Throughout my career and my life I've followed this strategy disparagingly called being a doormat below. I have a friend who has followed the opposite strategy, always asking for and fighting for the most he can squeeze out of an employer and life. Strangely, I have often been paid more, been given more benefits and been generally happier. I think this works because unlike what many people seem to think, the other side aren't typically sociopaths trying to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the employees. But they will respond that way when pushed.
People generally have a solid understanding of what is fair and what isn't. When we start a negotiation from a point of unfairness and unreasonableness, both sides are then on the defensive which anyone who has read Dale Carnegie knows is a recipe for failure. I'm not sure I buy into the OP's idea of asking for $0 since that's just as unreasonable but it's unreasonable in a way that brings the other side closer instead of pushing them away. If you sincerely say you want to work for what you make, the majority of people will want to give you what you deserve. Are there people out there who will immediately try to screw you? Yes but that happens, you get as far away from them as possible. And if you can't recognize those people, you have far bigger problems than learning how to maximize your negotiations.
Negotiations seems to work best when they are discussions, not attempts to get the most of of the other side. Of course, if you're working for a boss who used to be a used car salesman or a sociopath, by all means, be prepared to have to fight for everything you want. And be prepared to be miserable to boot.
I believe the $0 base salary might be more reasonable in the field in which the writer works. Based on the part about hefty profit sharing, I suspect it might be one where that portion of the income is paid out immediately and could potentially provide adequate income.
There is a wide gulf between fighting for every last drop and being a doormat.
But yes, negotiations work best when they are discussions with each side explaining what they want, need, and why. The other side of that coin though is that people in general get weird when money is involved. When it's a large amount of money it gets worse. So even though people are generally not out to screw someone else, money can cause those same people to screw everyone else.
Are you and your friend working in the same field and having the same capabilities? I'm pretty sure a brilliant "doormat" programmer will make more than, say, an average "maximizer" salesman.
I was with you until the example. At any company I've ever worked at that had both sales and engineering, the salesfolks were making 50%-100% more. And those are the typical negotiating strategies of each group.
Well the adage is, the closer you are to where money comes into the company the more you can make. Most sales jobs are also commission based which means if a sales person is making a lot of money the company also made a lot of money.
I'm pretty sure not, because the doormat will be caught by the first place that pays him any low wage he accepts, they will accept his deal because it's remarkably low, and he won't cycle out.
Companies do not pay you more money just for being brilliant, when it is not obvious that they need to.
This commonly expressed idea that companies are out to screw everyone is divisive and poisonous. "Companies" don't make decisions on how much to pay someone, people do. And most people, by definition, are decent and have a strong understanding of what's fair. Again, there are exceptions but assuming you work in a field where there are other career options, staying in a sociopathic working environment shouldn't even be up for discussion.
I might be considered a doormat because I don't demand what I deserve. But the very fact that I don't seems to turn into fair pay, good working conditions and honesty. Sure, it's one data point. But I've given it a lot of thought and noticed that people who are constantly demanding what the deserve are highly unpopular and frequently unhappy.
Most companies aren't out to screw you, but I've worked for a few (I'm 40 this year), and the vast majority of them aren't actively concerned with not screwing you, which works out to the same thing practically speaking when it comes to raises and other advancement within the company over time.
There is an old adage about the easiest way to get a raise in the tech field being to move to a new company. This is, in my experience, absolutely and nearly universally true (there are a select few companies that really stay on the ball with regards to keeping up with salary adjustments for existing employees, but they are very few and very far between).
I totally agree. It makes a great work philosophy, but it doesn't guarantee or necessarily affect results at a given employer. There are too many unrelated factors that aren't being controlled for.
Is your company going through expansion or is it shrinking? You can work terribly hard on a sinking ship and still wind up with a lower salary and worse position than the average at your age.
Staying with the same firm in IT that long may be luck or it may even be harmful with the wrong employer.
He didn't ask for nothing. He asked for zero salary along with the highest profit sharing percentage in the industry. He works as a prop trader and hedge fund manager, so his value delivered is totally quantifiable. In othe words, he offered to take on more risk in exchange for a higher percentage return in a business where it's hard for your employer to be dishonest about exactly how much value you delivered.
My failure in previous salary negotiation was assuming my employer would be honest about my delivered value.
