10 Rules of Salary Negotiation (how to raise your offer from Meta, Google, etc.)

hello there if you are about to negotiate your salary after receiving a drop offer this might be the most important most valuable video that you've ever watched um grab a pen and paper and take notes because with me is an expert in salary negotiation um it's Annie Annie thanks so much for doing this with us thank you so much for having me I'm honored to be here um yeah a little bit about me I was the first hire at a small startup that focused on uh engineers and high level Executives negotiating their compensation so I

worked with hundreds of individuals across many Fang compan companies um and helped folks make uh hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in their offers so very excited to share uh the tips and tricks that I've learned over the past few years cool all right let's get stuck into it Annie what's what's the first commandment of negotiating your salary yeah so first and foremost the number one thing that I hear from customers uh you know especially women is that they don't buy into their own value you know they don't believe that they should negotiate and so

first and foremost buy into your own value you are being considered for these positions because you're a talented engineer because you're bringing something unique to the table so you know don't be afraid to really step forward and just don't let that impostor syndrome hold you back you know you're here for a reason you deserve the compensation that you're asking for would you even say that you should always negotiate an offer like just as a given even if you think oh that's great like you should always do it like why not right absolutely because I think

it can really be a great barometer for the company's morals and values you know the more willing they are to negotiate with you the more they're bought into you you as well that's just a really good sign right so make an attempt the worst thing they can do is tell you no yeah yeah definitely okay that's a that's that's a good mindset to go into it with then um what about number two yeah so I think a lot of other people will say things like well I don't have any other offers so how can I

really leverage my offer to get more and I think more so than anything especially in the engineering space leveraging your value ad is really going to be crucial here so one document that I really encourage folks to spend some time working on is your 30 60 90day goals for your time within the role that you're looking at right so you know talk to your future manager sit them down and really highlight your knowledge of the role of the position and weave in your prior experience at other companies that you know justifies like you know based

on my time at meta I implemented a tool that saved us you know x amount of money and I'm going to do that here at door Dash to help gain x amount of Revenue right it just sort of solidifies that you're the best person for the job and I'd say have that conversation after they've given you the offer right at this point it's not like you're still trying to interview it's just that you're reassuring your manager that they made the right decision sure and I guess at some places like um Google I know people sometimes

get matched with teams after you know they get the offer first before they've been matched with the team so I guess that could make it difficult to be specific about what you're going to do if you don't actually know like what you're going to be working on yet but you could still have that conversation and kind of double down and like consolidate what you're offering for them right so you can still outline something and that still kind of ties into our third Point too which is about asking the right questions and setting up the right

dialogues right because even in a situation with Google where you're team matching post getting your uh final round interviews done I would recommend set up at least two to three calls with people on the team as well as your manager right and you want to understand key portions like you know what problems are the team facing what Solutions have they implemented in the past and what's worked and what's not worked because you don't want to put together this 30 60 90day presentation with a bunch of stuff that they've already tried right that's not really gonna

serve much so you know ask these questions and also you know it's in your best interest to do this anyway because you want to understand like is your manager you know a good person to work for you know so talk to those team members ask those tough questions and then other questions that you want to ask especially with the state of the economy is stuff that will protect you in the event of a layoff so you're going to want to ask how long this role is open for right because you know if the role has

been opened for a short period of time it's more likely that it could be affected by a layoff versus if you seen that role has been open for the last like three to five months right and then the other question that you want to ask is how close is the team to the profit arm now most Engineers are fairly close but you still just want to get that Insight you know if you're trying a new experimental product versus something that's tried and true and has been around for a while might have an impact right okay

yeah that's that's really interesting so uh the fourth Commandment that I really encourage people to think about is strengthening their position right because I think you know especially if you've been the victim of a layoff if you've been unemployed for an extended period of time that Gap in your resume really needs to get covered right you know that the longer that Gap exists the more question marks start popping up and from like an urgency standpoint if you don't have a source of income coming in obviously that creates a lot more urgency from your end of

like I need to get a job I'll just accept whatever right so there's a there's moves that you can make to be strategic in how to strengthen your situation like you know talk to uh colleagues and see if they're starting small startups that you could be a part-time adviser for that can help get some Revenue coming in that can also just help with your mindset where you're not just sitting all day agonizing about oh you know how am I going to make this work um do passion projects you know I've had friends who've built um

you know custom bots to help them trade cryptocurrency you know just for fun and putting that on your resume uh can show that you're passionate about what you're doing because you're doing this in your own free time right um and you know don't also be afraid to apply for lower level positions with strong company names because you can still use phrases like oh I'm in consideration with meta when you're talking to other companies that you're excited about right okay yeah nice okay so this I guess this is a this is an important tactic to use

