6 ms·

Never say no, but rarely say yes (2011)

201 points by jger15 3y ago

Obscurity4340 3y ago
[flagged]
chiefalchemist 3y ago
> If they say “yes,” you’re happy because the terms or money are so good, it more than compensates for the distraction, perhaps funding the thing you really want to do. Perhaps. Make sure you're high bar is high enough. Opportunity cost is an underappreciated metric. The exceptional (read: as in a rare exception well above average, mean, etc.) can be addicting, and eventually self-defeating (read: before you know it your temporary digital ditch digger stint gets less stint-y and more permanent-esque). It's like a bad-ish romantic relationship that goes on too long. Regrets, and the some. If you're going to go this route, be certain to plan your exit. For example, "The first X weeks are $Y per hour. After that we revisit, if necessary." Baking this into the agreement will force you at the end of X weeks to recalibrate the revenue vs the opportunity costs. In fact, for any type of contract work with too many unknowns and/or too much possible career friction always include a time limit along with the rate.
- gregw2 3y ago
  I think that’s the virtue of setting a high price on what you don’t want to do as your “not saying no”/funding strategy. It’s a reflection of your perceived opportunity cost. But you are right to suggest time-bounding your engagement up front to avoid getting stuck in a local maxima. Or, at a certain scale, have a segregated set of people doing these requests where possible to limit and help govern the distraction.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There are things I don't really love doing like ghostwriting company blogs but if the project is short and well-defined (and is something I can actually do a good job of fairly quickly), I'll take a few $K from you. I'd be much more hesitant to commit to something more open-ended even if the income stream were good if it were something I was doing strictly for the money.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    The other thing I wanted to mention, aside from opportunity cost, is risk. I'm not suggesting never leave your sweet spot. That would be stupid on my part :) However, as you leave your sweet spot, be aware (read: beware) of what you don't know. Be aware of the fact that bad decisions are very similar to trust...one slip and you've lost 10x more than you anticipated. If you're going to leave your sweet spot be sure you're prepared for the worse. It can and does happen. Put in real terms, over the years I've worked as a contractor for a number of marketing / web dev agencies. The more successful ones didn't get there from yes, they got there because of no. No to projects beyond them. No to clients with expectations out of proportion to budget. No for the win, so to speak. I've also seen those same agencies start to drink their own Kool Aid. They get in a financial pinch and take on work / clients they're not tuned for. For example, they don't have the in house expertise in the technology / solution required. Eventually the project costs more than it brings in *and* the team is miserable, has lost faith, leaves the conpany, etc. If you're leaving your sweet spot and you're not concerned, you're probably doing it all wrong.
londons_explore 3y ago
Downside of this approach: Often you are quoting a super high price because you don't want the work and maybe it isn't really what you love to do or your expertise. But the buyer assumes you have a super high price because you're the best and can charge what you're worth. End result: The buyer is unhappy with your work, because you priced as if you were a world leading expert and actually you are learning on the job and don't want to be there anyway.
- MourYother 3y ago
  Still a win in my book
  - bumby 3y ago
    Unhappy customers coupled with high cost to the customer is probably a Pyrrhic win.
- bluedino 3y ago
  Isn't that how the big name consultants work? Price it out like you're getting experts from a famous firm and then send in a green team to do the work?
  - FormerBandmate 3y ago
    It's also how Saul Goodman works
    - NullPrefix 3y ago
      Saul Goodman didn't outsource his lawyering. Having a paralegal secretary isn't the same as sending a green team
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Or subcontract, which created one of most dystopian term in corporate, "body lending"
- 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hkon 3y ago
The story would be better if I did not know the basis of it.
daneel_w 3y ago
For personal relations I will maintain that it's always better to be clear and give a straight yes or no. Nobody likes being left hanging in uncertainty, and nobody likes people who always do that to them - people who cannot even provide a "maybe" - when asked even simple questions.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  This article seems to only apply to job/sales quotes. The title is a bit clickbaity, it's too general.
- j7ake 3y ago
  Yeah it’s definitely bad advice to try on your partner, or even your boss /colleagues
- hammock 3y ago
