Lyft used to be one of the best companies to negotiate with, however purse strings have tightened as a result of the pandemic. We have still helped candidates get significant increases, but you need to setup the right leverage.
- Base salary
- Annual RSUs
- Signing bonus
Lyft has switched from a four-year vesting schedule to single-year vesting plans. Every three months, you will get 25% of the yearly grant. Each year there is a review where a new Lyft equity grant is issued. This has a major drawback of limiting equity upside, but it does also limit downside. Net-net this is worse than companies that offer 4-year plans because you lose the "call option" of locking in lower stock prices in future years.
Lyft does not have any annual bonuses in its compensation plan. Instead, they offer very competitive base salaries. That said, you can and should use performance bonuses in competing offers to negotiate a higher offer.
Like most tech companies, Lyft's compensation varies depending on which region you are located in. However, Lyft currently does not hire for fully remote positions. It is possible to transition to a fully remote role at Lyft after you start, but it is rare.
The majority of team members have the option to work a hybrid schedule consisting of three in-office days and two work-from-anywhere days.
Lyft offers a comprehensive benefits package with a very strong relocation offering. They offer up to $40k for international relocation and a competitive domestic relocation package.
The most flexible aspect of Lyft's compensation package is RSUs. For example, T5 annual equity in 2021 ranged from $640k to $880k. Lyft’s sign on bonus also has quite a wide range with T5 offers starting at $0 and going up to $100k.
Recruiters at Lyft heavily weight competing offers but rarely ask for cross offers in writing. Instead, recruiters will often ask for details about your cross offers (breakdown, location, level, comp) and will use differences in things like location as justification for not matching other offers.
Even if you have significant leverage, such as a very strong competing offer or a promotion at your current company, Lyft almost never goes above band. Fortunately, Lyft’s compensation bands are quite wide and there are other ways around this (e.g. upleveling).
The compensation package for each candidate is primarily determined by the hiring committee at Lyft. As a result, your relationship with the hiring manager will have less impact at Lyft. However, we always advise building a positive relationship with your hiring manager as they can often help with timeline extensions and Lyft level change requests.
Lyft’s hiring process typically consists of 4 stages: phone interview, first round interview, second round interview and offer stage.
The first interview will be conducted over the phone and will contain general questions regarding your background and experience.
The next two rounds of interview will assess your technical skills.
Lastly, if you succeed and a Lyft offer package is extended, this is where your Lyft salary negotiation process will begin.
Let’s consider a Lyft software engineer salary. The Lyft equity package and Uber equity package are quite comparable. At first glance, Lyft’s base pay appears to be higher compared to Uber, but that is offset as Lyft does not offer annual bonuses. On aggregate, the total Lyft salary for a software engineer is quite similar to an Uber software engineering comp package.
While Lyft’s signing bonus, RSUs and base pay should be the focus of your Lyft offer negotiation, there are other perks that are offered by the company. They also provide health benefits (including vision and dental insurance), a health savings account, maternity and paternity leave, as well as a gym discount. In addition to that, they also have ESPP, Roth 401k and mega backdoor Roth IRA in place. And of course, employee discounts for Lyft’s services are also available.
T3
T4
T5
T6
T7
T8
Equivalent Level at Google
L3
L4
L5 - L5.5
L5.5 - L6.5
L6.5 - L7.5
L7.5 - L8.5
Our Clients Love Rora
Coming from a non-FAANG background, I was shocked to find out how much I could be earning. Before I signed up with Rora, I made the mistake of telling Amazon my current compensation. Thankfully, Rora knew exactly how to fix it and ended up getting me an offer that was 2.3X what I previously made and more than $600K higher than Amazon’s initial offer!
Through several weeks of interviews, Ganesh was always available to make sure I knew what to say for each conversation. I interviewed with start ups, Google, Facebook and Amazon and was really impressed that Rora knew the comp ranges and were able to give me tailored advice for each – even the start ups.
There ended up being two particularly complex moments in my negotiation. One of the start-ups I had a personal relationship with and I wasn’t sure how it would affect the negotiation. I like that there was a focus on my individual circumstances and that they were leveraged to get me a higher offer. The other situation is that Amazon made a mistake on my written offer and initially wouldn’t rectify it. Ganesh was able to guide me through a challenging conversation to get it resolved.
