Ask HN: How to Negotiate for Job Offer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Negotiate for Job Offer?

31 pointsbuzzwr23 comments

Hello Guys,

I want to know how you should negotiate before accepting or after accepting your job offer. I have accepted an offer without negotiating and now I am feeling that my future employer/recruiter underestimated my value. How should I negotiate now?

I am feeling stupid because I don't have enough guts or skills to negotiate. I read many articles and blogs but I was never able to make a better deal. How do you guys ask for a raise? What do you mention? What is important?

  - Position: Software Engineer,
  - Location: London,
  - Work Experience: 10 months,
  - Base pay: 55k pounds/year

Note: I am not trying to be greedy but I want to learn how to make a better deal or how to estimate your own value.

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If you're a software engineer in London with only 10 months of experience, then believe me when I say that £55k is an exceptional offer.

Regardless, for future reference, some basic rules:

1. When asked what your current salary is, divert the question to your expectations instead. For example, "my current salary is one of the reasons I'm considering a new role. Given my experience, I am looking for something in the region of <insert high end of your expectations here>."

2. If you've been made an offer, it never hurts to _politely_ push back and ask for a higher base salary. Example: "Thank you for this. All things considered, I really am excited about the opportunity/company/platform. Having looked at my current expenses and career progression, the salary offered is lower than what I was expecting. I was hoping to see an offer in the region of <number that's at least 10% higher than their offer>. Is this something you would be willing to match?"

3. Unless you really are willing to walk away, put politeness ahead of assertiveness. However, if the salary offered is low enough that you simply won't accept it, then you hold all the power. Make it explicit what the minimum number needs to be and walk away if they fail to match that number.

Anyone you work for is also a person. You can talk to them as such. You can be transparent with them, and say you felt that you erred and are undervalued, and you can tell them that you feel your lack of negotiating skills has put you in a poor position.

You'll often find that when you approach someone with honesty and transparency, they usually respond in kind. And their honest response may be, "Sorry, we made this agreement and you need to choose to live with it or not." But they could also surprise you and say "We agree. Here is a raise." But the most likely response will be somewhere in the middle, with some specific plan laid out to hit performance milestones, and in return get a raise.

Negotiation is not a one-time deal when you accept an offer. It is an ongoing conversation through your entire career. That is how long-term retention happens in an organization - with both sides communicating their needs and deciding on long-term goals and compensation.

Most of the other comments here take a more adversarial approach. And while that is effective, it sets you up for these long-term conversations to be forever adversarial, instead of collaborative. It is your call which kind of relationship you want with your employer.

This is true... up to a point.

99% of employers will pick an acceptable salary range they want to pay you, and then offer you the low end of the range. If you ask, you'll get more, if you don't ask, you'll get less.

The employment relationship is inherently adversarial. They want to pay you less, you want to get paid more. (There are aspects that aren't adversarial: long hours are bad for both sides, even if many companies don't realize that.)

That doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or get angry, or be rude. It does mean you need to stand up for yourself, or you will get paid less and treated worse.

> The employment relationship is inherently adversarial.

Not in our industry. Maybe so in retail, and minimum wage jobs, where margins are thin and workers are more of a commodity. But coding is something else. For us, it is, at worst, an impersonal business transaction, and at best, a productive partnership for both parties. If you believe that all employment is adversarial, you have not yet found a good boss or employer, but more importantly... that perspective will prevent you from having enough trust in your employer to find a healthy working relationship that allows for mentoring and personal growth within your career.

I've had good managers, and I've had good relationships with my managers in general, and my managers have usually been very happy with me.

But—I once got to visit the people who did a menial task for a Very Large Software Company That Pays Very Very Well. They were contractors (so the company wouldn't have to pay them benefits), they got paid low enough wages that the state would have to pay for their health insurance (we should have Medicare for All, but lacking that the company can damn well afford to pay for insurance).

I'm sure there are worse jobs, but it was a shit job, and the company could've afforded to pay them better and give them actual benefits.

