💰 How to negotiate your tech job salary

Many candidates leave money on the table by either not negotiating or doing it in a suboptimal way; don’t be that person.

In this blog, I’ll share practical insights that you can use to ensure you land your next role with the right compensation. Let’s go 🏃

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If you are searching for a new job, one aspect you should be prepared for is handling salary negotiations in a professional and prepared manner.

If you perform well in this phase of the interview loop, you could easily walk away with a better total compensation, which means more income for your savings, future, and family.

As engineers, quite often we feel awkward asking for more, or we don’t know the right way to handle these conversations, leading to suboptimal results. Many engineers don’t even ask, thinking they will come across as greedy and fearing that the job offer may be rescinded.

However, you are not doing any favors to yourself by thinking this way.

In this blog, I’ll help break down principles and tactics from my personal experience and provide you with actionable tips on how you could negotiate your salary the right way.

🗼 4 pillars of negotiation

There are a few key principles in doing salary negotiations the right way. Let’s understand what these are, and then I’ll help you with some helpful simulation prompts to practice handling different situations

⛰️ Get some leverage

If you are negotiating for a better salary, you should understand what leverage you have:

Understanding what leverage you have would help you know how much you can ask or how hard you can negotiate.

Self-reflection on the below would help you self-analyse if you have leverage:

• Do you have a high current compensation that could be used as an anchor point?

• Do you have a competing offer?

• Are you an immediate joiner, or can you join faster than other candidates?

• Do you bring skills and experience to the table that other candidates don’t, or are you a better fit for the role?

• Do you come with a strong referral from an existing employee?

• Did you nail the interview process and come off as a strong candidate?

📊 Always do your market research.

Many candidates appear for interviews without clarifying basic things about the role.

• How long has this role been open?

• Why is the role open?

• How many candidates are in the pipeline?

• What level does this role play in the organization's career framework?

• What is fair pay for this role in this company or roles at similar levels in other companies in the same region or economic zone?

• Who is the final decision maker for this position?

When you speak to the recruiter or hiring manager, clarifying the above questions helps you further in salary negotiations.

How?

Let’s say you are the only candidate in the pipeline and do well, the company may consider paying you a bit more to close the position.

If you know who the final decision maker is, you can leverage this information to request the recruiter to reach out to them once during final negotiations.

Understanding how much other people are making in similar roles could be used during negotiations to provide actual data points and ask for a matching offer.

😶 Don’t reveal your numbers until they make an offer

During initial conversations and also during the interview process, the recruiter, leadership, or hiring manager may ask you for below information.

1. Current or Last drawn compensation

2. Salary expectations

3. Competing offer amounts

You might be expecting this, or this may be a surprise, but revealing this information early in the process does not work in your favor. I’ll discuss some common strategies that you can use to politely deflect.

What’s the harm in being transparent with this information?

• Outside range:

  • If this is the first conversation you are having with the recruiter/hiring manager, and you are outside the range, the recruiter will likely move on to other candidates and drop your profile. You may be okay with this, but this also means you’ll have fewer opportunities to talk to engineers and leaders in other companies. Many times, once the company understands what you bring to the table, they are more flexible on compensation later on.

  • If you reveal these during the interview process and say you are either at the top of their range or outside their range, they may consider offering the job to another candidate who may be within the range and may also be a strong performer.

• Lowball offer:

  • Say your current compensation is 20 Lakhs per annum (LPA), and the company can easily pay 35 LPA for the role. The moment you reveal your current compensation early in the process, the company may give you a 30% hike and offer you 26 LPA. Very few recruiters/hiring managers would pay you the fair starting range.

  • Also, revealing the competing offer amount before the company has offered you may create a lowball scenario. Say you have a competing offer of 28 LPA while the company range starts from 35 LPA. The recruiter may say, We can match the offer and do a little better and offer you 29 LPA. You may think you are getting a better offer, but in reality, you are leaving around 6 LPA on the table.

You may think recruiters and hiring managers are evil for doing this, but this is just how this process works. It’s not personal; if they have an opportunity to save the company some money, they will most certainly take that.

You should anticipate that they will ask you for this information at different stages; it’s their job, you should let them do their job, and ensure you also handle this in a respectful, gracious manner.

You should try to ensure you reach the offer stage and let them make the offer first.

Do this, and you will increase your chances of maximizing your total compensation.

🪫 Don’t set a low anchor

Assume you’ve done some back-and-forths with the recruiter or hiring manager, and they keep pressing for you to reveal your salary information.

Some candidates don’t have a clear number in mind and ask for a lesser amount or a very small increment.

In either scenario, you, as the candidates, end up walking with a lesser amount.

You should always research what salary range the company can offer and the ideal figure you are looking for, and go at least 20-25% higher than that. This ensures you have a high anchor, and the recruiter may attempt to meet you somewhere in the middle.

This strategy does not always work, you have to be mindful of when you can do this versus not.

For example, if you know the company can offer you 25 LPA, asking for 50 LPA will not work out.

🏋️ Practice simulations

The above pillar and advice sound great; however, in reality, the conversations can be very dynamic, and it's a good idea to have some mental hooks on how to respond to different situations.

🤝 Before the offer

Let’s walk through some situations and how you can respond to these.

Remember the key goal here: don’t provide any numbers early on, and try to deflect until you reach the offer stage.

Any numbers you provide at this stage do not work in your favor.

What if they remove you from the pipeline because you did not provide salary information?

🎊 Congratulations, you’ve dodged a huge red flag and bullet. Any recruiter or company that does not have the basic flexibility and plays this hardball early on would probably not be the environment that you would want to work in anyway.

