Career Negotiations Podcast

Apple Salary Negotiation - How to Navigate an Apple Offer Negotiation

• Brandon Bramley

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

Apple provides competitive compensation and perks to their employees, but how do you know if the job offer is competitive before you accept it? In this episode, my goal is to cover everything you're going to need to confidently navigate an Apple salary negotiation. I'm first going to cover the compensation structure at Apple so you know exactly what to expect in the offer Everything from Apple's base salary, their bonus, their equity package and their sign-on bonuses in every job offer. Then I'm going to walk you through my five recommended steps for negotiating an Apple job offer that are actually proven through real Apple salary negotiations that I've led for my clients. That way, hopefully, you can filter out some of the bad advice floating around out there and use salary negotiation strategies that are actually going to work with Apple. Then I'm going to close out the episode by highlighting three common mistakes you should definitely avoid in an Apple salary negotiation (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/resource-center/how-to-negotiate-your-apple-job-offer). That way, you don't risk the opportunity and you actually secure competitive compensation in your job offer before you begin. So let's dive into it.

Brandon Bramley:

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 comp. I'm not just a career coach or recruiter giving out some of the generic advice out there that's already floating around. Instead, I've actually 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 some of the 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 and get actionable tips, and when you're ready to take your negotiations to the next level, go ahead and head to the salarynegotiator. com for coaching (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/), courses (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/job-offer-negotiation-course) and tools (https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/salary-negotiation-templates) that are designed to help you negotiate a competitive offer package.

Brandon Bramley:

Okay, so before we dive into how to negotiate an Apple job offer, I really want to talk through the compensation components that you might find in your offer, and it's very important to understand the difference between base salary and total compensation. 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 paying Apple. So when you're considering a move to Apple, you need to look at the whole picture, which is your total monetary take-home pay, also known as total compensation. Total monetary take-home pay, also known as total compensation. This is going to include your base salary, your annual bonus, the value of your investing equity each year at apple and any sign on bonuses. Now you're going to find four core compensation components in an apple job offer. First, there's going to be your apple base salary. All right, this isn't new. Everyone in a salaried role should get this, but this is your consistent, guaranteed pay that you're going to see in every paycheck. It's really only going to change with promotions or merit increases, since it's a set rate, but it is negotiable. I'm just not going to spend too much time here, since it's pretty standard, okay. Second, you're going to have an annual performance bonus at Apple, which is a percentage of the Apple-based salary. This is typically going to range from 10 to 45%, depending on the Apple role and the level. It's going to be based on your personal performance each year and it's paid out annually, so it can fluctuate. Keep that in mind. While the Apple bonus is tied to your base salary, it's generally not negotiable, but the cool thing about bonuses is, if you do negotiate a higher base salary, your Apple bonus is going to increase along with it, so keep that in mind.

Brandon Bramley:

The third item you receive at Apple is equity. All right, so you're going to get an initial Apple equity package that comes in the form of restricted stock units, or RSUs. These represent ownership in Apple. That means that the Apple equity is going to 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 your fourth year. Okay, so you're not going to get the full value of the Apple equity up front, but you do share in the value fluctuations over that period. So that means if your stock price goes up, so does the value of your equity. The flip side of Apple is if the Apple stock price drops, your equity value and total compensation decreases as well. So remember that there are risks with getting equity. All right, it's completely tied to the market and the performance of Apple. And then the bad thing is is if you do leave Apple, keep in mind that any Apple RSUs that have not fully vested you are going to forfeit that when you do leave. So usually you want to time a departure around those vesting dates to make sure you do get the rsus that you work towards.

Brandon Bramley:

Finally, there's going to be the apple sign-on bonus. This is a one-time cash payment, typically paid out 30 days after you start. It's often designed to offset loss incentives or equity from your previous company, but usually you can get one just as an incentive to join and take that risk to join a new company. Okay, so the apple sign-on bonuses aren't always included in initial Apple offer, so they usually are going to require some negotiation. We've been lucky and we've had great success securing them for our clients, so know that they are negotiable. It just takes a little bit of a strategy to get there.

Brandon Bramley:

And the last item I want to call out is Apple does offer annual equity refreshes, which are essentially additional RSU grants each year. However, these Apple stock refreshers aren't always guaranteed and they can vary significantly depending on the role, the level and the year. So we don't include them in our total compensation calculations. But I always recommend asking the Apple recruiter about these Apple stock refreshers to see if they will give you any details on there, so at least you have a general idea of what you could get in the position. All right. So these four main Apple salary components your Apple-based salary, your bonus, your equity and your sign-in bonus are going to make up the total compensation at Apple. To help you visualize this, we have a total compensation calculator on our site. It's going to let you input your base salary, the bonus percentage, your equity grant and sign-in bonus. Then it shows your estimated compensation over four years, both in total and on an annual basis. You can find our free total compensation calculator at thesalarynegotiatorcom and I'll also link to it in the episode notes below so you can use this free tool and find out exactly how much you're making in your Apple offer package.

