Salary Negotiation Guide
73% of employers leave room to negotiate¹·Only ~30% of workers ask²

Don't accept the first offer. Know exactly what to counter.

The Counter-Offer Playbook — your personalized counter range, ready-to-send counter email, and the negotiation playbook behind both. Built on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for your exact title and metro.

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Instant·No signup·Backed by research
¹ CareerBuilder Compensation Survey, 2018·² Pew Research Center, 2023
U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsOEWS — May 2025 (latest annual release)
+ glassdoor · indeed · levels.fyi & other references
825 occupations · 393 US metros
updated annually since 1996
A sample Playbook · three illustrative cases

A look inside — three excerpts from the ten-section Playbook.

Three excerpts, three real cases — an engineer, a nurse, a financial analyst. Yours is computed fresh — from your offer, your title, your metro.

Counter range + verdict
Senior Software Engineer · Austin · 7 YOE
Where Your Offer Stands · Market read§ 01 / 10
Below market
$172,500 — $186,000
A defensible window between the metro median and the p75 ceiling, rounded to typical recruiter increments.
Government range
$150K – $186K
$142,000
your offer
Market range
$152K – $195K

Computed against the BLS percentile distribution for SOC 15-1252 in metro 12420, calibrated to your stated 7-year experience band. Cross-referenced against Indeed, Glassdoor, PayScale, and Levels.fyi to flag outliers.

Coverage393 metrosConfidenceHigh
BLS OEWS May 2025 · Austin–Round Rock · 7 YOEMethodologyBLS percentile bands for SOC 15-1252 (Software Developers) in metro 12420 (Austin–Round Rock–Georgetown), calibrated to a 7-year experience band.
Counter email
Registered Nurse · Denver · 6 YOE
Mail — Drafts
FromMaya AlvarezToday · 9:42
ToDana K.· Nurse Recruiter
SubjectRegarding the Registered Nurse offer

Hi Dana,

Thank you again for the offer — I'm excited to join the unit and the team.

Based on BLS wage data for Registered Nurses in Denver and my 6 years of experience, I'd like to counter at $104,500.

Happy to talk it through on a quick call.

— Maya

AnchoredOn marketStatusReady to send
Drafted from BLS Denver data · Personalized to your offer
Non-salary playbook
Financial Analyst · Charlotte · 4 YOE
Beyond-Base Levers · Ranked for you§ 04 / 10

Near market — protect the base, then win the package on these levers.

  1. 01
    Signing bonusCash

    Ask $8K – $12K · one-time cash

  2. 02
    Bonus floorCash

    Target % and floor — in writing

  3. 03
    Accelerated reviewCompound

    First review at 6 months, not 12

  4. 04
    PTO floorTime

    Push 15 → 20 days

  5. 05
    CFA supportDev

    Exam fees covered + study days

  6. 06
    Start dateTime

    Push 2 → 4 weeks

  7. 07
    Title pathRole

    Senior-Analyst criteria in writing

Levers7 personalizedVerdictNear market
Personalized levers · BLS + O*NET + Charlotte metro context

Salary Negotiation Guide · Research Desk — illustrative examples, real BLS data. Your Playbook renders against your inputs.

By the numbers

Negotiating works. The data is unambiguous.

Three findings from independent labor research. We didn't run these studies — we just read them, and we cite every number.

01·Will it work?
85%
of people who counter get at least some of what they ask for.
Fidelity Investments, 2022 (N=1,524)
02·What's at stake?
$5,000
average gain over the initial offer for those who negotiate.
Marks & Harold, J. Org. Behav. 2011
03·Is it risky?
~6%
of offers are rescinded after negotiation — almost always for aggressive or repeated asks.
Hart, Bear & Ren, HBR 2024
The Playbook's read

Hit send with confidence.

Research gives you options. We give you the answer you'll stand behind.

01

Premium negotiation coaches charge $1K–$5K.

The tactics they converge on are already in the Playbook — synthesized, sourced, and matched to the offer in front of you.

02

Your counter email anchors on market data — not on what you already make.

That's the anti-anchoring move most DIY counters miss. The number you ask for is grounded in BLS percentile bands and metro-specific wage data, not in your last paystub.

03

If you're above market, we'll tell you — and route you to other levers.

Signing bonus, equity refresh, PTO, start date. The specialist's judgment includes knowing when not to push on salary.

What's inside the Playbook

One $29 decision. Ten sections.

Personalized to your offer, your title, and your metro. Ready in minutes. No account required.

The Counter-Offer Playbook

Built for the offer in your inbox right now.

Drafted for the 24–48 hour window between offer and response. Read it once, send the email, keep the reasoning.

$29Free analysis
  • Free analysis for your current offer
  • No account required
  • Delivered as a private link in minutes
  • 30-day refund if it doesn't help you counter
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  • 01 Where Your Offer Stands

    The verdict on your offer, and the exact numbers to counter with — floor, anchor, target, and your accept line.

  • 02 Counter-Letter Toolkit

    A ready-to-send counter email written around your numbers, with a phrase library for tone.

