Negotiating a Microsoft software engineer offer from 109k to 117k

When the Microsoft offer came in for a software engineer role in Redmond, my instinct was to say yes on the spot. I'd wanted to work there for a long time, and seeing the number in my inbox gave me that rush of relief that makes people accept things they probably shouldn't. But I made myself slow down. Instead of replying that afternoon, I opened a fresh document and started logging everything: every email, every phone call, every number on the table. That habit alone changed how I handled the whole conversation. The initial package was a 109k base, a 120k stock grant vesting over four years, and a signing bonus that looked generous but had room to move. I knew it had room because I had a second process running in parallel with another company. Not a bluff. A real, ongoing conversation. That concurrent interest drove everything that followed. When I told the Microsoft recruiter I needed time to think, it wasn't a line. I genuinely had something else to weigh. That credibility shifted the dynamic. The recruiter stopped treating the offer as a formality and started treating it like something that might fall through. I went through five interviews total before reaching this stage, so by the time the offer landed I had a good sense ↓