A software engineer at same company would get paid top notch dollar and would be treated very very well. Why? Because the company has no choice, the market is very tight for hiring programmers right now. If the company could, they'd be treating the software engineers just as badly—think of all the savings.

A thought exercise: at how many companies can a software engineer, however well paid they are, complain to HR about sexual harassment by an executive and actually get real follow-up? (Asking the executive to leave with a multi-million-dollar check doesn't count as real follow-up.)

My guess is the percentage is less than 1. Possibly there are no such companies.

In the end we're workers, just like minimum wage workers.

> In the end we're workers, just like minimum wage workers.

As a former long-time wage worker, you are wrong.

There was no HR department at the restaurant where a coworker and I had to step in to get another adult employee to stop hitting on (read: sexually harassing) an underaged server after the general manger told us “boys will be boys”. There were no benefits for the sous-chef (my boss) whose Marine wife had excruciating pain from nerve damage in her hand. When one of your coworkers walks outside and starts vomiting and you can’t tell if it’s because he’s drunk or having withdrawals and you’re told that this means your shift isn’t ending and that you’ll have to stay at least another six hours and you can’t come in tomorrow because they don’t want to pay overtime then a day at your job will be like a day for a typical wage worker. A bad healthcare system, poor negotiation skills and severance packages do not make your experience anything like that of a wage slave.

1. Most startups either don't have HR departments, or have HR departments with no power at all, so sexual harassment scenario you describe can and does happen with no recourse. (Recent example: CEO harasses employee. Company does nothing, so employee leaves. Two other employees realize this happened, complain, get fired.)

2. Overall, though, yes, it's a much much worse working environment in minimum wage jobs. But the point isn't "my work environment as a programmer is bad", cause overall it isn't. The point is "my work environment is a lot better than minimum wage workers only because my skills are in demand".

So it's not about shared working conditions, it's about a shared inherent conflict with employers. And this is especially visible in companies that have both categories of workers, e.g. Amazon. Amazon isn't treating software engineers well because of some inherent goodness of their heart.

Since we'd all be treated the way minimum wage workers are given the chance, it's important to realize this, take advantage of the bargaining power we currently have, and actually negotiate (individually and collectively).

That's a good point, that the primary difference is the lack of bargaining power due to the way that demand for different types of work is viewed. Custodial work is viewed as being something that is in demand because only some people are willing to do it while engineering work is viewed as being in demand because only some people are capable of doing it. Your advice to use this to be one of the few people in the world who works in fair conditions is good advice.

I personally find that good work is difficult to source and beneficial in the long-term across all industries and skill levels. High employee turn-over of any kind makes it more difficult to hire, wastes money on training and recruiting and, in some notable cases, breeds resentment even among people who have never worked at that company or in that field (again, Amazon). Having employees who are sick due to lack of healthcare, pretending to be sick because it's the only way to get elected time off or, even worse, are coming to work sick because they don't have an option for paid time off is only going to cause more problems.

Yeah, a lot of worker/management conflict is result of some combination of prioritizing power over efficiency (overworked workers don't have time to complain/organize), and plain old bad management. Things like long working hours reduce output, and as you say having sick people come in is also stupid.

So smart companies won't e.g. overwork their employees. But some of the conflicts are inherent in the relationship, e.g. how much money goes to workers.

lol, dont be so naive.

As someone who has hired many engineers, management absolutely sees coders as a commodity.

You say "I accepted an offer without negotiating", but that's not true. Every job is a negotiated relationship, as is every job interview. You negotiated—badly.

Negotiating skills are a thing you can learn, though. I've personally accepted really awful job offers, but over the years I got better.

1. You should do research, _in advance_. Ask people, look at surveys (https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary/results?l=London%2c+Un...), and so on. This is also part of negotiating.

2. Negotiation starts _before_ you get the offer, from the moment you apply to a job. How you interview is just as important as the final discussion over their offer.

