15 ms·

Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued

596 points by llambda 15y ago

ssharp 15y ago
I think these discussion tend to get a lot of people debating on who should offer a # first. I don't think this is a question with a binary answer. Statistically, you may be able to determine which works better as a whole, but nobody will negotiate their salary enough times to render a proper sample. I'd guess that treating each salary negotiation uniquely will produce a higher mean salary than simply changing the "who says $ first" variable.
corin_ 15y ago
"If you’re sane only about 25% or so of your gross income is subject to the results of real estate negotiations. Close to 100% is subject to the results of salary negotiations. Thus, your salary negotiations are probably going to be the most important financial decisions you will ever make." That's pretty irrelevant really, what's relevent is the difference it can make. First, if you negotiate a 20% discount on the 25% you're doing better than negotiating a 1% pay rise for the 100%. Second, a negotiated salary recurrs annually, it's not a one-off sum. So yes the conclusion is right, but for the wrong reason.
- yariang 15y ago
  The 25% he alludes to is your recurring mortgage payment, which also happens annually--monthly, actually. What he means here is that a discount of 5% in your mortgage negotiations is much less than an increase of 5% in your salary. So he is right, for the right reason.
  - jarek 15y ago
    corin_ is right - salary is recurring, mortgage/real estate purchase is one-time. You pay off the mortgage with recurring payments, but they are based on the one-time amount. If you negotiate $10k extra salary, after two years you will have $20k extra. If you negotiate $10k lower real estate purchase, after two years you will not have $20k extra. (Technically you will have a little bit more than $10k extra due to compound interest on smaller principal, but nowhere near $20k.)
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badclient 15y ago
Honestly, my top advice for negotiating better: interview lots and never feel like if you don't take this job, you won't get a better one. The techniques are important. But if you don't have a solid foundation in any negotiation(options and leverage), you're fighting an uphill battle. As it stands, patio11's advice seems to be more applicable to people who have very few job options. I'd argue most people on HN would have multiple options, even if they are shy about activating them(by applying/interviewing).
- funkah 15y ago
  > interview lots and never feel like if you don't take this job, you won't get a better one Right. One thing my dad taught me is that if they want to sell it more than you want to buy it (or vice versa), you win. If you're feeling insecure about your value, I'd say that matters a lot more than, say, who throws out a number first.
Timothee 15y ago
One thing I often find in salary negotiation advice are lines that go like this "At my last company, I increased sales by 3% by $YADDA_YADDA". The thing is that I can't really think of nice metrics like this, and am surprised that a lot of engineers would find something as significant as sales numbers. For one thing, the further your metric is from strict revenue, the harder it is to put a price tag on it. A sales number is easy, but if you optimized some part of the code somewhere, it becomes much more fuzzy and longer to explain. Sure, Patrick also pushes people to get jobs were your contribution is more directly correlated to revenues, but not everyone will want a job like that, and until you do get one, you can't use that. The other thing is that I feel it's easier to consider a sales person as directly responsible for a significant increase in revenue for their market. But engineers work in teams, so saying "I increased sales by x%" is hard to justify: what about the Product Manager that spec'ed it out? What about the rest of the engineering team that worked on that change, reviewed it, pushed it to production? If you're the only one doing all that, sure, but that's rarely the case. So, what's a good way to come up with relevant, justified metrics like that?
- lrobb 15y ago
  I don't think most engineers or engineering managers really give a flip... At least IME they don't. They want to see that you can produce code. So if you can point to features/apps that you developed, or how you optimized some feature somewhere, that's what they want.
  - Timothee 15y ago
    I understand that and that's kind of my point. As an engineer, you can definitely talk about what you've done to convince the other party that you're capable, but it's (IMO) more difficult to tie it to a specific increase in the offer when negotiation starts, which is what Patrick discusses. Specifically, he puts the asked salary increase head-to-head with the potential revenue increase: "Getting me that extra $4,000 would make this a much easier decision. Considering that this is conceivably worth millions to you, we’d be silly not to do business with each other." Which indeed makes it sound like a bargain. :) And I know it's exactly the goal of what Patrick preaches: speak in terms of value created, not technical competence. It's just, y'know, hard :)
inerte 15y ago
The part about managers thinking less of you because you do not negotiate is completely true. Everybody wants an awesome negotiator under them. Just like if you solve P=NP on the white board on the interview will mark you as the wizard, negotiating will mark you, right from the interview, as someone who fights for what he wants, and will fight for what the project/team/company wants.
- chrisbennet 15y ago
  I upvoted you but I'm not so sure its the negotiation skills that they'll admire as much as the self confidence in your own market value. Sort of "This guy is used to getting paid really well, he must be really good."
dsolomon 15y ago
Author drew numbers from thin air resulting in horrible advice. Throw in - "For a funded startup which has enough engineers to warrant a foosball table, the company payroll is well north of $100,000 a month." - yet still require that employees provide their own hardware/software to do the job.
lazerwalker 15y ago
In your guys' experience, how relevant are these tips to someone speaking with relatively young startups (say, seed or Series A stage)? I know that good negotiation skills are good negotiation skills however you slice it, but I'm curious to hear from folks if they've needed to use a different set of tactics when not dealing with an "HR department" as much as a founder.
vimalg2 15y ago
Thanks Patrick. This was a long time coming. I can tell you've had quite a personal journey about this topic.
DavidChouinard 15y ago
patio11 draws some content from his original "Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice"[1] which you should definitely read. [1] http://old.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://old.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
bryanh 15y ago
I think a lot of what Patrick does well in this article is "reframing" the situation. I find once you get out of the "I don't want to offend them and lose my shot" mindset, negotiation and other "money talk" becomes really routine. I wonder if there is value in creating "mock hiring sessions" that require you to negotiate your pay up. There are millions of "mock interviews" done in colleges every year, why not go that extra step? It seems learning to reframe the situation is easy enough to do given the proper coaching.
jaryd 15y ago
http://salarytutor.com/ http://salarytutor.com/ this is a pretty good and fast read on the subject with some actionable advice that will help prepare you for the conversation.
jwegan 15y ago
The suggestion to not give a number first is awful. You may not want to give your previous salary history, but you most certainly do want to give the first number. You should do your research and figure out what the company usually pays for someone of your experience (checkout glassdoor.com or ask around) and state a number that is on the very high end of reasonable. It is always easier to try and stand your ground than fight your way uphill from a low offer. The only case you might not want to state the first number is if you can't find our what the company typically pays.
- VMG 15y ago
  Scientific research agrees with you. The concept is called anchoring Anchoring research helps clarify the question of whether to make the first offer in a negotiation: by making the first offer, you will anchor the negotiation in your favor. In fact, Mussweiler and I have shown that making the first offer affords a bargaining advantage. In our studies, we found that the final outcome of a negotiation is affected by whether the buyer or the seller makes the first offer. Specifically, when a seller makes the first offer, the final settlement price tends to be higher than when the buyer makes the first offer. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4302.html http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4302.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring The whole article could use a lot more science. I suggest reading "59 Seconds" from Richard Wiseman.
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  - damoncali 15y ago
    I was under the impression that putting out the first number anchors the negotiation around that number, not necessarily in one's favor. For example, if you think you want to earn 100k, and they were hoping to keep you under 125k, throwing out a number of $110k is not giving you the advantage, as they may have thrown out a first number of $115k if you had let them.
    - kevinh 15y ago
therandomguy 15y ago
Always be the first one to give a number. That sets the bar. Let's say your current salary is $100K. You want $130K. You say call the number first, $160K. Now the company is negotiating against that number. If you accept $140K they will perceive it as a win for them.
- rmc 15y ago
  The problem is most engineers significantly under value their worth and so usually offer a low-to-the-company number. There are people working in offices (not as programmers) that don't know zip files. You, as a programmer, can do magic with the magic boxes. In the long run, it would be better if programmers were better are valuing themselves. In the short run if programmers stopped giving numbers, it'd be better.
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swanson 15y ago
Any tips specifically for negotiating a higher raise? Most of the advice is targeted to the "new job"-salary negotiations.
- patio11 15y ago
  Get attached to the part of the company that makes money, set up the measuring and politics such that you get credit for increases in the amount of money they're making, pitch a raise for you as the easiest way for them to get a repeat performance in the next quarter. Also, since companies have persistent exploitable inefficiencies about this issue, be prepared to talk to the people who are actually willing to give you a raise. (i.e. it may not be the people you currently work for.)
- patrickyeon 15y ago
  I haven't had the opportunity to try it, but a suggestion I liked when I heard it was to go to the person in a position to give you a raise and tell them "in six months time, I would like to be making X$. What would I need to do or show I am capable of doing (actionable, measurable, objective is important here) for you to give me that?" Then do those things. In six months, remind them about the conversation (I'm sure it'd go better if you had a reliable way to jog their memory, eg email). If you're worried about them backing out, maybe follow up halfway through to see if they agree that you're on course and that they understand you meant it.
- grecy 15y ago
  This is a tactic that works very well for me: I go into the room and do lots of listening at the start. I'm told something like a 3% raise. I say that's very interesting.. blah blah and the manager thinks then it's done. Then I ask to confirm what my job title is, and what my responsibilities are (write them down). Then I go through a list of all the things I've done or am doing in the last year (prepare well in advance) and I get the manager to say if that item falls within my responsibilities, or if it's "over and above" my current title. Also then make sure the manager comments on how valuable that "thing" is. I drag this on. Eventually, we have a list of 5 things I'm doing that are "expected" and 20-30 things I regularly do that are "over and above" and highly valued in the manager's own opinion. From there, it's quite clear I deserve a higher raise. -- Another thing I've done is compare the increase in cost of living to my (potential raise) - When the manager told me 3%, I mentioned my rent had increased 10% and gas had increase more than 25% in the last year... so in fact a 3% is actually a salary cut.
feralchimp 15y ago
While I don't agree with all of the article's advice, it gets the most fundamental point right: Stop feeling guilty about asking for market compensation. Being a nice person has nothing to do with it. It's not your fault that you're worth more than they're offering out of the gate. It's the market's fault. Good luck out there.
- erikb 15y ago
  To get what you're worth, you should actually ask for more. The other one will assume you did and try to bargain you down hard anyway.
  - feralchimp 15y ago
    I have never been in a salary negotiation in which I was bargained down hard, which may mean I'm a terrible person to ask for negotiation advice. But not entirely, because the "assume the counterparty is a dick" technique is actually kind of pointlessly lossy, even if it works out in aggregate over the market. It's been a long time since I negotiated a salary, but in a few recent contracting scenarios I've just set a price that I knew was fair, stuck to it, and when necessary explained to the prospect why it was fair. People are either willing to listen to reason or they're not worth dealing with.
    - erikb 15y ago
      Actually, that sounds reasonable! From my experience a good bargainer will always win more then you, but he will often also help you in ways you didn't imagine were possible. Because he is good at finding what is really important to people and how to get things done. If he wants something from you, he will also give you solutions to some of the harder problems you have in exchange. So I don't think a strong bargainer is a dick. Of course there are people who bargain to trick you. And even normally fair and strong bargainers will sometimes use their powers more to their advantages then they should. But in my eyes it's not the common situation. Between sticking-to-the-first-number and tricking-each-other-out-of-money there is a big range of good and bad bargaining which actually solves the good purpose of finding each others priorities, a good range for the value bargained, and a result both parties can agree to.
skrish 15y ago
@patio11 Thanks for writing such a detailed blog on this. As I read your rephrasing of questions, I remembered reading this book "In the line of fire" by Jerry Weissman. There is a concept explained in this called "Roman Column". The key message is: Do not answer the question till you fully comprehend the roman column i.e., the key issue. You can get to your own interpretation of roman column or ask the person to clarify the question to understand better. Then paraphrase the question and address the issue head-on focussing on the roman column. I found the book to be very interesting with lot of real examples about press meets & other negotiations.
bhousel 15y ago
Like many others in the comments, I disagree with the whole "Don't be the first to state a number" strategy. Being weaselly about your number is a very noob thing to do in a negotiation. A skilled negotiator will seize on this and anchor the negotiations in at a very low rate. You need to know your number ahead of time, and drop it on them like it's the most natural thing in the world. Your initial offer should be high but not ridiculous. (Unless you really are that busy with work and you don't want the job anyway, then give them a ridiculous number, and see what they say. Sometimes they'll say yes anyway). The number could be 2x whatever you make currently, or 2x whatever you think they will pay, but the important thing is that it's high, and you say it with confidence and act like it's reasonable. It's far better to work your way down from (your) high number, than up from (their) low number.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  I'm curious how this should all work when working with a recruiter. I've come across a number of interesting positions that are available only through these guys. But we never get 15 minutes into a conversation before they're asking about salary history. The implied message is that the number you give is going to decide if your resume gets passed onward or not. So going too high, say 2X, would certainly kill your chances. I've tried the "let's get to a fit before negotiating salary" and I actually had one recruiter say "sorry, this is how we roll". I dumped that guy, but it keeps coming up. I know the OP's advice was to avoid this route and get to the hiring manager. Just curious what to do about these people.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Go "too high". Why dump the recruiter when you can just price yourself out of the recruiter's league? Believe me, if your salary seems impossible to achieve the recruiter will tell you, probably pretty bluntly. And if it is possible to achieve and the recruiter helps you get there she'll be thrilled. Recruiters get a cut of that number! (Though, remember, take recruiter advice with a grain of salt: Their tendency will probably be to talk you down. As with buyer-brokers in real estate, the recruiter's incentive is to make the deal go forward, not to hold out for the best possible price for you. Alas, in the end, the responsibility for holding out for a good price is almost impossible to delegate: The buck stops with you.) Of course, the take-home lesson is that if you aren't comfortable setting a high anchor point for your salary you shouldn't deal through recruiters. Which probably helps to explain why companies seem to love using recruiters.
rdouble 15y ago
I'm not convinced by this article that the author has ever done a salary negotiation.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  The author offers his services to companies as an independent contractor. I would think a huge amount of that involves rate negotiation.
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    - noahc 15y ago
      This isn't full time and the $13,000 should be amortized over the next couple years as that was spent on client prospecting and he seems to be moving in the direction of only dealing with repeat client work.
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    - chc 15y ago
      Can you explain the key differences you see between the two?
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tlogan 15y ago
All negotiations need to end with both parties thinking they are winners. In that spirit, you need to give a number (high-end) (so called anchoring) so that other party can feel good when they convince you for less. Also, other things (i.e., vacations first 6 months, or some small perks) mention only after you negotiated the salary and pretty much you close the deal.
- lawnchair_larry 15y ago
  I've never understood advice that talks about negotiating fringe benefits like vacation time. At best, company policy will prevent those terms from being negotiated because they're standardized. At worst, you're just going to look like an entitled asshole from day one if you try to get special treatment. I'd much rather make up for it in salary negotiation and take the same deal that your future teammates got.
  - run4yourlives 15y ago
    >At best, company policy will prevent those terms from being negotiated because they're standardized. Those policies are there for people that don't choose to negotiate those terms.
  - sethg 15y ago
    At best, company policy will prevent those terms from being negotiated because they're standardized. If you frame your counteroffer as “I would take this job if you gave me $X more base salary or Y more vacation days”, then the guy across the table can decide which option is more offensive to company policy. It’s not your job, as the applicant, to decide in advance what terms the employer will accept. Your job is to communicate what you want until you either have a deal or feel comfortable walking away from the table. At worst, you're just going to look like an entitled asshole from day one if you try to get special treatment. Personally, I have better things to do with my time than count up how many days off each of my co-workers have taken and compare them with the numbers in the employee handbook.
mikeklaas 15y ago
The advice to "never be first to state a number" should really be "never divulge your current/previous salary".
- throwaway1979 15y ago
  This isn't as easy to dodge though, right? Or do people do this routinely?
  - patio11 15y ago
    It is not too difficult to dodge questions about current/past salary. We're clear on why you want to do that, right? If you say "My salary at my current job is $65,000", you will receive a job offer at $70,000 +/- $2,000 regardless of whether the company would happily pay $90k for you if they had not known your current salary. Anyhow, given that, there are numerous options to decline to damage your own negotiating position. My personal favorite is "As a matter of professional courtesy, I decline to comment on the specific policies of past employers. Don't worry, I will treat your confidences with the same level of professionalism when someone asks me about them in a few years." It is unfalsifiable (as opposed to what people sometimes suggest on HN: "That is under NDA", which is a claim that can actually be a lie), conveys status, and (gently) informs the person you're speaking with that you're aware how the game is played.
    - throwaway1979 15y ago
      Dude ... I've said it before (under my real HN account) and will say it again ... you-are-the-man! I can't believe how stupid I've been all these years :( I'll admit that when recruiters have asked me this question, I've behaved almost like a deer in headlights. My current job, I accepted the offer as is. THEN asked them if they had any salary negotiation room. Of course, I was told no. I felt like hitting my head against a wall right after that phone call. I won't be that big of an idiot again!
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lrobb 15y ago
"Applicant: Great, I can’t wait to get started. Getting me that extra $4,000 would make this a much easier decision. Considering that this is conceivably worth millions to you, we’d be silly not to do business with each other." I think the problem is that you don't have a verifiable skill that will increase sales by X%... Because if you did, then you'd be silly for only asking for an extra $4000 based off of increasing sales by millions.
- hudibras 15y ago
  I think Patrick's point is that this is B.S., but it's B.S. that the interviewer can use to rationalize giving up the $4,000. It's exactly the same as the Free Food At Google argument.
- byoung2 15y ago
  I think the problem is that you don't have a verifiable skill that will increase sales by X%... Because if you did, then you'd be silly for only asking for an extra $4000 based off of increasing sales by millions. I think software engineers can come up with a few skills that makes them more valuable than other applicants by a quantifiable amount. In my case, I have extensive experience with streaming audio and video across web and mobile devices. Having built and maintained the streaming video infrastructure that powers RushLimbaugh.com, JimRome.com, CoastToCoastAM.com, BobAndTom.com as well as their corresponding mobile sites and apps while I worked at ClearChannel, I have the experience to cut months off of similar projects for my current company. That alone was worth the 37.5% increase over my last salary to them.
spicyj 15y ago
Can anyone say how applicable these suggestions are to getting internships while still in college?
- prophetjohn 15y ago
  I'm currently working at my first internship where I negotiated a ridiculous lowball into a substantial lowball. I didn't have any other offers on the table and was worried that I wouldn't get anything, so I settled. I think my point is that it won't hurt to ask. I later found out that I wouldn't be an employee, but a 1099 contractor responsible for all my taxes, making the rate even lower than I initially thought. Needless to say, they will have to more than double my hourly rate when summer comes for me to stay.
throwaway1979 15y ago
So here's an issue I've faced. Instead of being asked ... what's my number? I've gotten asked .. "what's your salary?" How do you deal with this one?
- sethg 15y ago
  If you don’t think your current salary is relevant to what you are worth to your next employer, then you don’t have to answer that question. Really.
- bhousel 15y ago
  Make something up. It's not like they're going to call your boss and say "Hey we're trying to steal this employee away from you, how much money are you paying him?" Some exceptions to this: 1. You work a government job where your salary is public knowledge 2. You are unemployed and they can just call your previous employer. 3. You listed your current boss as a reference and they're probably getting a call anyway. 4. You expect that they're going to perform an extensive background check that might uncover your salary anyway.
- sigjuice 15y ago
  "Can't disclose my current salary due to NDA?"
brador 15y ago
I'll just say be careful when taking free negotiation advice from professional writers rather than professional negotiators..That's not to take anything away from patio11 here, just be careful and keep the salt handy.
dexen 15y ago
Details of strategy sure are important, but, above all, do negotiate. A comment† by http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jfoster http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jfoster that really opened my eyes: > You might also look at it another way, and Google probably will, too. If you're being considered by Google and you don't negotiate, perhaps they are the ones making the mistake [by attempting to hire you]. † http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496512 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496512
positr0n 15y ago
Great advice here, now I want to see something about negotiating a raise within your own company. I could use this information to get huge raises by changing jobs every couple years for the first decade of my career. But what if I like my job? I want to stay here and negotiate large, fair raises. How?
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  Be willing to leave. Sounds trite, but it's true. If your employer knows you are never a threat to leave, they will never try to convince you to stay with monetary incentives. Once you are willing to leave, shop around and "interview" with your employer too. Figure out what the best overall deal is at that point.
  - wallflower 15y ago
    My friend wanted to move his family across the country. He approached his managers with the proposal that they let him work remote. And, more importantly, he explicitly let them know if they did not accept his proposal that he would resign. He got the remote approval and he says that there was no bluff. He was all-in. If they said "sorry, we cannot do that. Cya", he would have had to resign. Because his creditability would be shot if he said "oh, thanks for considering". He feels he got it because he really was forcing their hand.
larrys 15y ago
First let me say that this appears to have plenty of good information and I will definitely read the entire piece. But I've been stopped right away by this paragraph near the beginning: "I think that middle class Americans are socialized from a very young age to view negotiation as something that is vaguely disreputable and engaged in only by poor people. Think of the associations you have with the word “haggling”: do you think of a successful young professional talking about thousands of dollars in a brightly lit office? No, you probably think of an old woman arguing over a trivial sum of money in a dirty flea market." Nothing could be further from the truth for people that are, as only a few examples, jewish, indian, asian and I would imagine other immigrant groups. As a member of one of the above mentioned, it's exactly the opposite. I was raised to think if you don't negotiate you're stupid. And not only that, but if you give someone a price and they don't negotiate so is the other party. Of course this all depends on the product or service in question obviously as well as the dollar amount. By the way, negotiation doesn't mean someone giving you a price and you saying "will you take $x". That's something that any good negotiator will recognize as essentially saying you will pay the asking price or maybe you want them to throw you a bone.
gleb 15y ago
Real estate purchases in US are usually highly leveraged, say 5x for a typical purchase with 20% down. So, negotiating those will have proportionally larger impact than immediate cashflow changes suggest. The article incorrectly suggests otherwise which detracts from its authority.
alexwolfe 15y ago
I think there are a lot of people disagreeing with "Don't state the number first" but it's important to be open to new ideas. This article is meant to make you stronger and offer some new tricks in the negotiating process. You're certainly not learning and expanding your game if you're convinced that you don't need to do anything different. I think its important to think about what the author is really saying: Can you find out what cards their holding before they know what cards you have? Can you? It's tough, its challenging, that's the point. The more information you have before you start making decision the better decision you're going to make, period. When you start throwing out numbers a very big decision has just been made, theres's no going back at that point. If you're worried they are going to laugh at you, or be offended, they won't be. This is not a war, it's an interview, a chance to make an introduction and meet somebody new. Sometimes you can make connections in the interview even if you end up not taking the job. You're dealing with people, not robots. No one is out to get you. In fact, they're considering hiring you and working with you everyday! The point is learn new tricks and push back a little.
- calibraxis 15y ago
  Interesting point. Also, it really helps to somehow weasel/tap your way into the hiring side. ;) Even if it's just to see the submissions of applicants. An important principle of negotiation is knowing their interests as well as you can. And presenting a representation of yourself which strongly satisfies those interests. Basically, all the work is done before the negotiation; the point of negotiation is where it all comes together and you use all that pressure you've built up to (politely) bear. If you have a take-home project, great, you can hit it out of the ballpark by adding all the professional polish that virtually no other applicant will do — have it build, solve corner cases, or casually note that it was tested on 3 platforms; whatever's vaguely appropriate. Virtually everyone else cuts some corner somewhere. Most will submit a minimal answer, to a question which resembles — but isn't — the take-home question. To the company struggling to find a good coder, this makes you a drool-worthy thing to purchase, like the newest Mac. They will calculate what they're losing in not having your increment of productivity, and that will pressure their decision. (That said, I prefer to state the number first as an anchor, because I research relevant salaries, but whatever. ;)
geekfactor 15y ago
A friend of mine turned me on to the audio version of this book, "Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute" [1], many years ago. It's more about a mind shift than rocket-science techniques, but I can attest to increasing my income by tens of thousands of dollars by putting its ideas into practice. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Minute-Revised/dp/1580083102/ref=dp_ob_title_bk http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Minute-Revised...
publicus 15y ago
