LinkedIn & Google Data Scientist Salary Negotiation

Disclaimer: We’ve anonymized the names to protect our clients confidentiality.

Harold has been working as a data scientist for a couple years in the Bay Area. In recruiting, Harold gets two offers - one from LinkedIn and one from Google. The challenge is that these two offers are coincidentally very similar - they are both ~$190k to $210k in annual compensation but LinkedIn includes a $40K signing bonus.

A common negotiating tactic companies use is a verbal policy that they can only change offers if a higher counter offer is presented. Let’s say you have two offers. Company A’s policy is that they will not increase their offer until you show what Company B is offering. Company B has the same policy, so your best offer is simply the higher of the two.

In this scenario candidates typically feel powerless to do anything, we call this the “Blocked Syndrome.” In Harold’s negotiation, Google applies this tactic. Therefore his intuition is to share the LinkedIn offer with Google. This will only result in a $40K signing bonus from Google and no change in the LinkedIn offer.

LinkedIn also attempts another negotiating tactic, applying arbitrary offer deadlines. After spending some time speaking to his potential LinkedIn team members the recruiter emails Harold:

"I previously mentioned to you our offer deadline was last Friday and since I didn't hear from you the offer expired."

The Results

With LinkedIn being Harold's preferred choice, he is obviously shaken by this response. He considers trying to accept the offer immediately. Using Rora, Harold is able to do three things:

• Navigate the offer deadline and get a 1 week extension
• Get LinkedIn to increase their offer without sharing Google’s
• Stay objective when the negotiation gets stressful from company pressure

Using arguments prepared by Rora, LinkedIn provides an offer that is an 18% increase annually and includes the $40K signing bonus. Harold is happy with this increase and ready to accept the offer. However, Rora has the experience that Harold does not so we advised him to do one final negotiation. With one final script, we helped Harold attain an additional $15K signing bonus to accept the offer which he then accepted. 

Using Rora, Harold increased his offer by 21% in total compensation.

To Learn More About Rora

If you want to learn more about our negotiation tactics and market data, go to www.teamrora.com/learn.