Career Negotiations Podcast

Nvidia Salary Negotiation - How to Navigate an Nvidia Offer Negotiation

• Brandon Bramley

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

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

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NVIDIA SALARY NEGOTIATION RESOURCES

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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:

NVIDIA provides very competitive compensation and perks to their employees, but how are you going to know if your job offer is competitive before you accept it? In this episode, my goal is to cover everything you need to confidently navigate a NVIDIA salary negotiation (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/resource-center/how-to-negotiate-a-nvidia-job-offer). I'm first going to cover the compensation structure at NVIDIA so you know more about NVIDIA's base salary, their equity package and sign-on 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 NVIDIA offer that are proven through real NVIDIA salary negotiations that I've led for my clients. That way, you can go ahead and filter out some of the bad advice out there and use salary negotiation strategies that are actually going to work to get you better pay at NVIDIA. Then I'll close out the episode by highlighting some very common mistakes that you should avoid in NVIDIA salary negotiation. That way, you don't risk the opportunity and you actually secure competitive comp before you begin. So let's dive into it really quick. 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 strategic tools to help professionals like you navigate the negotiation process and secure competitive comp. I'm not just another career coach or recruiter giving out generic salary negotiation advice. You've probably already seen 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 in strategic negotiations negotiations and my goal is to debunk some of that bad advice out there and give you proven negotiation strategies that are actually going to 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 (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/) for coaching, courses (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/courses) and tools (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/salary-negotiation-templates) that are designed to help you negotiate the best possible offer.

Brandon Bramley:

Now, before we dive into how to negotiate an NVIDIA offer package, let's talk about the compensation components. Okay, because it's really important to understand the difference between your base salary and your total compensation at NVIDIA (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/nvidia-software-engineer-salary). Too many people focus on only the base salary for a role, but that's just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to pay at NVIDIA. When you're considering a move to NVIDIA, you need to look at the entire picture, which is your total monetary take-home pay at the end of the year, also known as your total compensation. This is going to include your base salary, the value of your investment equity each year and any sign-on bonuses. So you're going to find three core compensation components in an NVIDIA job offer. First, there's going to be the NVIDIA base salary. Okay, this is your consistent guaranteed pay that you'll see in every paycheck. It's only going to change with promotions or merit increases, since it's a set rate. It's a pretty standard pay component that you're going to find in all salary roles, regardless of the company, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. Second, you'll receive equity at NVIDIA.

Brandon Bramley:

Your initial NVIDIA equity package comes in the form of RSUs, which are Restricted Stock Units. These represent ownership in NVIDIA and these RSUs are subject to a four-year NVIDIA vesting schedule. What that means is that the NVIDIA Equity will vest over a four-year period in equal annual increments, meaning you'll receive 25% of your RSUs in year one, 25% in year two, 25% in year three and the final 25% in year four. You're not going to get the value of the NVIDIA equity up front, but you do share in value fluctuations over that period. So if NVIDIA stock price continues to go up, so does the value of your equity. The flip side, though, is that if NVIDIA stock price drops, your equity value, as well as your total compensation, decreases as well. So there are risks when you have equity as part of your package, but it's also important that when you leave NVIDIA before your RSUs do fully vest, in case you decide to transition, companies know that you will forfeit any unvested portions that you have, so keep that in mind as you start to plan your transitions. Nvidia does also offer annual equity refreshes, which are additional RSU grants each year. However, these NVIDIA stock refreshers aren't always guaranteed and can vary significantly, so we don't include them in our total compensation calculations. It is worth asking the NVIDIA recruiter, though, about these stock refreshers. That way, you at least have a general idea of what might be included and how these might pay out year to year.

Brandon Bramley:

Finally, there's going to be the NVIDIA sign-on bonus. This is a one-time cash payment, typically paid out with your first paycheck or 30 days after you start. It's often designed to offset lost incentives or equity from your previous company or as an incentive to join NVIDIA. The NVIDIA sign-on bonuses aren't always included in the initial NVIDIA offer, so keep that in mind that they might require a negotiation to get one, but I can confirm that we've had great success in securing them for our clients. So if you do use the right strategies and you negotiate well, you should be able to get one before you begin. Lastly, I do want to call out that you will not receive an NVIDIA bonus. Okay, most tech companies offer annual performance bonuses to their employees, which is typically a percentage of your base salary, and it's a great compensation incentive to have in most companies. But unfortunately, you're not going to find a bonus at nvidia and they just don't believe in adding one. So instead they focus on the other three comp components that I shared. So keep that in mind. As you notice, there's no bonus that you might currently have at your current company.

