We've negotiated many Netflix offers this year. Don't leave $100K+ on the table.
Great pay but not great to negotiate with.
Netflix pays competitively at the initial offer stage (rarely lowballs), but is also known for putting candidates in "take it or leave it" situations. This can make Netflix negotiations quite tricky. That said, we have helped clients lock in significant increases with negotiation strategies tailored for Netflix specifically, so it certainly is possible to negotiate with them.
- Base salary
- You are eligible to allocate a % of your salary to purchase a special class of Netflix stock options.
This article has a good overview of Netflix's Stock Option Plan. The option plan is very different from equity offered by other big tech companies. It's important to spend time to make sure you fully understand Netflix's compensation package and whether allocating a% of your salary makes sense in your specific situation.
Annual bonuses are not included in Netflix’s comp. Instead, Netflix offers very competitive base salaries.
Despite negative comments about remote work from CEO Reed Hastings, Netflix has churned out a large set of remote job positions over the past year.
Netflix’s remote salary is also one of the best remote compensation packages. Remote offers typically range from 80-100% of Los Gatos comp depending on the location. New York and Boston are both100% and Seattle is 90%.
Netflix offers a very generous relocation package to fully cover your move. This is customized for each person's situation.
At Netflix you negotiate total compensation and then select your breakdown. This is a result of their unique compensation structure. It's important to make sure you are factoring in all possible components of competing offers when comparing total comp.
Recruiters rarely ask for proof of competing offers in writing at Netflix. They will, however, ask questions to better understand what other options you have in order to go back to the team to secure an increase.
If you crush your Netflix interviews and conduct a great negotiation, it is possible to get approval for an above band offer.
Netflix places heavy emphasis on interview performance and hiring manager scores will impact your initial offer. After that, your offer will primarily be decided by the Netflix compensation committee. A strong hiring manager relationship can tip the scale in a Netflix negotiation, so it's certainly worth cultivating.
Netflix’s hiring process typically has 4 stages: pre-screen with a recruiter, phone interview, onsite interview and offer stage.
The pre-screen interview will be conducted over the phone and will contain general questions regarding cultural fit, your background and experience. The Netflix recruiter will send you a link to and walkthrough the Netflix values page.
The second phone interview will assess your technical skills and will often be conducted by the hiring manager.
The last stage of interviewing is the onsite interview. Due to Covid-19, this may be conducted online but a typical onsite interview is divided into two part. The first part comprises of four technical interviews and a human resources interview. The second part is less technical and consists of talking to two directors. This part will mostly be about determining your cultural fit.
Lastly, if you succeed and a Netflix offer is extended, this is where your Netflix salary negotiation process will begin.
Let’s consider a Netflix software engineer salary. Netflix traditionally only had 1 level, senior software engineer (new grad was only recently added). Hence, there is a lot of variability in the salary ranges at the same level. They also only have base salary and allocation of a % of your salary towards stock options. Hence, Netflix’s base salary is much higher as compared to Apple and Amazon.
Overall Netflix is known to have one of the highest compensation packages in the industry, but the gap has been narrowing.
While Netflix’s base pay should be the focus of your 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, onsite fitness classes, as well as a gym discount. In addition to that, they also have ESPP, Roth 401k and mega backdoor Roth IRA in place.
New Grad Engineer
Senior Engineer
Equivalent Level at Google
L3
L5 to L8
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!
Netflix
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
Netflix
offer possible