I am a teacher in the UK, working in the private sector. This industry has many ticking time bombs: the pension scheme is collapsing, regulatory burden means small schools must consolidate or die, and above all a class action sword of liability must surely be hanging over the closed-shop hiring practices. These are some of the anti-competitive informal rules about moving schools:
A new prospective employer (usually the head of the school you are applying to) expects to be able to talk to your current head from the moment you apply.
This in turn means that you have to tell your current employer the moment you start looking for jobs elsewhere.
Any other references are done before interview, not during an offer. Your referees will be writing a lot, on your behalf, O(n) — jobs applied for — and not O(1) — job offers you want to accept.
It is considered obstructive behaviour to not be open about your current salary. You are immediately viewed as “difficult”: just like candidates who apply without telling their current school, so too with candidates cagey about money.
Taking time off during term is not allowed. Taking time off to interview will be deducted from your pay unless you get prior approval, and you have to declare that you are interviewing.
Resumes / CVs are not allowed as part of the application. No one will read them.
Some other gems, when negotiating salary: “b-but no one goes into teaching for the money!”, “sorry we don’t aim to compete with the commercial sector”, and “we don’t define the hours you’ll need to work, only that you do what is deemed necessary and appropriate” only to later be told that it’s not the done thing old chap to work any less than 50 hours a week.
It is very sad how under-appreciated and underpaid teachers are (especially in US). I know my son's teacher works a lot of hours just by knowing how much responsibility she is expected to take on for her class. And she gets paid a fraction of what I get paid. Sometimes when I am having beer with my team-mates during team happy hour on company time, I realize how lucky I am.
An uncomfortable fact of teaching is that it is 15% inspirational and highly nuanced technical leadership, and 85% unskilled labour.
When most of the job is rock breaking then it’s easy to see why the supply of new teachers is so high. Coupled with the romance of wanting to be that inspirational teacher, and the genuine privilege of wanting to work with young people, and it’s not hard to see how schools can get away with murder when it comes to pay.
Money isn’t the worst of it though. Alongside the low salary there’s also a huge risk of employers developing a them/us relationship. The involvement of unions exacerbated this, and schools are already high-rules / low-trust environments even before any of this kind of staff/management internecine conflict.
But: (1) I love working with kids; (2) while the job attracts good people and bad people, the good ones are great.
PS: I’d eat my hat if exactly the same wasn’t also true for police detectives and nurses.
Teaching is mostly unskilled labor? What a ridiculous statement. Have you ever created a lesson plan? Written a test? These are difficult tasks that take skill and practice.
Have you ever marked 400 “third-month algebra” assessments? Done “stop playing football in the classrooms” break duty? Teaching requires a lot of skill, but most of the work a teacher does isn't teaching; it's child diplomacy, tedious marking and paperwork. (I wouldn't say as much as 85%, though – and it's not unskilled, either; just largely unpaid.)
You* are right to call out my use of the word unskilled. Teaching is skilled work, but it’s much more blue collar than the job requirements would have you believe.
Driving a fork lift truck is skilled work. Plumbing a house is skilled work. Felling a tree is skilled work. I have never done any of these jobs but I believe the majority of work a teacher does has a lot more in common with this kind of labour than it does with, say, maintaining a web-based Rust build infrastructure.
Over a 10 year span of teaching the same material, what percentage of time is spent on those high-skill activities?
I agree teachers are under-valued (both of my parents did that as a career), but a lot of the minutes of activity required when working as a teacher seem more aligned with the skills needed for baby-sitting than instruction.
I don’t know if it’s 85%, but from my experience in public school and observing/listening to my parents, it seems like it’s over half.
> Taking time off during term is not allowed. Taking time off to interview will be deducted from your pay unless you get prior approval, and you have to declare that you are interviewing.
It seems like a systematic solution to this would be do do interviews off-hours, and give the people doing the interviewing equivalent time off during the work day?
The best leverage you have during negotiation is to negotiate when you don't really need the job. Don't wait to be out of a job before interviewing. If you can do this, most of the advise in this article is immaterial. Have a number in mind that will make you happy and make you switch. Give out the number. If they can do it, you take it else you stay in your current job. That cuts out all the bullshit mind games described in this verbose article.
The article is describing a process of maximizing ones compensation. You can continue to have a number you care about in your mind and judge the final offer against that.
