The Airbnb engineer who got a $250,000 starting-pay package shares his tips on negotiating job offers

Haseeb Qureshi is an Airbnb engineer who drew a lot of attention last spring for his blog post explaining how he negotiated a $250,000 starting-pay package from an original $120,000 offer.

He's been continually documenting his advice and tips for how others can do the same and just published a lengthy, detailed post on how to negotiate once the offer is in hand.

The advice comes from his own experience. After deciding he wanted a new challenge from his previous job as director of product at App Academy, he got rejected by all 20 jobs he initially applied for.

He then got rejected by a bunch more companies contacted via referrals from friends. Nothing was working. He had actually only learned to code about a year before. His background was as an English major and former professional poker player.

Then, after working with a startup called TripleByte, which anonymously tests a candidate's technical skills then matches them with companies, a couple of interviews and offers started to come in. By letting all the recruiters he talked to know he had multiple job offers, he ended up landing eight job offers, including positions at Google, Uber, and Yelp.

The problem? While all the early offers were in range for what entry-level engineers make, they were for less money than his current job, and not enough money to live well in expensive Silicon Valley.

He had another trial-and-error process in negotiating for more.

His latest post called "How not to bomb your offer negotiation" is worth reading, but here's a few top tips we gleaned from it.