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.
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.
I worked at a company where HR would request a copy of the competing offer. Very frequently, the candidate would come up with reasons why they couldn’t show the offer letter to HR. Often it was some story about having a verbal offer or something equally flimsy.
HR eventually just assumed the mythical competing offer was a bluff, and to be honest from everything I saw that was most likely correct for the average applicant.
As someone who always interviewed and negotiated honestly, it was kind of shocking to learn how often candidates lied about everything from where they worked in the past to having competing offers.
That was my first thought. I'm sorry, no. That offer is between them and me, and I'm not comfortable sharing information that isn't owned solely by me. All you need to take out of it is that that offer is my current lower bar and, if you're not willing interesting in negotiating based on it, then we're probably done here.
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.
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.
Why would you think that just because nobody negotiated, somehow everyone doing the same job will be making the same amount? In reality, they will all be making the lowest amount the hiring manager was comfortable offering at the time.
You are confusing lack of negotiation with transparent compensation, which is extremely rare in the US (outside the government).
> Why would you think that just because nobody negotiated, somehow everyone doing the same job will be making the same amount?
well, at least from personal experience, I'm talking about the kind of company that explicitly says "we want to make you an offer as a software engineer, at such and such level, and this is the fixed salary for that job+level". they could have been lying of course, but once you start going down that rabbit hole you might as well not take the offer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
