Amazon Software Engineer

So now you've got the comp data, are you ready to negotiate? Not quite.

First off, comp data is constantly changing and Amazon made significant modifications to its compensation approach in 2022. Early 2022 numbers are already coming in higher than the 2021 numbers listed above, and it’s critical to know the full range for each component to optimize your negotiation. Amazon also fundamentally changed how they structure offers with the removal of their artificially low base salary caps. But even more than that, many people think knowing the compensation data is the most important part of a negotiation, but it’s not. You can go tell your Amazon recruiter that you read online the top of band is $X and you want that number, but in 90% of cases that won’t work. So what will?

Companies negotiate when they believe you won’t accept their offer. But, since you just finished a long and arduous interview process with them, they know you are likely to accept the job unless you have higher competing offers from other great companies.

This means you need to create leverage and make it believable that you are considering other options but would prefer Amazon if the compensation is comparable. This sounds easy but quickly becomes challenging if you don’t have other offers or if your other offers aren’t higher than the top of band comp numbers you are targeting.

Assuming you do have a higher competing offer (i.e. above your top of band target) from another good company, the negotiation can still be surprisingly difficult. Amazon has many unusual policies. For example, they by default assume 15% stock appreciation in their offers - though they don't openly disclose it. This means they will claim to have "matched" a competing offer when in fact their offer is much lower. There are multiple rules like this at Amazon, and the strategies that we've found work best to get around them are often not intuitive. In our experience, Amazon's comp team operates like a bureaucracy where through trial and error you can figure out how to reliably turn specific pieces of information (inputs) into your target output.