Shifting jobs is usually the only time you have lots of opportunities to negotiate up by a lot. Personally Ive found that the better offer I can get, the better tenure I have at a company since I’m not focused on playing games to get promoted, but have negotiated a somewhat higher than expected level and salary.
That's great if you're optimizing leverage. If you're optimizing quality of life (and if you can afford it; and I'll take the liberty to assume you can, since you're here), I can't but recommend taking long breaks between jobs, at least a month or two.
Good article, articulated a lot of my own feelings on the subject.
The only part I can never quite get my head around is having multiple offers at once. It takes me months if not years to find a company I actually want to work for. The chance of finding many hiring for a suitable position—let alone receiving offers almost simultaneously—seems miniscule.
I feel like these types of articles assume everyone has a sort of drag net approach to finding employment, but my own approach is more like fly fishing (pardon the analogy). I feel like I've been successful in the past because I can explain exactly why I've applied for the specific position. I suppose this must be atypical, perhaps I'm a terrible negotiator.
The appropriate advice for an Asian male in Silicon Valley may not be appropriate for a black woman in Birmingham, Alabama.
An Asian male dancing around the FAANGs in SV has a much better chance of getting multiple, simultaneous, offers quickly.
The reality out there is that 99.99% of companies completely suck at recruiting when it comes to first contact, resume/application processing, turnaround time, and interview scheduling. And LinkedIn has made them lazier and suckier.
I love it when recruiters write whiny blog posts that make it to HN complaining about being ghosted by candidates when in reality their companies are treating people way shittier. But we're getting off topic here.
IMO this whole "multiple offers give you leverage!" bullshit knocks a good majority of these job negotiation blogposts off the table. It's you and one company, negotiating a salary 1:1. The BATNA is zero.
The author also makes a dangerous assumption that getting an offer means the company has closed the door on every other candidate. All it means is that you were on top, but that could change. I have no problem extending an offer to #2 and moving on. It's a few clicks of a mouse to do that and get back to my donut.
I do not understand the claim. From anecdotal evidence, it's possible to apply to multiple companies and get multiple offers. Even getting an offer while you currently have a job is pitting at least 2 buyers against each other.
Yes, it's possible to apply to multiple companies. The tactic in the OP is to get multiple successful interviews AND offers with a short timeframe of each other. How likely is that in most places?
Let's talk about that last point.
Have you gotten an offer and gone back to your manager and said "give me $x or I'm leaving"?
I have gone out and gotten an offer, shared that with my boss, and gotten a substantial raise from it, in that case not just me personally but many of our devs did as the written offer (from JPMorgan in my case) was evidence that we weren’t competitively positioned in the market. I didn’t approach it with your proposed language, of course, but the outcome if nothing changed was obvious to all sides.
I’ve also been the manager on the receiving end of that conversation. In general, we’re paying about what the position is worth to us, so we might make a small adjustment but in general the outcome is a handshake and some well wishes, and another datapoint to put into our “what is the true market for this set of facts and circumstances?”
For most people in tech, the BATNA vs this one company is way higher than zero. It’s stay in your current role or take your own (maybe even unknown to you right now) second-choice company in a few weeks.
It's not though, is it? If you're not currently employed but are employable, the alternative is waiting a few more weeks for the next offer. Whether you want to do that or can even afford to, the company doesn't know.
I'm wary of the given advice for a different reason: tech is a very unique job market. Anything written by someone in tech is always to be considered only from that perspective. This is because the market isn't just (very) favorable to job-seekers, it's downright weird. Here in Montreal, there must be about 10 people in a "city area" of 3 million with my specific skills and experience with certain software. There are thousands of software engineeers with more experience or who are just smarter, better at coding. But almost none of them have my experience (and very few of my skills overlap with any other given individual's). How do you even value a role that is, all in all, incomparable? Well, you negociate.
It would seem irresponsible to me to give the same advice to someone who's unspecialized or to anyone in most job markets (which supply-demand trends tend to favor employers). But that's still not "zero" BATNA : You can always afford to wait (at least until you can't).
And I assume the flip side of having a specialized skill/resume is that there are relative few places that are a good fit for you, especially if you're expensive.
Which to my point in another comment probably means you won't easily find another job immediately while a relatively high-skill mid-level Java developer can probably land several offers fairly quickly if they're in an urban area of any size.
