Negotiate your Walmart Salary

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Walmart Salary Negotiation Guide

Do we like negotiating with Walmart?

Mixed. They are willing to negotiate and we have secured some solid increases. However, they generally pay below top of market and have some tricky compensation policies.

Walmart's compensation structure

  • Base Salary
  • On hire equity grant (see vesting schedule below)
  • Annual equity grant (i.e. stock refreshers)
  • Annual performance bonus
  • Signing bonus

Walmart performance bonus targets

  • Walmart Software Eng 2 = 15%
  • Walmart E3 (Software Eng 3) = 15%
  • Walmart E4 (Senior Software Eng) = 20%
  • Walmart E5 (Staff Software Eng) = 20%
  • Walmart E6 (Principle Software Eng) = 25%
  • Walmart E7 (Distinguished Software Eng) = 30%

Target bonuses used to be almost 100% guaranteed. Recently, fewer people have been receiving the target bonus %.

Walmart's approach to remote pay

Many tech roles at Walmart no longer require you to come into the office (i.e. remote permanently). Compensation does change if you move states and pay is set based on the market rate of the new area where you are living.

Note: if Walmart is sponsoring your H1B there are specific rules around remote work you need to follow.

Walmart's relocation package

Walmart does offer relocation packages (or allowances) up to a preset amount based on bills accrued during the relocation process. We've seen even entry-level software engineers get packages of 12.5K, plus covering the costs of a moving service, flights, and a realtor to find an apartment.

However, Walmart can claw back some of this if a candidate quits the company. If you leave after 1 year, you could have to pay back 100% of the amount given by Walmart. If you leave after 2 years, you could have to pay back 50%.

Most negotiable component

The easiest component to negotiate is the signing bonus. What's unusual about Walmart negotiations is that base salary typically also has quite a wide band and over a 4-year period, this often has the biggest delta between initial and final offer.

Negotiating equity is difficult at Walmart because offers have a separate on hire equity grant (that vests over 4 years, but is small) and then "guaranteed" annual stock grants that also vest over 4 years.

Does Walmart require written offers?

Walmart will rarely ask for competing offers in writing. However, they will often refuse to match competing offers unless you play your cards right.

Will Walmart go above band if I have a strong competing offer?

Walmart is quite strict with its compensation bands and very rarely do we see above band offers. If you have competing offers that are substantially higher, your best bet is to push for an uplevel at Walmart to ensure comp is competitive.

Is my hiring manager relationship important at Walmart?

Your hiring manager can play a big role in your negotiation at Walmart. For many clients we've helped, the correct strategy has been to bring the hiring manager into the negotiation, as they often heavily influence or make the decision. This is very different than companies like Google.

What does the hiring process look like at Walmart?

Does Walmart pay well compared to ?

What kind of benefits does Walmart offer?

Walmart Equity Vesting Schedule

Year 1
25%
Year 2
25%
Year 3
25%
Year 4
25%
Year 5
25%
Year 5
%

Walmart Levels

Walmart Level

Software Eng 2

Software Eng 3 (E3)

Senior SWE (E4)

Staff SWE (E5)

Principal SWE (E6)

Distinguished Eng (E7)

=

Equivalent Level at Google

L3

L3 into L4

L4 into L5

L5

L6

L6 into L7

Why use us?

Our Clients Love Rora

Coming from a non-FAANG background, I was shocked to find out how much I could be earning. Before I signed up with Rora, I made the mistake of telling Amazon my current compensation. Thankfully, Rora knew exactly how to fix it and ended up getting me an offer that was 2.3X what I previously made and more than $600K higher than Amazon’s initial offer!

Through several weeks of interviews, Ganesh was always available to make sure I knew what to say for each conversation. I interviewed with start ups, Google, Facebook and Amazon and was really impressed that Rora knew the comp ranges and were able to give me tailored advice for each – even the start ups.

There ended up being two particularly complex moments in my negotiation. One of the start-ups I had a personal relationship with and I wasn’t sure how it would affect the negotiation. I like that there was a focus on my individual circumstances and that they were leveraged to get me a higher offer. The other situation is that Amazon made a mistake on my written offer and initially wouldn’t rectify it. Ganesh was able to guide me through a challenging conversation to get it resolved.

