Facebook / Meta Salary Negotiation Explained

Our team of recruiters from Meta reveals the top ways to negotiate more

We’ve helped job seekers negotiate hundreds of offers with Facebook/Meta since we first launched our negotiation coaching services in 2019. We want to share with you the best information we’ve learned, so that you can be prepared to tackle your own negotiation! If you want more hands-on, personal, guidance, feel free to check out our Negotiation Coaching service, where one of our Recruiter Coaches will be able to coach you through your negotiations on a personal level to ensure you know what to say and how best to say it.

Editor’s Note May 2022: Although Facebook/Meta has made an announcement of a hiring freeze, we are still seeing some candidates with niche skills/specialties still being moved forward. More generalist roles will be impacted more than highly specialized skills.

Contents

  • Offer Structure
  • Market Rate
  • Negotiation Process
  • Tips for Negotiating with Meta

Offer Structure

The first thing you should know when negotiating with any company is how they structure their compensation. Meta’s offer components are very similar to a standard tech-industry offer, so we won’t spend too much time going over the individual parts here. If you’re unsure of what that looks like, feel free to take a look at our post 'What is Total Compensation?' for a breakdown.

Instead, we’ll focus on the components as it relates to the offer and negotiations.

Base Salary

Like most companies, Meta operates with ‘compensation bands’ or ‘compensation ranges.’ In addition to having overall total compensation ranges, the base salary also has a fixed range, all dependent on your level.

The base salary component is usually offered at a standard mid-point of the range, so you’ll know there is some flexibility. Consider the ranges to be broken up like below:

MinMedMax

From what we’ve seen in our negotiations, the range of base salaries for lower levels is a bit narrower than for higher levels, so the room to negotiate may vary with your base salary. Additionally, Meta strongly considers pay parity when rolling out offers and just because you may know the maximum range for the base salary, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get it, as they will have to consider other members of the team and role.

Equity / Stock / RSUs

As with many tech companies, Meta offers RSUs as part of your offer package. For more information on what those are, take a look at our article here.

Meta’s vesting schedule is split evenly over 4 years. Similar to a lot of other tech companies, you’d get 25% of your equity each year until you vest all of your new-hire grant. Something nice about Meta is that they have a quarterly vesting schedule, which means that your RSUs vest 4 times per year. This means that on each vesting date, you can expect about 6.25% of your total new-hire grant.

For example, if you were awarded $400k of RSUs, you could outline it like below:

  • Total Year 1 value awarded: $100k.
  • Total value awarded on each vesting date: $25k.
  • Total Year 2 value awarded: $100k.
  • Total value awarded on each vesting date: $25k.

And so on and so forth.

Something you may also see around is stock refreshers. These aren’t included with initial offers, so it’s hard to predict and evaluate what the refresher may look like. Recruiters are typically advised against providing guesses/estimates, as it’s managed by a wholly different team, but it’s still worth a shot in asking in case the recruiter is open to sharing that information.

Sign-on Bonus

Although your offer may not include a sign-on bonus immediately, there is typically room to negotiate for one and Meta does offer sign-on bonuses regularly. Recruiters may leave out a sign-on bonus in the initial offer as a way to give themselves room to improve your offer down the line after negotiating.

From experience, we’ve helped our clients negotiate sign-on bonuses ranging from $10k up to $100k depending on the level and role.

Performance Bonus

Meta pays for performance. Although they have general performance bonus percentages (see below for what those are), top performers who greatly exceed in performance ratings can get up to 150-200% of their bonus.

  • E3 = 10%
  • E4 = 15%
  • E5 = 15%
  • E6 = 20%
  • E7 = 25%
  • E8 = 30%

In our experience, it’s typical to hit target bonuses or potentially even higher, as the company continues to do well.

Market Rate

Meta prides itself on having a market-based approach to compensation and regularly pays top-of-market for many competitive positions. Something unique about Meta is that they pay for ‘cost of labor,’ as opposed to ‘cost of living.’ What this means is that they won’t tie your compensation to a specific location, so moving to a higher cost-of-living area won’t necessarily guarantee you a higher offer.

For information on the salaries and market data we have from Meta/Facebook, check out our page here.

Negotiation Process

So now you know how Meta’s compensation works, you might have an idea of what you want your offer to look like, how do you negotiate it?

First, let’s start with advice that applies to all salary negotiations, regardless of company.

Negotiations can start as early as the first recruiter phone call before you even meet with anyone from the interview team. You may have had (or will get) the dreaded, “So what are you looking for in terms of compensation for this role?” Getting this question so early in the process can throw people off, but recruiters will often use it and hold you to it early on. If you’re frustrated with your current job and are starting the job hunt, it’s easy to consider taking a lower salary just for the change of scenery.

  1. Do not share your compensation expectations up front. Money isn’t everything, (but we know it’s important) so feel free to lean on the interview process as an excuse and say something like, “I’m focusing on the interview process now, so I haven’t had a chance to consider compensation. I’m focused on finding the best team and culture fit for me, but if things go well, I’m sure we’ll be able to make it work down the road.”
  2. Do not share your CURRENT compensation, either. A lot of states have salary history bans, meaning companies and recruiters cannot ask you what you’re currently making as a way to anchor a potential offer. If it’s to your advantage, you can offer up the information willingly, but you should only do so after you receive a verbal or written offer that’s lower than your current salary.

Meta’s Process

Meta’s offer process can differ depending on your leveling and role. If you’re unsure of your leveling, feel free to ask your recruiter directly.

If you’re in a non-engineering role, it’ll be pretty straight forward. The recruiter will call to share the good news with you that the team wants to move forward with an offer. It’s here that they may roll out an initial offer or bring up your compensation expectations again.

If you’re in an engineering role, you will have to go through a 6-8 week Bootcamp, where you’ll learn about the various job-specific tools Meta uses.

If you’re a junior engineer (E3-E4), they typically consider you a generalist, so you won’t have a pre-decided team to join. Instead, they’ll consider your Bootcamp performance and experience as a way to match you up with the best fit for your skills and interests. E5 engineers may also fall into this category sometimes, though many have pre-decided teams.

If you’re a senior engineer or above (E6+), you won’t likely have to go through a placement during Bootcamp, but recruiters may approach your negotiations a bit differently.

Tips for Negotiating with Meta

Meta typically pays higher than their counterparts at the likes of Google, Amazon, etc. From our 2021 Pay Report, Meta/Facebook lands at the fifth highest paying company for Staff Engineers and the second highest paying company for Principal Engineers. Knowing this, keep these tips in mind as you consider negotiating your offer with Meta.

  • Meta is willing and expects you to negotiate. As noted previously, sign-on bonuses are common for Meta offers, but many times, recruiters will roll out an initial offer without one attached. If you accept their offer as-is, you could be leaving $10k-$100k on the table in just a sign-on bonus.
  • Meta recruiters must work closely with an internal compensation team. Both that team and your recruiter need data to support certain compensation requests. The team has standard ranges and will approve compensation based primarily on market data or competing offers, but you may also convince them to consider your personal situation, such as unvested equity from your current company or current compensation (if applicable).
  • Meta pays for cost of labor, not cost of living. We mentioned it above, but it bears repeating. Negotiating on the basis of relocation to a higher/lower cost-of-living area usually doesn’t get much traction.

Other Resources

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