Even documented and presented as a counter point in negotiation they simply denied the truth and quickly tried to pan the evidence.
Maybe I was naive, but it was so shockingly dishonest to me, I was mentally broadsided, mouth agape in disbelief. I mentally quit right then and there, and left as soon as possible.
It also seems like the type of business where effective game-theoretic methods that maximize positive cashflow are going to be valued higher than, say, teamwork and team loyalty.
But aren't teamwork and team loyalty just two means to the same end--which is to maximize profits. So why does it matter that it's a type of business that only value the end instead of the means?
Reminds me of designer friends of mine that constantly harp on about their 'design process'--but, do your users like your product in the end or not? That's the key. The process is merely a means to an end (there are many means in business, but generally one end: profit). If the end sucks, the means is worth very little (it's only worth is as a lesson in what not to do).
You want the job don't you? The job involves working with people.
Here's how that negotiation would go with any hiring process I've ever worked with:
"So Mr. Pwnguinz, what are your salary requirements?"
"On this piece of paper I've written down the least I would work for. Now you please write down the most you are prepared to offer a perfect person, irrespective of whether I am that person or not. Then we shall exchange papers."
"This is highly irregular."
"If after exchanging papers, we find that your number is less than mine then we can save time."
Two ways I see this going:
A. "Thank you for your time Mr. Pwnguinz".
B. The hiring manager writes down what they were considering as an initial offer, you write down $0, and you become an HR office legend.
Here's another, equally replicable secret to a higher salary: Go for a walk. Run into a billionaire. You both get knocked down. Tell the billionaire to watch where he's walking. The billionaire stands up, says, "Hey, kid, you got moxie. I'm now going to hire you at twice your current salary." Say, "That's insulting." The billionaire responds, "All right, make it quadruple your current salary." Enjoy your new career and 4x pay raise!
In my experience, likelihood of spam content is correlated with number of ads or tracking cookies (the indicator number in ghostery). I expect posts with more than 5 tracking cookies/ads to be spam
(and yes, techcrunch rings in at 15, and almost all of their content is garbage)
in fact, Ghostery does block the article, for me anyway. Which is odd, one of the few times I've seen Ghostery have the effect of making a site unuseable/unreadable, and possibly the only time i've seen it on a blog.
For those who want to read the article despite using Ghostery, the tracker you want to allow through is "Adobe Digital Marketing (Omniture)". Or just add it to Pocket and read it there.
Disagree on spam. I don't think it's high-quality content-- nothing against the idea or writing, but it's one anecdote and I think the conclusion is wrong-- but it can produce high-quality discussion and that's why we actually come here.
> "Brooke Allen has worked for 30 years in the securities industry as a proprietary trader and hedge fund manager."
Let me translate:
"Brooke Allen has worked for thirty years in a industry dedicated to fleecing the stupid rich. Hedge funds uniformly deliver lower-than-average returns with high volatility, but high payouts to the staff involved sucking from other people's money. Mr. Allen believes that working in an extremely-well-paid industry where he managed to get extremely-well-paid makes him a good salary negotiator."
Okay, this is a very interesting article with a high risk approach used by somebody who hasn't ever had to change jobs so comes from the point of view of somebody with a single data point. I'm not saying disregard it, just that...your mileage will vary. As an employer, I'd never ever play these games with a prospect.
As an employee, I've used a different approach (note: this is not intended to be reflected on the very strange environment of a startup, but on more established businesses)
When you start the job, ask for a salary that you'd be happy with, in fact give them $5-7 thousand dollar range with your ideal salary somewhere on that range (usually on the low end), and would stay happy with so long as it continued to rise at a reasonable percentage slightly higher than inflation. You also get information based on where they come in on your range.
The very first time you get a pay raise under that percentage or that doesn't keep up with inflation? Change jobs. If your pay raise isn't even keeping up with inflation, congratulations your reward for your last year's work is a de facto pay cut. That's what your employer thinks about you. Time to leave, period.
In one case I secured a better paying job in another part of the company, gave my intent to leave and was given a counter offer with a promotion and a double digit pay raise that beat where I was going. I told them that if I stayed, I would be committing to 12 more months, if my pay raise was again unacceptable I would leave. The next year the raise was below inflation, and I left for a much better job.
