Hacker News Reader

Comment by vox_mollis | Hacker News Reader

One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers, by default, maintain a very high correlation with nonassertiveness and dearth of social skills. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. For most of us, these factors are baked into our essence from childhood, and are virtually impossible to break. In the absence of concrete interaction examples or a corpus of negotiation scripts to analyze, none of his vague advice is useful for many of us.

View on HN

"One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers..."

It seems far more likely to me that Patrick has made it such a focus for him to share this advice is that he is intensely aware of it, rather than what you said.

Don't get me wrong, I understand and appreciate his motivation, but I doubt he fully comprehends the psychology he's up against. Apologies if I come across as too un-appreciatively negative toward his efforts.

Are you aware that he was (is) a developer himself, long before he became an evangelist of charging more?

Yes, I'm quite aware of this fact. But he's a socially competent developer, and my point still stands about those of us who are not.

Did you come out of the womb knowing how to program or is it something that you spent some time on, reading, practicing, working your way through uncomfortable situations?

Social competency is a skill just like any other and requires practice and learning.

"No true scotsman."

Would you prefer advice from a socially incompetent developer?

If I'm at point A and want to reach point B, I'd value advice from someone who went A->B (and now comfortably sitting at B) more than from someone who is still stuck in A with me.

Perhaps. If one is a socially incompetent developer, it's quite possible that one might find advice from another socially incompetent developer to be more relevant and actionable than advice from a socially competent developer.

Assuming he went from socially incompetent to socially competent. Patio11 seems very much like he is more naturally gifted than the [stereo]typical developer in this respect.

If you go through his blog you'll find that he was a very shy engineer himself who couldn't look people into the eye. I guess we should all understand that there are only very few things / skills that can't be learned.

I completely understand what you're saying: This is exactly why I wrote my book and courses, and why I offer 1-on-1 coaching. And I focus very heavily on providing real tactics, templates, worksheets, scripts, and examples to make the process as transparent as possible.

For example, we talk about "The Dreaded Salary Question". Here's an article I wrote that discusses this question in detail along with what to expect and exactly how to respond: https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/the-dreaded-salary-que...

And we go into more detail in this episode.

To put a finer point on it: A lot of the reason I created Fearless Salary Negotiation is specifically to address the factors you mentioned. It's why a lot of my examples in the book involve software developers and related topics.

If I can clarify or elaborate on anything that was vague in the episode, please let me know so I can give more detailed information!

Thanks for your comment!

EDIT: I am on the fence about this, but I think it's extremely pertinent here. I mentioned I coach people and this is a big reason why. If you're a software engineer and you're tentative about negotiating, I can help you. https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/coach

His "vague advice" is very useful. It's a reminder that tech isn't the only thing that employees are selling. And that selling includes an interpersonal component. It can be ignored, but the results will be far from optimal. The best thing for an engineer who underperforms in conversation and negotiation is to realize that there is room to improve and to get moving on doing whatever it takes to have a package to offer that includes technical ability and the social ability to negotiate appropriately.

I'm not even going to touch upon the fact that the skills that a person can use to negotiate more effectively will almost certainly make them a better and more valuable employee (even if they are just a developer/engineer).

Tech workers are not islands unto themselves. The faster they learn this, the better.

Really? While I'm at the point in my career where I don't use the proposed techniques, I think the advice is generally OK-to-good and was anything but vague.

If you identify as non-assertive and aren't interested in compensating for that during negotiations, you're going to get a particular result.

If you identify as non-assertive, but are willing to concretely work against that tendency for an aggregate of fifteen minutes to a max of two hours during negotiations, you're likely to get a much better outcome.

Out of the three sections that TFA is broken down into, two of them deal exclusively with how (and why) to improve your negotiation skills, and the third one is roughly 50 percent dedicated to the topic. If dedicating 83 percent of your essay to how and why to overcome "nonassertiveness and a dearth of social skills" isn't enough, exactly how much would be enough?

I personally found his advice extremely actionable, and I'm keenly aware that I struggle more with being assertive in negotiations than probably everyone I've ever worked with.

I'm very sorry if this comes off as insulting, but I have only ever known two developers who really needed much more basic advice than what Patrick is offering here, and I believe that both of them are mentally ill. (One has Asperger's Syndrome, and the other, I strongly suspect, has severe clinical depression which is going undiagnosed and untreated.)

Now, if you are in this situation yourself, it is absolutely worth your time to seek treatment, or at least research and practice using coping mechanisms that apply to the issues that you struggle with most. Seriously, just memorizing a few new sets of behaviors and then "executing the program" in appropriate situations can profoundly improve your quality of life, in ways that go far beyond getting a fatter paycheck.

If you want to discuss any of this with me further, feel free to contact me at afishionado@gmail.com.

Then treat it as an engineering problem. Or be content making less than you should.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com