How to negotiate your salary package

Telling others how “the market” is when you only have your very limited subjective and anecdotal experience to share is a bit bold, and probably dispiriting to read for others that do not have the same experience. Do you really have a stat sig number of interviews and offer to say that the market merely tightened a bit?

Are all the people here reporting a shift in their ability to get a job in the last year not even good enough to pass the bar in a normal team ?

I share your experience of having had no issue, but we have to recognize that our specific role, history, location, network, sales skills and luck all play a role, and may not be a general rule.

I strongly encourage people to read the post and not give up because of the unrelenting cynicism in these comments.

I will definitely try once a human deigns to speak with me.

…and, CRITICALLY, as Patrick’s article points out, it compounds each time you switch jobs.

This makes it absolutely huge over your lifetime.

You're wrong. You got lucky, that's all.

You're also a product designer, not a SWE which most of us are.

But they have a phone number that I was given and I can call them whenever I need to convert currency worth more than €20k. The rates are much better, and they get almost mid-market by the time you ask them about €100k+ numbers.

The number has no waiting music, it rings, trader picks up and deal is done and money has been exchanged in my account in less than a minute.

"I received your offer for $X. I really enjoyed the interviews, meeting the team, and am intrigued by the problems I'd get to solve with them. Unfortunately, I have a competing offer for $1.25X from another company and I need to make sure my family is provided for. If you would match it, I'm excited to join, but if your offer is firm at $X, I'm afraid I won't be taking it."

If they really just need someone to hold down a chair, they'll probably not budge. If they really want specifically you, they're more likely to bend if they believe that's their only move.

In my case I was already advocating for upper end pay packages for people joining us. One thing you learn quickly is that despite all the Internet talk about having a BATNA or putting companies in a bidding war against each other is that the majority of candidates really don’t have other options to even compare against.

Combine this with the one-size-fits-all salary negotiation advice and a problem arises: The only way they can feel like they’ve won the negotiation is to fight for some arbitrary increase and then have the company give it to them.

My mistake early on was trying to give people the best possible offer out of the gate that I could possibly justify. Many people took it because it was a big raise for them or they understood what we had discussed. However, you could tell when someone was reading a compensation negotiation guide because it was like the number did not actually matter. The only thing they cared about was getting something extra added on top of it. Some people would be so tunnel visioned on this idea of getting the extra bump that they’d threaten to walk from an excellent offer over something trivial like a $5K bump

So what’s the strategy? You start holding back that last little bit of your budget for the inevitable up negotiation round, then you give it to them when they do their negotiating script that the internet guide told them to follow.

If the person doesn’t negotiate, you then surprise them with it as bonus plan or something similar.

It works, but I hated it. Eventually you get a feel for who’s likely to play the negotiation script and who was not, so you could somewhat predict it most of the time.

Patrick is right: compensation is much more about negotiating skill than it is about reputation or (especially) notoriety, holding everything else equal.

I once negotiated a large raise at a job where afterwards my boss told me that he could not have justified giving me that raise on his own, but because I asked for it he was able to make the case.

Negotiating often works. It has no downside for you (besides making you feel uncomfortable) and major upsides that last well beyond your current role.

How many people do you think would hit that bar in the industry? Hundreds? I have hundreds of letters with numbers attached to them to say nothing of how many people simply negotiate, get the comp bump, and do not feel the need to email me about it.

1) after reading the original post immediately linked it to a friend who had an outstanding offer. She got a significant raise from fairly light negotiating

2) personally, I don't think of myself as a particularly aggressive negotiator. However, I have been able to truthfully discuss compensation using the tactics described with recruiters to get leveling and comp where I've wanted it to be for my last couple of jobs. Yes, I always had multiple offers. That's part of negotiating.

More generally, though, I think spending 30+ minutes (reading the piece and more) thinking about negotiating has helped me build a better mental model for what to bring to the table.

