

That’s why Patrick said it helps to have a strong reputation going in. Still, you can absolutely negotiate—just make sure you have real leverage. That usually means a competing offer from another solid company (ideally a competitor).

Keep this in mind: it’s really hard for companies to hire good engineers. The onsite-to-offer ratio might be 20:1 or worse. So when a recruiter says they’ll just move on to the next candidate, they’re probably bluffing.

But what if they do have 20 people lined up? Then you don’t have leverage with that company—and that’s fine. Take the offer if it’s good enough, or walk and try elsewhere.

P.S., a fun anecdote: when Netflix was extending an offer to a renowned engineer, he brought his PR to negotiate. Apparently, it worked well for him.

P.P.S, always interview for a higher title. I get it — it’s tough with hot companies like OpenAI. But for most places, it’s worth a shot. At the very least, don’t aim lower than your current level. It’s funny how the human mind works—interviewers anchor their expectations to your title. And ironically, a senior engineer interview is often just as hard as a staff-level one. If you’re feeling cynical, just remember: title inflation is real and everywhere, and plenty of high-level ICs are great at navigating politics, drawing boxes, and sounding confident, but not necessarily skilled at offering real values like solving hard engineering problems. So if you can’t beat the game, why not play it?

I’m hardly a “Captain”, and I’ve successfully negotiated salary increases several times.

The only thing you need is leverage, and yes, rank-and-file are not going to have a lot of leverage at a FAANG.

You can’t negotiate if you’re not willing to let the job go through.

This could not be less true and I really wish people would stop spreading this idea, because it's costing other people lots of money. In fact, the Venn diagram mapping "software celebrities" like Patrick and expert negotiators has not much overlap at all. You've never heard of some of the best-compensated developers I know (and they don't work on "celebrity" projects, either); meanwhile, I can think of multiple "celebrities" who have gotten extremely raw deals --- one, for instance, was brought in to lead engineering & R&D at a security company working against organized crime, and didn't even get any equity.

Patrick is right: compensation is much more about negotiating skill than it is about reputation or (especially) notoriety, holding everything else equal.

L5 at FAANG and adjacent companies (Airbnb, Uber, Stripe, Block, Databricks, etc) is a rank and file, employee number 12887 rule. Yet it is compensated in the mid six figures, and the ranges are easily more than $100k wide. Position in the range depends on a number of factors, famously stock market timing is a big one, but competing offers and negotiation are certainly in there.

I actually strongly disagree with this take and

1) after reading the original post immediately linked it to a friend who had an outstanding offer. She got a significant raise from fairly light negotiating

2) personally, I don't think of myself as a particularly aggressive negotiator. However, I have been able to truthfully discuss compensation using the tactics described with recruiters to get leveling and comp where I've wanted it to be for my last couple of jobs. Yes, I always had multiple offers. That's part of negotiating.

More generally, though, I think spending 30+ minutes (reading the piece and more) thinking about negotiating has helped me build a better mental model for what to bring to the table.

I am the 12887 too. Luckily applied at the place in emergency mode and was perfect fit. Negotiated +6%. Yeah! In the second year it was reduced by 3% coupling my bonus to unachievable goals. As someone wrote on HN: it is not their first rodeo. HR knows how to attract and get to the right salary level afterwards. What can I do? Swallowing is the only way. There are no job ads in my area.

I’m not a celebrity or superstar, and I’ve successfully used his techniques several times. The very first time it resulted in $20k improvement over the initial salary offer. Another time it resulted in an additional $40k in signing bonus.

Most recently it resulted in a modest $5k boost to the offered salary.

But the level of success you are likely to experience entirely depends on the alternatives that you have and the alternatives they have.

(I should also note that I’ve never been located anywhere like SF.)

If you have ~5+ years of experience and live in the US, things haven't changed. Regardless, negotiating matters more than ever.

At startups you negotiate for equity instead of salary but a lot of the same advice applies.

that's because it was written in 2012! The original essay is here: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ (Originally written: January 23, 2012)

> Reality is that engineers have way less bargaining power that they used to

There is negotation power but only if you pass all the interview challenges. Only at that point you are in a position to name your number (of course you won't ask $500K when you know the company you are applying to pays around $200K... because you have done your previous research on that; you'll ask something between $200K and $250K and see how they react). Layoffs and AI hasn't change this (sure, thing, 5 years ago companies were hiring more and perhaps were more relaxed about this, but that didn't change the fact that you can only negotiate when they want you)

Honestly at work LLMs seemed to make me less productive. For side projects they help but I've seen papers indicating this is the case for industry.

We as engineers have let the recruiters and VC funding brainwash us into lower salaries. Kind of looking forward to a rebound.

So even if you’re just advancing down a flow chart, the ‘negotiation’ option is better, right?

I too have never been in situation where the timing would possibly work out to get companies to compete. Some employers take months from start to finish while others can wrap things up within two weeks. Then you get an offer that requires a decision within two-three days.

Sure, make an ask for more money, but I have never had any leverage.

I think expectations are often realistic in the sense that companies are generally able to hire sufficiently many people at acceptable prices. But I think it’s also the case that there are fashions in interviewing such that companies are mostly all trying to hire the same subset of candidates that do well at the current thing. So if you’re bad at the current style of interviewing it’s going to be more work than someone fortunate enough to do well at the current fad.

They can find out your salary, but they won’t know your stock, which has much higher variance for software engineers.

Tangential: What's with the disclaimer about reading on an "iDevice"? Do they struggle with lots of words on a single page?

I can tell you that most hiring managers and recruiters find it offensive, and the conversation quickly shifts to how much do we care about playing games with this candidate who seems a bit reckless in suggesting a salary they know isn’t realistic.

When talking with recruiters, I usually decline to state the first number politely - saying something like "salary isn't the only reason why I'd take a job, and I always look at the whole package as well as the role. I'm sure your offer will be competitive."

On forms where I have to put a range, I put $1.00.

Ok, but also engineers in the US are much better paid now than 15 years ago. In 2010 the big story in engineer comp was that Google, Apple, and others were conspiring to avoid competing for talent (and thereby driving pay up) [1]. It was roughly Facebook not being part of this scheme that started driving salaries up. A few years ago the popular story was that people were switching jobs because their compensation had been inflated by massive share price increases (ie you are promised x shares vesting over 4 years at sign on with refresher grants, but the value of x shares goes up a bunch over those years) and they wanted to maintain their high realised comp even though shares were no longer rising as much. The only way for that to happen was engineers getting paid very well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

It still is! I think getting your foot in the door is much more difficult now compared to 5-6 years ago, similar to difficulty finding entry level work in 2008-2009 financial crisis.

Market conditions aside, the points the OP blog post makes about asymmetrical value are evergreen.