  In that case you ought to be reframing the problem, answering a different question that you are comfortable giving a definite yes or no too. For example, Them: “Will you do x thing for me by year end?” You: “Are you actually trying to solve y problem? What if I refer you to Z person by end of day? Or start by bringing you some research around X by end of month?” Tbh the same applies to business not just personal
  - campbel 3y ago
    this person collaborates
- remram 3y ago
  I disagree, I like a qualified answer. I often have other options and this allows me to use them. "Can you do X?" "Maybe, I'm very busy so I might not get to it this week" "Ok nevermind I'll ask [other team member] / I'll do it / I'll do Y instead" If you say no when you're busy/uncertain, you quickly become useless to me and I'll learn not to ask you for things. But if you say yes, I'm counting on you and I will be both disappointed and in trouble if you don't deliver.
29athrowaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- nailer 3y ago
  And also ruin your reputation.
- junon 3y ago
  Did you read the article? It's not about toxic positivity, it's about how to craft "no" and "yes" such that they're not absolute and can still make both sides happy. Has nothing to do with feelings.
  - 29athrowaway 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - junon 3y ago
      I really, truly don't believe you read the article.
  - BLanen 3y ago
    > can still make both sides happy. > Has nothing to do with feelings.
Tade0 3y ago
I never give a definite answer before I'm at least somewhat familiar with the problem at hand and their deadlines - I'm not able to tell from this article alone if the author did that. Anyway this approach is profitable but comes with two downsides: -You risk getting stuck with a project that was much larger than you anticipated. -Eventually you find that your business is not what you originally envisioned. I used to work for a company that wanted to get into the Big Data space back when that was a fashionable buzzword. I went to an interview there a couple of years after parting ways only to discover that while they still heavily advertised big data, deep learning and whatnot, their main money maker was some pretty standard DevOps.
zzzeek 3y ago
say "yes" for things you aren't into doing but just make sure you ask for super high amounts of money, so that you're happy if they accept your offer. nice theory for "getting more money is good" but doesn't work for "I have no time". If people could package up "more time" for me in some kind of interdimensional container, I'd be all set.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yep. I'm almost certainly not going to cancel personal plans especially for something that's "just business." However, if I don't have any urgent plans and you want me to do some well-scoped short-term job for you or even hop on a plane for a consulting day, I'll probably do it for a fairly generous hourly rate/per diem. But I won't be a bargain unless it's something I really want to do or could lead to some sort of follow-on business.
- yayitswei 3y ago
  You can buy time with money (with some limitations).
- xyzelement 3y ago
  If you end up in a situation where people consistently offer you more money than you are otherwise getting, you will solve the time problem by shifting to the more-money type work... If your big (technically, your ask) isn't high enough to cause you to make the time, the it's not high enough.
sourabh03agr 3y ago
The title is catchy!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
paulsutter 3y ago
Focus means saying no to almost everything The hourly rate example is a clear tell. If you're selling your time by the hour you're already doing the wrong work. Consulting = death, and I mean that literally. The months of our career are finite and we should allocate them carefully
- garrickvanburen 3y ago
  While I agree the combo is death, billing hourly and consulting are two different things. Consulting with value—based fees is a fantastic way to deliberately allocate our finite time .
  - paulsutter 3y ago
    No consulting is always death, you’re dividing up your energy into little packets of focus and you just can’t accomplish much You can only get the value of your work over time though equity. If your impact really is large, nobody could afford to pay the net present value up front (and only a lowlife would want to damage the company by taking out cash like that)
    - garrickvanburen 3y ago
      I think we are using the same word to reference two different things. Equity increasing in value, as has been discussed on HN multiple times, is not a guarantee - and businesses engage all kinds of other businesses for all kinds of help. There are lots of ways to structure a temporary engagement that's mutually beneficial to both parties - in the short & long term.
- sbayeta 3y ago
  Could you please elaborate on consulting = death?
- lmm 3y ago
  Career is a means to an end. Billing hourly I can look after my family, not get too stressed, and focus on what really matters when I'm off the clock. Even if the EV from swinging for the fences would be higher, it's not worth the risk.
b8 3y ago
As I learned from my mom, "maybe, I'll think about it".
Klsimek 3y ago
See also Weinberg’s “Orange Juice Test” from “Secrets of Consulting” https://lalgudi.medium.com/orange-juice-test-will-you-pass-it-520ee04b0fb1 https://lalgudi.medium.com/orange-juice-test-will-you-pass-i...
garrickvanburen 3y ago
A decade+ later lots of people (potential customers, investors) also prefer not say “no”. In my work with startup founders, I regularly say, “people say ‘no’ in a lot of ways, many are very subtle. But when they say ‘yes’ it’s clear and obvious.”
gumby 3y ago
This is good advice that has also stood me well over the years. If you are doing custom development you can also use this at a finer level of granularity: charge a lot for parts of the project you’d rather not do (even possibly pay a bonus for the poor person on the team who draws the short straw and has to do that part, and maintain it) and charge less for the parts the customer might be on the fence about but you know will either make them happy (though they don’t realize it yet) and/or help you get future business elsewhere.
- gumby 3y ago
  To expand a little: look over the horizon. Imagine you are thinking of expanding into the banking market at some point down the road. Customer A says, “hey, would you add a feature to your emoji generator to interface with the ACH system?” Stupid request, maintenance nightmare. But you might get paid to have one person get some exposure to the horror show that is banking APIs. Exposure that might later help you think a bit better when it’s time to start thinking about that market. Of course charge a LOT because it’s new and charge a LOT for the maintenance contract. Maybe it helps you estimate engineering and marketing budget, or maybe it helps you decide on a different expansion path. The converse is true too. Customer B wants hospital integration so they can add cute emojis to messages like “hey, you’ve only got four months to live. Have a nice day!” You’re not stupid so you know you never want to get anywhere near the tarpit of medical software. So you can confidently say “no” (phrasing it, “we don’t believe we could honestly provide the necessary level of support you’d require and don’t want to let you down blah blah blah”).
xyzelement 3y ago
This is also why you should get multiple quotes for any transaction without an obvious and transparent market. When your roofer quotes you $XK to replace your shingles, that might be what he thinks is a competitive rate in your market, or it might be the "I am too busy but if they really want to pay that much I'll find a way to make it work" rate. A guy who's drowning in business and a guy who's sitting idle will likely quote you very different rates. Obviously you should also be conscious of why someone is busier than another, but sometimes it's just a matter of timing, etc.
- NullPrefix 3y ago
  >A guy who's drowning in business and a guy who's sitting idle will likely quote you very different rates Yes, that's how it works. That's why no one goes out of their way to hire unemployed people
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    // That's why no one goes out of their way to hire unemployed people I don't know why someone would "go out of their way" to do that, but the numbers take care of it. For example, if I post a job at $XXXK per year, if XXX < FAANG salary, I would expect nobody from FAANG to apply, but I might get some "laid off from FAANG" candidates.
    - NullPrefix 3y ago
      And you wouldn't hire them, because they were laid off and currently unemployed
jameshart 3y ago
Another lesson from this article: If you land a $100/hr gig, and the work takes 90 minutes: bill the client $200, not $150!
creer 3y ago
Perhaps there is space for a nuanced: - "yes" - "no" - "this is not our specialty but we'll do it within our current relationship for $BIG_ENOUGH" (and then you know, actually do it.) - "this is not our specialty but we'll help you hire and manage a specialist so they fit in (for $MODERATE)"
dang 3y ago
Discussed at the time: Never say “no,” but rarely say “yes.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2481213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2481213 - April 2011 (36 comments)
lee 3y ago
I have a similar anecdote in my career as a developer. At the height of the financial crisis I was just 2 years out of school and working for a small startup. Our first child was just born, and I got fired from my job as they discovered I was trying to bootstrap my side-project. There was no non-compete clauses in my contract but the company used it as an excuse to avoid paying me severance as they laid off a quarter of the staff the following week. So there I was, anxious that no one would hire a young developer who has a tarnished work experience with a newborn at home. I was desperate to just find some work. I eventually got two offers with the exact same salary as the job I had gotten fired from. One job sounded more appealing and offered me a chance to learn and grow. The other was for a job to maintain an existing legacy codebase for a struggling company that just went from 100 employees to 10. My wife suggested to just counter-offer with a 50% increase for the unappealing job. If I didn't get it, it was no big loss as I had another in hand. Sure enough, they accepted and the job wasn't actually that bad in the end. Strangely, when I look back everything turned out in the end for me. I got a 50% pay raise and I also got to spend 3 months at home with my newborn child while unemployed.

201 points by jger15 3y ago

[flagged]

> If they say “yes,” you’re happy because the terms or money are so good, it more than compensates for the distraction, perhaps funding the thing you really want to do. Perhaps. Make sure you're high bar is high enough. Opportunity cost is an underappreciated metric. The exceptional (read: as in a rare exception well above average, mean, etc.) can be addicting, and eventually self-defeating (read: before you know it your temporary digital ditch digger stint gets less stint-y and more permanent-esque). It's like a bad-ish romantic relationship that goes on too long. Regrets, and the some. If you're going to go this route, be certain to plan your exit. For example, "The first X weeks are $Y per hour. After that we revisit, if necessary." Baking this into the agreement will force you at the end of X weeks to recalibrate the revenue vs the opportunity costs. In fact, for any type of contract work with too many unknowns and/or too much possible career friction always include a time limit along with the rate.

gregw2 3y ago
I think that’s the virtue of setting a high price on what you don’t want to do as your “not saying no”/funding strategy. It’s a reflection of your perceived opportunity cost. But you are right to suggest time-bounding your engagement up front to avoid getting stuck in a local maxima. Or, at a certain scale, have a segregated set of people doing these requests where possible to limit and help govern the distraction.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are things I don't really love doing like ghostwriting company blogs but if the project is short and well-defined (and is something I can actually do a good job of fairly quickly), I'll take a few $K from you. I'd be much more hesitant to commit to something more open-ended even if the income stream were good if it were something I was doing strictly for the money.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  The other thing I wanted to mention, aside from opportunity cost, is risk. I'm not suggesting never leave your sweet spot. That would be stupid on my part :) However, as you leave your sweet spot, be aware (read: beware) of what you don't know. Be aware of the fact that bad decisions are very similar to trust...one slip and you've lost 10x more than you anticipated. If you're going to leave your sweet spot be sure you're prepared for the worse. It can and does happen. Put in real terms, over the years I've worked as a contractor for a number of marketing / web dev agencies. The more successful ones didn't get there from yes, they got there because of no. No to projects beyond them. No to clients with expectations out of proportion to budget. No for the win, so to speak. I've also seen those same agencies start to drink their own Kool Aid. They get in a financial pinch and take on work / clients they're not tuned for. For example, they don't have the in house expertise in the technology / solution required. Eventually the project costs more than it brings in *and* the team is miserable, has lost faith, leaves the conpany, etc. If you're leaving your sweet spot and you're not concerned, you're probably doing it all wrong.

londons_explore 3y ago

Downside of this approach: Often you are quoting a super high price because you don't want the work and maybe it isn't really what you love to do or your expertise. But the buyer assumes you have a super high price because you're the best and can charge what you're worth. End result: The buyer is unhappy with your work, because you priced as if you were a world leading expert and actually you are learning on the job and don't want to be there anyway.

MourYother 3y ago
Still a win in my book
- bumby 3y ago
  Unhappy customers coupled with high cost to the customer is probably a Pyrrhic win.
bluedino 3y ago
Isn't that how the big name consultants work? Price it out like you're getting experts from a famous firm and then send in a green team to do the work?
- FormerBandmate 3y ago
  It's also how Saul Goodman works
  - NullPrefix 3y ago
    Saul Goodman didn't outsource his lawyering. Having a paralegal secretary isn't the same as sending a green team
- ilyt 3y ago
  Or subcontract, which created one of most dystopian term in corporate, "body lending"
3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hkon 3y ago

The story would be better if I did not know the basis of it.

daneel_w 3y ago

For personal relations I will maintain that it's always better to be clear and give a straight yes or no. Nobody likes being left hanging in uncertainty, and nobody likes people who always do that to them - people who cannot even provide a "maybe" - when asked even simple questions.

yellow_lead 3y ago
This article seems to only apply to job/sales quotes. The title is a bit clickbaity, it's too general.
j7ake 3y ago
Yeah it’s definitely bad advice to try on your partner, or even your boss /colleagues
hammock 3y ago
In that case you ought to be reframing the problem, answering a different question that you are comfortable giving a definite yes or no too. For example, Them: “Will you do x thing for me by year end?” You: “Are you actually trying to solve y problem? What if I refer you to Z person by end of day? Or start by bringing you some research around X by end of month?” Tbh the same applies to business not just personal
- campbel 3y ago
  this person collaborates
remram 3y ago
I disagree, I like a qualified answer. I often have other options and this allows me to use them. "Can you do X?" "Maybe, I'm very busy so I might not get to it this week" "Ok nevermind I'll ask [other team member] / I'll do it / I'll do Y instead" If you say no when you're busy/uncertain, you quickly become useless to me and I'll learn not to ask you for things. But if you say yes, I'm counting on you and I will be both disappointed and in trouble if you don't deliver.

29athrowaway 3y ago

[flagged]

nailer 3y ago
And also ruin your reputation.
junon 3y ago
Did you read the article? It's not about toxic positivity, it's about how to craft "no" and "yes" such that they're not absolute and can still make both sides happy. Has nothing to do with feelings.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - junon 3y ago
    I really, truly don't believe you read the article.
- BLanen 3y ago
  > can still make both sides happy. > Has nothing to do with feelings.

Tade0 3y ago

I never give a definite answer before I'm at least somewhat familiar with the problem at hand and their deadlines - I'm not able to tell from this article alone if the author did that. Anyway this approach is profitable but comes with two downsides: -You risk getting stuck with a project that was much larger than you anticipated. -Eventually you find that your business is not what you originally envisioned. I used to work for a company that wanted to get into the Big Data space back when that was a fashionable buzzword. I went to an interview there a couple of years after parting ways only to discover that while they still heavily advertised big data, deep learning and whatnot, their main money maker was some pretty standard DevOps.

zzzeek 3y ago

say "yes" for things you aren't into doing but just make sure you ask for super high amounts of money, so that you're happy if they accept your offer. nice theory for "getting more money is good" but doesn't work for "I have no time". If people could package up "more time" for me in some kind of interdimensional container, I'd be all set.

ghaff 3y ago
Yep. I'm almost certainly not going to cancel personal plans especially for something that's "just business." However, if I don't have any urgent plans and you want me to do some well-scoped short-term job for you or even hop on a plane for a consulting day, I'll probably do it for a fairly generous hourly rate/per diem. But I won't be a bargain unless it's something I really want to do or could lead to some sort of follow-on business.
yayitswei 3y ago
You can buy time with money (with some limitations).
xyzelement 3y ago
If you end up in a situation where people consistently offer you more money than you are otherwise getting, you will solve the time problem by shifting to the more-money type work... If your big (technically, your ask) isn't high enough to cause you to make the time, the it's not high enough.

sourabh03agr 3y ago

The title is catchy!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

paulsutter 3y ago

Focus means saying no to almost everything The hourly rate example is a clear tell. If you're selling your time by the hour you're already doing the wrong work. Consulting = death, and I mean that literally. The months of our career are finite and we should allocate them carefully

garrickvanburen 3y ago
While I agree the combo is death, billing hourly and consulting are two different things. Consulting with value—based fees is a fantastic way to deliberately allocate our finite time .
- paulsutter 3y ago
  No consulting is always death, you’re dividing up your energy into little packets of focus and you just can’t accomplish much You can only get the value of your work over time though equity. If your impact really is large, nobody could afford to pay the net present value up front (and only a lowlife would want to damage the company by taking out cash like that)
  - garrickvanburen 3y ago
    I think we are using the same word to reference two different things. Equity increasing in value, as has been discussed on HN multiple times, is not a guarantee - and businesses engage all kinds of other businesses for all kinds of help. There are lots of ways to structure a temporary engagement that's mutually beneficial to both parties - in the short & long term.
sbayeta 3y ago
Could you please elaborate on consulting = death?
lmm 3y ago
Career is a means to an end. Billing hourly I can look after my family, not get too stressed, and focus on what really matters when I'm off the clock. Even if the EV from swinging for the fences would be higher, it's not worth the risk.

b8 3y ago

As I learned from my mom, "maybe, I'll think about it".

Klsimek 3y ago

See also Weinberg’s “Orange Juice Test” from “Secrets of Consulting” https://lalgudi.medium.com/orange-juice-test-will-you-pass-it-520ee04b0fb1 https://lalgudi.medium.com/orange-juice-test-will-you-pass-i...

garrickvanburen 3y ago

A decade+ later lots of people (potential customers, investors) also prefer not say “no”. In my work with startup founders, I regularly say, “people say ‘no’ in a lot of ways, many are very subtle. But when they say ‘yes’ it’s clear and obvious.”

gumby 3y ago

This is good advice that has also stood me well over the years. If you are doing custom development you can also use this at a finer level of granularity: charge a lot for parts of the project you’d rather not do (even possibly pay a bonus for the poor person on the team who draws the short straw and has to do that part, and maintain it) and charge less for the parts the customer might be on the fence about but you know will either make them happy (though they don’t realize it yet) and/or help you get future business elsewhere.

gumby 3y ago
To expand a little: look over the horizon. Imagine you are thinking of expanding into the banking market at some point down the road. Customer A says, “hey, would you add a feature to your emoji generator to interface with the ACH system?” Stupid request, maintenance nightmare. But you might get paid to have one person get some exposure to the horror show that is banking APIs. Exposure that might later help you think a bit better when it’s time to start thinking about that market. Of course charge a LOT because it’s new and charge a LOT for the maintenance contract. Maybe it helps you estimate engineering and marketing budget, or maybe it helps you decide on a different expansion path. The converse is true too. Customer B wants hospital integration so they can add cute emojis to messages like “hey, you’ve only got four months to live. Have a nice day!” You’re not stupid so you know you never want to get anywhere near the tarpit of medical software. So you can confidently say “no” (phrasing it, “we don’t believe we could honestly provide the necessary level of support you’d require and don’t want to let you down blah blah blah”).

xyzelement 3y ago

This is also why you should get multiple quotes for any transaction without an obvious and transparent market. When your roofer quotes you $XK to replace your shingles, that might be what he thinks is a competitive rate in your market, or it might be the "I am too busy but if they really want to pay that much I'll find a way to make it work" rate. A guy who's drowning in business and a guy who's sitting idle will likely quote you very different rates. Obviously you should also be conscious of why someone is busier than another, but sometimes it's just a matter of timing, etc.

NullPrefix 3y ago
>A guy who's drowning in business and a guy who's sitting idle will likely quote you very different rates Yes, that's how it works. That's why no one goes out of their way to hire unemployed people
- xyzelement 3y ago
  // That's why no one goes out of their way to hire unemployed people I don't know why someone would "go out of their way" to do that, but the numbers take care of it. For example, if I post a job at $XXXK per year, if XXX < FAANG salary, I would expect nobody from FAANG to apply, but I might get some "laid off from FAANG" candidates.
  - NullPrefix 3y ago
    And you wouldn't hire them, because they were laid off and currently unemployed

jameshart 3y ago

Another lesson from this article: If you land a $100/hr gig, and the work takes 90 minutes: bill the client $200, not $150!

creer 3y ago

Perhaps there is space for a nuanced: - "yes" - "no" - "this is not our specialty but we'll do it within our current relationship for $BIG_ENOUGH" (and then you know, actually do it.) - "this is not our specialty but we'll help you hire and manage a specialist so they fit in (for $MODERATE)"

dang 3y ago

Discussed at the time: Never say “no,” but rarely say “yes.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2481213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2481213 - April 2011 (36 comments)

lee 3y ago

I have a similar anecdote in my career as a developer. At the height of the financial crisis I was just 2 years out of school and working for a small startup. Our first child was just born, and I got fired from my job as they discovered I was trying to bootstrap my side-project. There was no non-compete clauses in my contract but the company used it as an excuse to avoid paying me severance as they laid off a quarter of the staff the following week. So there I was, anxious that no one would hire a young developer who has a tarnished work experience with a newborn at home. I was desperate to just find some work. I eventually got two offers with the exact same salary as the job I had gotten fired from. One job sounded more appealing and offered me a chance to learn and grow. The other was for a job to maintain an existing legacy codebase for a struggling company that just went from 100 employees to 10. My wife suggested to just counter-offer with a 50% increase for the unappealing job. If I didn't get it, it was no big loss as I had another in hand. Sure enough, they accepted and the job wasn't actually that bad in the end. Strangely, when I look back everything turned out in the end for me. I got a 50% pay raise and I also got to spend 3 months at home with my newborn child while unemployed.