Keep this in mind: it’s really hard for companies to hire good engineers. The onsite-to-offer ratio might be 20:1 or worse. So when a recruiter says they’ll just move on to the next candidate, they’re probably bluffing.

But what if they do have 20 people lined up? Then you don’t have leverage with that company—and that’s fine. Take the offer if it’s good enough, or walk and try elsewhere.

P.S., a fun anecdote: when Netflix was extending an offer to a renowned engineer, he brought his PR to negotiate. Apparently, it worked well for him.

P.P.S, always interview for a higher title. I get it — it’s tough with hot companies like OpenAI. But for most places, it’s worth a shot. At the very least, don’t aim lower than your current level. It’s funny how the human mind works—interviewers anchor their expectations to your title. And ironically, a senior engineer interview is often just as hard as a staff-level one. If you’re feeling cynical, just remember: title inflation is real and everywhere, and plenty of high-level ICs are great at navigating politics, drawing boxes, and sounding confident, but not necessarily skilled at offering real values like solving hard engineering problems. So if you can’t beat the game, why not play it?

The only thing you need is leverage, and yes, rank-and-file are not going to have a lot of leverage at a FAANG.

You can’t negotiate if you’re not willing to let the job go through.

Which is not to say that this advice must lead to a raise for everyone who reads it, but if your current assessment of the piece is "this only works for super stars" then you have definitely not really ingested the ideas offered (but you might be making excuses for why that is).

>Them: The offer is for $X.

You: Thank you, but I will continue my final interview process with [CompetitorA] and [CompetitorB]

>Them: How much more money do you want to accept our offer and terminate interview process with our main competitors?

You: Add Y% and I will sign the job offer right now.

This approach doesn't require you to lie, or photoshop fake offer letter (like some bad people advice on places like Blind), and doesn't require you to arrange a direct bidding war - all are huge red flags for any employer.

Again: Be honest and upfront, full integrity, never lie, dont make it about money, but rather about the mission of the job

If you're in demand, and you're good at what you do, the road is paved for you. Top companies have already set the bar.

Them: we offer 250k-350k

Me: I don't consider anything below 500

The answers I get vary. Some tell me to politely fvck off. Some tell me they need to discuss with leadership. Some just go for it because they know how hard it is to fill that role.

The justification is simple: why would I take a job with you if I can land an HFT gig at twice the pay?

My comp is good for non FAANG especially seeing that I work remotely in a non HCOL no state tax city. But it’s hard for normies to do significant negotiations. I also have “unlimited PTO” and fully plan to take 20-25 days at least.

Was true in 2012, remains true today.

My two jobs since I've been able to get more by... just asking for more, even without competing offers.

Maybe we’re just living in different worlds.

This way, you don't get outlier high salaries for strong negotiators (which causes hurt feelings down the road for weaker negotiators), nor low salaries for weaker negotiators. Downside if someone pushes negotiation, there's basically no wiggle room. And the salaries themselves are a bit on the generous side of fair, so if someone thinks they're worth more, they're welcome to prove it because they probably aren't aligned with market rates.

Most recently it resulted in a modest $5k boost to the offered salary.

But the level of success you are likely to experience entirely depends on the alternatives that you have and the alternatives they have.

(I should also note that I’ve never been located anywhere like SF.)

This was before I started writing my blog.

There are jobs where I suspect I couldn't get a raise, but they're all roles where I would be unable to differentiate myself from a commodified ultra-scrub engineer (think the cheap labour you get from generic Azure consultancies).

So I am left thinking they are just collecting salary metrics for the position.

i'm usually lucky if i can get one offer when interviewing. no room to negotiate that way...

1. Negotiate from a position of strength

You pointed out a couple of these, like when you have a strong personal brand (like Patrick) or when the market dynamics favour employees. The former is not something you can control so, when the market is in this place, you should take advantage of it to propel yourself. However, the former is completely within your control. You can spend some time and effort building a personal brand. Many people discount the value of a brand and the effort spent building one, but it totally works. I have marketing-savvy friends who, since early in their career as juniors, spent a lot of time on LinkedIn thought leadership & brand building. And it totally works. In fact, I have one such friend who was recently part of a restructuring layoff (i.e., not related to performance). Because of the brand they built, once they posted about the layoff on LinkedIn, they had 12 offers within a week all higher than their previous salary.