Brandon Bramley:

Now, to wrap it up, these three main nvidia salary components your base salary, equity and your sign-on bonus are going to make up your total compensation at NVIDIA. To help you visualize this, we have a total compensation calculator on our site. It lets you input your base salary, the bonus percentage if you did have one equity grant and sign-on bonus, then it shows your estimated compensation over four years, both in total and on an annual basis. So you can find our free total compensation calculator at the salarynegotiatorcom and I'll also link to it in the episode notes below so you can use this free tool. That way you can see what your total compensation looks like over the entire offer package when you get it. Okay.

Brandon Bramley:

So now that I've covered everything you need to know about Nvidia's comp structure, let's discuss the. Okay? So these are the strategies that I've used to successfully negotiate many NVIDIA offer packages and I highly recommend you follow them to navigate your own NVIDIA salary negotiation. But once you actually have an offer in hand because NVIDIA does typically provide their offers verbally initially and they're only going to provide you a written offer after you verbally accept. So make sure you don't verbally accept. Instead, you write down all the offer details and ask them to send over the benefits package for your review. That way you can kick off the negotiation. So once you have an NVIDIA job offer, the first step to negotiating is to make sure you fully understand the comp components and benefits in the NVIDIA offer package. The biggest takeaway from this is understanding the NVIDIA total compensation before negotiating is very important. That way you know exactly how to value the NVIDIA 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. This is where you review the NVIDIA 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 offer, but it also allows you to strategically ask questions that are going to build salary negotiation leverage. Okay, you can call out things that might not be as competitive as your current company hey, for example, I have a bonus or what competitors offer? Right, and if you need some ideas, I've created a huge list of strategically drafted questions that you can ask, which is included for download on my templates page (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/store/questions-to-ask-during-job-offer-negotiations) and I cover it in my course (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/job-offer-negotiation-course). Okay, so don't skip this step, even if you think you understand the offer and don't have questions. It's important in changing the narrative for the negotiation.

Brandon Bramley:

Okay, we don't want to just ask for more money. If we ask for more money, it's not going to go anywhere and it's going to come out of the blue. Instead, we want to show that we're doing our research, we're fully reviewing the offer package so that when we do come back with an ask. It doesn't come out of left field and it's based on research, which leads me into the third step, okay, where you need to actually do your NVIDIA compensation research and find not only the base salary range but also the total compensation range for the specific role, location and level at NVIDIA. Okay, that way we can take a data-based approach rather than asking for random numbers, and what you can do is you can use online resources to find this data, but I want you to use multiple sources and average the results.

Brandon Bramley:

In this step, we're really trying to identify the compensation ranges so we can see where your initial offer sits and how much more room there is for improvements. So we can identify our ask. And what we found, just like most companies, is NVIDIA does try to hire their employees at the lower to mid end of the pay bands. Okay, which is common, because they've had a lot of equity appreciation and they plan that for the future. But I do always suggest that you push towards the top end and the NVIDIA pay range for your role, because they're going to expect you to go ahead and take on any other job and project once you start, as anyone else they hire, so you should be getting paid the same for that position.

Brandon Bramley:

As for the publicly reported data, be careful, because this is not always accurate, okay, and I highly recommend using multiple resources, because one new hires aren't going to go ahead and have like stock appreciation yet, but people reporting that would okay, so the compensation might not be the same as well, as people are error prone and they upload incorrect data on total compensation. So make sure you using multiple resources and you're averaging across those when you're building the ask in your video counter offer. And if you need help for this, dive into my course where I cover exactly how to do this compensation research, or use my compensation research comparison tool on the templates page to make sure you know how to build your ask in your counter offer. Now, once you have the Nvidia compensation research done and you've know how to build your ask and your counter offer Now, once you have the NVIDIA compensation research done and you've gotten answers to all your questions, you're now ready to draft an NVIDIA counter offer. Okay, so this is where the fun takes off and this is where we wanna actually take a database approach to craft the NVIDIA counter offer for the recruiting team. What we're gonna do is we're gonna present the top end of the range that you're targeting, based on your 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's going to give the NVIDIA hiring team everything they need to advocate for you and they can simply send your points over to the decision makers or the comp team instead of hoping that you're going to be able to cover this on a call.

Brandon Bramley:

If you try to counter verbally, you try to counter verbally Because, if you think about it, nvidia is not a small company. They have a huge recruiting team and their recruiters have been trained to go ahead and deter negotiations, okay. So if you try to counter verbally with NVIDIA, they're going to cut you off, steer you in a different direction and it's not going to go the way you think. So instead, I highly recommend sending an email, if you can, as long as you draft it correctly, which you can use some of our counter offers on my site (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/store/counteroffer-examples) if you need help with that.

