• Tech employees share their salary negotiation tips, which helped boost their pay by tens of thousands of dollars.
• Their negotiation strategies include practicing pitches, using data, and leveraging multiple offers.
• Research and transparency are key in negotiating better compensation in tech roles, they said.

Sarra Bounouh has worked at consulting giant Accenture and three Big Tech companies.

But she still deals with imposter syndrome, especially when talking compensation.

"Going into a negotiation is always, at least for me, a very uncomfortable discussion," Bounouh told Business Insider. "I just want to push through and ask for what I deserve."

She and four other tech employees from Meta, Google, and Cisco shared their salary negotiation tips before joining a company or when trying to get promoted. They have used these strategies to add tens of thousands of dollars to their original offers in recent years.

Product manager at Meta

Avoid offering the first number. If you must, back it up with research, said Bounouh, a product manager who joined Meta earlier this year.

She suggested using resources like Levels.fyi or Glassdoor and selecting your role and geography to see recent offers and compensation that makes sense for that job.

"I personally don't like having detailed conversations about level and compensation from that first call with the recruiter because I want to meet the team, I want to meet the hiring manager, I want to get excited about the role," she said.

Bounouh prefers to negotiate her level and compensation once there's an offer on the table.

She said she often gets asked about salary expectations early in the process because recruiters say they want to save time for both sides.

She politely declines to share a number by telling the recruiter: "I don't have a number for your right now. I will need to do some research before getting back to you. At this stage of the process, I'm more focused on meeting the hiring manager and team."

Rehearsal is key for conversations about promotions or raises, she said.

Bounouh said she practiced her pitch for every job after Accenture and increased all three jobs' initial salary offers: Microsoft by 32%, Snap by 19%, and Meta by 37%.

Product manager at Oracle

Internal transfers between teams or offices are also an opportunity to negotiate your compensation package.

Ketaki Vaidya, who moved from Oracle's India to California office in 2022, said she approached her negotiation with an "everything under the sun is negotiable" mindset.

First, Vaidya looked at Glassdoor and talked to people who'd made the move to gather salary data. She wanted to ensure she was getting a fair offer for the US' cost of living.

"I was being given this offer for the credibility that I had built in the organization. I felt like I had an upper hand in negotiating," she said. "I was much more confident in asking for the things that I deserve — so it ended up being a very smooth transition."

After negotiating her base salary up to $80,000, she discussed other compensation components, including the timing of her next review, sign-on bonuses, relocation costs, paid leave, and remote work. She negotiated a sign-on bonus of $15,000 and a relocation allowance of $15,000, which weren't part of the initial offer.

Now, her compensation is about $130,000 annually, including stock units and bonuses.

Product manager at Cisco

When Varun Kulkarni switched from consulting to tech to work on more artificial intelligence projects, he was careful not to come off as aggressive during his pay negotiations.

Once he had offers from Cisco and others in hand in 2022, he was transparent with recruiters and mentioned other offers, without introducing his own counter number.

He asked recruiters how high they could go and what they thought about other offers.

"You want to kind of not be too pushy" he said.

His offer from Cisco already matched the market rate and what several competitors were offering, but he managed to negotiate it by 5%, bringing his total compensation to $180,000.

Product manager at Google

During his 2022 recruitment process at Google, Yung-Yu Lin used his employer at the time, PayPal, to land better offers from both companies.

He interviewed and landed jobs at several places — but their pay did not compare with Google's offer.

Lin decided to negotiate a retention package. PayPal countered with a 10% pay bump. He then renegotiated with Google.

Google offered a 20% raise on his original compensation at PayPal, which brought his offer to the $350,000 to $400,000 range as a senior product manager, including stock-based compensation.

Software engineer at Meta

Hemant Pandey, a senior software engineer at Meta, used other offers and research in his most recent job search.

After two years at Salesforce, in 2021 he applied to Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and two other companies. He used offers from these companies to negotiate his compensation at Meta.

"Be very transparent that you have other offers. Even if you have interviews going on, mention those, because it's also leverage," he said. It signals to the recruiter that they have to move fast and work with your parameters.

Meta's recruiters matched the base salary and restricted stock units from the highest of all offers.

Aside from being transparent, Pandey said it is important to be proactive and research how compensation works in different companies. For example, candidates should compare how stocks are refreshed, he said. A refresher is when the stock option portion of an employee's compensation is updated.

"I also negotiated my sign-on bonus and said, 'Hey, at Salesforce, I'll be leaving my $30,000 to $40,000 of annual bonus if I join you. Can you help me accommodate that?'"

Pandey was offered $520,000 in annual pay, including stock options, in that 2021 move.

"The most significant thing happened in my career when I made the move from Salesforce to Meta, which was close to almost 80 to 90% hike" in pay, Pandey said.

Do you work in tech, consulting, or finance and have a story to share about your career journey? Please reach out at [email protected].

• Members of Congress may be getting an up to $6,600 raise this year.
• That's due to a provision in a must-pass funding bill that's set to get a vote this week.
• Rank-and-file lawmakers have been making $174,000 since 2009.

For the first time since 2009, members of Congress may be about to get a raise.

Under a provision tucked into a new bill to fund the government through March 14, lawmakers would be given a cost of living adjustment to their salaries — something that Congress has blocked every year for a decade and a half.