Another area where you can gain leverage is when you already work at a company that wants to retain you. The only time a business will bend over backwards for an employee is when the conversation is about retention. To make the conversation about retention you need to be completely willing to walk, and your negotiating position is strengthened if you have counter offers. To maintain your political capital (which will be important if you stay) you need to be careful about how you play this game. I've worked with people in the past who approached the business confrontationally, saying "if you don't give me $X, I quit" - that strategy only works once. But there are ways to structure this conversation where you don't leave a bad taste in anybody's mouth.

2. Care about something different than your counterpart

Often the person you're negotiating with cares the most about optimising certain metrics. You should try to spend some time figuring out what those metrics are and see if there is something different that makes a difference in your life.

e.g., your employer might be really under the gun about managing fixed salaries. This is very common in a lot of businesses to try to manage their headcount. So they might be more willing to give you a $50k cash bonus compared to a $25k salary increase. Or maybe they're more open to an extra week or two of vacation vs. salary.

This phenomenon has been really helpful for me in the last year. I run my own business, but my business is fully bootstrapped, so I don't have a board or any investors to please. As a result, I'm not as motivated by ARR as other SaaS companies. Sometimes I encounter customers who would rather pay me a 3-4x one-time fee instead of ARR. By making these deals I immediately guarantee what would have otherwise been four years of cash (potentially with a cancellation risk during the term). A VC-funded SaaS business would almost never make a deal like this, because such a deal would not have a material impact on valuation.

Another example - I was moving recently and sold some furniture. I was chatting with somebody who was an optometrist who wanted to buy a few things, which I listed at $200. They offered $100. I countered, asking for the right to use their employee discount, and ended up getting $500 in value.

So you should also spend some time trying to figure out what your negotiation counterpart cares about. Maybe there is an arbitrage where you can both get exactly what you want, instead of needing to find an outcome where one person wins and the other one loses.

On forms where I have to put a range, I put $1.00.

Yes. Good insight. But I'd guess it's somewhat more than a little; apart from other things, he's also an angel investor. See the last paragraph here:

https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/about/

It starts like this;

>Obligatory disclaimers: I'm a (tiny) angel investor. I previously worked at, and am still an advisor to, Stripe.

Market conditions aside, the points the OP blog post makes about asymmetrical value are evergreen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Ask for working hours that effectively pays you more per day, like an 80% contract at the same comp. If they mumble HR and hours, offer to do 4x10 hour days. The magic phrase in corporate is "flexible working". This doesn't solve your comp going up, but you get a 3-day weekend and 52 more holidays a year.

This one even works at intensely bureaucratic organisations like universities. With grants, the amount you can be paid is very fixed, but almost anything else can be approved if three people sign off on it.

At startups you negotiate for equity instead of salary but a lot of the same advice applies.

There is negotation power but only if you pass all the interview challenges. Only at that point you are in a position to name your number (of course you won't ask $500K when you know the company you are applying to pays around $200K... because you have done your previous research on that; you'll ask something between $200K and $250K and see how they react). Layoffs and AI hasn't change this (sure, thing, 5 years ago companies were hiring more and perhaps were more relaxed about this, but that didn't change the fact that you can only negotiate when they want you)

We as engineers have let the recruiters and VC funding brainwash us into lower salaries. Kind of looking forward to a rebound.

Sure, make an ask for more money, but I have never had any leverage.

So I won the negotiation game with the first company by truly not wanting the job. And I got the rational desired outcome of negotation with the second, by having the right skills and right luck at the right time.

None of us would be feeling pessimistic about our career prospects if we had OpenAI experience.