Brandon Bramley:

Okay, so now that we've covered Apple's compensation structure works, let's discuss the Apple salary negotiation steps right, this is where the fun part kicks off. These are the strategies I've used to successfully negotiate many Apple job offers and I recommend you follow them to navigate an Apple salary negotiation. Once you have an offer in hand, note that Apple typically provides offers verbally initially and will only provide a written offer after you verbally accept. So make sure you write down all the offer details on that call and ask them to send over the benefits package for your review before you accept it verbally. That way, you can kick off the negotiation. So once you do have an Apple job offer, the first step to negotiating is to make sure you fully understand the compensation components and the benefits in your Apple offer package. The biggest takeaway from this is that understanding the Apple total compensation before negotiating is very important. That way, you know exactly how to value the Apple offer and what to negotiate, including your base salary, annual bonus, equity and the sign-up bonus.

Brandon Bramley:

The second step is what I'm going to call doing your due diligence and asking strategic questions. This is where you review the Apple 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 before you move forward, but it also allows you to strategically ask questions that are going to build negotiation leverage Very important. You can call it things that might not be as competitive as your current company or what Apple's competitors offer. Right, if you need some ideas, you can grab the list of strategic questions that we have on our templates page or in our course to give you an idea of how they should be worded and what you should be asking. But the biggest takeaway from this step is don't skip it right. A lot of people are going to be like, hey, I already know everything about the offer. Let me throw out numbers. But by doing your due diligence and showing the recruiting team that you are researching the offer, that's going to make sure that your counter offer doesn't come out of left field and it shows that there's research behind it, rather than, hey, I just want more money. Okay, and it also lets you secure any freebies or items that Apple might use as trade-offs later on in the negotiation if you just skip to sending a counter. So don't skip it.

Brandon Bramley:

The third step is to do your Apple compensation research and find not only the base salary but also the total compensation ranges for your exact role, location and level at Apple. Okay, you can use multiple resources online to find this data. Just make sure you do use multiple resources online to find this data. Just make sure you do use multiple resources and you average across those results, because at this stage it is publicly reported data. It might not always be accurate, so we wanna make sure that we're using multiples to make sure that we're getting any stock appreciation out of the way from my current employees or past employees, as well as if someone uploaded their pay incorrectly. But essentially, what we're trying to find here is what those pay ranges are, because we found that Apple usually tries to hire employees in at the lower to mid end of the band. But I want you guys to push for the top end of the band because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what role it is. They're gonna expect you to essentially provide the same work and tackle the same projects as anyone else in that role, so you should be getting paid the same. All right, and if you need help with this and doing the compensation research, feel free to either take our course, where I talk through this in a lot more detail, or grab our compensation research comparison tool that helps you actually go ahead and build your ask into an Apple counter offer.

Brandon Bramley:

Okay, so once you have the Apple compensation research done and you've gotten all the answers to your questions, you're now ready to draft an Apple counteroffer. This is where we want to take a database approach and craft an Apple counteroffer to send to the recruiting team. We're going to hopefully represent and 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. And I'm highly going to suggest you do this by email, because it's going to give the Apple recruiter everything they need to advocate for you and they can simply just send your points to the comp team instead of you hoping that they're going to note your comments down on a call and present that Right. Plus, if you think about it, recruiters and Apple negotiate offers every day. You don't, so they're going to be ready with tactics to cut you off or steer you in a different direction. If you try to count on with Apple verbally, so don't do it. Keep it to email if you can.

Brandon Bramley:

But that leads us into our final step. Which is why it's important to send an email is that they are going to push back right. So after sending an Apple counteroffer, you want to be prepared to handle the recruiter pushback or objections. It's pretty much guaranteed that these are going to come up before they'll decide to take it back to the comp team. So I want you to be prepared on how to navigate this pushback, so you know what to say to get the recruiter to actually take your concerns back to the Apple compensation team. Essentially, to handle an objection you're going to want to state that you understand their concerns, but you're nicely going to reiterate yours and ask them to take it back to the compensation team for one last look. It's honestly gonna possibly take overcoming a few objections, but once they do agree to take it back for another look nine times out of 10, they'll actually come back with a better app or Apple offer package. We have a full list of objection handlers and I talk through this a lot more in my course, if you really need to understand how to do that, or just feel free to grab the objection handlers on my template page for download so you know exactly what to say when you encounter this pushback.

