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Comment by Archio | Hacker News Reader

I liked all of the steps taken except this one:

>They developed a compensation philosophy that was conscious about not rewarding aggressive negotiators, nor punishing those who were conflict averse.

I'm all for compensating employees fairly, but being able to negotiate and advocate for oneself is an incredibly important skill both in the workplace and in life. I think we as a society need to focus on reversing any cultural pressures that lead women to be conflict averse, as opposed to dumbing down the process for everyone. The way this is worded seems to imply "women aren't good at negotiating for themselves, so we take that out of the process to keep things equal".

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On engineering teams you don't want constant negotiation. The psychological chess that people play when they negotiate salary doesn't yield a better product. What you want is people collaborating dispassionately to always choose the best possible option --- the most physically effective, the most beautiful, the most platonically ideal (whatever that means), etc. Truth isn't negotiated. Likewise for the example below, programming languages. A language should be chosen based on technical factors. Defending your opinion should mean presenting a compelling (true) argument, not somehow coercing your teammates to your view.

I'm personally extremely conflict averse, in that I hate senseless fighting where winning depends mostly on asserting yourself. I'm cool with competition of ideas where the best ideas win, and I optimistically suspect most of these "conflict-averse" women would be too.

This is really framing negotiations as a conflict and emotional. It doesn't have to be. There's plenty of data out there to make a data based case for a certain salary. There can be a lot stress depending on an individuals situation (currently no job, first job, new role, etc). For the most part I believe this stress during negotiations come from information asymmetry. Educating oneself is the best way to deal with this.

I have never seen a highly emotional negotiation tactic work. Screaming / demanding will more likely get an offer rescinded. Best negotiations I see usually go "market pays X for Y, here's the data to prove it from multiple sources", "competitor is paying X+Y%", "This job requires X% more time than stated, I have done this before. Here is the proportional increase I should get for the extra time."

The example with the competitor might seem as a one off. But market rate has a range, and it changes. Whatever competitors offers will eventually become market rate, if all else being equal (location, company prospects, coworkers, etc).

> On engineering teams you don't want constant negotiation.

I'm not sure you can escape it. I'm not sure you want to escape it. "Hey Jane, wouldn't the code be better written like this?" enters the process of negotiation. Do you really want to not explore a better way to write a given section of code because of some perceived conflict?

And maybe she will respond with: "Nice thought, but I avoided doing it that way because of a bug on platform X.", so you come back with: "Oh, I did not realize that. I still believe there is room for improvement. What if we did _this_ instead?". To which she returns with "I never thought of it that way. Good idea."

And there you have an act of negotiation. You won't always reach an agreement. Jane may not like your updated suggestion either and you ultimately walk away, leaving the code unchanged. But even when disagreements occur, I'm not sure I would want to go near an engineering team that was afraid to do that, to be honest.

> I hate senseless fighting where winning depends mostly on asserting yourself.

Perhaps we have differing ideas of what negotiation is. Senseless fighting and trying to beat someone down into submissiveness doesn't sound like the process of negotiation at all to me.

>Truth isn't negotiated

But yet... You name several possible states of "truth". For which either team member may or may not weigh as heavily..?

And, negotiations re-enter the conversation..

But is it a skill that matters for the job? How does the ability to cajole a better salary correlate with work product? IMO, it doesn't in most cases.

I've worked in a variety of places, from rigid union seniority scales, to 100% commission, to traditional corporate bands. End of the day, as long as the pay was enough, there's not much difference. Assholes, incompetents, average, high skill and genius people existed in all of those environments.

The other thing is the future time wasted through the negotiation process and dealing with the issues created. Dealing with a aggressive negotiator is a signal of a pain in the ass to me, better to cut bait.

> But is it a skill that matters for the job?

I think so. For instance, as a software developer, we might reach a point where we have to make a choice about which programming language to use for the new project. As usual, everyone on the team has differing opinions about what programming language is the right one for this project. You (usually) can't just have everyone go off and use whatever they language they feel like using, so a negotiation process is necessary.