Thanks to Wilson and the team at Rora I got a ~$250K increase on my remote Facebook offer! I was initially worried I wouldn’t have much leverage because Facebook reached out to me, and I wasn’t interviewing anywhere else. Rora introduced me to an Amazon L7 recruiter and helped me get that process started. I didn’t even end up needing to finish the Amazon interviews, since we were able to use some early compensation conversations to justify our numbers to Facebook.
At one point I was also considering pushing for an E7 role, and they wrote up a great script for me to broach the subject with my recruiter. She ended up giving me the option to do an additional interview to be considered for the higher-level position.
The whole process was very smooth, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use the service for any future negotiations. I found the regular calls with Wilson where we walked through strategy and discussed the scripts to be extremely helpful. Not only did it help with this negotiation, but I also learned a lot of useful negotiation tactics that I’ve already started to use in other situations.
As an engineering leader with decades of experience and having now gone through the negotiation with the team at Rora, the only thing I can say is — get the help. Whether you realize you need it, or even if you think you don’t. Just because you have done well in engineering doesn't mean that you understand the tactics and limits of the recruiting process.
Rora helped me get a $200K increase on my original Facebook offer without any competing offers. It was clear that Rora was deeply familiar with Facebook's negotiation playbook. I’d honestly give the experience an 11/10.
In addition, Rora guided me on how to get the position switched to a revised remote role which was a huge deal at a personal level. They showed me how to redirect FB’s questions so that I could explore the possibility of not relocating, without ever having to say no to my original offer.
This is my first FAANG role and I'm so happy I worked with Rora (thanks again Annie!) for the negotiation. My goal was to increase my Google offer, but I was in a tricky situation where I only had 1 other interview (no offer yet) at a small startup. With their guidance, I managed to get a $240K increase on my Google offer, despite Google's policy of requiring cross offers in writing to justify an increase.
The mock negotiations were a big part of why I was able to get this increase. Going into the negotiation, I assumed the key factor was what to say but I quickly learned that how you say it is equally if not more important. This was clear when over the course of the call"no" turned into "I'll see what I can do" and eventually"I think we can make this work". A big part of this was also having someone with me on the calls to provide real time guidance. This took a lot of the stress out of the situation. I can't recommend this team highly enough!
After receiving several job offers, I needed to make a decision within a few days. I wanted to make sure I was getting the best offer possible, so I decided to use Rora. I was very pleased with their service. My coach, Sameer, was well prepared and had information about what compensation increases were likely possible. He provided detailed scripts covering a range of scenarios, and he did practice negotiations with me that helped me feel confident when I had the actual conversations.
With his help I was able to increase one offer by $45k per year plus get a $50k signing bonus and then use that to increase my offer from Square, which was my first choice. All throughout he was very responsive as I was dealing with some tight deadlines and looking to wrap things up quickly. Rora's fee was only a tiny fraction of the increase they helped me negotiate, and even though they would have made more money if I had taken the highest offer, Sameer always put my goals first and never pressured me to do so. I highly recommend Rora!
My friend introduced me to Rora and I’m so glad they did. I initially did some calculations to see if working with them would be worth it - my final increase ended up being ~3x higher than what I had estimated to be possible!
Their data is much more accurate than anything I found online. Without Sameer's guidance, I would have never known (and would have probably been too nervous) to ask for >$800K for anAmazon L7 offer. Of course, it's not just not enough to throw out a big number, you also need to be able to justify it. Sameer guided me through negotiating an up-level at another company, which I didn’t even know was possible at my level. With their scripts, I was able to leverage my competing offer to get exec approval for my Amazon offer. They also knew all the tricks Amazon would play (e.g., assuming 15% stock appreciation) and exactly how to counter them.
My total 4-year compensation increased by $570K. I don't think I've ever had a higher ROI – I’m very thankful that this service exists!
Lyft
has a unique set of negotiation policies. If you don’t have experience negotiating with them, you risk losing out on large amounts of money because of very small mistakes.
There are many of these rules you need to know to get the highest
Lyft
offer possible