Brandon Bramley:

The final step after sending an nvidia counter offer is being prepared to handle recruiter pushback. It's almost always guaranteed that you're going to get some pushback from the nvidia recruiter because nvidia recruiters are trained to deter you from negotiating right and try to get you to accept the initial offer. So be prepared for that pushback and know how to overcome these objections to get them to take your concerns back to the comp team. So to do this, you essentially want to say that you understand their constraints and their concerns, but nicely reiterate yours and ask them to take your ass back to the NVIDIA hiring team for another look. It's honestly going to take overcoming a few objections, but once they agree to take it back for another look, nine times out of 10, they're going to come back with a better NVIDIA offer letter. We do have a full list of objection handlers that you can download from our templates page or if you check out my course. I talked through this in a lot more detail so you know exactly the psychology behind it and how to respond. So you know exactly what to do when you encounter this pushback. But outside of that, from here, the NVID Nvidia recruiter is either gonna come back with a better offer that fits your needs or not move at all and it might be lower than your ask.

Brandon Bramley:

So at that point it's time to decide on hey, do I accept or do I make one last push and send another NVIDIA counter offer. The only thing I want to highlight about that, if you are thinking about pushing again, is note that negotiating salary is not like the bad negotiation advice that you see out there for, like car dealerships or the aggressive boardroom stuff. Right, there's actually not a lot of back and forth discussing numbers, and you really don't want to counter, usually more than twice, otherwise you do risk coming off as aggressive and jeopardizing the relationship, so keep that in mind as you navigate these discussions. Okay, so the last thing I want to cover is a few NVIDIA salary negotiation mistakes before you decide to negotiate a job offer. Okay, because I work with a lot of career professionals when it comes to NVIDIA salary negotiations and unfortunately, there's some bad advice out there where people make mistakes up front, and I want to help you avoid those if at all possible.

Brandon Bramley:

The main item I'm going to recommend against is sharing your salary expectations or current pay with NVIDIA recruiting team. This is usually only going to work against you, right, but the recruiter is going to ask about it. However, if you think about it, right, it right. If you throw a number that's lower than what nvidia could offer, you're going to likely get less compensation, right, or you'll be at the low end of their pay range. And the other thing that happens at these tech companies, especially with nvidia, is if they find out you're willing to accept or making less than what their level pays, they might down, level you to that lower level that still hits that, say, pay range. It's very common. So be very careful with what you decide to share, and my recommendation is don't ever share comp, your current comp or salary expectations.

Brandon Bramley:

And the other side of the coin right is, hey, oh, I'll throw out a high number thinking it's going to help. However, that's not a good strategy as well. It's one going to show you haven't done your research. And two, they might say, hey, I can't afford this person. Maybe we should go with another candidate instead, rather than wasting time giving an offer to someone that's not going to accept. So it's just not a good strategy and avoid that.

Brandon Bramley:

And if you truly think about it, the NVIDIA recruiter knows exactly how much they can pay for the role. These roles aren't new. They're a huge company. They have set levels okay on a base salary basis and a total compensation basis for every position, so it's always better to turn that question back on the hiring team to see if they'll share the base salary and total compensation ranges for this role. And then you always want to follow up during the negotiation process by doing your own research to see if that's truthful and where those ranges realistically lie.

Brandon Bramley:

And my next tip or mistake to avoid is make sure that you're being realistic about what you should ask for in the NVIDIA counteroffer. Okay, way too often people ask for way too much. That doesn't make sense. You're either going to get laughed at or it's going to come off as aggressive and, honestly, could get the offer rescinded. So make sure you're taking a database approach when it comes to NVIDIA to make sure you're asking for realistic compensation that they can provide. Like I mentioned before, they have compensation bans for every role level and they're only gonna pay within those bans. So don't jeopardize your Nvidia offer package by coming off as too aggressive and asking for realistic numbers. Just don't do it.

Brandon Bramley:

And finally, don't be worried about an Nvidia salary negotiation. You're probably gonna feel nervous, but as long as you follow proven strategies and keep the negotiation professional, there's no reason you'd risk the offer. If you do it right, you should secure a better NVIDIA offer package before starting the new role. So have confidence in this, but make sure you follow proven strategies or get the negotiation support that you need to negotiate a competitive offer package.

Brandon Bramley:

Well, that wraps up this episode on NVIDIA salary negotiation. So I really hope this breakdown of NVIDIA's compensation structure, our proven NVIDIA salary negotiation strategies and negotiation mistakes to avoid with NVIDIA are going to help you feel way more confident in these discussions. But you know what? If you're serious about getting the best possible offer with NVIDIA or with any company, I'm highly going to recommend you don't go into any salary negotiation alone. Okay, head over to the salarynegotiatorcom to either work with me directly as your salary negotiation coach or check out my salary negotiation courses and tools. You'll find all the links in the episode notes below to make sure that you have all the tools you need to negotiate competitive pay. And if you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe, leave me a comment and share it with someone who could use this advice in their career. Thanks for tuning in and good luck.

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