A team of strong negotiators will work through all the plusses and minuses and reach a consensus of which one is the best choice for everyone's needs. Everyone may not be completely happy, but they will be confident that the right choice was made. If you have weak negotiators, they will be apt to yield before making their case, leading to a good chance of not making the best technology choice, and almost certainly resulting in people who are not confident in the direction of the project. Soon, you have a toxic work environment.

People have anxieties that are very specific to negotiating their pay, which do not correlate with their passion for advocating for technical directions.

How would we measure the correlation between "willing to ask for more cash" and "willing to advocate a technical decision"? Has it already been done, are you speaking from anecdotal experience, or are you just conjecturing?

When picking a language everyone on the team has the same interests: Figuring out the best language to use. Ideally in the end everyone agrees on the right decision.

A wage negotiation is adversarial. More money for one side means less for the other.

I think those are quite different skills and situations.

I would argue that business deals are also of shared interest. Why would you even reach the point of working out the specifics if there was no mutual interest in having the relationship work?

Agreed. The relationship has to be a net positive for both sides to begin with, for there to be anything to negotiate about.

The adversarial part is how to divide that mutually created gain. The "surplus", as economists call it.

> A wage negotiation is adversarial. More money for one side means less for the other.

Incorrect. More money for you means the manager get more budget for this years and the next and he can write "hire X people for $Y". More money mean you both got more.

That's not comparable to a salary negotiation for an engineer.

As a technical stakeholder, everyone has a voice of some sort. The architects may have more weight, but your opinion is based in your professional knowledge and work. In a salary negotiation, there is a lot of information asymmetry -- the employer knows the budget, probably knows the market better and knows the cost of fringe benefits that you do not, and has less to lose.

IMO, semi-transparent scales work best. They also avoid many discrimination issues. If you want to have financial incentives, use bonuses.

> the employer knows the budget, probably knows the market better and knows the cost of fringe benefits that you do not

In my experience, the employer have little clue about the market. He's tainted by the organizational culture. For instance, a $XX-YY band for everyone your age or a habit to import cheap worker from A Mexican city.

> Dealing with a aggressive negotiator is a signal of a pain in the ass to me, better to cut bait.

"Please stop the yelling Bob, that's not helping your argument. You come back with an offer from another company and I'll see what I can do."

Negotiations going aggressive is a sign of immature negotiations. Speak calm and slow. Keep it short, the longest it goes, the more chance it has to go wonky.

Taking negotiation off the table is simply another form of negotiation. Most car dealerships negotiate; CarMax does not. CarMax simply says, "this is the price, take it or leave it." That attracts some customers, and repels others, the same way that an outright refusal to negotiate compensation will attract some employees and repel others.

In my experience, the programmers who are particularly able to negotiate aggressively and are conflict-seeking achieve the goal of getting their designs adopted, which usually doesn't correlate with getting the best designs adopted. If you don't believe such a correlation exists, you get a more productive development team if you artificially avoid rewarding aggressive negotiation and self-advocacy. It's an important skill in other disciplines like sales (where the goal is to close the deal even if your company's product is unquestionably worse than the competitors' products), but not so much for engineering.

I also think this isn't so much "women aren't good at negotiating for themselves" as "women who negotiate for themselves aggressively and are conflict-seeking are penalized socially for non-womanlike-behavior, so they learn not to do so." There are legitimate criticisms to be made about implicitly buying into that social standard, but it seems like an easier change to just prioritize different things in compensation, if the goal is short-term fairness in compensation.

> I also think this isn't so much "women aren't good at negotiating for themselves" as "women who negotiate for themselves aggressively and are conflict-seeking are penalized socially

Are they?

When I negotiate on pay it is with my manager and maybe someone from HR. How does this translate into social penalty?

Do you have studies which show women who aggressively negotiate salary and change jobs at a similar frequency to men typically earn less than women who don't? Or have a worse social environment than men?