If you are really trying to maximize, you could try to get offers from places you don’t want to work for anyway just to use in negotiations. Personally, I find interviewing tiring enough (or maybe I care too little about maximizing) that I don’t do this. After one interview I’m good to not go through another one for at least a few years.
I agree with you. Also the sentiment that "I can quit my job on Monday and have my choice of plum offers by Friday." To the degree these exist I assume it's some in-demand cookie cutter keyword skill backed up by the right resume.
Certainly the few times I've changed jobs, it's happened fairly quickly but it was very targeted and always came through someone I knew well (and almost certainly involved a degree of luck).
I feel like everything in this article can be automated at some point in the future. I can't wait till the day that an NLP algorithm takes piles and piles of negotiation dialogs and negotiates on your behalf.
This is the kind of stuff that I want Google Assistant to do. I don't need it to get me a silly haircut appointment.
I think this is great advice. You're not always in a position to use this advice, this is the most extreme approach, but I think it's good to be aware of the most extreme approach. Very often a lot of this doesn't apply. 2 Years ago the company I work for really struggled to fill the roles in my team. We would've been very flexible with compensation to bring people in. Today we simply don't have that problem, if you push too hard we have about 3 other good people for the role. 1 year ago we would've dismissed you out of hand for working from home, today that would absolutely be part of our negotiating armory. It's very important to probe and find out where the company is flexible.
Also, it is actually true that if you've really managed to sell yourself to HR and got a big old salary and you end up on my team underperforming it's going to be a much bigger problem for you. At my current company you want to be underpaid and overperform - because our compensation structure is highhly bonus orientated so you don't need to worry about it working out. At previous companies I've worked at your compensation for the entire tenure at the company is set the day you sign - bonuses and salary budget are both determined as a % of base pay and your ability to increase your compensation is basically a fight between you and the rest of the team who are all part of one budget (horribly dysfunctional system, accidentally hire 1 person at a grade level lower than where they should be and it's going to completely screw your whole team's compensation for the next couple of years).
I don't think it hurts to use this advice. The worst that can happen is that the company is only willing to pay you 90k (either they don't think you can net them more or they think you're bluffing, but that's risky if you have other offers to show them). You can still pick that company if you want in the end.
I really don't get this advise about not giving out a number. Seems like you yourself don't know your worth. Most of the times, save for FAANG companies, no other company is willing to pay me what I am asking for. So to go through the whole laborious and lengthy interview process only to find out during negotiation stage that they are not going to even match my current compensation is a lot of wasted time. If I talk to a recruiter, I tell them what I want even before interviewing. Most of the times, recruiters from non FAANG companies tell me that they won't be able to pay that much even if I performed stellar in the interview. I don't give out a number to FAANG recruiter before the interview but I do give out during the negotiation stage and so far my comp has been at at least as good as my peers'. My understanding is that most companies have a salary range and they want all the employees on the same level to be within that range. They won't break those rules regardless of how good you are. You are only one among many good candidates. So you should aim to be at the high end of that range during negotiation. That's how I decide the number to give out.
Exactly. I don’t proceed to a second conversation without making it clear that I’m not coming cheaply and, if they’re not aligned with that, we can both save a lot of time by politely ending the conversation now.
Sometimes that takes the shape of describing my current comp in detail; other times it’s more “it starts with a <digit>” when I’m pretty sure they’re off by more than one.
There's a big difference between saying what you want, and giving your current salary. The former avoids wasting time but the latter gives an advantage to the recruiter.
About giving our a number, I see two cases:
- if you have a decent job, not in a rush to change, do give out a number that is very high (top of the range for the job or more). This anchors a high figure and hey, they may give it to you.
- Otherwise, wait for them to give a number. If pressure, give a range with a high end.
They actually don’t tell you if you ask them. I’ve tried to do this with a few recruiters at the phone screen stage just to save everyone’s time but they usually don’t give a number, presumably because they do have flexibility for filling out roles that are in demand.
Yes employers have comp bands for each level within an org. You can always ask to come in at a higher level.
The thing is you never know how much a company values a particular role. By giving a number first you basically preempt the scenario where they might offer more than you would have thought to ask for.
If they come in low to anchor the negotiations on a lower number, that can also give valuable information about how much the organization values your role / function.
Either way it is in your best interest for them to show their hand first.
I confess I didn't read it all, because there was too much of the adversarial stuff I'm not interested in.