🦜 Initial recruiter conversation

* Smith – imaginary recruiter in this role play

* Neo - best damn candidate on the planet 😉

🪪 Salary expectations?

You would want to convey that you are open and negotiable at this stage and interested in evaluating the opportunity holistically. This sets the right early tone for the process, where the recruiter knows you are savvy.

Recruiter: What are your salary expectations?

Candidate:

1. Hey Smith^*, I’m open and negotiable for the right opportunity

2. (If they press you or follow up again) I’m excited to learn more about the position, meet the team, and understand the challenges and opportunities for me to make an impact, and I'm happy to discuss compensation once we’ve done those

↕️ Tell me your expected range?

Recruiter: Can you provide me with the range or number that you would be comfortable with?

Candidate: Smith, can you tell me a bit more about the salary range for this role?

If they press again.

Recruiter: We need this data to move forward

Candidate: I understand and appreciate your need to get my salary expectations. At this point, I want to learn more about the role, meet the team, and if it's a fit, then happy to discuss salary expectations.

💰 Let them make the offer.

If you’ve done well in the interview process and the recruiter reaches out and lets you know that they are willing to offer and asks about your expectations

Recruiter: Congratulations, Neo. We have decided to offer you and I need your last drawn compensation and expectations to roll out the offer.

Candidate: Smith, if your company believes I’m the right fit, I would love to see an offer in writing and discuss how it aligns with my needs

If they press more, you should push back and understand the rationale.

Recruiter: At this stage, this is a mandatory part of the process to get these numbers

Candidate: Mandatory part?

If they confirm they need the information and cannot proceed, you can push back with

Recruiter: I’ll need this information to roll out the offer; it's part of our process

Candidate: Smith, I just want to understand, has there been a situation where the candidate didn’t provide this information at this stage

Recruiter: This is a stopping point

Candidate: I would need to think about it. I prefer for companies to present the offer first. I don’t want to lose the opportunity, but I would need to think about what those numbers need to be …

And then pause and see if this forces Smith to cave in and come up with the offer.

🔱 Set a high anchor

If you have a tough recruiter at hand, and they are not willing to budge without getting your salary information

Recruiter: Unfortunately, we’ve reached a stopping point. We have other candidates in the pipeline who have provided salary, and I’ve been given a directive from leadership that we need to get this information before

If you want the job, set the anchor high. At least 20% higher than the number that you want.

If you get a surprise reaction from the recruiter

Recruiter: This number is high, this is way out of our range, and I wish you had discussed this before (some emotional reaction)

Candidate:

• I want to thank you again for all your time and effort. As I said earlier. I’m open and negotiable for the right opportunity.

• This is about the number I’m looking for, but I would like to see an offer from your company and see how it can make sense for both of us, because I’m interested, and it sounds like you guys are as well.

🏁 After the offer

If they make a verbal offer, Congratulations, you won the first battle. Get an offer in writing first.

Also, check if there is a deadline.

❌ Don’t say:

Is this negotiable

✅ Instead, say:

Thank you! I’m so excited to be at this stage. I’d like a day or two to discuss this offer that you’ve put on the table for me with my family and get back to you.

You should ideally do the negotiation over a phone call and not via email, as this allows you the opportunity to observe your recruiter's tone and speech to decide where the flexibility lies.

⁉️ Ask open-ended questions

Start by asking open-ended questions.

• Is there flexibility to move the base salary up?

• Is there flexibility to get more stock?

• Is there flexibility to get a sign-on bonus?

🫰 Present your ask

You should know your numbers at the top of your mind before you do this. You can start with

“Based on the value, I believe I’ve demonstrated, and based on my research and what you know about the organization. I’m looking for X amount as total compensation.”

Always go a little high, so that you allow them to meet you in the middle.

If they say the offer is not negotiable, and you know they are not the decision maker, you can say

“I would appreciate it if you could go back and ask on my behalf.”

📐 Know your numbers

If they say you are at the top of the base pay band, you can say,

“Is there potential to get more stock or a sign-on bonus?”

Here, your research matters. You should have the data as a link or screenshot that proves this is a number for this role, company, and level.

❎ General fallbacks

If they ask something that you don’t have an answer to, you can always say something like:

• Let me think about it.

• Can you help me understand where this question is coming from? (in a nice tone)

If they give you an ultimatum like

1. “If I meet these, would you accept the offer on the spot”?

2. “I’ll need a handshake from you now, so that you’ll agree to these no's and sign the offer.”

You should not accept ultimatums, You can say something like:

“It's something I’d strongly consider, I’m happy to be at this stage. It's something that I’d need to discuss with my family.”

Negotiate everything at the same time.

• Get a timeline from the recruiter – when can I expect an answer?

• Do a lot of research – anticipate back and forth with a recruiter.

🎨 Get creative

If they are not giving what you want, you can get creative and see what else can be negotiable. Sometimes, companies have flexibility on these aspects, which may make an impact on your quality of life at the company.

• If the bonus is going to be prorated, can I get the bonus amount for the full year?

• Can I accrue vacation days immediately?

• Can I get an extra 2 weeks of vacation?

Conclusion

I’ll leave you with this thought.

“You can be uncomfortable for 30 mins, knowing you’ll end up with a better offer, or you can be polite, knowing very well you left money on the table”

The choice is yours, my friend!

Let me know if you would like to do a mock interview around these lines.

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Disclosure: I’ll earn a small commission if you decide to purchase some of the educative.io text courses linked in the blog for your learning and growth. Their system design courses and grokking coding interview courses are quite helpful for interview prep.