How not to bomb your offer negotiation (2016)
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There is the flipside also, which is that if you misrepresent your own value and cinch an offer higher than you're worth, you'll be first to go when downsizing comes -- moreso the higher the number.
As an aside, I looked at the post he talks about here ("how I got the job at airbnb") and this guy seems... kinda shiesty?
First, top comment on the last story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12477191
And this, also in the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12477866
He didn't stay at AirBnB for very long, has since moved onto... yup, crypto.
Hate to say it but in this market you ain’t going to get a callback with 3mo bootcamp so i wouldn’t waste the time reading it
2016 was pretty wild.
This is really an edge case. I would err towards earning more, having more saveable income, and growing into your pay.
Being able to take a gamble on a company that could do something big or important, or flame out quickly, is a huge privilege, and only comes from generational wealth or having your assets widely outweigh your liabilities by living below your means.
You'll get 3000$ Cool !
But 25% of that is car/phone/meal vouchers
Oh no, we can't give you more because your experience is not an exact fit with us.
oh actually, it's 2250 - 10%, because we'll hire you on a 3 months basis trial, afterwards we'll give you the salary.
oh, and if you don't mind, we'll pay you partly in royalties because it's tax free... But to do that, you'll easily understand you must waive your I.P. on the stuff you make for us.
Ad nauseam.
I understand I'm not worth an Einstein but, could they just be honest and say: we want to pay you the less possible and we will pay you with anything that will help us avoid taxes... This always remind me how much in power they are.
But isn't that extra good since usually you get many months pay when downsizing?
So unless you spend more than that time on finding a new job, it's 100% a net good.
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I can't comment on the other posts as I haven't read them, but I thought the negotiation ones were rather good overall. They line up with very well with other content I have read/watched/listened to from professional negotiators. I know these articles highlighted several things I have personally done wrong in past job offer negotiations.
It is important to note that most of this advice is mostly only applicable to white-collar seasoned professionals who are in the middle or later stages of their career. Essentially, people who have the luxury of taking their time to delay the hiring process as much as they can in order to maximize the number of concurrent offers.
If you are young and/or just getting started and are hungry to start your career, or were laid off and have been unemployed for 6-12 months with a dwindling emergency fund, you may have to take the first sensible offer you get. Especially if the job market is tough (like it is right now) or if you need that paycheck to keep a roof over your head. You can (and should!) always work on leveling up your career as you go along. Other, better opportunities WILL come along if you are properly tending to your skills and social network.
Performing poorly is what will trigger the PIP like process, compensation only comes up later. Further, it's rare for an org to truly let a manager slice up their compensation budget however the like (hey you can hire 2 juniors or 1 senior, your call).. so it often doesn't cost your direct line manager extra headcount just because you are on expensive end. Usually headcount is decided, and then the compensation required to fill that headcount is a secondary concern, as crazy as that seems.
Further, it's a rare interview process that doesn't shake out that you are at a lower seniority level than you are representing. Interviews may fail to shake out exact level of technical proficiency but I think most interviews do place you on the junior->senior spectrum fairly well.
Only once in my 20 year career have I almost gotten a job that in retrospect was way ahead of where I was at the time. 15 years later I ended up finally taking a similar job. But they didn't hire me!
Financially, this will likely still work out well for you in the long run. But it may not be a great way to get top job stability.
Job stability implies staying somewhere for a long period of time, and that's generally not how you maximize compensation.
Compensation maximizing career management usually involves moving every ~5 years or so, depending on industry.
But I'd rather make more money AND have more opportunities/experiences than to rely on the continued benevolence of my single long term employer.
When they start sorting spreadsheets by compensation for layoff purposes, you are already in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being paid less for years and years so that you are lower down the spreadsheet isn't a career strategy.
However you'll find its a lot easier to save money as you make more money.
My savings rate AND my absolute dollars saved have gone up as I progressed through 20s/30s/40s/etc.
Increases in your rent or real estate taxes +/-5% don't matter as much when housing is a lower overall % of your income. This is a big hurdle in HCOL areas when you are starting out, so the faster you can move through that phase the better.
The solution, then, seems to be: Be one of the best employees, particularly if you're getting paid more than most of them.
Also, people should just stop expecting job stability. The evidence is blatant and public that this simply isn't a thing for anyone. Instead, you should work on maximizing successful outcomes in your life and career regardless of which employer's logo is on your paycheck/badge. Having a budget, having an investment plan, and actively building up and managing your savings are just important life skills for success irrespective of how much you get paid and where you work. The more money you make, though, makes everything else easier. It is a fruitless and misguided plan to try to make /less/ just so you can "stay under the radar". Not only does it not work, but it's actually self-sabotaging.
