Senior Software Engineers and Engineering Managers: Improve your job offer with expert salary negotiation coaching
Full-service salary negotiation coaching: Negotiate your job offer with personal help and actionable advice
Full-service salary negotiation coaching: Negotiate your job offer with personal help and actionable advice
You're on the clock. You finally got a job offer from a company you would like to work with, and they want to know if you're ready to accept it.
You think you can command a higher salary and a better compensation package, but you just don't know how to negotiate these things in your job offer.
How do you counter their job offer? What if you ask for too much? What if you leave money on the table by asking for too little? What if they retract the job offer? How do you know what to do and if you're doing it correctly?
Imagine this...
That's exactly how Justin felt when we worked together to negotiate his Amazon offer. He has earned an additional $74,000 per year so far—that's $220,000 and counting!
I'm Josh Doody, a professional salary negotiation coach who helps Senior Software Engineers and Engineering Managers get more job offers and negotiate higher salaries. Software Developers at Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, @WalmartLabs, Zillow, Kimberly-Clark, Bloomberg, Red Hat, Verizon, IBM, Microsoft, and other companies you've heard of have benefited from my full-service salary negotiation coaching.
How does this work? When you work with me, you'll have me working behind the scenes to negotiate your salary for you. You can rest assured you won't leave any compensation—monetary or non-monetary—on the table.
Having a professional involved allows me to not overthink and overanalyze the process. I can throw out ideas, have them approved or not, without having to spend hours and hours agonizing over the decision tree. With Josh’s help, I negotiated $30k more salary, $50k more bonus, and $100k more equity. I always try and convince folks to hire Josh. I consider myself above average at negotiation (and some of that was learned from Josh and his book), but I would still much rather have the guidance of a professional to get the max comp offer and peace of mind.
Josh Johnson
Staff Software Engineer
Opendoor
I was able to almost double my sign-on bonus and equity, resulting in a $100,000 increase over the original offer in year one total compensation and a total increase of $405,000 over five years. If I had taken the original offer, reaching my retirement savings objective would be delayed by seven years!
I’d recommend working with Josh at a certain comp level. As the numbers get bigger, you need more professional support. I hired a financial advisor when my retirement savings approached $1 million. Same thing here.
Zach
Principal Product Manager
Microsoft
I’ve never negotiated an extra dollar for myself in any job offer or raise, and I had tried a couple times before. The fact that Josh helped me get an additional $74,000 was amazing. It wasn’t unexpected to get more money, but it was unexpected to get that much more money.
Justin Garrison
Software Development Advocate
Amazon
When I considered hiring Josh to help me negotiate, I had concerns that the company wouldn’t move from their initial offer. Given the amounts I was looking at for this job transition, I decided the initial fee was worth the risk and I expected I’d learn a lot in the process, so considered it a form of tuition. The initial offer was in the $400k range. We negotiated a first-year improvement of more than $50k, which includes improvements in salary, equity and signing bonus. I learned a lot and I’m very confident I came out ahead. I don’t think I would have asked for what we did on my own.
Anonymous
Senior Software Engineer
L5
Working with Josh went great! I thought I could maybe get a 10% improvement on my own. Together we ended up close to a 20% improvement on an offer that was in the mid six-figures. I didn’t think they’d go that high. I was so stoked. In fact, my message to Josh when I got the offer “holy s&#t. [number redacted for privacy reasons] total. i’m accepting.”
Anonymous
With Josh’s help, I negotiated increased offers from Facebook, Amazon and GitHub. GitHub was the lowest offer, but they came up quite a lot with a $25k signing bonus, a $15k increase in salary, and a $32k annual increase in equity. The offers got close enough to each other that I could decide based on other more intangible factors and choose the opportunity that was the most compelling for me personally.
Jamie
Senior Software Engineer
GitHub
Josh provided the insight and guidance I needed to be confident throughout the negotiation process. I know that because I had Josh’s help, I asked for more that I would have on my own. I negotiated $20,000 more in salary and a substantial increase in equity.
Josh also put my own desires ahead of his own; there was a part of the negotiation process where he could have tried to influence me in a direction that would result in a larger fee for himself. Instead he discussed the options with me, provided me with enough information, and encouraged me to make the decision that was best for me.
Wayne B.
Staff Software Engineer
L6
I didn’t want to get too emotionally involved in the negotiation — not too confident, not too timid. Having Josh as an experienced coach by my side was an important check on my emotional involvement and I learned a lot about negotiation strategy. I negotiated for an additional $24,000 and large upside potential in bonuses. Josh helps you get not only the best deal, but also the fairest one for all parties.
William
Chief Revenue Officer
Depending upon the complexity of the situation and your needs, the strategy fee is between $3,000 and $6,000. The strategy fee is for all aspects of your salary negotiation. It ensures that I can build and execute the best possible strategy for each and every client.
The result fee is due only when we improve your job offer, and is 10% of the improvement to your first-year compensation that we negotiate.