3. As someone else said, being able to walk away strengthens you negotiating position, especially if you can demonstrate another offer. You don't have to be as aggressive as "if you can't match I'll walk", you can also just subtly set it up as a competition: "this other company gave me a really great offer, but I would love to work with you, maybe you can change the offer?"

4. When they give you an offer, you can also ask for more (https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/01/18/negotiate-like-6-yea...). But that presumes you haven't already accepted it.

See http://valerieaurora.org/howto_salary/ for a reasonable starting point.

Not sure what to do _after_ you've accepted offer: you have far less negotiating strength at this point. However, research might suggest your salary is reasonable for London, in which case you can just revisit in a year.

A short but great guide [1] was written by Haseeb Qureshi on how to negotiate job offers. If I'm not mistaken, he was hired by AirBnb about a year after finishing a coding bootcamp.

[1] https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer...

Awesome post

On first glance, that doesn’t seem like a terrible offer for that level of experience, but you haven’t really said enough to fully evaluate.

What are you building for them? What skills are you bringing? Distributed systems expertise? AI/ML? What’s the job? Are they able to find hundreds of people to do it, or are you special?

What industry are they in, and how do they make money? How’s your work going to contribute to that? What’s your value to them? What doesn’t get done if you’re not doing this job?

What other aspects are there to the offer itself? Offers are a tapestry, and salary is a key element but rarely the whole story. Do they subsidize/contribute towards private healthcare, dental and/or optical/vision? Is there a variable or defined bonus system? Do you get any stock/equity compensation, if so are they public and what’s the value of that to you after sale and taxes? Provide or contribute towards a vehicle? Education allowance? Company-paid travel and expenses to conferences? Commuter benefits, do they pay for train/tube costs? Workplace cafeteria with free breakfast, lunch or dinners? Laundry and dry-clean service?

The best advice regarding job offer and salary negotiations I have seen is given by Patrick McKenzie (patio11).

You can check it out on https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

If you want more money, just ask them - if they say yes, then congratulations; if they say no, then find another job that says yes.

There isn't a lot of detail in your post, but you make it sound like this is an offer you have on the table, but you haven't started working there yet?

If that is the case, and you aren't 100% happy with the salary, company, location, overall prospects... then you could definitely try to negotiate, but your best course of action is probably to keep looking for another, better offer.

With this existing offer, you could ask for more, and you might get it, but you would also risk annoying them and perhaps losing the offer. If you take the job at a salary that isn't great, and later look for something better, then you'll end up with a short term job you'll have to explain in future interviews, and risk being labelled as a job hopper. Once you take a job, negotiating substantial raises is always difficult, it is always easier to negotiate hard before you start.

If you accepted an offer it's over, you can only do harm now by post hoc negotiations in bad faith. Let it go and use this as an opportunity to learn from for next time.

I recommend looking into Ramit Sethi's advice on negotiation: https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/guides/ultimate-guide-... (Don't be put off by the same name. Ramit is great.)

>my future employer/recruiter underestimated my value

You are exactly worth the amount they pay you. The best way to negotiate is to negotiate from a position of strength, that means, get 2 offers and be very clear. Offer X is offering me this much, if you can't match it I'll walk.

I exaggerate my current salary, and then say I really like their company and I consider it a lateral move anyway but I’d like at least the same salary.

Allows myself to get higher wage and the business I’m applying too to not feel disrespected.

No need to do that. Keep your current salary secret and tell them your desired range. Say it depends on the position. Eg 100k to 150k depending on the position and responsibilities.

Some will say let the employer say what they’ll offer first. I’ve never got that to work, unless they are upfront enough to put it in the job ad or have their recruiter reveal it. Plus it’s a lot of wasted time for both parties if at the offer stage it’s way too low.

You ask for a raise by putting a higher offer from another company to your boss desk.

Anything else is a beggar's game.

You may also bluff but you maybe called (just be aware of that). It's not unheard of to double your pay this way.

If you don’t really want the job that badly, you can also ask for more.

It’s when you are desperate or you really like the job that things become dicey.

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