Brandon Bramley:

But from here, honestly, the apple recruiter is either going to come back with a better offer that fits your needs, or it's going to be lower than your ask, or they didn't move at all. At that point you're going to want to decide if you're ready to accept or if you want to send another apple counter offer to push again or not. Um, so keep that in mind. The only thing I want to note about that is negotiating with Apple is not the negotiations you see online on TV or at a car dealership right. There's not that old school back and forth where you keep just kind of arguing over numbers. Instead, keep it to two counter offers max. Otherwise you're gonna risk coming off as aggressive and jeopardizing the relationship. So keep these conversations in the tone like you're talking with a friend that's helping you feel comfortable with the move to Apple and you're gonna have a lot better success.

Brandon Bramley:

Now one of the last things I wanna cover is a few Apple salary negotiation mistakes. Before you decide to negotiate an Apple offer package, all right, the main item I recommend against is don't share your salary expectations or current pay with Apple recruiting team. This is usually only going to work against you, okay. So if you think about it, look, if you throw out a number that's lower than what Apple could offer which is pretty likely considering they pay top tier in the industry you're likely going to get a less competitive compensation package at the low end of their pay range. The other thing you want to avoid is it's very common to be down leveled at Apple right, because if they find you accept a lower comp that actually a lower level will offer, they're going to bring you in at that lower level and there's nothing you can do to negotiate that title back up. Okay, so don't do that.

Brandon Bramley:

And on the flip side, if you think, hey, I'm just going to throw a drastic numbers seeing if they'll put a competitive offer out Also not a good strategy. We don't want the recruiter to say, shoot, you know what? I don't think we can afford this person. They're not even going to accept once we give them an offer, so let's go with a different candidate instead. So it's not a good strategy. It might lead to actually not getting the offer. And plus, if you think about it right, apple is a pretty smart company. They have a huge recruiting team. They know exactly how much they can pay for the role, right? So there's no reason for them even to ask you. Okay, instead, you should turn that question back on them to find out what the base salary is and the total compensation ranges for the role, just so you can note those down and circle back to those when you're doing your own compensation increase or research to make sure that that is the right ranges and how much you should be asking for once you have an offer and can follow the negotiation steps. My, you should be asking for once you have an offer and can follow the negotiation steps.

Brandon Bramley:

My second tip or, I guess, mistake to avoid is make sure that you're realistic about how much you should ask for. On the apple counter too often do I see people ask for way too much, which just doesn't make sense. Okay, you're either gonna get laughed at or it is gonna come off as aggressive, and in those cases sometimes it can get rescinded. Right, they're like, hey, this person isn't gonna accept, want way too much. Or hey, they don't know how to actually look at data and present what's realistic, so we don't want to work with these people. So don't do that. Always take a database approach with Apple. Ensure you're asking for realistic compensation that they can actually provide. Okay, they have set compensation bands for every role and level and they're only going to pay within those bands, except for certain cases. So don't jeopardize your Apple offer letter by coming off as too aggressive and asking for unrealistic numbers. Just don't do it.

Brandon Bramley:

And the final thing don't be worried about an Apple salary negotiation. Okay, I get it. You might feel nervous. You may have not done this before, but as long as you follow proven strategies and keep the negotiation professional, there's no reason you'd risk the Apple offer. Okay, if you do it right, you should secure a better Apple offer package before starting your new role, and you'll know that you're essentially making competitive compensation. So be confident in this and make sure you provide proven strategies or get the support you need to help you negotiate an Apple job offer.

Brandon Bramley:

Okay, everyone, that wraps up this episode on Apple salary negotiation. So I really hope this breakdown of Apple's compensation structure, our proven Apple salary negotiation strategies and negotiation mistakes avoid help you feel more confident in these discussions. But if you are serious about getting the best possible offer with Apple or any company, I highly suggest you don't go into the salary negotiation alone. All right, we have too many resources out there, so I highly suggest you head over to the salarynegotiator. com. Either work with me directly as your salary negotiation coach or check out my salary negotiation courses and tools. Okay, you're going to find all the links in the episode notes below and you're going to find everything you need to make sure that you get competitive compensation at Apple or any company. And also, you know what? If you found this episode to be helpful, make sure you subscribe, leave a comment and share with someone who could actually use this advice in their career. https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/apple-product-manager-salary https://www. thesalarynegotiator. com/apple-software-engineer-salary

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