  • 03 Recruiter Response Playbook

    Their likely responses — pressure, deflection, a partial move — and your prepared answer for each.

  • 04 Beyond-Base Levers

    Every lever beyond base salary — signing, timing, review terms — ranked for your situation.

  • 05 Total Comp Calculator

    What your package is really worth over four years, computed line by line.

  • 06 Fine-Print Checklist

    The contract terms to verify before you sign — including non-compete rules.

  • 07 Company Intel

    How this employer pays and negotiates, and where it has room to move.

  • 08 Role Intel

    Your role's market trajectory and the positioning signals that strengthen your case.

  • 09 Methodology & Sources

    Where every number comes from — sources, method, and confidence.

  • 10 AI Companion Pack

    Your whole kit, structured for ChatGPT or Claude, with a tiered question menu to keep working it.

— Independent analysis. No sponsored placements. We never sell your data.

How it works

How we build your Playbook.

Your free analysis in about a minute; the full Playbook about five minutes after you unlock it. Real BLS wage data, cross-referenced with live market research.

Input
01

Tell us the offer

Title, company, metro, base + bonus + equity, and years of experience. About 30 seconds; no account.

02

Pull BLS wage data

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS — May 2025 release. Your exact title in your exact metro.

Analysis
03

Pull market research

Live web search across Glassdoor, Indeed, Levels.fyi, and PayScale for your title and companies like yours.

04

Cross-reference & calibrate

Two independent reads, side by side. We anchor on the position that holds against both sources — calibrated to your years of experience.

Output
05

Build your counter

A defensible counter range anchored on metro market rate — plus the ready-to-send email, with a phrase library for tone.

06

You send it

You hit send. 30-day refund if the Playbook didn't help you counter.

The compound cost of not negotiating
$500K – $1.5M

The compound cost, over a career, of not negotiating a first offer — depending on raise rates and investment returns.

Your gap may be smaller or larger. The Playbook tells you — for your title, your metro, your years.

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Backed by research·30-day Guarantee

— Babcock & Laschever (2003). Princeton University Press.

Frequent questions

Plainspoken answers.

The objections we hear most often, answered with the same evidence we used to design the Playbook.

— Salary Negotiation Guide · Research Desk

Sources: BLS OEWS, O*NET 30.3, HBR 2024, Fidelity 2022, CareerBuilder 2018.

No. Research of 3,000+ negotiations found only ~6% of offers were rescinded after a candidate countered — almost always for aggressive or repeated asks, never for a single polite counter.Source: Hart, Bear & Ren, HBR 2024.
Probably, yes. “Feels good” usually means “better than expected,”not “at the top of market.” 73% of employers leave room to negotiate; 85% of people who counter get something. The Playbook tells you where your offer actually sits — so you can counter with evidence or accept knowing you’re at the ceiling.Sources: CareerBuilder 2018, Fidelity 2022.
A common barrier — ~38% of people cite it as their reason for skipping the counter. The fix is in the framing, not the ask itself. Counters framed in shared-interest terms (“given the role’s market rate and my skill set, here’s what makes sense”) don’t trigger the social-cost read that demand-framed asks do. The Playbook’s counter email uses that framing by default.Source: CareerBuilder 2018.
Primarily the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) — the federal wage dataset, covering 825 occupations across 393 metros and all 50 states, May 2025 release. We supplement with O*NET occupation data and live employer-reported figures from Indeed, Glassdoor, PayScale, and Levels.fyi to triangulate the band you’re actually being offered within.BLS OEWS · O*NET 30.3 · Live employer-reported sources.
ChatGPT generates plausible-sounding ranges from training-set text — it has no real wage datafor your title and metro. We pull specific percentiles from the federal OEWS dataset for your exact occupation and location. Glassdoor and Levels.fyi show employee self-reports with selection bias (high-comp candidates self-report more); we cross-reference those against the federal data so you see the spread, not just the loud end. The Playbook also writes the counter email and pre-stages tactics for the recruiter’s reply — generic AI doesn’t.
We’ll tell you. The Playbook still includes non-salary levers (signing bonus, equity refresh, start date, PTO) and validates your offer so you can accept with confidence rather than with doubt.
The federal OEWS dataset covers 825 occupations — most roles map cleanly to a SOC code with metro-level data. For specialized titles (“Forward Deployed Engineer,” “Growth PM”), our pipeline matches your title to the closest SOC and supplements with live employer-reported figures. Startups don’t change the methodology — we pull the same wage data; we just flag when sample size is thin so you read the band with appropriate caveats.
Your free analysis runs in about a minute. The full Playbook is built for your offer after you unlock it and delivered in about five minutes.
If the Playbook doesn’t help you counter, reply to your receipt email within 30 days and we’ll refund the $29 in full. And if we ever fail to deliver your Playbook, we refund automatically — you don’t need to ask.
Only for report delivery. No account, no mailing list. We never sell your data.

Take the next step

Don’t walk into the call without the data. Get the Playbook.

About five minutes from unlock to ready-to-send email. You read it once, send it, and move on.

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Backed by research · 30-day Guarantee

Independent analysis. No sponsored placements. We never sell your data.