There was a recent round of layoffs at my previous employer very last minute and chaotic. Skip level managers were given an hour to produce their list. My former skip level boss basically whacked everyone he disliked in one swoop as long as they weren't in operationally important roles he had no backup for.
Can confirm from my experience. The greater the salary, the better the working conditions. Companies that paid as little as possible also tried to squeeze out as much work as possible.
By and large companies that don't want to pay individuals appropriately also don't want to hire enough people, so everyone is stuck underpaid, overworked and miserable. They also tend to collect people in leadership roles who would not be hired anywhere else.. leaving their ICs all the worse.
My best paying jobs generally all had the best benefits and nicest people.
There are some examples of companies that are known in their industry to pay a premium "hazard pay" for working you to the bone, but they are something of an exception.
I think this isn't as clear-cut as you're making it; the advice also applies to earlier-stage engineers. The key observation for those cases is that there _is_ a big return from running as intense a process as you can manage.
I think lots of folks apply for a few jobs at a time, and the point here is that you would likely be better off applying for 100 roles at once, rather than browsing and applying for a handful every week (and then tapering off if you get through the filter into a process that seems promising).
It's true that more-junior engineers will have fewer options, but I think you can still directionally update on this advice. I would also advise more junior engineers to actually run the funnel calculations to get a feel for how many applications you need to send out per onsite, as the dropoff is quite grim and therefore you need to push way harder than you might hope.
Also, if you see yourself in such a situation and see yourself having to choose between competing offers, it may make sense to go for the offer that pay less money if this position will expand your long-term employability. It is better for your career to become a tech lead for an upcoming Y-Combinator using Rust, than making some 50k more to be a Senior Java Developer in a oil company from TX.
EDIT: I meant 50k MORE
Texas isn't some backwater. It's the second largest state with a long history in deep tech.
I wonder if the same dynamics, if it exists at all, apply to Big Tech alum.
He was a professional poker player until he was involved in a cheating scandal. To hear him tell it he was a victim, but many in the poker community didn’t see it that way.
I doubt it's as random as all that - and I've known people who were forced out because of their salary (he went from sales to project management, but kept the salary, and they let him go at the first opportunity).
>He didn't stay at AirBnB for very long, has since moved onto... yup, crypto.
Can you explain why the author's background is relevant? The post seems to be decent advice to me, I don't see why it matters. One's work should stand for itself.
> blushes I-i-i sometimes get nervous cough if maybe it could possibly be ok with you could we maybe do it with a phone call, whoops, I mean e-mail!! nervous laughter
Some recruiters may find it cute
1 50m371m35 g37 n3rv0u5 1n 1mp0r74n7 ph0n3 c4ll5.
If your BATNA is going back to your current job, which is already decently paying and something you've made pretty easy by understanding it in depth, you're in a really good negotiating position from the start.
If your BATNA is unemployment, and you're not already wealthy, not so much. Some people find it tough to bluff that kind of thing, in which case, getting any job at all is going to do more for your future negotiating power than quibbling over the number. (I would still recommend quibbling, but only because most people won't retract the offer just because you counter these days!)
I've never seen a recruitment pipeline that stopped when they got an acceptable CV in, nevermind risk a lot of money on an offer stage. It keeps going until a contract is signed, and sometimes beyond, exactly to mitigate risk.
Forget interviews - I don't even get phone screens. Recruiters will ghost you, which is new. Usually you would not be able to get rid of them.
I think when an interview does come along, I will approach my salary demands gingerly.
Now, I would probably buy them dinner.
I have a similar amount of experience as you, and generally, ageism hasn't been a problem.
Start with the basics, have someone review your resume, no need for a professional, you probably can find a few people amongst your friend able to take a look and give a few suggestions. Ex-manager, ex-colleagues, even a former recruiter that was particularly cool and you really liked.
Recruiters sometimes get confused with resumes from people who can work in multiple languages and frameworks because they are not programmers. They won't understand that someone who worked with node will have an easier time understanding asyncio in python, that the way packages work in Go kind of remember the way you can write partial classes in different files in C#. They scan your resume trying to fill up a map where the keys are technologies and the values are years of experience, so, either you tailor your resume for each kind of opportunity or (better) send a cover letter expanding on your experience with the tech stack from the requirements.
Also, remember that now it is a buyer's market. You need to pro-actively apply for positions to keep your pipeline full. Long are the times where you just went to sleep, to wake up in the next morning and having 6 or 7 contact requests from recruiters in your linked-in.
And the rest of the article then falls into role-playing contrived conversations, all of which can be skipped by being even more honest than they recommend. Simply say that you want an offer that is good enough to never make you second-guess your choice in joining them. That pretty much covers every conversation and scenario you can imagine, and you don't need to make up strategy for 3 potential layers of back and forth on who says what.
