<aside> 💡 Please note that offer negotiation will vary drastically depending on your role (Explore, Intern, FTE) and your mileage may vary regardless. The creators of this guide are not responsible for any decisions you make which make you upset.

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What's a Reasonable Offer?

The most important step of negotiation is figuring out what your target offer is. This means setting a realistic lower bound, what you'd say "no" to if not met; stretch, what you'd like to get; and target, what you expect to negotiate successfully. One of the hardest parts of this step is figuring out what reasonable values are for all of those, which can be especially tough with absolutely no basis to go off of. Below, I've divided this section into two subsections for prior interns and new hires, as Microsoft's compensation levels differ quite a bit between the two.

Prior Intern

Well aren't you lucky. Fortunately for you, I've been scraping together huge amounts of past hiring data, all self reported. The sheet can be found here: Google Sheets. Down at the bottom you should see two tabs. The "Summary" tab contains aggregated data, while the "Raw" tab contains the raw responses. Not all the information is perfectly represented by the summary, so check if out if you're curious. Feel free to use these sheets as much as you want, just promise to fill out the form when it comes to be your turn (if you're comfortable).

New Hire (non-intern)

Levels.fyi is known to give fairly good information about new hire compensation levels. I'd focus only on the overall averages, as the specific roles tend to get corrupted by unfiltered self-reports, some made from salty employees who found out they're making less than everyone else. I'd also like to point out that this site tends to fall apart at higher levels, as the compensation can differ so greatly based on specific position and performance that it makes it hard to get accurate estimates for the career.

How to Negotiate the Offer

Offer negotiation is a large part of obtaining an offer, and it's important to be prepared for this step appropriately. Proper negotiation will easily net you tens of thousands, and frequently we see improvements of $35,000+.

The Talk on How to Negotiate

A year or so back, I held a talk to a few hundred interns about how to negotiate their offers. This talk was recorded, and is embedded below. I highly recommend watching it (otherwise I wouldn't have made it) as it will answer most of your questions. Any further questions can be asked in the discord: https://discord.gg/mMaJhYd5rk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMbR-_ykZIU&feature=youtu.be

Email Templates

  1. Hi [recruiter], I hope you've had a good week. A while back you mentioned that if I decided on an offer I would take outright to stay at Microsoft to let you know. As I've been following other leads I realized that I genuinely do like working at Microsoft, and I enjoyed my team and the environment. I would love to make Microsoft the place where I continue my career, and if you're willing to do 21k more on the bonus or stock I'd be willing to withdraw from my other processes and commit to Microsoft. Thanks, [First name]
  2. TODO

FAQ: