I had an interview with a company and was told at the end of the interview I will be getting an offer. We have a phone call on Monday "to discuss next steps". Salary will likely come up. I'll list some context that may be relevant to salary, and then and list some questions about salary discussions Relevant info that can affect salary: * I am a college senior graduating in a month from a state university. I double majored in computer science and applied math. I have one internship * the company is a very large Healthcare company that runs many hospitals * I got the interview by winning first place in a kaggle-like competition they held where I created a machine learning model to predict something in a dataset they provided * I have no other offers, and have time pressure since I graduate in a month. I am waiting to hear back from a web dev company, and will likely get an offer, but do not want to take it. I have a phone screen with a tech startup on Monday. I recently had an onsite at Google, but was rejected, but I think I was close * the company is in the NYC area. (You can probably piece together the company name given info in this post, but don't say it) * They seem very interested. I have many side projects and hackathon wins, so they asked me to make a presentation on my side projects, which they were impressed by. In the end, he was really selling the job hard to me. He said "I know you're going to get other offers, and want to address and concerns you have about working here" * The job is working on the innovation team creating new products. They also mentioned they want me to come up with ideas and projects for them. (I have some health related, hackathon winning projects they were impressed by) Given how interested they are, I feel like I have a significant amount of negotiation leverage. However, looking in glass door, though I can't find software engineer salaries, salaries for other roles are a lot lower than I would imagine. If I were to estimate a salary that I think is fair and would be happy with, I would say 100k. Questions: * Is this too high of a salary to consider fair? * if they ask what I'm expecting, how should I respond? * if I absolutely have to state a number, what should I say? I'm thinking 110k, but I'm scared that's too high and will scare them off. Thoughts?
1. I know any random new grads at Salesforce can make above 100k, so assuming NYC pays the same as SF, i don't think it's too high 2. I usually tell them that I wouldn't even think twice for X + some magnitude of $10k 3. That's the hard part of being a new grad, you really don't have leverage. Your only leverage is another offer or doing post grad. If you can make the company believe that you're willing to walk, then you have leverage. However, be prepared for them to call your bluff.
They do believe I have other offers and that I am willing to walk (I of course have done nothing to correct this misconception) and have shown they want to hire me, and are willing to make accommodations to try to make it attractive to me. I live a bit far from the job location, and they bought up the possibility of getting me a company paid for apartment that's closer (it was more of a just-throwing-ideas-out-there tone) Let's say I get this other offer I'm 90% sure I'll be getting shortly, so I do have the ability to walk. How do I use this?
Is there signing bonus? $110k base doesn’t seem too crazy. Our college hires get around that with crazy sign in bonuses and like $100k or more RSUs.
They have not stated any numbers yet. That'll happen on Monday. Making this post so I can be prepared before-hand I definitely won't be making Microsoft levels of compensation though
My most important question of the post isn't getting answered, which is what should I say if they ask what I'm expecting? Dodge or say number, and if the latter, what number?
Dodge.. don't say 100k. Let them say the first number.
This might help https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/
This post is nice!
Unfortunately you have no leverage and most likely will have to go with whatever they offer. I’d say don’t overthink this.
Should I attempt to negotiate? I accepted my internship salary without much resistance due to this mindset, but later learned all my fellow interns negotiated and had higher salaries, despite being in the exact same situation as me, so I regretted not negotiating. So this time, I want to avoid the same mistake but don't know the right balance
You can always ask for more, they will not rescind your offer. Worst that can happen is they say no