How Not to Bomb a Job Offer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21382224 - Oct 2019 (1 comment)
How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12476814 - Sept 2016 (125 comments)
I personally wouldn't send something like this.
"I would prefer to discuss the offer over email".
Is enough.
Even allowing for inflation since 2016, this seems like a terrible way to start negotiating a salary: you just proclaimed yourself "average" and anchored yourself to a low number.
I would say it is actually pretty good negotiating strategy by subtly getting the hiring person to agree that 120k is the absolute floor and probably insultingly low, since who (especially at companies like Google and AirBnB) would willingly admit to hiring below-average or even average employees? "Everyone knows" that they want Only The Best (tm). Just the fact that they're talking about salary therefore implies that the applicant must be above average and confident behavior/being hard to get can easily reinforce that impression.
They definitely won’t start over from scratch. Most companies where I worked held on to reject one or two finalists until the selected one accepted the offer. Precisely to be able to go back and offer them the job without any significant cost if the first one in the ranking rejects the offer.
Since this final decisions are for minimal, very subjective reasons, I often saw a manager having second thoughts and kind of hoping the selected person to reject their offer so they can go with the other that, e.g. doesn’t have that experience in a stack, but seems nicer to work with.
In that scenario (not uncommon in my experience), the hiring manager has incentives to not raise the salary a bit.
But… otherwise is a very good, helpful article. Lots of good tips there.
I've hired so many 2nd or 3rd choices when the first choice overnegotiated. In almost every case the person I passed over re-applied with us 3-6 months later. I'm not sure why, but I suspect that love of money does not always equate to a great software engineer.
Yup. That's the way to go as a freelancer. You announce your rate and either they book you or not.
If you get a better deal just switch. The MBA caricature type will just despise you for taking the worse deal anyways.
There deal gotta be better though and 1USD is certainly not worth the risk alone.
Never ever had I seen a CEO that much in shock.
Often the companies that want to pay 1x are looking for quite a lot of experience & seniority, despite wanting to pay 1/3 the top of range I can achieve.
I've had job negotiations that they wanted me to manage 20 people, in-office, for less compensation than I was collecting as a remote IC.. and with more of it locked up in deferred stock with the slowest vesting schedule I had ever seen.
One company pays you 50€/h and think you're expensive, another pays you 150€/h and thinks it's a bargain.
And I know of places I can go for a 50% bump if I want to give up my personal life (I don't) for a couple years .
But I have helped peers in managing their careers / salary negotiations and found situations where people at my level were making 1/3 or 1/2 what I was.
I have also done the same and found people junior to me by quite a bit who were making more or less the same.
Compensation is path dependent and somewhat random.
Then I heard that their salary band was 90-110K (and was fixed, but variable depending on your COL band).
"That might get you an Associate PM..."
Except:
> salary is almost always the hardest thing to give
This is not really true. There are many things that are much harder to change, like composition of social groups, databases, upper management, sales-dominated development, etc. Changing money is just poking an accountant to edit a number in a spreadsheet somewhere. (That said, there may be even easier things to change, but money is far from the hardest.)
If no amount of money will ever make you stop thinking about money, you don't need negotiating advice, you need a psychologist.
How might different risk investment allocations affect my retirement date?
The second I have enough money to quit and live the rest of my life as I want to, I will. If pessimistic retirement projections show a large success rate of funds through retirement, I’m gone! I don’t care how long I’ve worked for a place; I’m only there for the money and no other reason.
Just I don't really like this approach of ending with a suggestion to "see a psychologist".
It's like this conversation:
Alice: Alcohol is bad for you!
Bob: But I can't relax and have as great conversations in social settings or connect with people properly.
Alice: That's just an excuse! If you can't enjoy yourself without alcohol there must be something wrong with you!
Bob: Okay, maybe there's something wrong with me. What should I do.
Alice: Go see a therapist.
Bob: Sees therapist
Bob: Still can't enjoy or relax
Bob: How long should I try this and for how long should I skip being able to enjoy social situations or relax?
Alice: Keep trying!
Bob ends up trying, but never gets anywhere, then dies.
One of the worst things you can do in negotiation is talk to the wrong person. Instead of going you -> recruiter -> HR rep -> team lead -> hiring manager, you need to go you -> hiring manager. Talk to your recruiter, strategize, whatever, but everything else is playing telephone and it's very easy to get a yes from someone who's not allowed to say yes.
The distinction is - if there's one person with the authority to say yes to your salary requirements, and three people who only have the authority to say no, does it benefit you to go via those three people?