If the economy is good, give yourself a raise when changing jobs, treat it like a promotion, give yourself two years worth of pay raises for the new job when getting down to salary negotiations.
If you get promoted, expect at least two years worth of pay increase percentages. If you don't receive that, it's not a promotion, it's just more work for you. Never take-on additional responsibility without additional reward.
If they don't ask for your salary requirement, see what they offer, if it's low don't feel afraid to point that out and ask for a more realistic salary. In many cases I've worked in expensive cities, in small offices, that are part of very large companies in different states. Their salary expectations may be great where their HQ is, but might stink in the city. Point that out.
I've also worked in places where the yearly raise percentages reduce as your pay increases. So a starting employee on a starting salary might easily see double digit increases year over year, while an experienced employee might barely keep up with inflation. They struggled to keep experienced talent around.
If you're offered a choice between a small bonus and a pay raise, take the pay raise. That increased base pay makes a difference forever. Say the bonus is $5000 and the pay raise amounts to $2000 the next year. In three years it's worth $6000. In ten it's worth $20000 even if you never get another pay raise again. It's pretty much the best guaranteed investment you can ever make. Now, consider that it'll become part of your base pay history that you then make raises off of, which are percents of your salary, that raise is worth even more! Employers know this and try and convert pay increases into bonuses all the time, it's a one time payment that then gets off their books if they have a bad year the next year. Don't fall for it. There are exceptions, extraordinarily large bonuses shouldn't be turned down of course.
One you accept a salary (this includes your pay increase), commit to working there for at least 12 months. It can suck sometimes, but long term it looks better on your resume. I've typically put in 3-5 years at most places. I've never had to have one of those "why did you leave this prior employer after 3 months?" discussions, but I have had to have "why did you leave this place after working there so long?". In this market, working too short or too long can be unusual. The employee who's working someplace for 17 years and then suddenly wants to change jobs is a red flag. It wasn't boredom that made them change their job, any job is boring after a few years. Getting to 17 means they can beat that problem. Something else happened.
Following this plan, Over the last 18 or so years, starting out with a yearly pay of under $18k, I've managed to get consistent pay increases that are more than double inflation while working for bigCos, year over year pay increases of 15 to 20% have not been uncommon (if you aren't too stuck to a single company). I'm not "rich" by any means, but I live a very comfortable boring suburban life free from any debt beyond a rapidly disappearing mortgage on a very comfortable home with enough left over for lots of overseas travel every year. In about 5-6 years I'll have paid off my home, gone completely debt free, and then will literally have more money than I can spend in a normal day-to-day life. I still have to work, but I rarely have to think much about what things will cost when going out shopping. I went to normal boring state school for university, and have managed to consistently make (or grow my salary faster) than every single one of my peers who went to a "better school". Any advantage they had starting out has more than disappeared over the years.
Startups are a very different beast. And I know that alot of this won't be popular with the startup founders here ;)
#1 Don't accept a bad salary. You'll get all the lines about equity and stock options etc. In the end, unless you are one of the first employees and you happen to hit the lottery and end up at the next billion dollar company, your equity will be worth at or less than most normal bonus packages you'd receive anyway if it's worth anything at all. Take a normal salary. A company with good funding shouldn't squawk at paying their people decent salaries. But you might take a small hit on the salary. Keep a mental note of what this hit is if you go back to a BigCo. Correct for it, act like you were paid the higher amount, when negotiating your new salary with BigCo.
#2 You are very tied to the ups and downs of the company. Expect not to get a pay raise from time to time, especially in the early days until the company starts making a profit. If the goal of the company is not to make a profit and that you'll get your reward out of options, consider your payout divided by the number of years you'll have to put in and see if that makes you happy. Consider what would happen if the payout is $0.
#3 If the business booms, time to renegotiate your salary. Sometimes the company hits super profitability, point out that you took a smaller salary to get the company through the lean years and now it's no longer lean. If you went multiple years without a pay increase, expect the first increase to be unusually large (to make up for it) and future increases to be more normal.
#4 Don't accept ridiculous paycaps. They're stupid. A couple very well known startups cap their employee pay at $120k. One I know of hasn't paid raises for years. The employees who took a pittance first-out-of-college salary are still getting paid that 3,4 and 5 years later -- but now many are married and quite a few are having kids. Their company recently advertised that their valuation is nearing double digit billions (but now in their 5th or 6th funding round with no public plans to sell or go public so equity these days is almost worthless). Does that sound right?
Remember, what's your payout going to be divided by years. Suppose bigCo buys this startup tomorrow, many of those employees might see a sweet $150k payout. Or $30k per year for 5 years of work. Suppose their starting salary was $50k that means they've been working for $80k the entire time. Instead of 5 lean years they could have had 5 satisfied pay years elsewhere.
Even worse, when moving on to another company, especially a bigCo, their suppressed salary puts them way down at the bottom of the pay scale. It's "diseased" their future salary prospects. Just like taking a small raise instead of a bonus "boosts" your future salary prospects, they've managed the inverse...and because the caps and pay policy of this startup are very publicly known, they can't negotiate or talk their way it.
#5 All is not lost, perks are awesome, figure out how much it would cost you out of pocket for the perks you use and then figure that into your total compensation. Some places are receptive to "my total compensation at my last place was $xyz, but I'm looking for a different kind of mix of $qrzw". These are more complicated, but you can say "my last employer gave me about $5k a year in perks that I used. I'd rather have that as salary here". It's reasonable, even if not every place is receptive to it.
Don't accept ridiculous paycaps. They're stupid. A couple very well known startups cap their employee pay at $120k. One I know of hasn't paid raises for years.
That is startling. Is this a popular thing in the Valley?
I worked at a startup in NYC that had a $200K pay cap. It applied to everyone, including executives. However, I believe they abandoned the policy because it made it too hard to hire.
I handle a lot of salary stuff for big tech startups and have literally never seen or heard of this happening beyond this story. But yeah, it is pretty alarming...
>As an employer, I'd never ever play these games with a prospect.
Exactly. Who is going to spend time with someone in-person to swap pieces of paper with salary numbers on them? The employer that the author talked about asked to be counter-offered. They were basically asking for this kind of interaction.
Good example, so let's say I started there 5 years ago and received a $100k salary, hit the pay cap last year and took a thousand shares in options. And then tomorrow somebody bought them for whatever their current valuation is, what would that be worth? After 7 rounds of funding, I gotta say, probably not much (especially after I divide it by my number of years).
But that should be an easy thing to compute for any employee there and for them to decide if that's worth it.
Perks: Free food and laundry service is cool, but I'd rather make more money that covers the food and laundry with some leftover.
Right, but if they never exit, or keep taking funding rounds, the equity the employees have becomes either worth nothing, or worth not a hell of a lot. Again, divide the money they might see by the number of years and add it the base to see if it was worth it.
There's a couple others I know that went public, but still have pay caps, but implemented a preferred stock option system for bonuses and such that works out very well for many of the employees.
It's difficult to get a handle on the real business value of Palantir: homeland security bubble has burst (sequester and US govt debt); big fight against DCGS for Army procurement; high cost of doing business overseas; financial product line is a drag; low cost competitors building product from OSS/COTS components (e.g. Hive/Hadoop, graph DBs, HTML5 front end) ....
The strangest thing is that Palantir is almost 10 years old, but it still prides itself on behaving like a startup. The flat all-for-one structure means there's no specialization of labor, so over-qualified CS wizards work as Forward Deployed Engineers, building servers and doing post-sales support. Imagine how much fragile spaghetti code 100s of really smart hackers can produce in 10 years - it's a lot. But Palantir is not an algorithms and data mining play, it also prides itself on having a human-in-the-loop, so there's no real underlying IPR value or barriers-to-entry either. That prejudice also inclines them against a real-time (CEP) front-end: you can't squeeze the human into streaming algorithms. Where's the enterprise platform? The elegant API and the end-to-end SDK? The vision for a strategic data processing and BI pipeline?
Palantir's principal asset is its collection of amazing employees. The biggest benefit to workers is not $$, but toiling alongside other great people. These are strong, creative and independent minds, any IPO or acquisition will disperse many of them to the four winds, to create a future networked diaspora of Palantir Mafia, building the next generation of great Valley companies.
The one area that Palantir does not behave like a startup is frugality. Where has all the money gone? We know it's expensive to build fabs in Asia, but Palantir doesn't have any. We know that companies sometimes acquire their way to a customer base, but Palantir hasn't. Series G for a software company!
