Sign-on Bonuses
Explore effective techniques to negotiate sign-on bonuses in the tech industry. Understand how to leverage evidence like unvested stocks and competing offers, and how to advocate for unique situations such as relocation costs. This lesson provides real-world examples that teach you to assertively negotiate for higher cash bonuses, even after accepting an initial offer.
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Sign-on bonuses are commonly offered by companies to make-up for any unvested stocks or upcoming bonuses a candidate may be leaving behind. The sign-on is an opportunity for a candidate to negotiate hard with an employer for more cash. Some companies have standard offers for sign-on bonuses, while others are more flexible. Offers from the latter kind can vary widely in range for the sign-on component of the offer. In most instances, the recruiter will ask for evidence to justify the sign-on bonus.
Some will even ask you to provide them with the screen-shots of unvested stocks in online brokerages so that they can present it to their compensation committees to buttress the case for a higher sign-on bonus.
Here is an anecdote from our time in the valley: Silvia, a friend, was working at Oracle and had an offer from Salesforce. She requested the recruiter for a sign-on bonus and was immediately met with the question of why she would need one if she weren’t leaving behind any stocks? She countered that she is required to ...