maybe this is kind of earlier on before you've got the offer um to kind of set put yourself in a better position going forward so yeah so yeah so so yeah get get a part-time job or get do do a passion project get it on your resume to increase your chances and yeah I love that I love being able to being able to say that you're in consideration with another company without having to say that it's actually a much a much more Junior role that that that's a nice little trick yeah yeah and that just

really ties into our next commandment about information being currency here right because you know ultimately there are key pieces of insight that you want from the recruiter and vice versa and you have to be very strategic about what you're sharing and how you're sharing it right I love that phrase in consideration it could mean anything it could mean that you've got an offer in hand it could mean that you've just applied on the on the portal right and so being strategic about how you're sharing your competing opportunities is great because I think a lot of

times people just want to you know they get these other offers and they're so excited about them that they just want to share them and use them to their fullest extent but you don't want to play your cards all at once right you know you want to be mindful about that and um so you know if you give a recruiter a crumb of information just let them push for more details more often than not they won't you know if you say I'm in consideration with meta they might say what's your timeline there and you can

say well you know I'm early stages or I'm about Midway through but you know be very careful about when you're saying things like oh I have an offer or something like that because that's like blood in the water for recruiters they're like what's the deal details when is it expiring you know how much Equity all that stuff and you might not be ready to answer that yet right okay okay and then also I guess the the one of the number one things that people recruiters ask um is what are your salary expectations for this role

um and or they might ask what you earning at the moment and and I guess you should try and not give that information right like it's very difficult to say no to to someone that you're trying to get a job from right but right and it can be to because like for example in the United States in Most states it's illegal for them to ask you what you're currently making right and um you know you can kind of hide behind things like oh I'm not comfortable sharing that and even if you're in a European country

or a place where maybe that's not a law you can still say I'm not comfortable sharing because it is very personal um but when it comes to your salary expectations it does get challenging right because sometimes on the application it'll be a red asterisk field right and you kind of have to fill something in I usually would tell folks to type in those uh scenarios let's talk about it when we're further along but I've seen them now where they make you input a like a a number in there and they get mad if you enter

zero right so I would say um in some situations you can see the posted salary range depending on the state you are in the United States like California New York Seattle a lot of states or Seattle Washington um you can uh see the salary range listed on the job posting right that's kind of a legally mandated thing that's not everywhere so do your best to try to do some research and my general frame of reference is you know think about what you're currently making add a percentage on top of that that you think would make

sense that would be make you excited to leave and then add a little bit more for just hedging you know because you never want to ask for exactly what you want you want to ask for above what you want so that way you know that's kind of the strategy there okay okay nice great okay um next what's what's number six yeah so the best person to talk to here I think a lot of times there's confusion about you know who do I talk to in the negotiation should I just talk to the recruiter and I

would say talk to the decision maker right don't waste your time um kind of dallying with HR because they are just a middle person right their whole job is to take your salary requests go back to the compensation committee share those salary requests get their approval and then come back and share that with you right so they don't have any Authority um and your manager is really the person who can go behind the scenes who has Sway With the comp committee who can go to like VPS svps and say hey this is why Tom deserves

higher compensation right so that's why I think it's really important when you have that 30 60 90day conversation you do it after you've gotten an offer you do it with your manager and towards the end of that dialogue you kind of weave in well based on the work that I'm doing as well as you know um whatever your other leverage opportunity is whether it's a promotion or other company you know based on this and my other offers I would be looking for a compensation of XYZ and you share that straight up with your manager now

there is a chance that your manager might just be like well uh you know I don't do this this is the recruiter's job you know and that's fine but at least you've made the ask with them and they can they have to sign off on it too right so you know your recruiter is still going to go to them and be like hey is this kosher so it just kind of helps uh Grease the wheels in advance if that makes sense yeah yeah that makes sense yeah I guess I guess it can be you can

make you a bit anxious kind of asking for more time you know from this from this manager that you know they're busy they've already you're you're chuff that they've given you the you know the the green light for the offer you don't want to kind of ask for more but but yes they they won't they're not going to think that you're pushy for for doing it right like they they're going to understand that this is what people do it won't be the first time that especially if they're at a big company you know like met

or Google it's not going to be the first time that somebody a candidate has done this and so even if they say no then that's fine that they're not going to kind of uh change their mind and and recommend that you're not given the job anymore yeah exactly they'll actually respect you more for being very thoughtful about this yeah you know because I think a lot of times um you know you are interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing you right and you want to make sure you're doing your due diligence there um but

