We would be remiss not to mention patio11's excellent (if long) Salary Negotiation blog post[1] from years ago. Still holds up. I took a negotiation class last

We would be remiss not to mention patio11's excellent (if long) Salary Negotiation blog post[1] from years ago. Still holds up. I took a negotiation class last year, and it was pretty eye-opening. One of the things we discussed is how not every negotiation is an adversarial one. In fact, most negotiations are cooperative! In most cases, neither person wants the other to walk away. Let me put it this way: I'm a hiring manager. I want to hire you. You want to accept the job [for the right amount of money]. We have a mutual goal. It doesn't have to be power plays from either side. Look, it's not my money. What do I care if you make an extra 10K or 20K or get a sign-on bonus or not? It's not a zero-sum game for me. I don't make less money because you make more money; I'm hiring you to solve a problem I have. If giving you an extra 10K is what I need to do to get your brain into my codebase to produce code, then BY ALL MEANS, HAVE AN EXTRA 10K. (Yes, yes, my department does have a budget, and while there's usually a little wiggle room around salary ranges, I can't just pay you a bajillion dollars. But in my experience in Silicon Valley, there's almost always a will to hire great candidates, and if my budget is $200K and it takes $210K to get you in the door, I've yet to be told no.) TL;DR: this advice is decent, but at the end of the day, the simplest thing to do is just say, "That's a great offer, and for an additional 10K, I'll sign right now." Nine times outta ten that'll work. [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/