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My observation is that salary negotiation has little to do with negotiation. The management side of the table is never thinking in terms of economics and has no idea what their BATNA is.

I think this comes from HR and leadership which can't quantify what the right balance is for comp vs their BATNA.

For engineers this is especially challenging because metrics are hard to come by and correlate with the $$$ going out the door.

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I've been working for over a decade. There is ONE and ONLY ONE rule i've seen universally followed by HR -- your pay rises with the # of people reporting to you. Regardless of whatever managers say about running a lean shop or budget or whatever -- the more people you hire and manager, the more money you make. If you can do the work in six months, tell them 18 and hire two others. If you can do the work with 4 FTEs, tell them 12 FTEs and get a nice promotion. Increase employment, get great documentation and unit tests, and play to the foolish HR policies HR has cooked up. When people get paid for productivity, then switch to lean. Until then, play to the metric they set.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

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