Palantir is not a spartan ramen noodle kinda place. There is free food, but most of the over-catered lobster dinners are donated to homeless people. Seven rounds of VC money buying lobster dinners for tramps. Only in Palo Alto.
It's funny, they were not originally who I was thinking of when I brought up pay-capped Valley companies, but the more I think of it, the more they seem like the perfect template of a place not to work for.
Imagine being a smart kid who just spent 5 years surrounded by smart people working on nothing that's actually interesting, but the cult-like environment makes you think it is. Now suppose they sell and you go elsewhere only to find that the echo chamber you've been working in and the field engineer time you've spent has rotted away your previously top-notch CS skills, and you're coming out of it with a salary far below market norm. It's going to be a tough position for lots of their engineering staff.
It's also funny how they seem to have backed off quite a bit from the "we don't have a sales force/marketing staff" message.
* financial product line is a drag*
I was not aware of that. I would have assumed it was going like gang busters in a vertical with tons of money to put against tools. I wonder why?
Their other product seems like a fancy visio-clone tied to a database. Watching some videos makes me think that their message is "yay! Everybody is now a data-entry specialist!" Doesn't look like a fun or interesting product as a user.
having a human-in-the-loop
You'd think that with all the smart engineering talent they have, that there'd be more concentration on automating away lots of the drudgery I see in the videos. But they seem entirely uninterested in it. Videos on youtube from 5 years ago look almost identical to those released today. I'm not really sure where the engineering talent is focusing.
Where has all the money gone?
On a whim I took a look at their glassdoor profile, by the looks of it I'd wager they spend millions per year on useless cattle-call hiring. Some of the interview experiences are downright ghastly. And from the looks of the number of negative reviews, they're pissing off their future customers. Somebody they screwed around with and aren't hiring today is going to become a purchasing decision maker tomorrow.
To be fair, they appear to be pushing out internationally quite a bit, and that's hideously expensive, trying to replicate and size other markets they can get into. There's probably not much of a reason they couldn't find some penetration in other OECD countries.
For various reasons, I'd rather not say, but it's a Valley Startup. The information is out there publicly on a few forums and glassdoor, a few folks I know who work there confirm it. There's an internal exchange there where they can internally trade their options, but with no exit plan and becoming too big to acquire, I'm not sure why I'd want to buy more options.
Most of the staff there is very young and it's literally their first job out of college so they frankly don't know any better. But any digging into how they expect to get dollars for those options are usually met with really deep concerns.
>"I explained that my goal is to live a debt-free life, and therefore I wanted to give value before receiving compensation."
Really, "live a debt free life" by letting other people pile HUGE debts on you?
So the top dogs get lear jets, nice Jaguars and golden parachutes with the fruits of the work you and others like you contribute, since they get to keep all the extra profits off of your work (besides those needed to keep the company going and moving forward).
If you really want to eliminate debt, eliminate it on BOTH sides.
I am a "taker" and, strangely, I love this approach. Why? Because this strategy leaves both parties feeling the opposite of driving off a used car lot (where someone got squeezed, and someone did the squeezing). Yet, it maximizes value.
For most of my career I've made more than my peers, simply because I asked, and asked, and asked. More often than not, when I asked my salary went up. It's that simple. The problem is that eventually my employers have begun to felt a little squeezed and when a rough spot came around, that smoldering ember lit a fire that sometimes ended with me leaving the company. It's not easy being the highest paid person in the company by a margin of 30%. I don't say that to boast. I mean it. Theres a massive expectation placed upon you.
I think I'll use this new negotiation strategy in the future instead.
Part of what the OP is saying is true: I've been rewarded by employers (especially at the beginning) by working hard, not making demands, and delivering more "value" than I received in compensation.
Working hard and delivering more value than your receive is generally a good strategy.
However, eventually you will need to learn the art of asking for things: raises, benefits, etc... In my experience the squeaky wheel DOES get the grease.
Imagine two people working hard, doing their best. Imagine their boss, also working hard, too busy to stop and think about the future. One day, one of the workers asks the boss for a raise and a promotion. The other worker just assumes his hard work will be noticed and rewarded.
Who do you think gets the raise? The boss makes the easy decision and goes with the person who asked for it.
I've seen it happen time and again. You can either cry that the world is unfair, or just be the person who asks for what you want.
tl;dr employers will like you if you tie all your compensation with performance.