In some organisations it might benefit you! If your salary needs to be approved by a hierarch of the fourth level but you'll be reporting to a hierarch of the second level who'll be benefiting from your genius, they might be a highly motivated advocate in your favour.
In other organisations though, the more opportunities there are to say no, the higher chance of the answer being no.
Sometimes, it's the manager because they benefit the most from hiring you and the organization probably values their opinion, but some managers are pushovers with zero people skills and will be useless.
Sometimes, it's the recruiter because they are the most experienced with the hiring process and know what wheels to grease; sometimes they're useless because recruiters are often viewed as interchangeable cogs.
In a way, you need to also pretend to be dumb and with a big ego. If you're irrational, they'll think they might lose the deal and will offer more.
It resembles dating. The same tiptoeing and guessing what the other person is thinking.
At it's most basic, the company wants to pay me the least I will accept. I want to be paid as much as possible. These are contradictory, so some middle ground needs to be found. There's also a lot of hidden information, on both sides: What's the most the company is willing to pay? What's the least I'm willing to take? We can also have orthogonal goals: personally, I put a pretty high value on PTO, so there's room for trading salary expectations for additional time off.
By not negotiating, all you're doing is leaving money on the table. The company is going to represent it's interests, you have to represent yours.
You need to pick your negotiation strategy based on the situation. Sometimes you do need to be bullheaded when insisting on a refund. That doesn't make you a bad negotiator when negotiating pay - you just use a different strategy when negotiating a pay raise.
I wouldn't never recommend doing what the author suggests, namely: "I’d prefer to discuss the details of the offer over e-mail."
The phone is always better. Busy business people such as recruiters prefer it. Especially, because nowadays everyone hides behind text. Only the phone or an in person meeting gives you the chance to really hear what is possible compensation-wise and then really get what you want.
Btw I wrote this guide years ago: https://iwangulenko.gumroad.com/l/5-salary-negtiation-hacks?...
My experience with recruiters on the phone has mostly been those recruiters pulling in one or two extra random people from their company on the call to hide behind as they try to lowball me with fifteen minutes of rambling about market conditions.
Talk to them not man in the middle that has no power. And person that will try everything to lowball you.
The risk/downside is that my number could be too low, but that's something I'm willing to live with if it means I can avoid having to negotiate. If they immediately agree to your number, it probably means you asked for too little. Or the person you're dealing with also hates negotiating.
Even I don’t like to push hard and use tactics like the ones you see in sales calls, but the last time I had to negotiate salaries, I just said that I was excited for the position and the company, and reminded them it would be difficult to accept what they were offering because it didn’t meet my expectations. Virtually everyone was convinced by said statements and came back with salary increases after that.
As for ChatGPT, there are tell tale markers when someone uses that, and because of its content-free nature of writing, it is very likely to backfire.
Why are you assuming that I'm constantly accepting lower salaries? I pick my number so that I can my bills and live a comfortable life. Sometimes they have to close a job req and open a new one with a higher pay grade to give me my number.
I've read a few times that employees don't care about the absolute number, as long as they feel like they are getting paid fairly compared to their peers. I was like that when I was younger but now I don't care. If Jeff does nothing and gets paid more than me, whatever. As long as I make a number I'm happy with then I'm happy.
> As for ChatGPT, there are tell tale markers when someone uses that, and because of its content-free nature of writing, it is very likely to backfire.
I just tried it, and it came up with:
> Thank you for the offer. I appreciate the opportunity to join your company. However, based on my skills, experience, and the market standards for this role in the industry, I was hoping for a salary closer to (your salary). I believe this reflects the value I can bring to the team and the responsibilities of the position.
Seems _good enough_. I'm sure if I spent more time with the prompt and actually told it what industry I'm in, it could write something less generic.
I’d typically explain in a friendly, non-threatening way how I’m sure they have a pay scale and pay ranges for particular positions, so why don’t we start with where they see me.
They’d usually push on a bit, and I’d stay friendly but resolute. You can always spin it in a way that “I really like what I’ve seen so far, so it’s not about the numbers. I’m flexible, I wouldn’t want you to pass on me just because of some random number I might say.”
For me this has worked wonders. Every single time I would’ve low balled myself. Highly recommended.
It’s a stupid game. You can totally opt to just not play it.
Similarly once I was given an offer I for a job I wasn’t looking for. It was a nice jump higher than what I was making. But I was happy with my current job.
I politely turned it down. Went to my current boss, explained that I got an offer, turned it down because I wasn’t looking for change but felt like that offer showed I was worth more than they were paying and would appreciate a bump.
I got a raise. I was happy. He was happy.
Important to note this does not make good advice / expectations - most bosses will not be as understanding, and the job you were happy with is now filled with resentment for not getting a raise.