I think one of the things that I see folks get the most anxious about is you know how do I respond to these um things from my recruiter from my manager these harsh pieces of push back right you know what push back should I even anticipate and I think it's really important before you have these dialogues to really sit down and think okay what's the worst thing that they could say and then how can I respond to that you know I'm very much a prepare for the worst hope for the best kind of person so

think through like you know if they're saying things like oh um you know I don't know maybe it just doesn't seem like you're a great fit if you're so focused on money and you're not focusing on the mission of the company or whatever you know think about how are you going to respond to things like that and typically the guidance that I give is um use the excitement sandwich so the excitement sandwich is basically like a similar to the compliment sandwich in management where it's like when you give yourself give someone um a piece of

negative feedback you do positive feedback negative feedback positive feedback I've eaten I've eaten a couple of compliment sandwiches in my time yes sometimes they don't taste that great uh you know um but the excitement sandwich is kind of similar and you know ultimately your recruiter really cares about are you going to sign with them that's how they get benefited in their metrics is if you sign with the company so they're not going to do a ton of work for you if they believe you've got one foot out the door so if you can really uh

frame it as like I'm so excited about this opportunity the one thing that I'm struggling with is the compensation if we could get the compensation to a place I'm excited about I'd be happy to sign today yeah see just makes that pill a little bit easier to swallow yeah okay yeah yeah yeah that's good and and yeah Al obviously you want to that that you're portraying the right attitude no one's going to say that yeah that you're just you're not you're not on board with the values of the company so yeah just I guess that

positivity that you would have been showing throughout the whole interview process anyway just keep keep going with that right especially when you're talking to like a small startup or something about like a severance package you know you really want to be careful because a you want to protect yourself right but B you don't want them to think you don't believe that the company's going to be successful so you know it's like I have every faith that you know stealth startup is going to be amazing but I have to be thoughtful about myself and my family

giving this tough time with that in mind if if we could add a severance package uh on here I would be excited to sign right yeah okay yeah sound um so you know another thing to think about too is that I often will have people when I'm doing mock negotiations with them you know they they'll throw out their initial number and then I'll say oh as the recruiter oh we can't do that you know the top of the band is a slightly lower number you know um I can go back and get that approved are

you gon to accept that and a lot of times folks want to jump to that sort of haggling perspective where they want to say oh will you take this and then just immediately drop their original number don't do that okay that is going to make your original number seem like it's not that important to you right it's going to make it seem like oh you know does he even really want that first number you know um and so you really have to stay firm on that and focus on verbiage like let's close the gap here

so that really helps especially if you have like a promotion or other offer that you can kind of Leverage in that regard um or just you know even like close the gap with what I'd be hoping to make you know if I come here right um so just don't feel that need to sort of be like dropping that number immediately that's not to say that you know you have to die on that hill of that number if like two conversations later they're still like this is never gonna happen you know you might want to accept

that but um you know just be strategic again about when you're calling out that other number is that like two or three conversations later if so you know you can definitely make that work um but just don't do it on that same call yeah right okay don't I I get that I guess it's like when you're in holiday and you you got some uh you know they're trying to sell you some tourist bit of tat and uh and they say yeah it's 8 and you and you're like uh I've got three and they're like okay

five and immediately it's like well obviously wasn't worth $8 so yeah you don't want to kind of give the same treatment to your own Worth right you w to you want to at least show that you believe in that first number right even if in the end you then drop but you're not a charki right you're a valuable you know human that doesn't deserve to drop immediately and you know know I think ultimately a lot of times too people will really get in this mindset of well I still have to keep proving that I'm the

best person for this job even after the interviews are over and I think that's that's very common and you just have to remember you've already gotten the offer right you don't have to keep saying you know if you gave me this offer I'd do XYZ right you're already at that point now that's not to say you can't leverage your value ad right you definitely should with that 30 60 90day presentation but you just don't don't feel the need need to keep you know justifying your need to be there this conversation is more going to be

about like you confirming with your manager that you're on the right track and demonstrating to your manager you're not going to have onboarding syndrome you're going to hit the ground running you're going to make a big splash when you get in there so you know if you're really struggling like I don't know if I have leverage at all your value ad is leverage enough okay yeah okay that's I like that your value ad is leverage right okay right so one of the most questions I get asked is what happens if they pull the offer right

and I think that is a very rational fear you know because hey I've gotten an offer pulled when I tried to negotiate and uh it did not feel good you know I didn't realize that happened okay that it does happen then oh yeah it does and from my end it was indicative that I dodged a bullet yeah because you know I didn't make a massive comp request I didn't you know say anything UNT but I learned some things about that company after that experience that I was like you know I'm glad I didn't end up

getting stuck there um because more often than not when you are going through the interview process especially at a big tech company that is going to be like $330,000 of investment from the company side paying the interviewers you know making sure that you're prepared all that kind of stuff so once they get you an offer it's really not financially lucrative for them to decide to pull it based on you negotiating now now if you're coming in there and you're saying offensive things or you're asking for an inordinate amount of additional income yeah they're going to