For some positions this is a good thing when you have control over the outcome and you're confident you're upto par.
Sales and trading for example are good areas as the performance is easy to quantify. Creative professions... not so much.
This seems like a very long way to describe the very old advice of never being the first to say a number. There are better articles online, specific to salary negotiation and how to refuse to give a number without being a dick about it.
Reason for posting on HN: "come to our start-up and work for free. We will compensate. Maybe. Sometime. See that one hedgie-trader did that and was OK!"
Almost everyone is cynical in the comments today...must be the weather.
I actually found the article interesting; sure the author didn't test his theory over multiple jobs but one might argue that his approach was SO SUCCESSFUL that he deemed it worth staying there for 17 years (and likewise for the company).
The method sounds like a doormat approach (particularly the title, but it's meant to grab your attention) but what it really is doing is forcing both parties to be honest about what they want. Which, honestly, is a pretty smart move because it engages a less exploitive psychology in both parties and reveals what the true value to be provided is.
I'm certainly going to try this in future negotiations. However I'm sceptical that a prospective client/customer is going to show their hand by revealing (albeit on a swapped piece of paper) their maximum bid in many cases.
No-one wants to pay the maximum for any commodity. It runs contrary to game theory.
I strongly disagree with this. If you think that you can bring a good value to a company, you should price yourself at a premium level. If you don't believe in yourself, why would you expect the company to do that? After you get hired, every raise will be based on your current salary (so a 5% increase of a higher starting point will get you to a higher salary). After that, the only way to have a significant raise is to change jobs. At least this is what I've noticed in my case.
I know what I'm doing, I'm good at that and I know that it's hard for companies to find good people (most of them either lack experience or they simple don't care about the quality of their code). Why shouldn't I ask for more? I care about the job I'm doing and I'm expecting the same thing from my employer.
A job where I can swing that type of contract and have the onus completely on me to prove my worth sounds perfect. The sad reality is that it seems like in my field of work the dependencies on others is enough to make such a move very risky. From my experiences I can imagine a few situations which of results in a "you didn't have a good year" kind of reward even though it wasn't my fault and I truly did the best that anybody could have.
When your work in a job that requires leverage and you have dependencies you need your entire dependency chain to do their job so yours can be judged accurately.
The article says that the OP 'developed an approach'. If I'm to believe that this is a technique, and not just a fortunate hiring for employee and employer, then there would need to be more examples of how this works, not just one.
From the content of the article alone it seems like finding a good employer might be a way of securing a good salary. No shit.
I'm forced to admit that this strategy reads like something out of the Vorkosigan Saga. Then again, there's a reason the Vorkosigan Saga is awesome. The question is, can it really be made to work outside the sample size of one?
In the securities industry high salaries are common because they usually are paired with lower percentage payouts. If you want a higher payout, you are generally expected to take a small or no salary (in the extreme case)
"I explained that my goal is to live a debt-free life, and therefore I wanted to give value before receiving compensation."
Why? If someone is hiring you to do something, they're taking the risk of you not delivering enough value, but they're also entitled to whatever rewards they can get from your work, which can be several times what they're paying you. Basically the author wants to take all the risk, and if he doesn't have a substantial bonus, very little of the rewards.
Well, of course anyone can live to make other people profit more, but it's a bit strange to tell everyone to live like that.
"We started with base pay. I wrote down the least I would work for and asked them to write down the most they would offer a perfect person, irrespective of whether I was that person or not. If when we exchanged papers, their number wasn’t higher than mine then we could stop there and save time. Their number was twice the best base pay I had ever received in past jobs, and my request was for $0."
I am not understanding. The least he would work for is nothing? That can't be a "start base pay", can it? Could someone clarify? Thanks!
Hahaha, go ahead and try it, and then you wonder why you are getting paid less than 100k while a incompetent new hire is making 150k fresh off of school.
Slightly off topic, but not too much: the article offers good advice as far as compensation goes. I have found another trick works really well in consulting: avoid locking in customers. Document everything, be willing to help train replacements, train employees to take over your tasks, etc. This gives customers a warm-fuzzy feeling about using your services, which seems to attract more work.
I can’t read the article. This URL ends up showing me “All the paths to immigration” or something. Does anyone have a copy of the actual content I can read?
