3 ms·

I had several f'ed up contracts in the 90s-2000s, and tried to negotiate each of them. In a fairly good position several times, as they had forgotten to have me

I had several f'ed up contracts in the 90s-2000s, and tried to negotiate each of them. In a fairly good position several times, as they had forgotten to have me sign the specific contract (non-compete, outside of CA) when they hired me. I got fuck all, as well. In 2 of 3 cases I think it was the VC who set the contract terms - I assume it was easier to lose 10% of their engineering team than to renegotiate, and I wasn't willing to play chicken and see if they fired me.

ekidd 4y ago
> I wasn't willing to play chicken and see if they fired me. That makes negotiation harder. There a number of books from the Harvard Negotiation Project which offer roughly the following advice: - Make sure your plan B is good enough that walking is no big deal. - Focus on finding a fair solution, even if you need to keep pulling the discussion back to that ideal. Basically, 75% of your negotiation effort should be spent improving your plan B. You want to be mostly saying things like, "I would love to work for you, but a 5 year world-wide, industry-wide non-compete is simply not fair. I knew a guy who basically got locked into indentured servitude when a private equity firm abused a similar clause. I'll tell you what. You have employees in California, right? California law strikes a pretty fair balance on this issue. What contract language do you use there?" And if they say, "No, I don't think we can do that," you say, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that! I was looking forward to solving your challenges with _____, but it sounds like we can't find mutually agreeable terms. No harm, no foul. I wish you the best of luck." Then you walk out the door and make the phone call to move ahead with plan B or C.