I have a feeling you are extrapolating based on very limited studies.

I don't think that's the parent point.

One of the main ingredients of a successful negotiation is to be likeable. Men can be likeable and aggressive, leading to better results than a likable but non agressive man. Women on the other hand, have more difficulties being aggressive while remaining likeable. If they act agressively they get labeled as "bossy", a term that society rarely if not never use on men. Since remaining likable is more important than being aggressive for the long term, women have a harder time getting big raises.

That's the social penalty I think the parent refers to.

Looking at a negotiation in isolation doesn't translate well to the real world.

You don't need to be an aggressive person to be aggressive in salary negotiations.

Being aggressive once or twice a year in salary negotiations with your manager is not going to land you a reputation as bossy.

Edit: or are you saying the parent was suggesting that being aggressive in the workplace itself is the best/only way of getting ahead?

> One of the main ingredients of a successful negotiation is to be likeable.

LOL.

The only ingredient of a successful negotiation is leverage.

You don't need and you shouldn't use anything else.

>They developed a compensation philosophy that was conscious about not rewarding aggressive negotiators, nor punishing those who were conflict averse.

If aggressive negotiators can't get raises at this company then they'll just go elsewhere when they get better offers. If it's true that women aren't able to negotiate as aggressively as men then they'll just be stuck at one company instead of moving around a lot. The pay disparity will remain, it'll just occur between companies rather than within them.

If a company can pay employees less and get equal productivity by hiring women and men that aren't good at negotiating, then that company would be foolish not to hire them.

As an individual, I agree. As a company, however, I think it's a good move, because not every individual will agree or be able to negotiate for oneself. If a company hasn't hired that individual to do negotiation, then I don't see why they should reward or punish that employee for negotiation skills. Hence Lever's neutrality on negotiation.

Is there a happy compromise that is good for both a company and its employees?

One thought that comes to mind is hazard pay in the military. A and B are in same role and share the same base pay. But A works at a desk, and gets no hazard pay. B goes to war, and gets paid extra for dodging bullets.

Is being conflict adverse inherently "dumb" though, when people's responses to it are gendered?

Or think of it this way, is the ability to negotiate aggressively that much of a value add to a company, and if so, is that worth more then the interpersonal skills that a less conflict prone person might have developed in areas like team work?

At the same time, no one should be screwed simply because they aren't good at negotiation. This applies to both men and women equally.

> At the same time, no one should be screwed simply because they aren't good at negotiation

Why is that?

You get screwed everywhere in life if you don't have, at a minimum, mediocre negotiation skills.

Craigslist, car buying, house shopping, gardening services, plumbers, painters...

Heck, even the grocery store has room for negotiations in some cases - "Come on, I only have this one bag of cat food, can you ring me up here in the cosmetics department instead of me standing in that big line?".

We should encourage people to get better at negotiations, and not just because they might get paid more... rather, you will succeed in life more and will be far more confident in yourself and your own abilities.

Life is one big negotiation.

On the employee side, you can certainly say that being good at negotiating is a critical skill. But from the standpoint of an employer looking to distribute raises is the most efficient manner, you don't want to promote someone simply for being a better negotiator or being better at marketing their work, unless negotiating/marketing is a part of their job. Assuming your goal is to pay people in proportion to their contributions, you want your salary-negotiation process to reflect actual contributions as much as possible, rather than reflecting people's ability to play up their contributions.

You could compare it to the incentives for an ideal standardized test. For a test taker, the incentive is to study for the test as much as possible to get the highest score. But for test maker interested in measuring actual intelligence, ideally you want to design a test whose scores are relatively insensitive to time spent studying/memorizing, at least after a certain point.

Obviously, you're never going to reach the ideal, but getting closer to it is still helpful.

Also, "aggressive negotiation" (the phrase used in the article) is not necessarily the same as effective negotiation, so saying that you don't want to reward aggressive negotiation is not necessarily saying that the goal is to remove all negotiation from the equation.