pull the offer because you're demonstrating yourself to be a financial liability right but if you are going in there and you're being respectful in your ask your ask is not you know exorbitantly high and you know what do I mean by that I mean you know 25% is like the max I would ask on top of if you feel really confident okay um so you know if you're asking for 50 75% more I would say that's a long shot at best um and you know I would say it's very unlikely that they'll pull the offer

but it does happen and in those instances the hiring manager is going to be the decision maker there it's not the recruiter so if the recruiter threatening that just know they have to get the HR hiring manager approval right and so they can't just pull that trigger willy-nilly yeah um I would say given the state of the economy don't die on the hill for compensation if you've made two or three attempts and you've gotten shot down each time no when to bow out right you know you want to protect yourself um and know that again

like the way a company chooses to interact with you about compensation is a really big indicator of their barometer in terms of how they treat their their um employees right so be thoughtful as an future employee do you want to work for a company when you make a reasonable compensation ask they just immediately pull that offer no right that is not a company that's invested in you that's not a company that wants to see you you know that that sees your value ad and the financial correlation with that right so you you know most of

the time the worst thing they'll say is no but just really be sure that you're protecting yourself so I think you know kind of circling back to what we were talking about before write down a few pieces of push back that you might anticipate them saying write down your compensation ask in advance it's okay if it sounds kind of scripted you know people kind of expect that and just don't be afraid to practice more often than not when I would work with clients we would practice the you know worst case scenario they would jump on

a call and it would be way easier than they thought it would be more often than not they would have zero pie is a push back the recruiter would agree to go back to the team and you know I think as long as you go with it go into it prepared for that and you'll find that it'll be a lot easier and a lot more successful okay great and and one thing uh do these conversations usually happen on the phone then like rather than rather than email is is there a preference from your perspective you

know there's pros and cons to both so I would say that the pros to email are that you can really you know be very specific with what you want to say you don't have that oh you know what if my mind goes blank in that moment kind of uh mentality but you got to be careful because recruiters and hiring managers get hundreds of emails every day you do not want your email to go to the bottom of their inbox and then just be able to ignore it right and then um also you can't control how

they're going to read your tone of voice you know when you say over a call you know what I'm struggling with is how could I accept the offer given the Gap in compensation with meta you know if you say it like that it sounds like like you're asking them a genuine question versus if they read that in an email they might read it as well how could I accept this offer you know and you don't want them to to risk being offended right um and I'd say if you're on a time crunch maybe do via

email but if you can do it over a call it it comes off as as more genuine more personable you can really control your tone of voice but look I'm a millennial I don't like phone calls right you know you just have to practice and prepare and um know it's going to be awkward I would always guide clients to treat yourself after making an ass even if it goes badly because that's literally putting your body and mind through a lot of stress so afterwards you know go get a slice of Ki go get a nice

bottle of wine you know celebrate that you did the scary thing um because I think that the more that you do that the less intense those conversations seem yeah it is scary but I guess and and a call is more scary but I guess the good thing in a a call is it's more likely to you've got out the way and you know that you know that it's in process whereas I mean I I for this job I I negotiated um with our founder Max and I sent an email and I think he replied the

next day but that was the longest 24 hours of my life thinking oh my you know what's happened has he he's changed his mind he's not he's not going to want me anymore and so at least with a phone call like yeah you can you can actually get a sent straight away of the reaction and uh right you'll still have to wait probably but maybe it will make that waiting a little bit more bearable yeah and then you won't feel tempted to kind of follow up like are we all good here I don't need the

money anymore you know like you don't you don't have to do that when you're on the call and you know it is it is just like ripping off a Band-Aid right you make that ask you get it over with you move on to the next thing and again more often than not the recruiter will say well I'm GNA take it back to the team can't make any promises but we'll see what happens right and the hiring manager if you're doing the ass with them they'll probably say that but more like you know I might have

to talk to some higher level folks but we can see what we can do right um and as long as you're going into that conversation with that being your goal of them just going back to the team you don't expect them to match it you don't expect them to say on the call yes we can do this right you know if they say yes we can do this you didn't ask for enough right to ask a little bit more um yeah but uh I would definitely say there's pros and cons to both phone and email

so just be thoughtful about the situation and be really mindful if you do an email what you're write right okay yeah cool an that's been uh been really really fun and uh I think hopefully really useful for for people um I'll certainly be watching it uh next time I'm negotiating an offer hopefully won't won't be anytime soon um cool uh yeah thanks thanks for doing this with us um thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it and uh any negotiation questions that you have drop them in the comments below uh I will

try to come by and and see if I can give some feedback oh that would be amazing thanks so much all right [Music] cheers