His point that it's a agreement to exchange labor for something else is spot on. My last two jobs had, statutorily and morally ZERO financial negotiating margin. One was an NGO, where I believed in the goals and strategy of the organization and so I enthusiastically accepted the salary level in exchange for what the job gave me. Next, I moved to academia, where the opportunity to have contact with young people and world class researchers also balanced out for me the constraints of the civil service salary grid (thus, statutorily impossible to negotiate $). Both jobs also respected my family life, which is precious, way beyond $$$.
Negotiate how you spend your life, yes! But with all the variables on the table, not only $$$.
At the NGO, any foregone salary can be used to further the interests of the organization. This likely brought you as much utility as additional salary itself.
And everything crumble down when I've stood my ground against "we have other motivated candidates" and my backup alternatives turned out to be a complete mess upon further inspection, started back pedaling on previously agreed terms (written but not signed), and just simply ghosted me.
Maybe a cultural difference considering I'm in Asia but in roughly 1/3 of the follow up interview I've experienced, the HR / manager mentioned there were other motivated candidates. Most of the times it came after I expressed I was hesitant after being low balled hard in term of income.
Retort with “well I hope there’s other motivated candidates, if there wasn’t it means this place sucks”
Perhaps motivated also implies “just as talented as you” which might give you some room to explore. Ask what they have that makes them looks as good as you. That could work to your advantage if they stumble on it or are super vague “just as many years of experience “ means nothing. 12 years or 6 sessions of 2 years ago experience?
Course it could also blow up in your face as the recruiter talks themselves into hiring the other person.
Assuming they've actually made an offer, I agree that it sounds like something they're firm on and, probably, while they might indeed be willing to hire you, they're perfectly fine with their fallbacks.
This was actually very good! Many of these articles on HN are a bit one sided but this one really feels grounded in reality and not just perception and "in my experience".
I think it was good for one context. As comments here mention, there are many other contexts:
1. Many jobs have fixed pay grades and no leverage.
2. There are buyers and sellers markets. Most of the advice was horrible for a recession.
3. Many jobs have other value. If you're a soft money researcher, lower salary may actually help you. If you're working for a not-for-profit, you need to consider where your salary is coming from.
I'll also mention: Exploding job offers aren't always b-llsh-t. If I have a 3 person startup and need a fourth person, and two strong candidates, I'll want to extend the offer to candidate number 2 if candidate number 1 doesn't accept. They're sometimes hardball negotiating tactics, but sometimes, business reality.
> I'll also mention: Exploding job offers aren't always b-llsh-t. If I have a 3 person startup and need a fourth person, and two strong candidates, I'll want to extend the offer to candidate number 2 if candidate number 1 doesn't accept. They're sometimes hardball negotiating tactics, but sometimes, business reality.
This point only serves to validate the article's point though. If you already have an acceptable alternative, negotiating with you is far less likely to be rewarding than negotiating with someone who doesn't have one.
Let me give a concrete (not real-world, but close enough) example:
I am running a small startup. I'm cash-flow negative, but slowly growing. I signed my first major contract which will put me in well in the black, and lets me hire a 4th employee to execute on that contract. My current employees are tapped out with existing commitments. If I don't hire a full-time lead for my new contract, my business is dead or on life support (startups are fragile).
I interviewed a dozen candidates. I have one who is clearly an excellent fit, and one who might work out but might be the wrong hire. They're clearly not in the same class.
I'll bend over backwards to get the right candidate hired right now, but I won't wait.
If all the businesses on the other side of the table were like that, the right negotiating tactic is to follow the 37% rule, and not any of the stuff in the article: https://plus.maths.org/content/mathematical-dating
I'll mention my last job search was a very different context, but the 37% rule made sense too. I have a very specialized skill set, which means an inefficient market. Good jobs come up once every few years. Conversely, if you're hiring, good candidates come up once every few years. Getting multiple job offers at the same time is not really an option, but if someone wants to hire you, they generally REALLY want to hire you.
I'll also mention in smaller markets, people know each other, so you find jobs through connections. That's a different dynamic too.
I know there are a lot of folks who think (or, to be fair, maybe know) that they can have their choice of highly paid jobs in a week. That's not true for a lot of people in a lot of roles (or a lot of ages).
Sometimes people who are not in a great situation currently get an offer that looks pretty darned good. It may make sense to take the position that trying to wring out a bit more is really not worth the risk as opposed to making it happen now.
