Though she commands a hefty $400,000 salary today, Sora Lee knows about starting small.

Lee earned a $40,000 base salary, plus a $6,000 bonus, at a startup called TubeMogul after graduating from college in 2011. 

A little over a decade and several job changes later, the 34-year old is now the global head of product marketing at TikTok with a $320,000 base salary plus $80,000 in restricted stock unit grants in 2024.

Before starting at TikTok, she worked for — and successfully negotiated big salary increases at — Netflix and Meta. 

Here are three tips she has used herself to find success in her career, including her No. 1 strategy for negotiating your salary before accepting a new job.

1. Be ready to negotiate

Along with plenty of other career experts, Lee recommends preparing to negotiate when you're expecting a job offer. Her best negotiation tip: always have a counteroffer.

When she was interviewing for her role at Netflix, Lee received an offer for a job at another firm.

"I already went into Netflix thinking, 'OK, if this doesn't work out, I will still double my compensation because I was offered about $80,000 at the [other] company," she says. "That gave me a lot of confidence."

That confidence allowed her to ask Netflix for $90,000 a year, knowing she had another offer that came close. Netflix wound up offering her $110,000.

2. Work at a restaurant

Lee got some of her earliest career experience working in a restaurant. 

"I highly recommend that everyone should work as a server at a busy restaurant at least once in their life, especially at an early age, because it teaches you about reading people and servicing people," she says. "I actually think highly of any candidate that has worked in the restaurant business."

Since employees often have to juggle a number of tasks at once — taking orders, serving food, clearing tables — Lee says it helps you think about "operational efficiency." 

"You never go into the hall without bringing anything, or go back to the kitchen without bringing dirty dishes," she says.

3. 'Make your own dream job'

"Make your own dream job. It's rare that a dream job is just available waiting for you," Lee says. 

When she was in college, Lee didn't know she'd wind up in tech or the type of jobs she could do, and says she "kind of fell into" the industry. "It's hard to dream to become something that you've never heard of or been exposed to," she says.

But as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, she took advantage of the campus' close proximity to Silicon Valley to score internships at tech startups like TubeMogul.

Not only is she making a good salary now, but she has gotten a lot of satisfaction and pride out of her career from getting to work with smart and well-respected leaders in the business world. She got there by finding the kind of tasks she enjoyed doing and the type of people she enjoyed working with and leveraging those skills and connections to get her next opportunity.

You might not land a role you think sounds perfect for you, but Lee recommends looking for other opportunities at the same company or within the same industry as a stepping stone toward the job you really want.

"To get your foot in the door, you may go for a less optimal role or function," Lee says. "You might have to do that for a year or two, but [then] you can look to transfer to a more attractive team or one that's more aligned with your career."

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