> Why is that?

Because it's not good to screw someone over unnecessarily. If the job they want to hire you for doesn't require you to negotiate, then why make it a silent requirement to excel in the position, if you don't have to?

> We should encourage people to get better at negotiations

And to exercise more, eat healthier, learn to cook, take public transit when possible, be generous to the needy ,etc... but a job shouldn't compensate someone more when they do.

It hurts the company too. Because people will leave if they're undercompensated. And recruiters are looking for people based on skills, not negotiation skills. If they find someone undercompensated for their skill set who fills a role they're looking to fill, they -will- poach them.

Paying people what they're worth benefits everyone involved.

I have to say, I'm surprised I don't see more of this viewpoint represented in here, especially when competent and experienced programmers are very much in a seller's market.

I think there are a lot of conflict-averse engineers. Not giving them the raises they deserve (putting the onus on the engineer to negotiate for it) sends a message employee: this company is more concerned with getting a "good deal" than with valuing you as an engineer. That's a breeding ground for sentiments of zero loyalty.

Being able to lift 300 lbs. is also very often a useful life skill, but it's a skill that shouldn't usually affect one's salary unless it actually leads to better job performance.

Call me cynical but most of the time "no negotiation" initiatives are really anti-employee initiatives.

How many of these companies end up paying in the top pay ranges?

Walmart doesn't negotiate it's prices, but still keeps them very low. I don't agree that outright refusal to negotiate is incompatible with market compensation. Of course, that could still happen.

Cashiers do not haggle with customers, but the whole on-sale process is more about engaging price sensitive consumers than you might suspect. Forming a rough analogue to a stereotypical in-person negotiation.

They also have a reputation for playing hardball in negotiations with their suppliers. Which has a lot to do with those low prices, and seems wrong to leave out.

Can you actually be screwed in such negotiation? Even the worst negotiators in the world end up reaching an agreement, or they walk away.

Are you trying to say that reaching an agreement means you didn't get screwed?

I don't get how they can do this. Does it mean that comp is simply non-negotiable?

I wonder sometimes whether the good negotiators who make 250-300k/yr realize that some percentage of the premium they're paid is taken out of the hides of the bad negotiators.

Like, it clearly must be, right?

Or it just shortens the runway, reduces revenue or slows down company expansion.

Who must it necessarily come from bad negotiators?

The market rate for senior software engineers could easily be $250-300k if everyone negotiated aggressively. The ceiling on developer pay is the value they produce, and developers at many/most companies produce well above $300k in value a year. The hiring pool for senior talent is supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. If all developers were paid $250k/yr, I would expect top companies to hire just as aggressively.

Negotiating aggressively could simply be bringing you closer to the perfect-equilibrium market price without implying that you're bringing down the salaries of non-negotiators.

If anything, it's the non-negotiators bringing down salaries for everyone. Their not negotiating allows (some) companies to think the market rate is lower and to avoid paying for the higher negotiated rates.

That's something you'd expect Snidely Whiplash the Evil Capitalist to tell labor to make them feel bad about negotiating with him, but I don't think it actually works that way. Costs are costs and money is fungible; a dollar extra negotiated doesn't come out of the pockets of another employee any more than a dollar spent on SaaS comes out of the pocket of an employee. Corporations might create internal fictions like e.g. headcount budgets to make this less obvious, but a) fiction and b) Snidely Whiplash.

Here's the acid test: who gets a bonus if your company happens to hire five doormats in a row? Is it the best negotiator on the engineering team?

I disagree. It depends on the job. Of course, if I hire a salesperson or for any role which involves negotiations with parties outside the company, I will gladly pay extra for a good negotiator. Therein lies part of the value of that person for the company. If I hire a back-office engineer or for any other kind of job that does not involve negotiations with external parties, I will not. Paying someone for skills which are not of value to the company is not only unfair to others who bring the same value to the company, but outright stupid.

lol, so basically they sent away the guys who wanted to much money and ended up with those who work for less?

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