I think the very first you need to know is the market. Talk with colleagues, better if they recently moved, and ask for a little more. I think most of my friends know my salary, some earn more and some less, who cares? I'm not sure about not mentioning your current salary because a lot of interviews have ended at that point without wasting anyone's time. You can give a figure and ask for a 30% raise, it's perfectly reasonable because moving has always some associated risk and HR knows, better than anyone, that it is your better chance at improving your salary.
Negotiation in job offers is unfair. Most people (as is called out in the article) are poor negotiators (and what’s wrong with that?).
Negotiating is a skill not required for most jobs*, so negotiation results in unequal pay just because someone had a skill unrelated to their job. There’s also an imbalance (hiring teams do more job negotiations than individual employees do).
Likewise past salary is not relevant. The environment can be different today from when you got your previous job and the market price could have gone up or down.
Finally: what a waste. If the employee isn’t interested in the salary on offer why find that out at the end of the process?
With phrases like "your interlocutor will try to trick you into making a decision" I would treat this article as less than gospel.
I've been on both sides of the negotiation table. With any negotiation, both sides must "win" and neither side should try to "trick" the other party. On the prospective employee side, should they inflate their credentials and experience? Sooner than later after working at the new place, they will find out and credibility will be lost, so of course you shouldn't.
So let me take the perspective the the hiring manager: should the hiring manager try to quickly close the candidate? Of course not. I'm after the candidate. I want them to work for me (something the article doesn't mention). I want them to work, in fact, for something more than compensation because compensation is not a strong motivator. Paychecks are important, of course, but no one can say that a more highly paid individual always outperforms a lower paid one.
As the hiring manager, I represent the company. Of course I would prefer to acquire talent for the lowest amount as possible, but you might be surprised that we don't want candidates to be underpaid. Underpaid employees are not long term invested in the company and will seek a higher salary elsewhere eventually. I would hope the employee has a salary which supports them (and their family), pay the bills, save and enjoy life with another variable tied to their performance and commitment as a long term investment. Whether it be options, RSUs, bonus, etc. you want employees who can achieve a higher compensation and tie that to goals. In this way of thinking, the negotiation process is never closed.
There are some good things to take from the article from the candidate side, specifically around taking notes, being positive, not taking undue pressure and how to push back (exploding offers). To be honest, having non-timebound offers are never a good thing, because too much time to think or continue shopping are not only against the employers wish (assume we have limited people we can hire, and the time to get someone onboard is opportunity cost), but sometimes it's against the candidates best interests as well. People often have difficulty making choices, and limitations are a healthy thing -- sometimes especially when you have the ability to overthink and analyze things, as most engineers do. The language of "exploding" offers is counter to an employers interest, because it's basically saying, "take it or leave it, I'm going to walk away in 48 hours" is insanity, in my opinion. You might say to a candidate, "If you give me a verbal 'yes' now I can get to <$offer + x%>" as a way to try to close them. Hiring managers want to close a candidate as quickly as possible, there is no such thing as an infinite time scale on either side, and there are many candidates who are, unfortunately, not negotiating in good faith. Example: a candidate who is just trying to get a counter-offer from their current employer, or just trying to bump up an offer for another company they're really interested in. I assume when someone tells me they're interested in the company and joining that they're telling the truth, which above all both sides should do. Words matter.
A new prospective employer (usually the head of the school you are applying to) expects to be able to talk to your current head from the moment you apply.
This in turn means that you have to tell your current employer the moment you start looking for jobs elsewhere.
Any other references are done before interview, not during an offer. Your referees will be writing a lot, on your behalf, O(n) — jobs applied for — and not O(1) — job offers you want to accept.
It is considered obstructive behaviour to not be open about your current salary. You are immediately viewed as “difficult”: just like candidates who apply without telling their current school, so too with candidates cagey about money.
Taking time off during term is not allowed. Taking time off to interview will be deducted from your pay unless you get prior approval, and you have to declare that you are interviewing.
Resumes / CVs are not allowed as part of the application. No one will read them.
Some other gems, when negotiating salary: “b-but no one goes into teaching for the money!”, “sorry we don’t aim to compete with the commercial sector”, and “we don’t define the hours you’ll need to work, only that you do what is deemed necessary and appropriate” only to later be told that it’s not the done thing old chap to work any less than 50 hours a week.