"When you apply for work, you need to have a good idea of what you're worth in the broader market"
Which is why coworker pay is not irrelevant.
Which is why coworker pay is not irrelevant.
If you're working in a situation where you feel you're tied to a single company needing to gouge out pay increases on the basis of what the guy next to you is being, you're already screwing yourself from so many angles that you have bigger problems to be thinking about. Instead of worrying about some fractional adjustment to your wage, you should be worrying about becoming more valuable, broader, flexible, self-sufficient.
This is an interesting topic because cultures have very different attitudes about negotiating. Here's a wave from the London morning crowd. The English tend to be silent-auction, sudden-death negotiators. It will be interesting to see what the Americans have to say when they get in.
Have you ever been on the employer side? Because I have. I've been involved in negotiating and setting salaries for the last 18 years, for dozens of employees.
Your statement above has never been true in any of the companies I've worked. It would have been true if the employees were all perfect negotiators, everyone had perfect information, and we were quite weak negotiators and ended up being pushed until stretching.
In reality, hiring managers tend to have much more information - when hiring we know what we can hire others for, as well as what others have accepted, and what a typical employee will bring in. We also know much better what the market is like. You will likely get an offer that is low enough that some candidates will walk away from it.
On top of that, most potential employees are shit at negotiating. Most never negotiate at all - they take the offered number or leave it, but they rarely push.
But the first offer is never my best. Why? Because it doesn't have to be, and we'd be throwing money out the window if it was.
On the flip side, when I am the one seeking a job, I never, ever accept a first offer. I've never had a job offer I couldn't negotiate up. Anything from 10% to 40%. For most type of professional jobs you're likely to get a 5%-10% increase over the initial offer just from saying the offer is a bit on the low end, and asking if that's the best they can do.
At the same time, raises are hit and miss. If someone does something that really merits a raise, sure. But 90% of the time it is not obvious, and chances are we miss things that someone has done when we evaluate them that could have led to a raise if they, or their co-workers told us. This is part of the reason why people often get those "shock increases" when they apply for a new job: Applying forces them to update their CV's, which forces them to think about and formulate what value they bring. Most employees never actually tell their managers about that, on the assumption they know. They're very often wrong.
> Maybe through hard bargaining you could inch a bit more out, but to do it you have to introduce an unpleasant penny pinching theme into your relationship with coworkers and employer.
Frankly, I respect the employees that come to me and negotiate _more_, as long as they have done their homework and knows what they are worth, and can explain to me why. They are demonstrating that they understand their value to the business. Those are the employees that also tend to actively try to increase their value to the business.
This is why the article sounded so strange to me. It seems like the idea that's really being pushed is that negotiation is bad, which is an easy sell because most people have a strong aversion to it. They're eager to find a reason to not have to do it, even when they suspect they're underpaid.
It's the uncertainty that causes so much angst, not the money in absolute terms, and appeasing that uncertainty by convincing the median earners that it's okay to gossip seems like a great way to get them to never ask for more. They will gladly continue leaving money on the table if only they can be confident that nobody else is taking it.
The fact that plenty of people have gotten wage increases by threatening to leave their company disproves this notion. Your wage is not the point at which companies will let you go, it is the minimum amount needed to retain you.
"but to do it you have to introduce an unpleasant penny pinching theme into your relationship with coworkers and employer."
This is a sad sad culture where asking for what you're worth is considered 'unpleasant' to your relationships with colleagues and employers.
In general companies don't pay you what they value you at; they pay you what they value you at, or what you choose to accept, whichever is lower.
I mean, getting work done for $x and selling it for $y and pocketing the $y-x economic surplus as profit is what business is all about.