Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer (2016)

I am a teacher in the UK, working in the private sector. This industry has many ticking time bombs: the pension scheme is collapsing, regulatory burden means small schools must consolidate or die, and above all a class action sword of liability must surely be hanging over the closed-shop hiring practices. These are some of the anti-competitive informal rules about moving schools:

A new prospective employer (usually the head of the school you are applying to) expects to be able to talk to your current head from the moment you apply.

This in turn means that you have to tell your current employer the moment you start looking for jobs elsewhere.

Any other references are done before interview, not during an offer. Your referees will be writing a lot, on your behalf, O(n) — jobs applied for — and not O(1) — job offers you want to accept.

It is considered obstructive behaviour to not be open about your current salary. You are immediately viewed as “difficult”: just like candidates who apply without telling their current school, so too with candidates cagey about money.

Taking time off during term is not allowed. Taking time off to interview will be deducted from your pay unless you get prior approval, and you have to declare that you are interviewing.

Resumes / CVs are not allowed as part of the application. No one will read them.

Some other gems, when negotiating salary: “b-but no one goes into teaching for the money!”, “sorry we don’t aim to compete with the commercial sector”, and “we don’t define the hours you’ll need to work, only that you do what is deemed necessary and appropriate” only to later be told that it’s not the done thing old chap to work any less than 50 hours a week.

The best leverage you have during negotiation is to negotiate when you don't really need the job. Don't wait to be out of a job before interviewing. If you can do this, most of the advise in this article is immaterial. Have a number in mind that will make you happy and make you switch. Give out the number. If they can do it, you take it else you stay in your current job. That cuts out all the bullshit mind games described in this verbose article.

Good article, articulated a lot of my own feelings on the subject.

The only part I can never quite get my head around is having multiple offers at once. It takes me months if not years to find a company I actually want to work for. The chance of finding many hiring for a suitable position—let alone receiving offers almost simultaneously—seems miniscule.

I feel like these types of articles assume everyone has a sort of drag net approach to finding employment, but my own approach is more like fly fishing (pardon the analogy). I feel like I've been successful in the past because I can explain exactly why I've applied for the specific position. I suppose this must be atypical, perhaps I'm a terrible negotiator.

I think this is great advice. You're not always in a position to use this advice, this is the most extreme approach, but I think it's good to be aware of the most extreme approach. Very often a lot of this doesn't apply. 2 Years ago the company I work for really struggled to fill the roles in my team. We would've been very flexible with compensation to bring people in. Today we simply don't have that problem, if you push too hard we have about 3 other good people for the role. 1 year ago we would've dismissed you out of hand for working from home, today that would absolutely be part of our negotiating armory. It's very important to probe and find out where the company is flexible.

Also, it is actually true that if you've really managed to sell yourself to HR and got a big old salary and you end up on my team underperforming it's going to be a much bigger problem for you. At my current company you want to be underpaid and overperform - because our compensation structure is highhly bonus orientated so you don't need to worry about it working out. At previous companies I've worked at your compensation for the entire tenure at the company is set the day you sign - bonuses and salary budget are both determined as a % of base pay and your ability to increase your compensation is basically a fight between you and the rest of the team who are all part of one budget (horribly dysfunctional system, accidentally hire 1 person at a grade level lower than where they should be and it's going to completely screw your whole team's compensation for the next couple of years).

I really don't get this advise about not giving out a number. Seems like you yourself don't know your worth. Most of the times, save for FAANG companies, no other company is willing to pay me what I am asking for. So to go through the whole laborious and lengthy interview process only to find out during negotiation stage that they are not going to even match my current compensation is a lot of wasted time. If I talk to a recruiter, I tell them what I want even before interviewing. Most of the times, recruiters from non FAANG companies tell me that they won't be able to pay that much even if I performed stellar in the interview. I don't give out a number to FAANG recruiter before the interview but I do give out during the negotiation stage and so far my comp has been at at least as good as my peers'. My understanding is that most companies have a salary range and they want all the employees on the same level to be within that range. They won't break those rules regardless of how good you are. You are only one among many good candidates. So you should aim to be at the high end of that range during negotiation. That's how I decide the number to give out.

I confess I didn't read it all, because there was too much of the adversarial stuff I'm not interested in.