That could result in up to a $6,600 raise for rank-and-file members of Congress next year, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service.

Currently, most members of the House and Senate make $174,000 each year. Some congressional leaders make more than that, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, who makes a $223,500 annual salary.

Though that $174,000 sum is well above the average household income, it hasn't kept place with inflation, and lawmakers in both parties have argued that it's not enough to keep up with the demands and responsibilities of the job, which can include maintaining two residences.

"If we want working class people who don't rely on independent wealth, to represent people in Congress, we have to make it work," Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told Business Insider earlier this year.

"You have quite a number of members of Congress that sleep in their offices," Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told BI earlier this year. "In this day and age, it makes sense to have people that feel that they can serve, and still be able to sleep in a home at night."

If Congress hadn't blocked annual cost of living adjustments since 2009, rank-and-file lawmakers would be making $217,900 this year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Earlier this year, a group of current and former lawmakers filed a class-action lawsuit to recover money that they would have made if their wages hadn't, in their view, been "unconstitutionally suppressed."

Increasing lawmakers' salaries has long been politically unpopular, and the inclusion of the provision is already leading to some opposition from more politically vulnerable members.

Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents a GOP-leaning district in Maine, said in a statement on Wednesday that he wouldn't vote for the government funding bill unless a pay freeze was reinstated.

"Members of Congress earn more than 90 percent of Americans," Golden said. "If any of my colleagues can't afford to live on that income, they should find another line of work."

If Congress fails to pass the bill by Friday, the federal government will shut down due to a lack of funding.

• Salaries make up around 75% of a startup's operating expenses, per an analysis by Kruze Consulting.
• The consultancy analyzed 450 VC-backed startups' payroll records to reveal employee salaries.
• An early-stage CEO makes around $132,000, while their technical cofounder is often paid more.

CEOs of American startups are seeing their salaries drop as the venture capital industry's cash crunch lingers.

Kruze Consulting, which provides accounting services to early-stage, VC-backed companies, released a study showing that the average seed-stage founder who is also a startup CEO makes $132,000 a year. This is down from $142,000 in Kruze's 2023 study.

The consultancy recently analyzed 450 of its seed-stage startup clients' payroll records to determine the average base salary for different jobs at early-stage companies. Kruze's study says that employee compensation accounts for around 75% of the total operating costs for its startup clients.

In addition to the base salaries analyzed by Kruze, equity is an important part of a startup employee's total compensation that can mean a financial windfall if a company is successful. The salaries in Kruze's study do not include equity-based compensation.

Kruze identified three buckets where seed-stage startups were likely to spend more money on talent: founders, early employees, and consultants. The study provided more detailed information on founder and early employee pay while noting that the average early-stage startup in its review spends 12.5% of its operating costs on consultancies.

Kruze also analyzed the one-time costs associated with hiring, such as equipment and training.

Founders and executives

The average seed-stage founder is likely to be making less than what other people on the leadership team are making. A technical co-founder acting as the startup's chief technology officer earns, on average, a slightly higher salary, at $134,000.

The chief operating officer and chief product officer make $135,000 and $149,000 per year, respectively.

The salary difference accounts for the greater technical expertise the CTO, COO, and CPO are likely bringing to the table, the Kruze study found.

Founder salary increases to an average of $183,000 when a startup closes its Series A funding round and bumps up to an average of $218,000 when a startup hits its Series B, according to Kruze's data.

Early employees

Kruze's data showed that after getting funding, most many-stage startups begin by hiring more engineers, followed by designers, product managers, salespeople, and marketers.

Engineers

Engineering compensation can vary greatly, depending on a person's technical expertise and experience with AI and machine learning and where in the country they're based. According to Kruze's analysis of its early-stage startup payrolls, engineers can make anywhere between $65,000 and $235,000 annually.

Sales

Startups usually start hiring sales teams after they achieve early product-market fit, the Kruze study found. Their total compensation typically includes a base salary plus commission, the latter of which could double base salary — which, depending on seniority and location, could be anywhere from $45,000 to $150,000.

Product and Design

Product and design teams can include a wide range of employees, some of whom are skilled engineers with experience working in Big Tech. Depending on seniority, job function, and location, Kruze's data showed that product team members could make anywhere from $70,000 to $185,000.

Marketing and Operations

Startups take varying approaches to building out their marketing and operations teams, with some hiring talent early on and others waiting until later in the company life cycle to bring people on. The Kruze study found that this contributed to a wide salary band for this group of employees — from $39,000 annually for a junior employee to as much as $325,000 for the top role.

Other costs

While payroll is a huge part of a startup's operating expense, salary isn't the only line item associated with hiring and retaining talent. The Kruze study found that early-stage startups spent an additional 10% of base compensation per employee on payroll taxes and required benefits, including unemployment, workers' compensation, and federal, state, and local payroll taxes.

Additionally, early-stage startups add another 15-25% of base compensation per employee on optional benefits, namely health insurance, in addition to 401K contributions, paid time off, and life insurance.

Equipment such as laptops and work stations cost startups between $2,500 and $3,000 per employee, Kruze's data found. Startups are also paying for software licenses, onboarding and training. Based on its analysis, Kruze recommends that startups looking to hire should budget between 25-35% higher than the base salary to account for additional costs, noting that certain cities and states might be more expensive than others.