Negotiation Course: Determine Compensation Benchmarks

The key inputs to determine compensation are level, role/title, industry, geography

Use tools like [levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi) and glassdoor to understand what the typical market rate for the job is.

- **Level**: Offers are formulaic based on level, so you can obviously expect. Don’t reveal this to the recruiter.
- **Industry**: if your job as a SWE is a supportive role for the main product of the company, you’ll typically be paid less (e.g. engineer in healthcare compared to engineer in FAANG)
- **Geography**: California and New York are more expensive than other parts of the US and certainly more expensive than most of the world.

One pro tip here: use <https://h1bdata.info/> to see salary data that companies are legally required to report to the government

However, these sources can be out of date or show an incomplete picture, so the best source is talking to friends or people in the community, like in Taro.

In Rahul’s case, he had a pretty good idea that Snap gave out a lot of equity, Meta gave out huge signing bonuses, etc.

The key inputs to determine compensation are level, role/title, industry, geography

Use tools like levels.fyi and glass

"Should I negotiate?" Answer: “Is water wet?” It's not often just sending a few emails can literally make you thousands of dollars. It’s worth a shot.

We all know that software engineers are highly paid. The downside here is that tech compensation can be incredibly hard to understand, filled with so many different components.