Career Negotiations Podcast

Amazon Salary Negotiation - How to Navigate an Amazon Offer Negotiation

• Brandon Bramley

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Are you about to negotiate an Amazon job offer? In this episode, I break down compensation at Amazon, then walk you through my proven step-by-step Amazon salary negotiation strategies and highlight some common mistakes to avoid during an Amazon offer negotiation.

That way you have salary negotiation tips that are based on hundreds of salary negotiations and actually work.

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WHO AM I

I'm Brandon, the Founder and Lead Negotiator at TheSalaryNegotiator.com. As a former corporate negotiator, I now help employees increase their compensation. Through hundreds of salary negotiations, I've helped career professionals secure over $175 million in additional compensation. My expertise is backed by more than 150 five-star reviews from career professionals on Google and Trustpilot.

Brandon Bramley:

Amazon provides competitive compensation and perks to their employees, but how do you know if your job offer is competitive before accepting with Amazon?

Brandon Bramley:

In this episode, my goal is to cover everything you need to confidently navigate an Amazon salary negotiation. I'll first cover the compensation structure at Amazon so you know more about Amazon's base salary, bonus, equity package and sign-up bonuses in their job offers. That way, you know exactly what to expect in the offer. Then I'm going to walk you through my five recommended steps for negotiating an Amazon job offer that are proven through real Amazon salary negotiations that I've led for my clients. That way you can filter out some of the bad advice out there and use salary negotiation strategies that actually work with Amazon. And I'll close out the episode by highlighting three common mistakes you should avoid in an Amazon salary negotiation (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/resource-center/how-to-negotiate-your-amazon-job-offer). That way you don't risk the opportunity and do actually secure competitive compensation. So let's get into it. Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel If you're new here. My name is Brandon Bramley and I'm the founder and lead negotiator at thesalarynegotiator. com. I provide professional job offer negotiation coaching, salary negotiation courses and tools to help professionals like you navigate the negotiation process and secure competitive compensation. I'm not just a career coach or recruiter giving out generic salary negotiation advice. There's already enough bad advice floating around online. Instead, I personally led hundreds of salary negotiations across various roles, helping my clients secure hundreds of millions more in compensation. My background is actually in strategic negotiations, and my goal is to debunk the bad advice out there and give you proven negotiation strategies that are actually going to work and help you earn more. So if you're a career professional looking to earn competitive pay, subscribe here for actionable tips and, when you're ready to take your negotiations to the next level, visit thesalarynegotiator. com for coaching (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/), courses (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/courses) and tools (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/salary-negotiation-templates) designed to help you negotiate the best possible offer.

Brandon Bramley:

Now, before we dive into how to negotiate an Amazon job offer, let's talk about the compensation components. It's really important to understand the difference between base salary and total compensation at Amazon. Too many people focus only on the base salary for the role, but that's just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to pay at Amazon. When you consider a move to Amazon, you need to look at the whole picture, which is your total monetary take home pay, also known as total compensation. This is gonna include your base salary, the value of your vesting equity each year and two sign-on bonuses at Amazon. Now you'll find three core compensation components in an Amazon job offer. First, there's the Amazon base salary. This is your consistent guaranteed pay that you'll see in every paycheck at Amazon. It only changes with promotions or the merit increase each year, since it's a set rate, so don't expect any big changes and you should be familiar with this one.

Brandon Bramley:

Second, you'll receive equity at Amazon. Your initial Amazon equity package comes in the form of RSUs, which are restricted stock units. These represent actual ownership of Amazon stock. These RSUs are subject to a staggered four-year Amazon vesting schedule. This means the Amazon equity will vest over a four-year period in different annual increments, meaning you'll receive 5% of your RSUs in year one, 15% in year two, 40% in year three and the final 40% in your year four. You don't get the value of Amazon equity up front, but you do share in the value of fluctuations over that period. So the good thing is is the Amazon stock price goes up, so does the value of your equity. The bad thing is is the flip side is that if the Amazon stock price drops, your equity value is going to decrease with it as well. So there are risks with Amazon equity. Also, it's important to note that if you do leave Amazon before the Amazon RSU is fully vest, then you're going to forfeit the unvested portions.