His point that it's a agreement to exchange labor for something else is spot on. My last two jobs had, statutorily and morally ZERO financial negotiating margin. One was an NGO, where I believed in the goals and strategy of the organization and so I enthusiastically accepted the salary level in exchange for what the job gave me. Next, I moved to academia, where the opportunity to have contact with young people and world class researchers also balanced out for me the constraints of the civil service salary grid (thus, statutorily impossible to negotiate $). Both jobs also respected my family life, which is precious, way beyond $$$.

Negotiate how you spend your life, yes! But with all the variables on the table, not only $$$.

And everything crumble down when I've stood my ground against "we have other motivated candidates" and my backup alternatives turned out to be a complete mess upon further inspection, started back pedaling on previously agreed terms (written but not signed), and just simply ghosted me.

Oh well.

This was actually very good! Many of these articles on HN are a bit one sided but this one really feels grounded in reality and not just perception and "in my experience".

I think the very first you need to know is the market. Talk with colleagues, better if they recently moved, and ask for a little more. I think most of my friends know my salary, some earn more and some less, who cares? I'm not sure about not mentioning your current salary because a lot of interviews have ended at that point without wasting anyone's time. You can give a figure and ask for a 30% raise, it's perfectly reasonable because moving has always some associated risk and HR knows, better than anyone, that it is your better chance at improving your salary.

from (2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12197795

Negotiation in job offers is unfair. Most people (as is called out in the article) are poor negotiators (and what’s wrong with that?).

Negotiating is a skill not required for most jobs*, so negotiation results in unequal pay just because someone had a skill unrelated to their job. There’s also an imbalance (hiring teams do more job negotiations than individual employees do).

Likewise past salary is not relevant. The environment can be different today from when you got your previous job and the market price could have gone up or down.

Finally: what a waste. If the employee isn’t interested in the salary on offer why find that out at the end of the process?

What is the game theoretic outcome if both parties have read this article?

you can only negotiate if you are ready to lose. Most ppl don't have that luxury.

With phrases like "your interlocutor will try to trick you into making a decision" I would treat this article as less than gospel.

I've been on both sides of the negotiation table. With any negotiation, both sides must "win" and neither side should try to "trick" the other party. On the prospective employee side, should they inflate their credentials and experience? Sooner than later after working at the new place, they will find out and credibility will be lost, so of course you shouldn't.

So let me take the perspective the the hiring manager: should the hiring manager try to quickly close the candidate? Of course not. I'm after the candidate. I want them to work for me (something the article doesn't mention). I want them to work, in fact, for something more than compensation because compensation is not a strong motivator. Paychecks are important, of course, but no one can say that a more highly paid individual always outperforms a lower paid one.

As the hiring manager, I represent the company. Of course I would prefer to acquire talent for the lowest amount as possible, but you might be surprised that we don't want candidates to be underpaid. Underpaid employees are not long term invested in the company and will seek a higher salary elsewhere eventually. I would hope the employee has a salary which supports them (and their family), pay the bills, save and enjoy life with another variable tied to their performance and commitment as a long term investment. Whether it be options, RSUs, bonus, etc. you want employees who can achieve a higher compensation and tie that to goals. In this way of thinking, the negotiation process is never closed.

There are some good things to take from the article from the candidate side, specifically around taking notes, being positive, not taking undue pressure and how to push back (exploding offers). To be honest, having non-timebound offers are never a good thing, because too much time to think or continue shopping are not only against the employers wish (assume we have limited people we can hire, and the time to get someone onboard is opportunity cost), but sometimes it's against the candidates best interests as well. People often have difficulty making choices, and limitations are a healthy thing -- sometimes especially when you have the ability to overthink and analyze things, as most engineers do. The language of "exploding" offers is counter to an employers interest, because it's basically saying, "take it or leave it, I'm going to walk away in 48 hours" is insanity, in my opinion. You might say to a candidate, "If you give me a verbal 'yes' now I can get to <$offer + x%>" as a way to try to close them. Hiring managers want to close a candidate as quickly as possible, there is no such thing as an infinite time scale on either side, and there are many candidates who are, unfortunately, not negotiating in good faith. Example: a candidate who is just trying to get a counter-offer from their current employer, or just trying to bump up an offer for another company they're really interested in. I assume when someone tells me they're interested in the company and joining that they're telling the truth, which above all both sides should do. Words matter.