Steve Commisso
L7 Principal Software Engineer, Amazon

Thanks to Wilson and the team at Rora I got a ~$250K increase on my remote Facebook offer! I was initially worried I wouldn’t have much leverage because Facebook reached out to me, and I wasn’t interviewing anywhere else. Rora introduced me to an Amazon L7 recruiter and helped me get that process started. I didn’t even end up needing to finish the Amazon interviews, since we were able to use some early compensation conversations to justify our numbers to Facebook.

At one point I was also considering pushing for an E7 role, and they wrote up a great script for me to broach the subject with my recruiter. She ended up giving me the option to do an additional interview to be considered for the higher-level position.

The whole process was very smooth, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use the service for any future negotiations. I found the regular calls with Wilson where we walked through strategy and discussed the scripts to be extremely helpful. Not only did it help with this negotiation, but I also learned a lot of useful negotiation tactics that I’ve already started to use in other situations.

Chris Jones
E6 Software Engineer, Facebook

As an engineering leader with decades of experience and having now gone through the negotiation with the team at Rora, the only thing I can say is — get the help. Whether you realize you need it, or even if you think you don’t. Just because you have done well in engineering doesn't mean that you understand the tactics and limits of the recruiting process.

Rora helped me get a $200K increase on my original Facebook offer without any competing offers.  It was clear that Rora was deeply familiar with Facebook's negotiation playbook. I’d honestly give the experience an 11/10.

In addition, Rora guided me on how to get the position switched to a revised remote role which was a huge deal at a personal level. They showed me how to redirect FB’s questions so that I could explore the possibility of not relocating, without ever having to say no to my original offer.

E7 Hardware Engineer
Facebook

This is my first FAANG role and I'm so happy I worked with Rora (thanks again Annie!) for the negotiation. My goal was to increase my Google offer, but I was in a tricky situation where I only had 1 other interview (no offer yet) at a small startup. With their guidance, I managed to get a $240K increase on my Google offer, despite Google's policy of requiring cross offers in writing to justify an increase.

The mock negotiations were a big part of why I was able to get this increase. Going into the negotiation, I assumed the key factor was what to say but I quickly learned that how you say it is equally if not more important. This was clear when over the course of the call"no" turned into "I'll see what I can do" and eventually"I think we can make this work". A big part of this was also having someone with me on the calls to provide real time guidance. This took a lot of the stress out of the situation. I can't recommend this team highly enough!

Andrei Gorbushkin
L5 Technical Program Manager, Google

After receiving several job offers, I needed to make a decision within a few days. I wanted to make sure I was getting the best offer possible, so I decided to use Rora. I was very pleased with their service. My coach, Sameer, was well prepared and had information about what compensation increases were likely possible. He provided detailed scripts covering a range of scenarios, and he did practice negotiations with me that helped me feel confident when I had the actual conversations.  

With his help I was able to increase one offer by $45k per year plus get a $50k signing bonus and then use that to increase my offer from Square, which was my first choice. All throughout he was very responsive as I was dealing with some tight deadlines and looking to wrap things up quickly. Rora's fee was only a tiny fraction of the increase they helped me negotiate, and even though they would have made more money if I had taken the highest offer, Sameer always put my goals first and never pressured me to do so. I highly recommend Rora!

L6 Software Engineer
Square

My friend introduced me to Rora and I’m so glad they did. I initially did some calculations to see if working with them would be worth it - my final increase ended up being ~3x higher than what I had estimated to be possible!

Their data is much more accurate than anything I found online. Without Sameer's guidance, I would have never known (and would have probably been too nervous) to ask for >$800K for anAmazon L7 offer. Of course, it's not just not enough to throw out a big number, you also need to be able to justify it. Sameer guided me through negotiating an up-level at another company, which I didn’t even know was possible at my level. With their scripts, I was able to leverage my competing offer to get exec approval for my Amazon offer. They also knew all the tricks Amazon would play (e.g., assuming 15% stock appreciation) and exactly how to counter them.

My total 4-year compensation increased by $570K. I don't think I've ever had a higher ROI – I’m very thankful that this service exists!

L7 Principal Software Engineer
Amazon

Maximize your Walmart Offer

Walmart

has a unique set of negotiation policies. If you don’t have experience negotiating with them, you risk losing out on large amounts of money because of very small mistakes.

There are many of these rules you need to know to get the highest

Walmart

offer possible.

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