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Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

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Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#31

Post by doe_eyes »

Aeolun wrote: post #20
chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> People need more than knowing to negotiate, they need to know how to negotiate, and that means partially knowing what is negotiable. Everything is negotiable. Some things are just easier than others. Besides, did you tell them up front what was negotiable, or did you just kinda expect them to figure it out?

If you're joining a company of 15 people? Probably. If you're joining a company of 50,000? Absolutely not, because they're not going to vastly increase the complexity of their HR or payroll just to close a single hire.

Money and equity are easy to negotiate because there's no management overhead. But if you want your 401k to be at a different brokerage, or have other "process" request like that? Probably not gonna happen - not for a line employee.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#32

Post by tomrod »

Aeolun wrote: post #20
chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> People need more than knowing to negotiate, they need to know how to negotiate, and that means partially knowing what is negotiable. Everything is negotiable. Some things are just easier than others. Besides, did you tell them up front what was negotiable, or did you just kinda expect them to figure it out?

While this feels true, it isn't in the fundamental sense. Yes, paying taxes is negotiable, but the consequences may not be.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#33

Post by derefr »

chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> Or they’ll ask for weird PTO accrual and cash out schemes that just leaves us asking “why didn’t you just ask for more cash and more PTO up front because now HR is pulling people into meetings to try and figure out this demand”.

They're trying to get your help in decreasing their tax burden, without explicitly saying that that's what they're doing.

(Dunno why people are so coy about this; tax minimization is not illegal, and companies are totally willing to work with you on it.)

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#34

Post by ghshephard »

bkandel wrote: post #29
Aeolun wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People need more than knowing to negotiate, they need to know how to negotiate, and that means partially knowing what is negotiable. Everything is negotiable. Some things are just easier than others. Besides, did you tell them up front what was negotiable, or did you just kinda expect them to figure it out?

I suppose this is true in some abstract sense, but not in companies of any reasonable size when it comes to hiring. There are lots of things that are firmly set company-wide, like the type of health plans offered and the company contribution, that are pretty much non-negotiable. Not knowing this makes you look naive or runs the risk of just confusing the hiring manager/HR.

A good example of non-negotiable, while traveling overseas, for one particular company, I was just randomly doing an expense report - and noticed there was a "medical" line-item in my expense report, that I figured I would use for cough-drops that I had purchased. Finance of course went ballistic, because the policy against expensing anything with that line item was absolutely forbidden (which begs the question as to why it was available in the first place).

Here is the thing - the company would have zero difficulty with me asking for a $100/day per diem while traveling for months on end, instead of doing expenses - that was negotiable. But there was absolutely zero chance of getting a $7 bag of cough-drops allowed as a medical-expense. Non-negotiable.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#35

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

joezydeco wrote: post #14
bluSCALE4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past I would have said "this" but I've seen a lot of people declining good offers for better ones that never materialized. Be careful playing chicken if you can't afford to.

With the amount of scatterbrained recruiters out there these days, what kind of magic does one pull to get multiple offers to appear so close together?

I've never managed that, but everyone I know who has had some combination of the following:

- brilliant

- lucky

- juggled like 50 interview processes at once

Only one you can do anything about.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#36

Post by pcarolan »

Leverage is also about timing your market which is a matter of local and overall trends. You can use google trends to figure out when the global market trend is in your favor: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=a...

Get a sense for how your industry is doing as well. Your best leverage is a competing offer.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#37

Post by nemomarx »

derefr wrote: post #33
chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> Or they’ll ask for weird PTO accrual and cash out schemes that just leaves us asking “why didn’t you just ask for more cash and more PTO up front because now HR is pulling people into meetings to try and figure out this demand”. They're trying to get your help in decreasing their tax burden, without explicitly saying that that's what they're doing. (Dunno why people are so coy about this; tax minimization is not il…

more money solves that in the end doesn't it? Just ask for enough to cover the tax burden

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#40

Post by gruez »

nemomarx wrote: post #37
derefr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or they’ll ask for weird PTO accrual and cash out schemes that just leaves us asking “why didn’t you just ask for more cash and more PTO up front because now HR is pulling people into meetings to try and figure out this demand”. They're trying to get your help in decreasing their tax burden, without explicitly saying that that's what they're doing. (Dunno why people are so coy about this; tax minimization is not il…

more money solves that in the end doesn't it? Just ask for enough to cover the tax burden

But isn't it better to find a tax avoidance strategy that's mutually beneficial to both sides? Sure, you can ask for an extra $10k that gets taxed down to $5k, but if you can find a creative workaround to get $8k instead for the same $10k, isn't that better than trying to ask them for a $16k raise to make up for the taxes?
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