Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

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> for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all.

You're confusing the skill of adversarial negotiation with cooperative negotiation. Cooperative negotiation is a critical business skill within the company. You are all on the same team and should have the same goals.

Competitive negotiation is a good skill to have for some external negotiations. If anything, being good at cooperative negotiation is far more important.

> Disclosure absolves managers of the need to negotiate effectively, which means you get managers who can't negotiate, which is the worst possible outcome for a company, since what is their job again?

Same as above. You're again confusing adversarial negotiation for cooperative negotiation.

> Disclosure lowers all boats in that it causes mean-reversion in the sample, and reduces opportunity and incentive for people to apply themselves and succeed

In every org I've seen with open salaries, I've seen the opposite. That it raises all boats because everyone demands to get paid the same as the highest salary on the team.

> In every org I've seen with open salaries, I've seen the opposite. That it raises all boats because everyone demands to get paid the same as the highest salary on the team.

That's not an ideal result either.

A better result would be that people get more comfortable with conversations about "here's why they make more than you, and here's what you could do to provide more value and earn more salary".

Someone shouldn't get paid more because they're a better negotiator. But they should get paid more if they provide more value.

I've heard a few stories from people at companies open about salaries that involve such conversations, but not nearly enough such stories.

Yeah, that's the second part of the convo that I didn't mention. Step one, everyone demands to get paid as much as the highest salary, step two, we have a discussion about why that person makes more, step 3, sometimes they might get a small raise.

But the point is that it doesn't revert to the mean, but it reverts to the max.

Negotiation is price discovery. It is literally the empirical process of discovering the clearing price of an agreement based on deductive reason instead of the blind-man's-bluff bullying of a haggle. People on the privileged end of a power imbalance always think they're being co-operative, because they necessarily know they have the power and choose whether or not to co-operate. Negotiation is the art of managing power imbalances - particularly when someone is using leverage to get you to "co-operate," while essentially yelling "stop resisting!"

To clarify, there was no confusion.

When someone says, "take it or leave it," it's bullying. When someone says, "we're paying you this because this is what everyone else gets and that's fair because I'm telling you it is," that's also bullying.

A negotiated price is a function of the true price at which parties arrive at a deal. How do you deal with liars? Find options that yield information about their intent. This is the real art. It's finding information oracles about their position independent of what they present. Some people are simple, most aren't.

In this sense, negotiation is the pursuit of truth.

I don't understand your point. You seem to be all about "price discovery", but if it goes the wrong way, ie you discover the price is below what you accept, it is "bullying".

Weird.

If it's below what you would accept, there just wasn't a deal to be had. Everyone's time is saved. However, a manager's "no negotiation" policy deprives investors of growth. It's irresponsible.

Of course, if you are at some crappy, hollowed out and debt laden behemoth solving for cost optimization instead of growth, then it's already a race to the bottom and it doesn't matter.

That's what adversarial negotiation is yes.

But cooperative negotiation is when both parties have the same information and the same goals but different constraints. Or they have the same information but different goals.

Then you work together to come up with a plan that meets both needs, but most likely each side must compromise a bit.

That is the negotiation skill that is most important in business, and that is not the skill used when negotiating salaries in most cases.

Although as it turns out my last salary negotiation was in fact a cooperative negotiation, where I made an offer and was then told I asked too low and they offered me more than I asked for.

Not sure this view relates to any of the actual literature on negotiations outside of NVC (which is a cult), or any significant experience in negotiations. It is quite patronizing though. The game of putting a lack of virtuousness on others and transferring responsibility to others for the tone is not negotiation. I think psychologists call it gaslighting.

Telling the person you're negotiating with that they are just being confrontational is simple passive aggression.

After reading GTY, I recommend DeMesquita and Pfeffer, then, go back to Cialdini through a modern lens.

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