We've negotiated many Spotify offers this year. Don't leave $100K+ on the table.
Spotify is open to negotiating if you have leverage and set it up right. However, recruiters are very transparent about the fact that they don't pay top of market, and they use this as justification to not match other offers. You need to be prepared to handle this pushback.
- Base Salary
- Spotify Equity Package (see Spotify's RSU vesting schedule below)
- Stock Refreshers
Spotify very rarely offers signing bonuses and if you are successfully able to negotiate one it will be small relative to FAANG offers.
Spotify doesn't offer cash bonuses. The company offers performance-based stock refreshers, but they are not consistent. It is possible to go up to 4 years without a refresher. However, managers do try to give a new grant after 4 years so no employee runs out of equity.
Spotify has remote roles and your Spotify remote salary is based on the country you reside in (most companies have much more granular policies than this). This means that if you live in a low cost of living area you can get a very competitive offer. However, for people in SF/NYC, the offers are well below market rates.
Also, something to keep in mind, most Spotify employees in the US work on Eastern Standard Time regardless of where they live. Sometimes a team may require new hires to move to a city for timezone reasons. However, this is very team dependent.
Most of the time you won't have to relocate given Spotify's Work From Anywhere policy. If you do, Spotify typically offers a relocation package which is equivalent to one month’s salary.
Spotify’s most negotiable component is base salary, which is quite unusual as equity is almost always the most negotiable component at big tech companies. As mentioned previously, it's typically not worth focusing the negotiation on a signing bonus at Spotify.
They very rarely ask for written offers. You are more likely to simply be told that Spotify can't match your competing offer. Some recruiters do ask for additional details regarding the competing offer such as location, offer breakdown, etc.
Spotify does not usually go above band. They tend to differentiate on WLB rather than compensation. You still have other options at your disposal if you want higher compensation (e.g. up-levelling negotiations).
Managers at Spotify have less control over offers (that's mostly run by a comp team). However, building good rapport with your hiring manager is always helpful in a negotiation, as they may be able to advocate on your behalf with recruiters / comp team.
The hiring process at Spotify is different for every role. The hiring process for a software engineer typically has four stages: recruiter call, team interview (LeetCode questions via CoderPad), onsite interview, and offer stage.
Let’s consider a Spotify software engineer salary at the senior level. The total compensation at Apple for the same role/level (i.e. ICT4 software engineer) is much higher compared to Spotify. For instance, top of band at Apple is ~$440K/year + $80K signing, whereas at the same level Spotify's top of band is ~$310K/year.
Spotify's cash and equity components should be the main focus of your negotiation. They provide pretty standard benefits such as health coverage, a retirement plan, and other miscellaneous perks like employee discounts.
Associate Engineer
Engineer I
Engineer II
Senior Engineer
Staff Engineer
Senior Staff Engineer
Principal Engineer
Equivalent Level at Google
L3
L3
Between L3 and L4
Between L4 and L5
L6
L7
Between L8 and L9
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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!
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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.
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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!
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Spotify
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
Spotify
offer possible