Brandon Bramley:

Third, there's the two Amazon sign-on bonuses. You'll receive a sign-on bonus in your first year and another one in your second year at Amazon. Instead of being a one-time cash payment like most sign-on bonuses, these will be paid out monthly with your paycheck over those two years. They're essentially designed to offset the staggered equity in your first two years at Amazon. Amazon sign-on bonuses are always included in the initial Amazon offer and are completely negotiable, if you know what you're doing. Luckily, I've had great success in negotiating them up with my clients. Lastly, I wanna call out that you will not receive an annual performance bonus at Amazon, which is typically a percentage of your base salary at most companies. This is a great compensation incentive to have for most companies, but unfortunately, you're not going to find a bonus at Amazon. However, amazon does also offer annual equity refreshers, which are additional RSU grants each year. However, these Amazon stock refreshers aren't guaranteed and they're going to vary based off your annual performance review in April each year, so we don't include them in our total compensation calculations, but they are good to be aware of.

Brandon Bramley:

Now, these three main Amazon salary components. Your base salary, equity and sign-on bonuses are gonna make up the total compensation at Amazon. To help you visualize this, we have a total compensation calculator on our site. It lets you input your base salary, the bonus percentage, equity grant and sign-on bonus. Then it shows your estimated compensation over the vesting period, both in total and on an annual basis. You can find our free total compensation calculator at thesalarinegotiercom and I'll also link to it in the episode notes below so you can use this free tool All right.

Brandon Bramley:

Now that we've covered Amazon's compensation structure works (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/total-compensation-calculator), let's discuss the Amazon salary negotiation steps. These are the strategies I've used many times to successfully negotiate Amazon job offers and I highly recommend you follow them if you're going to navigate an Amazon salary negotiation. Once you actually have an offer in hand, note that Amazon sometimes provides offers only verbally and will only give you a written offer after you accept, so instead make sure you don't accept on the phone. You write down the offer details and ask them to send over the benefits package so you can kick off the negotiation process now. Once you have an Amazon job offer in hand, the first step to negotiating it is making sure you fully understand the compensation components and benefits in the Amazon offer package. The biggest takeaway from this is understanding the Amazon total compensation before negotiating is very important. That way, you know exactly how to value the Amazon offer and what to negotiate, including the base salary, the equity and the sign-on bonus.

Brandon Bramley:

The second step is what I call doing your due diligence and asking strategic questions (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/store/questions-to-ask-during-job-offer-negotiations). This is where you review the Amazon offer and come back with a list of questions for the recruiter. This not only helps you clarify any questions you might have about the Amazon offer, but it also allows you to strategically ask questions that will build negotiation leverage. You can call things out that might not be as competitive as your current company or what Amazon's competitors offer. If you need some ideas, you can go ahead and grab our list of strategic questions to ask from our templates page or course. Don't skip this step, even if you think you understand the offer and you have all your questions answered. This is very important for building salary negotiation leverage by showing you're doing your research and due diligence on the offer before sending an Amazon counter offer. It also lets you secure any freebies or items that the Amazon recruiter might use as tradeoffs later on in the negotiation. So don't skip it.

Brandon Bramley:

The third step is to do the Amazon compensation research and find the base salary and total compensation ranges for the specific role, location and level at Amazon. You can use various online resources to find this data, but make sure you use multiple sources and you average the results. We're essentially trying to identify the Amazon compensation ranges so we can see where your initial Amazon offer sits and how much more room there is for improvement. Amazon usually tries to hire employees at the lower to mid end of the pay bands that we found, but I always suggest pushing towards the top end of the pay range with Amazon. When you do negotiate, just remember that this publicly reported data might not always be accurate. People might report higher equity than a new hire get due to stock appreciation, or they may not have uploaded the compensation correctly. If you want help with this, you can use our compensation research comparison tool on our template page or found in our course (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/job-offer-negotiation-course) to help you organize this data and build your ask in the Amazon counteroffer.

Brandon Bramley:

Once you have the Amazon compensation research done, then we're finally ready to go ahead and send an Amazon counteroffer (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/store/counteroffer-examples). This is where we take a database approach and craft an Amazon counteroffer to send to the recruiting team. We're going to present the top end of the range we're targeting, based on our research, and call out any items that weren't competitive based on your due diligence questions. I highly suggest doing this by email because it gives the Amazon recruiter everything they need to advocate for you and simply send your points to the comp team instead of hoping that they're gonna note your comments down on a call. Plus, recruiters at Amazon are trained to negotiate and they negotiate offers every day, so they are going to have tactics and try to steer you in a different direction if you try to counter verbally with Amazon, so keep that in mind.

Brandon Bramley:

The final step after sending an Amazon counter offer is being prepared to handle recruiter pushback (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/resource-center/salary-negotiation-script-strategies-for-job-offer-negotiations). It's almost guaranteed that you're going to get some pushback from the Amazon recruiter. Amazon recruiters, as I mentioned, are trained to deter you from negotiating and get you to accept the initial offer. So be prepared for that pushback and know exactly what to say to overcome those objections, to get them to take your concerns back to the Amazon compensation team. Essentially, you want to say that you understand their concerns, but nicely reiterate yours and ask them to take your ass back to the Amazon comp team for another look. It might take overcoming a few objections, but once they agree to take it back for another look, nine times out of ten they'll come back with a better Amazon job offer. We actually have a full list of our objection handlers you can download from our templates page or find in our course if you want our scripts on exactly what to say when you encounter this pushback with Amazon. From here, the Amazon recruiter will either come back with a better offer that fits your needs or it might be lower than your ask. At that point, it's up to you to decide if you wanna send another Amazon counter offer again or if you're ready to accept the updated offer.

Brandon Bramley:

Just note that negotiating salary with Amazon is not like how you'd negotiate at a car dealership. There isn't much back and forth and you usually don't want to send more than two Amazon counters. Otherwise, you're going to risk coming off as too aggressive or jeopardize the relationship with the hiring team. So watch out for that. Now the last thing I want to cover is a few Amazon salary negotiation mistakes. Before you decide to negotiate an Amazon offer, the main item I recommend against is sharing your salary expectations or your current pay with the Amazon recruiting team. This is only going to work against you, so don't do it.

Brandon Bramley:

If you think about it, if you throw out a number that's lower than what Amazon could offer, you're more than likely going to get less competitive comp at the low end of their pay range or you run the risk of being down leveled, which is very common at Amazon and I see it all the time. Okay, amazon has multiple level roles and they usually go through the interview process and decide on where they're going to hire people. If they find you're going to accept a lower salary or current making less, they're going to bring you in at that lower level and down level you. So just don't do it. And if you think, on the flip side, it's better to throw out higher numbers because you think that's going to help, it's very possible that they'll think shoot, we can't afford this person, so let's decide to go with a different candidate instead. So it's also not a good strategy and it can risk even you getting the offer. So don't do it. And remember, at the end of the day, the Amazon recruiter knows exactly how much they can pay for the role. This isn't new to them. You always want to turn that question back on them and learn more about the base salary and the total compensation range for the role, and then negotiate it once you have the actual offer in hand.

Brandon Bramley:

The second mistake to avoid is making sure you're realistic about what you should ask in your Amazon counteroffer. Way too often do I see people ask for way too much, which really just doesn't make sense. They either get laughed at or, if it comes off, as too aggressive, and can sometimes even get the offer rescinded if it is too high. You want to avoid that and you should always take a database approach with Amazon to ensure you're asking for realistic comp that they can actually provide. At the end of the day, amazon has set comp bans and they're only going to pay within those bans for the specific role and level. So don't jeopardize an Amazon job offer by coming off as too aggressive and asking for unrealistic numbers. Just don't do it. And finally, don't be worried about an Amazon salary negotiation. You might feel nervous, but as long as you follow proven strategies and keep the negotiation kind and professional, there's no reason you would risk the Amazon offer and if you do it right, you should secure a better Amazon offer package before starting your new role, so have confidence in this, but make sure you're following proven strategies or get the professional support you need when negotiating an Amazon job offer.

Brandon Bramley:

That wraps up this episode on Amazon salary negotiation. I hope this breakdown of Amazon's compensation structure (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/amazon-software-engineer-salary), our proven Amazon salary negotiation strategies (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/amazon-product-manager-salary) and negotiation mistakes to avoid with Amazon help you feel more confident in these discussions. If you are serious about getting the best possible offer with Amazon, or you feel more confident in these discussions If you are serious about getting the best possible offer with Amazon or with any company, I highly suggest you don't go into the salary negotiation alone. Head over to thesalarynegotiator. com to either work with me directly as your salary negotiation coach or check out my salary negotiation courses (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/salary-negotiation-course) and tools. You'll find all the links in the episode notes below to help you with your negotiation and if you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe, leave a comment and share it with someone who could use this advice in their career. Thanks for tuning in and happy negotiating.

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