Im a SWE2 going into Senior SWE at Intuit after 3.5 years of experience. I have a good standing within the company and am overall "satisfied" with life ATM. I found that the innovation at Intuit and the growing bureaucracy was driving me crazy enough to look elsewhere.
I have two offers after 6 months of leet coding.
Apple:
The Apple team is giving me an ICT3 offer (from their POV, it was the best choice and I think so too -- would love some feedback here). I absolutely killed the interviews and have some leverage with an AWS offer as well. The team seems super cool and everyone has been professional.
They claim that they will match whatever I would like within reason for compensation, but they will only negotiate ONCE with VPs and directors to approve a better compensation package. Their first offer was 140 Base, 105 RSUs and 20-30K for a sign on bonus. Anything higher than the above needs approval from higher management. I could use some advice for negotiating a better offer! My recruiter even hinted that I should be asking for one anyway. My friends tell me to ask for 190 base, 200 RSUs and 50K sign on bonus (shoot for the moon I suppose -- entirely unrealistic from the data points collected on blind). Any help would be appreciated. Im trying to be as vague as possible and sharing as little direct information as I can. Perhaps there is a better strategy to negotiate an offer.
AWS:
My recruiter is extremely pushy. They want me to come in at an SDE 1 (even though I interviewed for an SDE2 position). The recruiter refuses to give me a written offer until I get the "final numbers" from Apple. The AWS team that I interviewed for is incredibly cool and would be within a technology that has a lot of up and coming traction. Needless to say, I am more excited about the learning/lessons to be had at AWS and am skeptical about the culture and compensation. Also, 3.5 years of experience and I get an entry level position? Not that it matters too much if the compensation is there, but wow. Is this an offer worth considering for the technical interest? Is that worth a potential 100K loss in comp? Will AWS budge if Apple makes a great offer?
My heart is torn because both situations are solid from the outside perspective. Please help!