Gain insights into strategies to maximize tech industry compensation. Discover negotiation techniques for better base salary, equity grants, and bonuses, ensuring you never leave money on the table.

In this course, you will learn the strategies to maximize your total compensation (base salary, equity grants, bonuses) while working in the tech industry. Whether you plan to change jobs or boost your earnings while staying in your current job, this course will guide you through the process.

Compensation is typically not a function of one’s ability, but how well you negotiate your deal. That’s why the material in this course will teach you how to prepare and position yourself for the best possible outcomes from your comp negotiations, so you never leave money on the table.

Grokking Comp Negotiation in Tech

You can not time the stock market, but you can certainly time your interviews. In order to land the best offer, you must schedule your interviews with different companies in such a way that if successful, you receive all the offers interspersed within a two to four-week span. This is the most crucial factor in gaining leverage when negotiating with companies in the post-offer stage.



One common tactic used by employers is to make exploding offers. An exploding offer is one that sets a tight deadline for the candidate to either accept the offer or risk losing it. The goal is to coerce the candidate into accepting the offer and limit the candidate’s ability to shop around and use the company’s offer as leverage against other companies that the candidate may have received offers from. Hence, if you fail to schedule interviews around the same time, you may end up accepting a low-ball offer under pressure. 



Few days later, as Murphy’s Law would have it, you will have an offer from your desired company staring at you in your inbox. This is an extremely common occurrence and confronts folks with ethical and moral dilemmas should they wish to decline an already accepted offer. But far more importantly, the candidates are unable to extract the best possible offer since bad timing prevents them from pitting potential employers against each other.

There are several ways to successfully prepare for interviews depending on your situation and circumstances. However, we suggest at least three months of preparation, where you can set-up phone screens spaced apart to your liking but then the on-sites together. If you are casting a really wide net and interviewing for several dozen companies, you may want to batch on-sites for companies that compete against one another together e.g., Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. interviews can be set up one week, and on-sites for startups the next. Below is an example four-month-long interview preparation timeline while working a full time job that you can follow. You can contract the timeline to two months if you are not working.

- **Month 1**: Start preparation for phone screens. Practice coding questions and a two to three minute brief about your current project and your role within it.

- **Month 2**: Schedule and start knocking on phone screens one by one. Keep up with your preparation at the same time. As you clear phone screens, schedule on-sites at the end of month three or thereafter.

- **Month 3**: Finish up preparation and phone screens. If you are not an experienced candidate, first set up at least two on-sites with the companies you are least interested to join. The interviews should serve as practice and help you to identify any gaps in your preparation.

- **Month 4 - week 1**: Schedule on-sites for a cohort of similar companies, e.g. Facebook, Google.

- **Month 4 - week 2**: Schedule Twitter, Pinterst, Salesforce, Box, Dropbox

- **Month 4 - week 3**: Schedule Microsoft, Salesforce, Uber, Lyft

- **Month 4 - week 4**: Schedule startups Stripe, KeepTruckin, DoorDash, etc.


You can achieve the best financial outcome when hunting for a tech job when you are able to land multiple offers around the same time. Though it can be tricky, timing your interviews and offers is crucial for a well-negotiated compensation package.

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All About Timing