The result fee is to ensure that our incentives are aligned throughout our engagement and to help us both share directly in the results. Sometimes, a company is very flexible and will significantly improve their offer through negotiation. Sometimes they are inflexible and their first offer is also their best offer. We cannot know which case applies to your offer until we negotiate, and the result fee enables us to work together knowing that we will share in the result.
You keep 90% of the negotiated first-year compensation improvement, and I collect the remaining 10%.
Your strategy fee and result fee will be paid after we complete our work, and I have a 100% satisfaction money back guarantee.
Once you sign and return your Letter of Engagement, we'll get started by scheduling your kickoff call. During this call, we will discuss your specific situation in detail and lay out our strategy for negotiating your offer.
I'll negotiate your salary behind the scenes, consulting with you every step of the way to provide the best strategy to negotiate the best version of your job offer.
Once we conclude our engagement, we will calculate the result fee—10% of the improvement in your first-year compensation—and arrange payment.
Jonathan was a Senior Software Engineer with lots of experience working for big-time tech companies. He was ready for a change, so he applied for Senior Engineering roles at Amazon and Tesla. He quickly got two job offers, but they were both very disappointing.
He reached out and asked if I could help.
Since the offers were both disappointing, I recommended that we get Amazon and Tesla to improve the offers before we began negotiating. If they would improve the offers from 'disappointing' to 'negotiable', then we could go to work.
After a few days, both companies came back to Jonathan with significantly better offers. Now we had room to work!
One tricky aspect of each offer was that they were very heavily focused on RSUs—Restricted Stock Units—which is common for public tech companies. Amazon caps base salary for most employees, and they offer RSUs as their primary negotiation lever once that base salary cap is reached.
RSUs can potentially be very valuable, but it's difficult to impute a present value on them in order to compare the value of the RSUs to, say, base salary or a signing bonus.
Through a careful analysis of the job offer and current market conditions, I was able to estimate the present value of the RSUs and help Jonathan negotiate on the two dimensions he cared most about: his base salary and RSUs.
We were able to significantly improve both of Jonathan's job offers from Amazon and Tesla so that he had a difficult decision to make.
With the hard work of negotiating behind us, we turned our focus to comparing the two opportunities on several dimensions to help Jonathan determine which opportunity was right for him.
In the end, he chose Tesla for the work environment, greater opportunity to work on new technology and manage a team, and better compensation.
By investing in salary negotiation coaching, Jonathan was able to improve his first-year compensation by $80,000.
Here's what Jonathan had to say about the experience of working together:
I would highly recommend Josh as a salary negotiation coach because has the knowledge and experience of what it takes to maximize your salary and total compensation.
I was expecting job offers from Amazon and Tesla, and I wanted to be confident I got the best offer from each company so I could make the right decision. I considered just handling it myself, but decided I would rather work with an experienced coach and expert with whom I could discuss all aspects of the positions and corresponding offers.
What a great decision!
Approachable, knowledgeable, available
Josh is very approachable and knowledgeable about the entire process and was able to provide possible next steps that were very accurate. He made himself available for calls and was very quick responding to emails with thorough, specific guidance on what to write or say at each stage in the negotiations. He was there to answer even the smallest of questions.
Josh took time to research specific questions related to both positions and the intricacies of the salary and total compensation discussions for both companies. The offers I got were very different offers, and he took the time to break them down into components so we could negotiate effectively and do an apples-to-apples comparison so I could make the best decision.
A great investment
I would highly recommend Josh as a salary negotiation coach because has the knowledge and experience of what it takes to maximize your salary and total compensation. He is also highly approachable and made himself available on very short notice.
Josh added value by making me confident when performing salary negotiations and showing me how to take the right steps in the process. He was professional and honest during the entire process.
This was a great investment.
Jonathan | Joined Tesla, earning an additional $80,000 his first year
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If you're a Senior Software Engineer or Engineering Manager expecting to negotiate with a big tech company in the next few weeks, then 1-on-1 Salary Negotiation Coaching could be perfect for you. Let's schedule a brief intro call to talk about your situation and whether Salary Negotiation Coaching might be a good fit!
You can an extensive list of questions and detailed answers here: Salary Negotiation Coaching: Common Questions and Answers
These are a few of the most frequently asked questions that may be helpful...
Yes! You don't need to be an experienced negotiator to benefit from negotiating your salary. With this salary negotiation coaching, you'll be totally prepared for every conversation, and even have word-for-word scripts to use every step of the salary negotiation process.
I can definitely help, although 1-on-1 coaching may not be your best option depending on your budget and timeline.
Let's schedule a brief intro call to talk about your situation and whether Salary Negotiation Coaching might be a good fit!
You won't pay any fees until we complete our work, and I have a 100% satisfaction money back guarantee. In other words, you'll only pay if you're satisfied with our engagement.
Working with Josh was amazing and I have already recommended him to several other engineers. Having someone who knows how these companies operate and what normal looks like in a hiring process was one of the most valuable things to me. We negotiated $30,000 additional total comp. My comp when I started working with Josh was $165k annually. My new comp is 2.5x that amount. I don’t know what to do with the extra money. I guess I’m going to invest it and maybe donate some to non profits I’m affiliated with.
Anonymous
Software Engineer
L5
Amazon AWS
I weighed the cost/benefit of hiring Josh. There are other far less expensive options and I believe I could have done pretty well negotiating myself, but you tend to “get what you pay for”.
The process was enjoyable, Josh was quick to help, and the results were strong. I ended up with a $50k+ increase in compensation year one and I have a good four-year outlook that I’m happy with.
Leonardo
Senior Manager
Amazon
My past negotiations have honestly been terrible where I never felt like I had the upper hand. Josh’s coaching gave me confidence in the negotiation process. Because I knew Josh had gone through this before, I knew I wasn’t asking anything too crazy / offensive of Apple. We ended up negotiating $35,000 more in base salary, $300,000 more total equity (vesting over four years), and $25,000 more sign on bonus.
Anonymous
Software Engineering Manager
Apple
The $3000 upfront fee was my biggest concern about hiring Josh. I was worried that maybe Google would be unwilling to negotiate or perhaps even rescind the offer and I would end up with nothing. I ended up negotiating more equity (and it more than covered the coaching fee). I know that I got the best possible offer. I also learned about negotiation strategy and how to handle this situation in the future.
Julian Diaz
Software Engineer
I found myself in a surprise situation with the company saying “we don’t negotiate offers” after I already hired Josh. It had me afraid that I wasted the $5k fee. Josh helped me navigate a “non-negotiation” to communicate my desired outcome and achieve something workable without endangering the interaction by making it sound too much like a negotiation. I received $30k (>10%) more salary, $50k more equity, and a $42k signing bonus. I completed the process with high confidence that I had the best possible outcome.
Anonymous
Staff Software Engineer
L4
Josh helped me negotiate with Alphabet to get an additional $160k in annual compensation.
It’s like professional sports — if you don’t have film on your opponent and you go into a game without any scouting report, you’re in big trouble. Josh has ‘the film’ on Alphabet and other tech companies. He knows who you’re dealing with and that’s a huge advantage.
Bringing on Josh made a huge difference for me — no way I would have ended up with that number without his help. Whether you’re a mid-level engineer or an executive — to me it’s a no brainer to work with Josh.
Taylor
Executive
Alphabet
“I wanted to maximize offer value and come off as a professional when asking for more money. I wasn’t sure if I’d get an ROI from hiring Josh, given the high cost.
Josh gave me great email drafts and talking points. I negotiated $75k more in salary and a $25k bonus. It’s good to know I’m valued at the company and helps with my motivation.”
K. S.
Software Engineering Manager
I’d heard the company I wanted to join made strong but fairly inflexible offers, and so I thought there may not be enough room to negotiate to make up for the up-front coaching fee. But I decided to work with Josh anyway and got a great outcome. The company made a strong initial offer and with Josh’s help, we added an additional $100k in bonuses — a $50k signing bonus and a $50k second-year bonus.
Martin
Staff Software Engineer
a fintech unicorn
The biggest risk is not taking any risk. Most of my friends were reluctant for me to work with a salary negotiation coach. They thought I was crazy because I had to pay a lot in fees for the service. However, I took a risk and guess what? I received more money from the company than I expected. For my first year, I am receiving $35,000 more for my sign-on bonus and a few thousand more in equity.
Jane
Sr. Product Manager – Technical
Amazon
It's time to decide: Are you ready to get paid what you're worth so you can finally afford those things you've been putting off? This is your chance to finally make the downpayment on that house or plan the family vacation you've been dreaming of.
On average, Senior Software Engineers and Engineering Managers I work with improve their job offers by $47,273. And other professionals—marketers, coding school instructors, and others—improve their job offers by $12,231.
If you're ready to invest in yourself, this is your chance to avoid leaving money on the table.
Salary negotiation coaching works. The testimonials and results from other Software Developers are the outcomes we're aiming for when we work together to negotiate your salary and help you get paid what you're worth worth.
You don't get many opportunities to change jobs and negotiate a significantly higher salary. Don't miss out on your chance to negotiate a higher salary at your next job.
All the best
Josh
I'm Josh Doody, a professional salary negotiation coach who helps Senior Software Engineers and Engineering Managers get more job offers and negotiate higher salaries. Software Developers at Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, @WalmartLabs, Zillow, Kimberly-Clark, Bloomberg, Red Hat, Verizon, IBM, Microsoft, and other companies you've heard of have benefited from my full-service salary negotiation coaching.
How does this work? When you work with me, you'll have me working behind the scenes to negotiate your salary for you. You can rest assured you won't leave any compensation—monetary or non-monetary—on the table.
In that case, I recommend Salary Negotiation Mastery to help you negotiate the best compensation package possible without endangering your offer. Learn more here: Salary Negotiation Mastery
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