Amazon Software Engineering Manager

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

First off, compensation data is constantly changing and Amazon has made significant modifications to its compensation approach in 2022. For example - Amazon fundamentally changed how they structure offers with the removal of their artificially low base salary caps.

While we believe that knowledge is power and always recommend collecting compensation data ahead of negotiating, it’s often not enough on its own. You can go tell your Amazon recruiter that you read online the top of the 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 create leverage.

Often - leverage comes from having higher offers from other great companies - so you can tell your recruiter that you’re considering other options but would prefer Amazon if the compensation is comparable. This 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.

Another option for creating leverage is through what we call “conducting research leverage” after you receive an offer – essentially, taking time to interview the company and the people you’ll be working with. Doing this helps you collect more information about how and where you can be impactful, and can slow down the negotiation process – which gives you time to collect other offers, do more market research, and build the company’s interest in getting you to sign. 

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 compensation team operates like a bureaucracy where only through trial and error can you figure out how to reliably increase your compensation.