FAIR & DeepMind Research Scientist Salary Negotiation
Disclaimer: We’ve anonymized the names to protect our clients confidentiality.
Alex was graduating with a PhD in CS from a R1 university. When Rora first engaged with Alex, he was initially very skeptical of the impact Rora could have. While he was aware of his inexperience with negotiating, he questioned what a coach could do since he was ultimately the one who would be negotiating with the company.
After an initial call with Rora, Alex decides to negotiate on his own. When negotiating, Alex has offers from DeepMind, Facebook, and a startup. Alex shares his Facebook offer with DeepMind and they increase it by 21%, but it was still below Facebook's offer. Alex then negotiates with Facebook and Facebook increases it by 8%. Now Alex is stuck because he wants to go to DeepMind but the offer is significantly lower than Facebook's and he doesn't know what else he can do.
At this point Alex reaches out to Rora and we begin working with him. Using our compensation database we know that candidates similar to Alex's background have received higher offers at DeepMind. We craft a script with unique justifications based on his situation, do mock negotiations so he has confidence going into the conversation, and arm him with specific asks that we know DeepMind can do. Alex negotiates with DeepMind and they increase their offer by 31%, now beating Facebook's offer.
At this point, Alex is ready to accept the DeepMind offer. The recruiting process has been long, he's grown tired of negotiating and is sensing push back from the companies. Rora is critical here to assuage his anxiety and has the experience to understand what’s left on the table. Knowing there’s more room to negotiate, Rora convinces Alex to do a final negotiation with Facebook and DeepMind. Rora helps him articulate his ask without damaging the relationships and with specific numbers that are based on compensation data Rora has. DeepMind increases the signing bonus by $50K, Facebook increases the equity by $50K. Alex decides on DeepMind and accepts.
Using Rora Alex increases his annual compensation by 31% and a $50K signing bonus.
To Learn More About Rora
If you want to learn more about our negotiation tactics and market data, go to www.teamrora.com/learn.
Brian is the founder and CEO of Rora. He's spent his career in education - first building Leada, a Y-Combinator backed ed-tech startup that was Codecademy for Data Science.
Brian founded Rora in 2018 with a mission to shift power to candidates and employees and has helped hundreds of people negotiate for fairer pay, better roles, and more power at work.
Brian is a graduate of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
Over 1000 individuals have used Rora to negotiate more than $10M in pay increases at companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, hundreds of startups, as well as consulting firms such as Vanguard, Cornerstone, BCG, Bain, and McKinsey. Their work has been featured in Forbes, ABC News, The TODAY Show, and theSkimm.
1:1 Salary Negotiation Support
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Step 1 is defining the strategy, which often starts by helping you create leverage for your negotiation (e.g. setting up conversations with FAANG recruiters).
Step 2 we decide on anchor numbers and target numbers with the goal of securing a top of band offer, based on our internal verified data sets.
Step 3 we create custom scripts for each of your calls, practice multiple 1:1 mock negotiations, and join your recruiter calls to guide you via chat.
Frequently Asked Questions
