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

The employers BATNA is they go to the pool of 35 other candidates. Yours is you go back to your job.

If your job hunting first when your sick to death of your job, your BATNA isn’t very strong.

If this is your only offer, your BATNA isn’t very strong.

If you’re one paycheck away from being out of the street, your BATNA isn’t very strong.

See where I’m going with this?

The less crass answer: In almost every company, you’re being hired on a salary band, so unless you’re at the top of that band in the initial offer there is room to go up, so you can typically push a bit higher. The trick is to make a request that’s higher than what they initially offer but not so high that they outright reject it without additional conversation, and if they are play hardball, and don’t budge on anything, you just reject their offer. It does mean you have to be comfortable rejecting an otherwise decent or good offer, but presumably most companies are willing to negotiate with a good candidate so this shouldn’t be a problem in practice if the negotiation is done in a considered way.

If they know you have alternatives, they are much more likely to negotiate. In fact the modern version of this guide is try to get several offers and negotiate them against each other (not you versus the company). Might be more difficult in the current market.

So I'd call their bluff. When they ask if you want the lower offer, say no. I can tell you that most places have recruiters being told to get you in the door for as little as possible... but still to get you in the door.

That's partly bluff. Hiring a good candidate is costly.

If they make you an offer, they have already sunk the costs of screening you. Having you exit at the negotiation stage is never free for them. You always have some wiggle room.

You can play hardball or softball. Hardball works when you have competing offers, and risks your offer being pulled.

Alternatively, you can just ask nicely. I've had luck saying something akin to "hey I'm super excited to join BigCo. I'm just curious, is there any way to move up the comp at all? Just checking, I don't know what the bands are, but if you can come up some, that'd be great. Either way, let me know I don't want to hold anything up, I'm excited to start".

Guess what? Sometimes the hiring manager has the power to come up 5,10,15k if you just ask. I've had luck and other times I've been told "nope" but i've never had anyone be upset.

> [Me]: I’d like $Y

You could try:

> [Me]: That matches my base salary at the moment but my current employer gives me healthcare and a car allowance so I would be out of pocket if I moved from my current job. In addition I currently am eligible for a 10% bonus. Would you consider an additional $5k/yr to cover some of this? I would love to move… although I can’t justify a pay cut, but think this is a really good opportunity and would love to work with you so hope we can make something work.

Ie you gotta give them a reason to justify paying you more, and to think that paying more is required for you taking the job. Also you have to be realistic in how much you ask (smaller amounts are more likely to be accepted, larger amounts pay more but are more likely to be rejected outright as if something is too large you can’t really counteroffer)

The last company's letter would be:

    [Company]: We have decided to move forward with another candidate. Thank you for your time and good luck on your search!

Apparently they are secret.

Therefore, any offer should be backed by logic of the form "we want to hire this candidate for $Y or less. We will make an initial of $X (X < Y), so that we have room to negotiate upwards when they ask."

In my experience, usually Y==(X * 1.1).

In your example one is not, so negotiations aren't possible.

Sounds like low skill, or entry-level work. or nah?

2. Ask for more money and/or more shares (if you think the shares are any good).

Patrick's guide explicitly talks about how a lot of people don't want to negotiate. His argument is that if doing something distasteful for a short period of time will get you a significant salary boost, you should try to do it anyway.

Ultimately, if it's distressing to someone to be assertive and negotiate, my first reaction isnt "That's fine! Let's all work together to make things nice and easy for them!" My reaction is "It's sad that it's so distressing, but one way or another they need this important life skill. Let's help them acquire it, even if it's difficult."

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.

Now I’m dealing with algorithms technical interviews, but they don’t mesh well with my style of problem solving at all. I like to quietly think on a problem by myself first. If it’s an exceptionally difficult problem, I’ll probably take a walk or the answer might come to me in the shower. If I’m working with someone else, a more collaborative process where we’re both trying to solve the problem and bouncing ideas back-and-fort is my style. Solving the problem in 30 minutes in front of a judge under the context of needing to land a job as soon as possible doesn’t properly test my abilities as a software engineer at all.

Yesterday, I was asked a leetcode hard in an interview from some no name start up. I answered how to theoretically solve it out loud with the interviewer but ran out of time implementing it. I got the impression the interviewer thought I was unprepared and a clueless engineer. I was rejected 15 minutes after the interview.

Overall, I’m not encountering interviews that actually let me display my competency. The interviews seem to all be tailored for a specific type of problem solver (fast in high-pressure test-taking environments) while eliminating every other type of person. I think it’s easy for the interviewer to lose context on the nerves the candidate might be experiencing.

The accounting industry doesn’t do this. If someone has a CPA license, companies trust that credential. If someone doesn’t have a CPA but has experience in Big 4 public accounting, companies trust that experience. If someone lacks those signals, companies may ask more technical questions. But they start from a basis of trust based on clear signals.

Unlike my accounting background where my past experience was based on trust, I have open source projects that can actually be reviewed. Some reviewers have gone through them yet still want to perform an algorithmic interview. Most have not. I feel that the vast majority of interviewers don’t really know how to interview in a more holistic manner.

EDIT: adding that, because we all live in a non-metropolitan area, we all have been remote, and are continuing to look for remote work.

There is definitely a down turn, because before you didn't need to be a good candidate, whereas now only good candidates are getting the interviews and ultimately the jobs but historically it still seems better than the downturns in 03 and 09.

I have commented on this before but if someone is applying for Senior or above, seeing them live code a random algo with weird requirements seems less valuable to me than actually discussing architecture, previous projects and personality.

Even talking through a small project (with 0 code involved) would tell me so much about someone than what I've experienced in the last year or so while looking for a job.

So, in my opinion companies are what became weird. I don't know but even the smallest startup seems to feel they need to have their hiring pipeline be like Google or something.

10-15 years ago, I would just meet a manager and someone in the engineering team, have 1 hour chat with them and instantly know whether I'm hired or not. Now it's 4 interviews from the CEO to the HR and their grandmas.

I don't understand this mindset. We should all support our working class brothers to get better wages. Just because the custodian, accountant, and jr HR person are also paid crap doesn't mean we should all grin and bear because at least we're not the day laborers outside.

The problem is that I'm not even getting to the stage of asking about salary, because I'm not getting any interviews in the first place. Neither is anyone else in my friend group.

I am probably overqualified for a lot of jobs, but my friend group, which has a lot of variance in age and experience, would definitely not fall into that classification.

Normal office jobs don't bring the value that STEM jobs do, that's why STEM jobs command more money. It's like comparing doctors to other careers and being surprised that doctors get paid more.

There’s a lot of value in getting someone who has already done some React. Or some Typescript. Or some Java. There’s a triple-your-salary kind of value, and everyone asks for the tripled salary.

Agreed that it's best not to give false information but you can also respond with something like, "What is your budget for this position?"

It makes it obvious -- at least, it should -- that you know they're only asking, as patio11 puts it, as an attempt to get you to compromise your negotiating position.

Giving the number and calling it out as low isn't a bad idea, just offering another for those who would prefer not to give a number at all.

I think it works so well because it is not a negotiation. Just stating my fake current number and they can make up their number.

As a company grows the roles get pigeonholed further and further, diminishing the value of your generalist skillset. The main antidote to this is to be higher up in the org, but that usually doesn’t happen organically over a generalist career (you have to create those jobs for yourself).

The issues was never the quantity, it’s been the quality. I believe companies like Deloitte had created corruption pipelines where money got you on the path to H1B.