Key: never tell them your salary. Then, be the first to give the number at 2X your current salary. Then come down a little eg, 5-10% lower then 2X. Get a bunch of offers, let them bid it even higher.
xiaoma 15y ago
>"I received a comment that this is untrue for startups by someone today. For a funded startup which has enough engineers to warrant a foosball table, the company payroll is well north of $100,000 a month." I'm 90% sure that was in reference to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3499480 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3499480 Our most recent round of funding at the start-up where I'm working was 750k. (http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offers-mobile-apps-platform-for-kids/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offe...) That has to cover everything for about half a year, including developers, artists, lawyers, rent, travel expenses, regulatory costs, etc... And we've made it go pretty far and will likely raise a much larger round in the near future. I'm sure everyone at the company would love to be making more money, especially those who have worked in richer countries. However, even a couple of developers pushing for the kinds of salaries that pattio11 is would mean the start-up burns its cash, the founders lose their invested time and money and worst of all, we don't improve kids' education. Of course there is always the chance that those two guys have such beastly skills that they can get us market dominance (and profits or a much larger investment) before that happens. Would you take that gamble? Disclosure: I don't speak for the company, I'm not privy to top level strategy discussions and I don't own any of it or represent it, etc... I do like what we're doing, though.
- rhizome 15y ago
  The flipside is that maybe the execs aren't good enough to get the kind of funding necessary to build the company effectively, or that the business idea (beyond "improving kids' education") is not viable in its current implementation path.
  - xiaoma 15y ago
    One of the founders has successfully sold a start-up in China in the past and the CTO has sold 2 in the US. The product fit still isn't 100%, though. The business has gone through a couple of pivots just in the time I've been there. It should go without saying that before hitting market fit is a terrible time to take on overly mercenary employees. Goal #1 is to survive off of the money long enough to reach that point.
mhartl 15y ago
I'd like to suggest a "comfort challenge" for patio11: apply the principles in this article to increase your stated income ($70,000 [1]) by a factor of three without compromising your quality of life. I bet it can be done. [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/21/bingo-card-creator-etc-year-in-review-2011/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/21/bingo-card-creator-etc-y...
jrockway 15y ago
This is all kind of obvious, and I boil it down to: if you're moving to a new company, they should pay you more than your current job and any other offers. Ask each company for what you want to make, then let them compete against each other. The real difficulty I had in the last round was pricing relocation; is $XX in New York better than $XX-10% in Seattle?
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  In my experience, most companies will severely lowball on big relocations and cost of living adjustments. You could be living in the boondocks on $100k a year, where the cost of living is next to nothing. And then you find a roughly equivalent job in NYC, where the cost of living is easily 2X or 3X your current situation. Will the firm in NYC double or treble your salary? Extremely unlikely. Most will simply anchor to your existing salary, with perhaps a very miniscule adjustment for COL. In these situations, it might make sense to volunteer the first number in the negotiation, and to go high with it. Don't mention your current salary. Just talk about how the cost of living is a big adjustment (be precise about your multiplier, citing a data source), relocation is a big adjustment, etc., so accordingly, $X sounds reasonable. (Where X = the first number you mention; you do not make reference to your starting point before arriving at X. The hiring manager or HR person usually won't work backwards and reverse-engineer your starting point, but rather, will treat X as the anchor. The mere fact of having a rationale leading up to X makes X seem credible). The other thing I'd say is not to make X a wildly ballsy figure, or to pull it out of thin air. You should have a very realistic reasoning for having arrived at X; it shouldn't be complete bullshit. Giving a number that is wildly off the top end of the pay scale for a position is a sign of naivete, which is often a signal that you're not actually qualified for the position (or that you're overqualified, in which case, why are you applying for this position?). Your anchor X should be somewhere at the high end of what your research tells you is a realistic range for the job in question.
- apu 15y ago
  This is all kind of obvious You're probably much more experienced than I am, but I thought a good 80% was new to me, and incredibly useful. Perhaps in the abstract I knew many of the principles, but to see them elaborated down to the level of actual conversations that happen during the negotiation was very valuable.
run4yourlives 15y ago
The best way to avoid saying the salary number is to simply ask the question of them first. In other words: "What salary range does this role warrant in your company?" That frames the conversation really, really well. For one, if the two ideas are severely mismatched, you don't waste your time. If the number is low, you can make note of it then and explain why you are so much better than that. If the answer is non-committal, you've got a wonderful spot to review the role in detail and "come up with the number together". If the number is high, you can reset your mid-point and focus more on their "horrible" vacation allowance that they'd need to correct to bring you on. :)
rb2k_ 15y ago
Speaking of salary negotiations, there is something I always wondered about the US: What is the difference in "pure" salary vs additional costs to the empolyer? Things like 401k contributions and benefits (e.g. dental or health) certainly come with a pricetag. Seeing as I'm doing remote work from another country, I'm not sure how much that actually saves the company. The same goes for simple things as not needing office space / electricity / ... which I provide for myself over here (as I'm working from home). Does anybody have any insight on that?
sethg 15y ago
One question I’ve been asked, interviewing at startups, is: “how do you feel about cash vs. equity?” For my personal financial needs, this is a no-brainer: cash is king, baby. But other HN readers might be in a position where their market-rate salary is $100K cash but they could see themselves getting by at $75K or even $50K... how should they answer that question?
mitchie_luna 15y ago
I think the people who has the right to negotiate is the one who has the skill to do the job being offered. Because you know your capability, definitely, you should know what is your value in the market. Anyway, article is interesting.
nnythm 15y ago
how do you negotiate equity?
bugmenot 15y ago
I recently saw on HN a page (PDF, actually, I think) of suggested questions for engineer-types to fill in before an interview to give them more of your standard HR talking points. Self-promotional stuff, but grounded in numbers/reality and not "I'm a team player!"-type things. Genius that I am, I forgot to bookmark it. Sound familiar to anyone?
forax 15y ago
Any advice for negotiating over email if you don't receive an offer until after the interview?
rapind 15y ago
Jut like everything in life, confidence is key. You gain confidence through experience. Try, fail, try again. Little tricks like not being the first to say a number is about as useful as pickup lines are for dating.
kurtvarner 15y ago
Anyone want to give a TL;DR explanation?
sliverstorm 15y ago
I always struggle internally with posts like this, or the other one I remember, "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer". To fully follow the advice underpinning these pieces, I would generally risk sacrificing a lot of personal enjoyment in my work in pursuit of money. I know HN leans strongly towards money whenever money is at hand, but I tend to lean the other way.
- tintin 15y ago
  You are right. Money is the worst motivation for a job. Money is just a small part of salary.
fragsworth 15y ago
For those of you who suck at negotiations and how to go about them, I believe the single best thing you can do is to get more than one employment discussion going at the same time. Then you can be totally honest and open in your negotiations and still maximize the offer made by each company. It is quite difficult to mess it up at that point - you might not get the highest salary possible between the companies, but you will get close to the highest possible salary that at least one of the companies is willing to offer.
cgopalan 15y ago
There are many people that are not comfortable with negotiation. They see it as a game, and want to avoid it. They would rather just produce something and get paid for it for a living, and cut all the bullshit. For those people, maybe the template below will help (just a suggestion). 1. Find out what you really like to do (technology or domain-wise etc) 2. Find out where you break even on your daily/monthly expenses. 3. Add to that a savings cushion that you are comfortable with. Thats your number. 4. Find out companies that do 1, and drop that number right away so that they know where you stand. 5. If company rejects, keep looking. 6. If the company okays it because they think its well below market rate, and you come to know of it, work for them for a couple of years and then jump ship. You may have been low-balled for sometime, but you worked on something you liked, and have some experience under your belt to search for other opportunities in the same field.
bedris 15y ago
Two good posts on the subject: http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/discussing-desired-salary-during-the-interview-process/ http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/discussing-desired-salary-... http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/be-prepared-to-discuss-salary-openly-when-seeking-a-new-opportunity/ http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/be-prepared-to-discuss-sal...
Anm 15y ago
Random note on the site theme: This detail looks horrible, adding unnecessary high frequency contrast when selected: body { text-shadow: white 0px 1px 0px; }
chrisbennet 15y ago
"What's it going to take to get you into a top of the line Engineer today?"

596 points by llambda 15y ago

I think these discussion tend to get a lot of people debating on who should offer a # first. I don't think this is a question with a binary answer. Statistically, you may be able to determine which works better as a whole, but nobody will negotiate their salary enough times to render a proper sample. I'd guess that treating each salary negotiation uniquely will produce a higher mean salary than simply changing the "who says $ first" variable.

corin_ 15y ago

"If you’re sane only about 25% or so of your gross income is subject to the results of real estate negotiations. Close to 100% is subject to the results of salary negotiations. Thus, your salary negotiations are probably going to be the most important financial decisions you will ever make." That's pretty irrelevant really, what's relevent is the difference it can make. First, if you negotiate a 20% discount on the 25% you're doing better than negotiating a 1% pay rise for the 100%. Second, a negotiated salary recurrs annually, it's not a one-off sum. So yes the conclusion is right, but for the wrong reason.

yariang 15y ago
The 25% he alludes to is your recurring mortgage payment, which also happens annually--monthly, actually. What he means here is that a discount of 5% in your mortgage negotiations is much less than an increase of 5% in your salary. So he is right, for the right reason.
- jarek 15y ago
  corin_ is right - salary is recurring, mortgage/real estate purchase is one-time. You pay off the mortgage with recurring payments, but they are based on the one-time amount. If you negotiate $10k extra salary, after two years you will have $20k extra. If you negotiate $10k lower real estate purchase, after two years you will not have $20k extra. (Technically you will have a little bit more than $10k extra due to compound interest on smaller principal, but nowhere near $20k.)
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badclient 15y ago

Honestly, my top advice for negotiating better: interview lots and never feel like if you don't take this job, you won't get a better one. The techniques are important. But if you don't have a solid foundation in any negotiation(options and leverage), you're fighting an uphill battle. As it stands, patio11's advice seems to be more applicable to people who have very few job options. I'd argue most people on HN would have multiple options, even if they are shy about activating them(by applying/interviewing).

funkah 15y ago
> interview lots and never feel like if you don't take this job, you won't get a better one Right. One thing my dad taught me is that if they want to sell it more than you want to buy it (or vice versa), you win. If you're feeling insecure about your value, I'd say that matters a lot more than, say, who throws out a number first.

Timothee 15y ago

One thing I often find in salary negotiation advice are lines that go like this "At my last company, I increased sales by 3% by $YADDA_YADDA". The thing is that I can't really think of nice metrics like this, and am surprised that a lot of engineers would find something as significant as sales numbers. For one thing, the further your metric is from strict revenue, the harder it is to put a price tag on it. A sales number is easy, but if you optimized some part of the code somewhere, it becomes much more fuzzy and longer to explain. Sure, Patrick also pushes people to get jobs were your contribution is more directly correlated to revenues, but not everyone will want a job like that, and until you do get one, you can't use that. The other thing is that I feel it's easier to consider a sales person as directly responsible for a significant increase in revenue for their market. But engineers work in teams, so saying "I increased sales by x%" is hard to justify: what about the Product Manager that spec'ed it out? What about the rest of the engineering team that worked on that change, reviewed it, pushed it to production? If you're the only one doing all that, sure, but that's rarely the case. So, what's a good way to come up with relevant, justified metrics like that?

lrobb 15y ago
I don't think most engineers or engineering managers really give a flip... At least IME they don't. They want to see that you can produce code. So if you can point to features/apps that you developed, or how you optimized some feature somewhere, that's what they want.
- Timothee 15y ago
  I understand that and that's kind of my point. As an engineer, you can definitely talk about what you've done to convince the other party that you're capable, but it's (IMO) more difficult to tie it to a specific increase in the offer when negotiation starts, which is what Patrick discusses. Specifically, he puts the asked salary increase head-to-head with the potential revenue increase: "Getting me that extra $4,000 would make this a much easier decision. Considering that this is conceivably worth millions to you, we’d be silly not to do business with each other." Which indeed makes it sound like a bargain. :) And I know it's exactly the goal of what Patrick preaches: speak in terms of value created, not technical competence. It's just, y'know, hard :)

inerte 15y ago

The part about managers thinking less of you because you do not negotiate is completely true. Everybody wants an awesome negotiator under them. Just like if you solve P=NP on the white board on the interview will mark you as the wizard, negotiating will mark you, right from the interview, as someone who fights for what he wants, and will fight for what the project/team/company wants.

chrisbennet 15y ago
I upvoted you but I'm not so sure its the negotiation skills that they'll admire as much as the self confidence in your own market value. Sort of "This guy is used to getting paid really well, he must be really good."

dsolomon 15y ago

Author drew numbers from thin air resulting in horrible advice. Throw in - "For a funded startup which has enough engineers to warrant a foosball table, the company payroll is well north of $100,000 a month." - yet still require that employees provide their own hardware/software to do the job.

lazerwalker 15y ago

In your guys' experience, how relevant are these tips to someone speaking with relatively young startups (say, seed or Series A stage)? I know that good negotiation skills are good negotiation skills however you slice it, but I'm curious to hear from folks if they've needed to use a different set of tactics when not dealing with an "HR department" as much as a founder.

vimalg2 15y ago

Thanks Patrick. This was a long time coming. I can tell you've had quite a personal journey about this topic.

DavidChouinard 15y ago

patio11 draws some content from his original "Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice"[1] which you should definitely read. [1] http://old.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://old.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

bryanh 15y ago

I think a lot of what Patrick does well in this article is "reframing" the situation. I find once you get out of the "I don't want to offend them and lose my shot" mindset, negotiation and other "money talk" becomes really routine. I wonder if there is value in creating "mock hiring sessions" that require you to negotiate your pay up. There are millions of "mock interviews" done in colleges every year, why not go that extra step? It seems learning to reframe the situation is easy enough to do given the proper coaching.

jaryd 15y ago

http://salarytutor.com/ http://salarytutor.com/ this is a pretty good and fast read on the subject with some actionable advice that will help prepare you for the conversation.

jwegan 15y ago

The suggestion to not give a number first is awful. You may not want to give your previous salary history, but you most certainly do want to give the first number. You should do your research and figure out what the company usually pays for someone of your experience (checkout glassdoor.com or ask around) and state a number that is on the very high end of reasonable. It is always easier to try and stand your ground than fight your way uphill from a low offer. The only case you might not want to state the first number is if you can't find our what the company typically pays.

VMG 15y ago
Scientific research agrees with you. The concept is called anchoring Anchoring research helps clarify the question of whether to make the first offer in a negotiation: by making the first offer, you will anchor the negotiation in your favor. In fact, Mussweiler and I have shown that making the first offer affords a bargaining advantage. In our studies, we found that the final outcome of a negotiation is affected by whether the buyer or the seller makes the first offer. Specifically, when a seller makes the first offer, the final settlement price tends to be higher than when the buyer makes the first offer. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4302.html http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4302.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring The whole article could use a lot more science. I suggest reading "59 Seconds" from Richard Wiseman.
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- damoncali 15y ago
  I was under the impression that putting out the first number anchors the negotiation around that number, not necessarily in one's favor. For example, if you think you want to earn 100k, and they were hoping to keep you under 125k, throwing out a number of $110k is not giving you the advantage, as they may have thrown out a first number of $115k if you had let them.
  - kevinh 15y ago

therandomguy 15y ago

Always be the first one to give a number. That sets the bar. Let's say your current salary is $100K. You want $130K. You say call the number first, $160K. Now the company is negotiating against that number. If you accept $140K they will perceive it as a win for them.

rmc 15y ago
The problem is most engineers significantly under value their worth and so usually offer a low-to-the-company number. There are people working in offices (not as programmers) that don't know zip files. You, as a programmer, can do magic with the magic boxes. In the long run, it would be better if programmers were better are valuing themselves. In the short run if programmers stopped giving numbers, it'd be better.
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swanson 15y ago

Any tips specifically for negotiating a higher raise? Most of the advice is targeted to the "new job"-salary negotiations.

patio11 15y ago
Get attached to the part of the company that makes money, set up the measuring and politics such that you get credit for increases in the amount of money they're making, pitch a raise for you as the easiest way for them to get a repeat performance in the next quarter. Also, since companies have persistent exploitable inefficiencies about this issue, be prepared to talk to the people who are actually willing to give you a raise. (i.e. it may not be the people you currently work for.)
patrickyeon 15y ago
I haven't had the opportunity to try it, but a suggestion I liked when I heard it was to go to the person in a position to give you a raise and tell them "in six months time, I would like to be making X$. What would I need to do or show I am capable of doing (actionable, measurable, objective is important here) for you to give me that?" Then do those things. In six months, remind them about the conversation (I'm sure it'd go better if you had a reliable way to jog their memory, eg email). If you're worried about them backing out, maybe follow up halfway through to see if they agree that you're on course and that they understand you meant it.
grecy 15y ago
This is a tactic that works very well for me: I go into the room and do lots of listening at the start. I'm told something like a 3% raise. I say that's very interesting.. blah blah and the manager thinks then it's done. Then I ask to confirm what my job title is, and what my responsibilities are (write them down). Then I go through a list of all the things I've done or am doing in the last year (prepare well in advance) and I get the manager to say if that item falls within my responsibilities, or if it's "over and above" my current title. Also then make sure the manager comments on how valuable that "thing" is. I drag this on. Eventually, we have a list of 5 things I'm doing that are "expected" and 20-30 things I regularly do that are "over and above" and highly valued in the manager's own opinion. From there, it's quite clear I deserve a higher raise. -- Another thing I've done is compare the increase in cost of living to my (potential raise) - When the manager told me 3%, I mentioned my rent had increased 10% and gas had increase more than 25% in the last year... so in fact a 3% is actually a salary cut.

feralchimp 15y ago

While I don't agree with all of the article's advice, it gets the most fundamental point right: Stop feeling guilty about asking for market compensation. Being a nice person has nothing to do with it. It's not your fault that you're worth more than they're offering out of the gate. It's the market's fault. Good luck out there.

erikb 15y ago
To get what you're worth, you should actually ask for more. The other one will assume you did and try to bargain you down hard anyway.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  I have never been in a salary negotiation in which I was bargained down hard, which may mean I'm a terrible person to ask for negotiation advice. But not entirely, because the "assume the counterparty is a dick" technique is actually kind of pointlessly lossy, even if it works out in aggregate over the market. It's been a long time since I negotiated a salary, but in a few recent contracting scenarios I've just set a price that I knew was fair, stuck to it, and when necessary explained to the prospect why it was fair. People are either willing to listen to reason or they're not worth dealing with.
  - erikb 15y ago
    Actually, that sounds reasonable! From my experience a good bargainer will always win more then you, but he will often also help you in ways you didn't imagine were possible. Because he is good at finding what is really important to people and how to get things done. If he wants something from you, he will also give you solutions to some of the harder problems you have in exchange. So I don't think a strong bargainer is a dick. Of course there are people who bargain to trick you. And even normally fair and strong bargainers will sometimes use their powers more to their advantages then they should. But in my eyes it's not the common situation. Between sticking-to-the-first-number and tricking-each-other-out-of-money there is a big range of good and bad bargaining which actually solves the good purpose of finding each others priorities, a good range for the value bargained, and a result both parties can agree to.

skrish 15y ago

@patio11 Thanks for writing such a detailed blog on this. As I read your rephrasing of questions, I remembered reading this book "In the line of fire" by Jerry Weissman. There is a concept explained in this called "Roman Column". The key message is: Do not answer the question till you fully comprehend the roman column i.e., the key issue. You can get to your own interpretation of roman column or ask the person to clarify the question to understand better. Then paraphrase the question and address the issue head-on focussing on the roman column. I found the book to be very interesting with lot of real examples about press meets & other negotiations.

bhousel 15y ago

Like many others in the comments, I disagree with the whole "Don't be the first to state a number" strategy. Being weaselly about your number is a very noob thing to do in a negotiation. A skilled negotiator will seize on this and anchor the negotiations in at a very low rate. You need to know your number ahead of time, and drop it on them like it's the most natural thing in the world. Your initial offer should be high but not ridiculous. (Unless you really are that busy with work and you don't want the job anyway, then give them a ridiculous number, and see what they say. Sometimes they'll say yes anyway). The number could be 2x whatever you make currently, or 2x whatever you think they will pay, but the important thing is that it's high, and you say it with confidence and act like it's reasonable. It's far better to work your way down from (your) high number, than up from (their) low number.

joezydeco 15y ago
I'm curious how this should all work when working with a recruiter. I've come across a number of interesting positions that are available only through these guys. But we never get 15 minutes into a conversation before they're asking about salary history. The implied message is that the number you give is going to decide if your resume gets passed onward or not. So going too high, say 2X, would certainly kill your chances. I've tried the "let's get to a fit before negotiating salary" and I actually had one recruiter say "sorry, this is how we roll". I dumped that guy, but it keeps coming up. I know the OP's advice was to avoid this route and get to the hiring manager. Just curious what to do about these people.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Go "too high". Why dump the recruiter when you can just price yourself out of the recruiter's league? Believe me, if your salary seems impossible to achieve the recruiter will tell you, probably pretty bluntly. And if it is possible to achieve and the recruiter helps you get there she'll be thrilled. Recruiters get a cut of that number! (Though, remember, take recruiter advice with a grain of salt: Their tendency will probably be to talk you down. As with buyer-brokers in real estate, the recruiter's incentive is to make the deal go forward, not to hold out for the best possible price for you. Alas, in the end, the responsibility for holding out for a good price is almost impossible to delegate: The buck stops with you.) Of course, the take-home lesson is that if you aren't comfortable setting a high anchor point for your salary you shouldn't deal through recruiters. Which probably helps to explain why companies seem to love using recruiters.

rdouble 15y ago

I'm not convinced by this article that the author has ever done a salary negotiation.

brown9-2 15y ago
The author offers his services to companies as an independent contractor. I would think a huge amount of that involves rate negotiation.
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  - noahc 15y ago
    This isn't full time and the $13,000 should be amortized over the next couple years as that was spent on client prospecting and he seems to be moving in the direction of only dealing with repeat client work.
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  - chc 15y ago
    Can you explain the key differences you see between the two?
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tlogan 15y ago

All negotiations need to end with both parties thinking they are winners. In that spirit, you need to give a number (high-end) (so called anchoring) so that other party can feel good when they convince you for less. Also, other things (i.e., vacations first 6 months, or some small perks) mention only after you negotiated the salary and pretty much you close the deal.

lawnchair_larry 15y ago
I've never understood advice that talks about negotiating fringe benefits like vacation time. At best, company policy will prevent those terms from being negotiated because they're standardized. At worst, you're just going to look like an entitled asshole from day one if you try to get special treatment. I'd much rather make up for it in salary negotiation and take the same deal that your future teammates got.
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  >At best, company policy will prevent those terms from being negotiated because they're standardized. Those policies are there for people that don't choose to negotiate those terms.
- sethg 15y ago
  At best, company policy will prevent those terms from being negotiated because they're standardized. If you frame your counteroffer as “I would take this job if you gave me $X more base salary or Y more vacation days”, then the guy across the table can decide which option is more offensive to company policy. It’s not your job, as the applicant, to decide in advance what terms the employer will accept. Your job is to communicate what you want until you either have a deal or feel comfortable walking away from the table. At worst, you're just going to look like an entitled asshole from day one if you try to get special treatment. Personally, I have better things to do with my time than count up how many days off each of my co-workers have taken and compare them with the numbers in the employee handbook.

mikeklaas 15y ago

The advice to "never be first to state a number" should really be "never divulge your current/previous salary".

throwaway1979 15y ago
This isn't as easy to dodge though, right? Or do people do this routinely?
- patio11 15y ago
  It is not too difficult to dodge questions about current/past salary. We're clear on why you want to do that, right? If you say "My salary at my current job is $65,000", you will receive a job offer at $70,000 +/- $2,000 regardless of whether the company would happily pay $90k for you if they had not known your current salary. Anyhow, given that, there are numerous options to decline to damage your own negotiating position. My personal favorite is "As a matter of professional courtesy, I decline to comment on the specific policies of past employers. Don't worry, I will treat your confidences with the same level of professionalism when someone asks me about them in a few years." It is unfalsifiable (as opposed to what people sometimes suggest on HN: "That is under NDA", which is a claim that can actually be a lie), conveys status, and (gently) informs the person you're speaking with that you're aware how the game is played.
  - throwaway1979 15y ago
    Dude ... I've said it before (under my real HN account) and will say it again ... you-are-the-man! I can't believe how stupid I've been all these years :( I'll admit that when recruiters have asked me this question, I've behaved almost like a deer in headlights. My current job, I accepted the offer as is. THEN asked them if they had any salary negotiation room. Of course, I was told no. I felt like hitting my head against a wall right after that phone call. I won't be that big of an idiot again!
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lrobb 15y ago

"Applicant: Great, I can’t wait to get started. Getting me that extra $4,000 would make this a much easier decision. Considering that this is conceivably worth millions to you, we’d be silly not to do business with each other." I think the problem is that you don't have a verifiable skill that will increase sales by X%... Because if you did, then you'd be silly for only asking for an extra $4000 based off of increasing sales by millions.

hudibras 15y ago
I think Patrick's point is that this is B.S., but it's B.S. that the interviewer can use to rationalize giving up the $4,000. It's exactly the same as the Free Food At Google argument.
byoung2 15y ago
I think the problem is that you don't have a verifiable skill that will increase sales by X%... Because if you did, then you'd be silly for only asking for an extra $4000 based off of increasing sales by millions. I think software engineers can come up with a few skills that makes them more valuable than other applicants by a quantifiable amount. In my case, I have extensive experience with streaming audio and video across web and mobile devices. Having built and maintained the streaming video infrastructure that powers RushLimbaugh.com, JimRome.com, CoastToCoastAM.com, BobAndTom.com as well as their corresponding mobile sites and apps while I worked at ClearChannel, I have the experience to cut months off of similar projects for my current company. That alone was worth the 37.5% increase over my last salary to them.

spicyj 15y ago

Can anyone say how applicable these suggestions are to getting internships while still in college?

prophetjohn 15y ago
I'm currently working at my first internship where I negotiated a ridiculous lowball into a substantial lowball. I didn't have any other offers on the table and was worried that I wouldn't get anything, so I settled. I think my point is that it won't hurt to ask. I later found out that I wouldn't be an employee, but a 1099 contractor responsible for all my taxes, making the rate even lower than I initially thought. Needless to say, they will have to more than double my hourly rate when summer comes for me to stay.

throwaway1979 15y ago

So here's an issue I've faced. Instead of being asked ... what's my number? I've gotten asked .. "what's your salary?" How do you deal with this one?

sethg 15y ago
If you don’t think your current salary is relevant to what you are worth to your next employer, then you don’t have to answer that question. Really.
bhousel 15y ago
Make something up. It's not like they're going to call your boss and say "Hey we're trying to steal this employee away from you, how much money are you paying him?" Some exceptions to this: 1. You work a government job where your salary is public knowledge 2. You are unemployed and they can just call your previous employer. 3. You listed your current boss as a reference and they're probably getting a call anyway. 4. You expect that they're going to perform an extensive background check that might uncover your salary anyway.
sigjuice 15y ago
"Can't disclose my current salary due to NDA?"

brador 15y ago

I'll just say be careful when taking free negotiation advice from professional writers rather than professional negotiators..That's not to take anything away from patio11 here, just be careful and keep the salt handy.

dexen 15y ago

Details of strategy sure are important, but, above all, do negotiate. A comment† by http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jfoster http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jfoster that really opened my eyes: > You might also look at it another way, and Google probably will, too. If you're being considered by Google and you don't negotiate, perhaps they are the ones making the mistake [by attempting to hire you]. † http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496512 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496512

positr0n 15y ago

Great advice here, now I want to see something about negotiating a raise within your own company. I could use this information to get huge raises by changing jobs every couple years for the first decade of my career. But what if I like my job? I want to stay here and negotiate large, fair raises. How?

run4yourlives 15y ago
Be willing to leave. Sounds trite, but it's true. If your employer knows you are never a threat to leave, they will never try to convince you to stay with monetary incentives. Once you are willing to leave, shop around and "interview" with your employer too. Figure out what the best overall deal is at that point.
- wallflower 15y ago
  My friend wanted to move his family across the country. He approached his managers with the proposal that they let him work remote. And, more importantly, he explicitly let them know if they did not accept his proposal that he would resign. He got the remote approval and he says that there was no bluff. He was all-in. If they said "sorry, we cannot do that. Cya", he would have had to resign. Because his creditability would be shot if he said "oh, thanks for considering". He feels he got it because he really was forcing their hand.

larrys 15y ago

First let me say that this appears to have plenty of good information and I will definitely read the entire piece. But I've been stopped right away by this paragraph near the beginning: "I think that middle class Americans are socialized from a very young age to view negotiation as something that is vaguely disreputable and engaged in only by poor people. Think of the associations you have with the word “haggling”: do you think of a successful young professional talking about thousands of dollars in a brightly lit office? No, you probably think of an old woman arguing over a trivial sum of money in a dirty flea market." Nothing could be further from the truth for people that are, as only a few examples, jewish, indian, asian and I would imagine other immigrant groups. As a member of one of the above mentioned, it's exactly the opposite. I was raised to think if you don't negotiate you're stupid. And not only that, but if you give someone a price and they don't negotiate so is the other party. Of course this all depends on the product or service in question obviously as well as the dollar amount. By the way, negotiation doesn't mean someone giving you a price and you saying "will you take $x". That's something that any good negotiator will recognize as essentially saying you will pay the asking price or maybe you want them to throw you a bone.

gleb 15y ago

Real estate purchases in US are usually highly leveraged, say 5x for a typical purchase with 20% down. So, negotiating those will have proportionally larger impact than immediate cashflow changes suggest. The article incorrectly suggests otherwise which detracts from its authority.

alexwolfe 15y ago

I think there are a lot of people disagreeing with "Don't state the number first" but it's important to be open to new ideas. This article is meant to make you stronger and offer some new tricks in the negotiating process. You're certainly not learning and expanding your game if you're convinced that you don't need to do anything different. I think its important to think about what the author is really saying: Can you find out what cards their holding before they know what cards you have? Can you? It's tough, its challenging, that's the point. The more information you have before you start making decision the better decision you're going to make, period. When you start throwing out numbers a very big decision has just been made, theres's no going back at that point. If you're worried they are going to laugh at you, or be offended, they won't be. This is not a war, it's an interview, a chance to make an introduction and meet somebody new. Sometimes you can make connections in the interview even if you end up not taking the job. You're dealing with people, not robots. No one is out to get you. In fact, they're considering hiring you and working with you everyday! The point is learn new tricks and push back a little.

calibraxis 15y ago
Interesting point. Also, it really helps to somehow weasel/tap your way into the hiring side. ;) Even if it's just to see the submissions of applicants. An important principle of negotiation is knowing their interests as well as you can. And presenting a representation of yourself which strongly satisfies those interests. Basically, all the work is done before the negotiation; the point of negotiation is where it all comes together and you use all that pressure you've built up to (politely) bear. If you have a take-home project, great, you can hit it out of the ballpark by adding all the professional polish that virtually no other applicant will do — have it build, solve corner cases, or casually note that it was tested on 3 platforms; whatever's vaguely appropriate. Virtually everyone else cuts some corner somewhere. Most will submit a minimal answer, to a question which resembles — but isn't — the take-home question. To the company struggling to find a good coder, this makes you a drool-worthy thing to purchase, like the newest Mac. They will calculate what they're losing in not having your increment of productivity, and that will pressure their decision. (That said, I prefer to state the number first as an anchor, because I research relevant salaries, but whatever. ;)

geekfactor 15y ago

A friend of mine turned me on to the audio version of this book, "Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute" [1], many years ago. It's more about a mind shift than rocket-science techniques, but I can attest to increasing my income by tens of thousands of dollars by putting its ideas into practice. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Minute-Revised/dp/1580083102/ref=dp_ob_title_bk http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Minute-Revised...

publicus 15y ago

Key: never tell them your salary. Then, be the first to give the number at 2X your current salary. Then come down a little eg, 5-10% lower then 2X. Get a bunch of offers, let them bid it even higher.

xiaoma 15y ago

>"I received a comment that this is untrue for startups by someone today. For a funded startup which has enough engineers to warrant a foosball table, the company payroll is well north of $100,000 a month." I'm 90% sure that was in reference to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3499480 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3499480 Our most recent round of funding at the start-up where I'm working was 750k. (http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offers-mobile-apps-platform-for-kids/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offe...) That has to cover everything for about half a year, including developers, artists, lawyers, rent, travel expenses, regulatory costs, etc... And we've made it go pretty far and will likely raise a much larger round in the near future. I'm sure everyone at the company would love to be making more money, especially those who have worked in richer countries. However, even a couple of developers pushing for the kinds of salaries that pattio11 is would mean the start-up burns its cash, the founders lose their invested time and money and worst of all, we don't improve kids' education. Of course there is always the chance that those two guys have such beastly skills that they can get us market dominance (and profits or a much larger investment) before that happens. Would you take that gamble? Disclosure: I don't speak for the company, I'm not privy to top level strategy discussions and I don't own any of it or represent it, etc... I do like what we're doing, though.

rhizome 15y ago
The flipside is that maybe the execs aren't good enough to get the kind of funding necessary to build the company effectively, or that the business idea (beyond "improving kids' education") is not viable in its current implementation path.
- xiaoma 15y ago
  One of the founders has successfully sold a start-up in China in the past and the CTO has sold 2 in the US. The product fit still isn't 100%, though. The business has gone through a couple of pivots just in the time I've been there. It should go without saying that before hitting market fit is a terrible time to take on overly mercenary employees. Goal #1 is to survive off of the money long enough to reach that point.

mhartl 15y ago

I'd like to suggest a "comfort challenge" for patio11: apply the principles in this article to increase your stated income ($70,000 [1]) by a factor of three without compromising your quality of life. I bet it can be done. [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/21/bingo-card-creator-etc-year-in-review-2011/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/21/bingo-card-creator-etc-y...

jrockway 15y ago

This is all kind of obvious, and I boil it down to: if you're moving to a new company, they should pay you more than your current job and any other offers. Ask each company for what you want to make, then let them compete against each other. The real difficulty I had in the last round was pricing relocation; is $XX in New York better than $XX-10% in Seattle?

jonnathanson 15y ago
In my experience, most companies will severely lowball on big relocations and cost of living adjustments. You could be living in the boondocks on $100k a year, where the cost of living is next to nothing. And then you find a roughly equivalent job in NYC, where the cost of living is easily 2X or 3X your current situation. Will the firm in NYC double or treble your salary? Extremely unlikely. Most will simply anchor to your existing salary, with perhaps a very miniscule adjustment for COL. In these situations, it might make sense to volunteer the first number in the negotiation, and to go high with it. Don't mention your current salary. Just talk about how the cost of living is a big adjustment (be precise about your multiplier, citing a data source), relocation is a big adjustment, etc., so accordingly, $X sounds reasonable. (Where X = the first number you mention; you do not make reference to your starting point before arriving at X. The hiring manager or HR person usually won't work backwards and reverse-engineer your starting point, but rather, will treat X as the anchor. The mere fact of having a rationale leading up to X makes X seem credible). The other thing I'd say is not to make X a wildly ballsy figure, or to pull it out of thin air. You should have a very realistic reasoning for having arrived at X; it shouldn't be complete bullshit. Giving a number that is wildly off the top end of the pay scale for a position is a sign of naivete, which is often a signal that you're not actually qualified for the position (or that you're overqualified, in which case, why are you applying for this position?). Your anchor X should be somewhere at the high end of what your research tells you is a realistic range for the job in question.
apu 15y ago
This is all kind of obvious You're probably much more experienced than I am, but I thought a good 80% was new to me, and incredibly useful. Perhaps in the abstract I knew many of the principles, but to see them elaborated down to the level of actual conversations that happen during the negotiation was very valuable.

run4yourlives 15y ago

The best way to avoid saying the salary number is to simply ask the question of them first. In other words: "What salary range does this role warrant in your company?" That frames the conversation really, really well. For one, if the two ideas are severely mismatched, you don't waste your time. If the number is low, you can make note of it then and explain why you are so much better than that. If the answer is non-committal, you've got a wonderful spot to review the role in detail and "come up with the number together". If the number is high, you can reset your mid-point and focus more on their "horrible" vacation allowance that they'd need to correct to bring you on. :)

rb2k_ 15y ago

Speaking of salary negotiations, there is something I always wondered about the US: What is the difference in "pure" salary vs additional costs to the empolyer? Things like 401k contributions and benefits (e.g. dental or health) certainly come with a pricetag. Seeing as I'm doing remote work from another country, I'm not sure how much that actually saves the company. The same goes for simple things as not needing office space / electricity / ... which I provide for myself over here (as I'm working from home). Does anybody have any insight on that?

sethg 15y ago

One question I’ve been asked, interviewing at startups, is: “how do you feel about cash vs. equity?” For my personal financial needs, this is a no-brainer: cash is king, baby. But other HN readers might be in a position where their market-rate salary is $100K cash but they could see themselves getting by at $75K or even $50K... how should they answer that question?

mitchie_luna 15y ago

I think the people who has the right to negotiate is the one who has the skill to do the job being offered. Because you know your capability, definitely, you should know what is your value in the market. Anyway, article is interesting.

nnythm 15y ago

how do you negotiate equity?

bugmenot 15y ago

I recently saw on HN a page (PDF, actually, I think) of suggested questions for engineer-types to fill in before an interview to give them more of your standard HR talking points. Self-promotional stuff, but grounded in numbers/reality and not "I'm a team player!"-type things. Genius that I am, I forgot to bookmark it. Sound familiar to anyone?

forax 15y ago

Any advice for negotiating over email if you don't receive an offer until after the interview?

rapind 15y ago

Jut like everything in life, confidence is key. You gain confidence through experience. Try, fail, try again. Little tricks like not being the first to say a number is about as useful as pickup lines are for dating.

kurtvarner 15y ago

Anyone want to give a TL;DR explanation?

sliverstorm 15y ago

I always struggle internally with posts like this, or the other one I remember, "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer". To fully follow the advice underpinning these pieces, I would generally risk sacrificing a lot of personal enjoyment in my work in pursuit of money. I know HN leans strongly towards money whenever money is at hand, but I tend to lean the other way.

tintin 15y ago
You are right. Money is the worst motivation for a job. Money is just a small part of salary.

fragsworth 15y ago

For those of you who suck at negotiations and how to go about them, I believe the single best thing you can do is to get more than one employment discussion going at the same time. Then you can be totally honest and open in your negotiations and still maximize the offer made by each company. It is quite difficult to mess it up at that point - you might not get the highest salary possible between the companies, but you will get close to the highest possible salary that at least one of the companies is willing to offer.

cgopalan 15y ago

There are many people that are not comfortable with negotiation. They see it as a game, and want to avoid it. They would rather just produce something and get paid for it for a living, and cut all the bullshit. For those people, maybe the template below will help (just a suggestion). 1. Find out what you really like to do (technology or domain-wise etc) 2. Find out where you break even on your daily/monthly expenses. 3. Add to that a savings cushion that you are comfortable with. Thats your number. 4. Find out companies that do 1, and drop that number right away so that they know where you stand. 5. If company rejects, keep looking. 6. If the company okays it because they think its well below market rate, and you come to know of it, work for them for a couple of years and then jump ship. You may have been low-balled for sometime, but you worked on something you liked, and have some experience under your belt to search for other opportunities in the same field.

bedris 15y ago

Two good posts on the subject: http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/discussing-desired-salary-during-the-interview-process/ http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/discussing-desired-salary-... http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/be-prepared-to-discuss-salary-openly-when-seeking-a-new-opportunity/ http://hollaforthatdolla.com/2011/be-prepared-to-discuss-sal...

Anm 15y ago

Random note on the site theme: This detail looks horrible, adding unnecessary high frequency contrast when selected: body { text-shadow: white 0px 1px 0px; }

chrisbennet 15y ago

"What's it going to take to get you into a top of the line Engineer today?"