Is it worth negotiating?

It's 100% worth negotiating, especially if the offers are from high-integrity, large companies like Apple (where you are), Google, Meta, etc. Three things to realize:

1. You should negotiate only after you have the offer. Once you have the offer, you're one of the few people who has made it through the interview process, and the company has already invested time + effort in vetting you. It's irrational for them to reject you simply because you're negotiating in good faith.
2. Generally at a big tech co, your manager or teammates won't know you've negotiated. That's something that happens with a recruiter.
3. You may be surprised how quickly a company offers you an extra $50K or $100K, which is trivial for them, but life-changing for you.

The only time I know where negotiating backfired is with an exploding offer, like the way some finance offer.

For internships, it might be worth trying to negotiate, but it's generally not possible, and it's anyway not very consequential since you won't get a sign-on bonus or equity.

More details in this and this YouTube video.

If I told you that you could spend 15-30 minutes writing some emails and potentially get $10,000+ for it, would you do it? Probably yes right? That's why negotiation is a complete no-brainer. There are very activities on Earth that are this high ROI. Here's an excellent video explaining this mentality more in depth: Why You Should Always Negotiate Your Offers

As Rahul mentioned, there is the edge case with an "exploding offer", but in all other cases, there's really nothing to lose as long you're polite about it. Given how competitive the tech industry is, especially with the search for talent, you won't be perceived negatively for trying either - It's sort of expected.

For tactics on how to negotiate, I recommend these Taro videos:

• The #1 Rule Of Negotiation - How To Avoid Giving A Number
• 3 Quick, Powerful Negotiation Tips
• The Key Insight Behind Negotiation

Lastly, if you ever need negotiation support, we're happy to help craft communications for you there as a part of the Taro Premium community.

Based on what Rahul and Alex have said, I can also better highlight what led to me turning down a few offers or how solid offers turned into exploding offers. During my last job search a few months back, I had the option of downshifting to entry-level in a startup since I was only mid doing exactly what I wanted to do, but they didn't know how to do microservice architectures well, so I said no to a second interview. I interviewed at senior at a national lab and the interviewer felt very stiff, again not something that's going to work for me even if it was something I wanted to do. A 3rd one was a good buy, but data science automation senior at a startup doing automation only no modelling, and even then the modelling work was only basic statistics when I can work in research level AI. I talked back and forth a bit and we just weren't a match for each other. Once you start to get these kinds of experiences you get a sense of how flexible someone is. Assume that tech stacks shown in a job ad are likely set in stone and there's not much you can do in the short term to change it, even if you know something better. It was also a great lesson to me in being picky within reason and it set me on a better life path than had I not been picky.