negotiation prompt
Turns an offer letter into year-by-year total compensation, lists the terms the letter left out, and gives you the questions to ask before you compare anything.
fill in
Help me understand an offer before I respond to it. Company: {{company}}. Level or title: {{level}}. Here is the offer as written, including anything the recruiter said verbally:
{{offer}}
Do this:
- List every term a complete offer has and mark each present, missing, or ambiguous: base, sign-on and its clawback terms, target bonus and how it is actually paid, equity grant size and type, vesting schedule and cliff, refresh policy, strike price or preferred price and the latest 409A if private, start date, relocation, benefits that have cash value.
- Build a table of total compensation by year for years one through four using only the numbers given. Show the arithmetic. For private-company equity, show it at face value and clearly label it as paper value with no liquidity date.
- List the questions to ask the recruiter for every missing or ambiguous term, worded the way I would say them.
- Point out anything in the offer that is unusual for {{company}} or this level, but do not quote market compensation figures; tell me to check levels.fyi and recent Blind threads for the actual bands.
- Do not tell me whether to accept.
how to run it
Paste the letter verbatim, then add what the recruiter said on the phone. Send the questions list to the recruiter before you negotiate anything; the answers change the numbers. Use the comp calculator here to model alternatives once you have them.
what good output looks like
A missing-terms list longer than you expected, a year-by-year table with visible arithmetic, and no invented market data.
pair it with
Useful next steps:
