7 ms·

If you don't have a strong BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), you're not going to get very far with just asking. "I received your offer for $X

• ryandrake 1y ago
  Basically correct. I guess my point is Patrick could have saved a lot of typing and simply wrote "Have one or more competing offers."
  • jt2190 1y ago
    Do you consider yourself an _excellent_ negotiator already? It really feels like you’re trying to suggest that negotiation can’t ever work for anyone except a handful of celebrities, even for those who are excellent negotiators. Someone’s already asking about your BATNA, and I’m wondering if you negotiate all benefits (amount of time off for example) since your story focused on salary alone.
    • ryandrake 1y ago
      Based on my results, I am clearly not a skilled negotiator! I have found most companies to be inflexible around everything, from salary to equity to vacation time to health benefits to 401(k). The package is what it is, and if you don't want to take it, you can leave it.
      • lazide 1y ago
        Sure, because you personally aren’t in a place you can just leave it. If you don’t have a good competing alternative offer/option, you’re not negotiating, you’re begging. And chances are, they have alternatives.
      • jt2190 1y ago
        Interesting. I think there’s definitely a “meta-game” that negotiation requires you to prepare in advance if you want success. For example, knowing if the job opening is in a “cost center” or “revenue center” for the company, or how the job is funded. Clearly a well-funded department can offer more salary, and a revenue increasing job can pay more than a cost-savings one, since revenue has no upper bound and savings is bounded. Companies that have high revenue per developer can pay more in general. Companies that have to compete globally for talent have pay more than those that only have to compete in a local market. I can go on but you get the idea.
      • danjl 1y ago
        We're you willing to walk away if you didn't get what you wanted? Or were you just hoping they would capitulate? IMHO, The key to negotiating is knowing where your red line is, and being willing to walk away if you don't reach it.
        • systemf_omega 1y ago
          I can imagine many people's view of negotiation is asking "Can I have X" and when they get rejected just moving on with "Ok that's fine".
      • sokoloff 1y ago
        As a hiring manager and someone who’s an employee rep on the 401k committee, I can’t even imagine how I could customize the 401k for an individual candidate. I think the same is true for health insurance. If someone came with that request, I’d probably be amused but I doubt I could change anything.
      • darkerside 1y ago
        Something is going on here. If the company and team is excited about hiring you, there will typically be some flexibility unless you are already coming in at the top of their range, or above. In which case they should be telling you so, and even somewhat apologetic about it. If that's not the case, they are not excited about you (in which case, why are they hiring you?), or you have not made your case firmly and clearly.
  • k__ 1y ago
    I mean, they don't know AND you only need one "yes"...
  • atrettel 1y ago
    In my experience, some employers don't even care if you have a competing offer. They will change nothing. I've written about this before [1]. To me, the best thing about having multiple offers is that you can at least make a choice. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43598192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43598192
    • zem 1y ago
      honestly I have no problem with that if they are firm about not negotiating - I actually respect that stance greatly and see it as a green flag. it just bothers me if I am shortchanging myself working somewhere that other people have successfully negotiated higher salaries for and I have not.
      • aianus 1y ago
        This just means you'll be working with people that had no other option. Massive red flag.
        • zem 1y ago
          or that i'll be working with people who also appreciate a culture where your salary is not based on your negotiation skills, and you don't have to worry about making less than someone doing the same job as you simply because you were less convincing or had less leverage when you joined.
          • esseph 1y ago
            Seems like a fight against reality
            • heylook 1y ago
              There are plenty of places where this is the standard. Anecdote time: I joined a not-quite-FAANG in an acquihire. Some of my teammates negotiated hard on the way in; I did not. After I got into management, I learned that they're perfectly willing to give you an extra $10k on your initial salary offer, but then you just get a lower raise after the first year, so everyone ends up in the same spot almost immediately anyway. The $10k was a rounding error in the total comp, and anyway they preferred to have steady employees who could be happy in a good situation for many years, rather than mercenaries who were more likely to chase vanity metrics and leave half-finished projects when they left in 18 months. Equity comp was generous and non-negotiable.
  • roncesvalles 1y ago
    In my experience, the proclivity of a company to negotiate entirely depends on how quickly they need to hire someone. If the requirement is to scale up immediately, once at the offer stage you're the fastest person on the planet who can start working in the role, and this gives you significant leverage. If the company can afford to onboard someone any time in the next few months, they don't need to negotiate. They just need to keep the pipeline flowing until some candidate accepts their lowball number.
  • pcl 1y ago
    I don’t get the impression that his brand is based on conciseness.
  • fuzztester 1y ago
    Yes, BATNA is a fanciful and useless buzzword. I saw it when it was first mentioned here, many years ago, and thought the same then. Though yours is good, it can be even simpler: Be ready to say no.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• whiplash451 1y ago
  > If they really just need someone to hold down a chair I would not jump to this conclusion. The company might have a very deliberate compensation strategy. Giving $Y instead of $X to a newcomer at a given level without aligning other people at the same level to $Y raises serious concerns. As a company, you don't have to let yourself bullied by other companies.
  • sokoloff 1y ago
    Agreed. If they just need a chair spring compressed, they won’t budge. That doesn’t mean if they don’t budge that they just need the spring compressed. P implies Q doesn’t necessitate Q implies P.
• octo888 1y ago
  "rank-and-file employee number 12887"s don't tend to find it easy to get multiple job offers at once to use as leverage ! Even more so in today's climate
• zem 1y ago
  pretty much, my first bigco job I made the mistake of only applying to the one place (had a job already, was looking for a change but without any urgency), and they would not budge on salary, just said the offer was already very generous and at the top of their salary band for my level. the next time I was job hunting I had just been laid off and so was frantically applying to a lot of places, ended up getting several offers and that definitely made a difference (though interestingly enough no one was willing to negotiate on base pay, but they would on things like stock and signing bonuses)
  • pinoy420 1y ago
    [dead]
• entropi 1y ago
  Last time I got a job offer the hiring process took ~4 months with seven steps, and I had to answer within 3 days. I do not get how is anyone realistically supposed to coincide the multiple offers they get. Unless you are already in an extremely privileged position, I cannot even imagine how you can do that.
  • rsanek 1y ago
    you tell everyone up front what your timeline is, months ahead of time. that way, all of them coincide and you get maximum leverage. last job search i got 4 offers to line up that i could use in negotiations.
    • PNewling 1y ago
      > you tell everyone up front what your timeline is, months ahead of time Honestly curious how this conversation goes, like "I'm busy with xyz for the next four weeks, then I can do round two of interviews..." or how does that go?
      • rsanek 1y ago
        i was simply transparent that i wanted to make an informed decision and was talking with multiple other companies. i let the recruiter themselves schedule when they'd like me to do interviews for the timing of the offer to work out -- after all that's i think one of the recruiters main assets / abilities, knowing the inside of how the company works and how long a certain stage usually takes. one company offered to give me an offer early but warned that it would expire before my timeline. i told them they can give me an offer whenever but I will not be making a decision before the timeline i communicated. they ended up giving it to me early anyway and then extending the expiration when I said I hadn't made a decision by their original date.
  • sokoloff 1y ago
    If you’re applying to Google, apply to them way ahead of the others…
  • 1y ago
• tiffanyh 1y ago
  Re: BATNA. It’s extremely difficult to get two offers to coincide at the same time. So in reality, your BATNA is your current job (if you’re employed).
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• idontwantthis 1y ago
  I think if you had a BATNA then you are much more likely to succeed at negotiation even without one.
• Aurornis 1y ago
  > Unfortunately, I have a competing offer for $1.25X If you can get multiple companies to time their interviews and offer stages perfectly and then get one of them to match the other, that’s quite lucky. However, it’s not like it’s an easy solution. It’s transforming one problem into a much harder one: Now you have to get a second offer that’s even higher and get it at exactly the right time to use it as leverage. How do you negotiate that second offer to 1.25 * $X so you can leverage it to get the first to the same level? That’s left as an exercise for the reader. “Just get a second offer for 25% more” is more of the wishful thinking negotiating strategy. In most cases it’s more realistic to set a target number and stick to it, being willing to walk away and continue the job search until it’s met.
  • selcuka 1y ago
    > that’s quite lucky The second offer does not have to be real. If it's real, what's the point of negotiating with the first company? If you are not willing to work for $X, simply saying that you want $1.25X won't work, but mentioning a hypothetical competitive offer might. If it doesn't, well, you weren't going to take the job (for $X) in either case anyway.
    • htrp 1y ago
      If the offer isn't real, be prepared for the company to tell you to take the other offer if you want the money (or potentially just pull the offer on you).
      • SecretDreams 1y ago
        That's the gamble, correct. If you're slaving in interviews and only have one offer, I can see why the offer is compelling. In this current market, I totally get it. But just a couple short years ago, the parent poster's approach was probably sound.
        • selcuka 1y ago
          Also people don't always interview when they are jobless. If you are already employed with a salary of $0.9X, gambling between $X and $1.25X makes perfect sense.
• throwaway2037 1y ago
  My experience is the same as OP. > If they really just need someone to hold down a chair, they'll probably not budge. If they really want specifically you, they're more likely to bend if they believe that's their only move. Except for super stars (literally, nerd famous people), 100% of companies and job offers will just let you walk away. One thing that I tell myself as a normie employee: There are many more people qualified to do my job than there are jobs.
  • fy20 1y ago
    As someone who has been involved in hiring, that's definitely not the case. The people I've seen who got hired are those who got through the interview process without any major red flags. There usually isn't any other potential candidate. If there was, we'd try to hire both of them, because hiring is a long process, and if you find someone who seems good enough you want them on your team. You can always fire them during the trial phase if they turn out to be a bad fit.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
    > There are many more people qualified to do my job than there are jobs. Maybe. But are they in your city or prepared to move there? Are they available now? Have they applied for this job? Would they even want this job? All of these, and many more, are considerations that you need to take into account before writing yourself off so easily.
• Lio 1y ago
  I don't think you even have to say that you have competing offer $1.25X. Simply stating you have a competing offer also for $X is completely believable and will probably get you a improved offer from one of the two interviewing teams. Even if it doesn't and you accept at $X then at the very least your new employer now knows that you liked them best. Which is not a bad way to start a new job. Either way I would never lie and say I had an offer when I didn't. Lying in general is a bad faith strategy and will often come back on you at some point.