Negotiation Questions

I'm a new grad with a few job offers but no clue how to negotiate. Hoping some folks with more experience can give some advice here :) My questions are...

- If I don't intend on accepting an offer from a company, but they are known to be open to negotiation, is it ethical/expected to still negotiate and use their increased offer as leverage with other companies? Or should I only negotiate with one company at a time once I've decided on my first choice? I do still care about maintaining good relations with the companies I turn down.

- I've read mixed opinions about whether a reasonable hiring manager would rescind an offer for negotiating. Some people say if this happens, it doesn't matter because the company was kind of toxic to begin with, while others say that you should be okay with the risk of losing an offer for negotiating. What do people think? If there's a company I really like, should I avoid negotiating in order to not risk it? Or go for it no matter what?

- Hypothetically, if I wanted to negotiate an offer from a mid-sized unicorn, is it a good idea to use offers from companies that are known to pay a lot more (Stripe, HFTs, etc.) as leverage even if their offer is $100k-150k more and very unlikely to be matched? Or should I use a more "reasonable" competing offer from a different company that's closer to what I think the limit would be to avoid scaring them away?

- How do you usually decide what a reasonable number to ask for is? I tried using levels.fyi, but I don't know how accurate it is because some of the numbers seem wildly unrealistic (over $100k more for the same new grad position).

- In general, what's the recommended thing to ask for on the first try: more base, more equity, or higher sign-on? Obviously sign-on is less ideal because it's a one time thing, but I assume it would be easier for them to agree on

(Edit: since someone asked, I shared the details of my offers in a different post -
https://us.teamblind.com/s/AsRQcgnJ)

#negotiating #negotiate #offers #facebook #stripe #databricks #citadel #robinhood #nuro #scale