Salary negotiation is all about information asymmetry; typically the company holds all the cards and the candidate none. Not sure any article could help with that in any way.
Common mistakes in salary negotiation
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Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also. Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the ab…
A lot of businesses post stupid ranges. Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful
Author here. These ranges are typically wide because your compensation depends on your interview performance and perceived seniority/value add to the company.
There's no way to tease this out before you interview, except that if you're looking for compensation that's significantly above the top of the band, it might be hard to get. (A little above the top is possible, and sometimes a lot is possible too... that's where the negotiation comes in.)
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#23How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront? I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
I ask the recruiter what the salary range is. If they refuse to say, I tell them to get back to me when they know what the range is. I'm not going to waste my time if they want to play games like being secretive about the pay.
I do think being proactive like you suggest is a good approach. It is pretty easy to couch it in a relaxed way that you are attempting to save everyone's time and it makes them show their hand first. That way you aren't reducing the possibility of making a higher than expected salary and you can hopefully short circuit positions with companies that are below your desired range or as you said, being secretive or weird about it.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#24the best part is the "exactly what to say" at the end:
"At this point, I don’t feel equipped to throw out a number because I’d like to find out more about the opportunity first – right now, I simply don’t have the data to be able to say something concrete. If you end up making me an offer, I would be more than happy to iterate on it if needed and figure out something that works. I promise not to accept other offers until I have a chance to discuss them with you."
i love it. I would have to have that right in front of me and read it word for word. And if I get pushed to reveal a number I would need to just pause and slowly repeat it again word for word like a robot.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#25Not talking about your salary history is a decent tip. But negotiation isn't rocket science: you need to be thoughtful and honest to yourself and come up with an aspirational number (what you want, best case) and a floor (which you will not go below). Any number in between should be acceptable to you, by definition. I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away.
> I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away.
The problem is that you almost certainly don't have enough information to predetermine a floor, because that almost certainly depends on what other options will be available to you in the near future. I mean, sure, technically your floor could be literally just the lowest amount that you could survive on, but most people anticipate that the options available to them allow them to go higher than that.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also. Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the ab…
A lot of businesses post stupid ranges. Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful
It's better to have reasonably large salary ranges than no range at all.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#27How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront? I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
Precisely. The article misses a third bullet point: 3) Many recruiters will say yes to everything and anything to get you into the interview seat And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.
> And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.
If they are remote jobs, you just accept them all, buy as many computers as the offers you accepted and multitask for n x the pay.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#28How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront? I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
[deleted]
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also. Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the ab…
A lot of businesses post stupid ranges. Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful
It is very helpful, the bottom of the range tells you almost everything you need to know. I don’t care if the top is $1B per year if I am willing to accept $200k in order to decide which jobs to apply.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#30How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront? I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
They will tell you what you want to hear and still low-ball you at the very end to try the sunk cost fallacy on you.