The left has FINALLY tried to pass a bill here to let companies fire people a little. Many yelled, but in soviet france, it has been a real issue, and the right/sarkozy did not manage to change something about it. It's sad, because this is the #1 cause of unemployment here, it's the total opposite of the US. The minimum wage is also a big issue which adds up to the fact companies almost cannot fire people.
That means companies are too much careful and cannot hire without being the employee will not drag everyone down. It boils down to companies hiring only people they trust, e.g. the friends of employees or their relatives.
It's weird, because for some time now, since 2004 or something, I have been so much interested and obsessed into the american culture in general, without really thinking about working there, or going to canada. I love the US and its issues, since the 2008 crisis I've been fascinated by how an economy works.
"best place in the world" oh boy, well I won't argue with this, but when you live a developed country, wherever you go, there's nothing to work on, because of human nature, and you can't say shit about it.
You either wait for some global conflict to make leaders and big owners react to the problem or force them to, which is really stupid to wish a thing like war, or watch terrorism happen and say "not surprising". You can also wait for the older generation to die out to leave room, but in the end it's just biology.
I think of it differently. There are maximizers, satisficers, and doormats. Maximizers are the ones who will go all-out to get the best deal, and sometimes even play the system. They're the ones who know that you can get a box of cereal for $3.79 instead of $5.29 at another store. They'll also come up with excuses to line their job interviews on the same week so the offers roll in at the same time and they can start a "bidding war".
Most people look at maximizers, in the context of negotiation, as being a bit sociopathic. I disagree; I think it's sometimes quite reasonable to take a maximizing strategy. It can be exhausting, but I wouldn't call it sociopathic.
Satisficers have a goal and a sense of "good enough" and, as long as they're north of it, they're happy. Doormats are the ones who take what's given to them. Being a doormat is the worst. You never win by being a doormat.
The problem with "ask for nothing at all", in the workplace, is that it makes you a doormat, not a satisficer.
On the other hand, you have to know when to maximize and when to satisfice (is that a word? It is now.) There's a time for each. Usually, you want to satisfice on salary and maximize on project quality and work culture. But there are exceptions to that rule.
The author seems to be recommending that you present as a doormat. You're exposing your jugular as a sign of trust, similar to the practice of shaking our right (weapon) hands as a greeting. If the other party is going to try to take advantage of you in this situation, walk away. You've now seen how they'll behave when they think you're in a weak position.
This only works if you are actually in a strong negotiating position (you have or can get equivalent/better offers elsewhere), but you are willing to pretend to put yourself in a weak one, to test the other party's good faith. Risky. If you expose your jugular, you might establish trust, but you also might get your throat slashed.
It works fine as a long-term career strategy as long as you always have a strong BATNA. If you can walk whenever anyone betrays your trust, then eventually you'll end up surrounded only by people you can trust. That's a very strong position to be in, and usually makes for both a happy life and a solid professional outcome.
In "Pricing With Confidence" by Reed Holden & Mark Burton, Rule 4 breaks everyone down into four types [of buyers]: price buyers, value buyers, relationship buyers, and poker players.
Price buyers only care about one thing: maximizing the amount of money in their pocket. (Your maximizers)
Value buyers understand that there is value in some offers that are worth paying more for. (Your satisficers)
Relationship buyers prefer to find trust worthy partners and build solid long term relationships with them, even if it means not getting the cheapest price. (Your doormats)
Poker players don't like to show their cards and play a tough game. They often say price is all the matters but you can often call their bluff by removing some value of your offer in order to reduce the price to something they claim they are aiming for.
(Negotiators, those that know when to maximize and when to satisfy and when to give in a little [a short term pain for a long term gain])
He may not be asking for nothing, at least not in the sense it seems to me at the moment that you mean. He seems to be saying something to the effect of: we'll both show our cards at once and if we've got inconsistent upper and lower boundaries, I'm walking.
Given that:
"The typical approach is for both sides to demand something unreasonable—but not let on that they consider it unreasonable—and then negotiate a “compromise” in the hopes that you will end up closer to your side than the midpoint."
He can be seen to be cutting out the negotiating part. They're not going to offer $0 because they expect him to be asking for a fair bit. Saying 'this is the minimum I'll accept and I'm not going to discuss anything lower' is quite a hard bargaining position for the other person to match under most conditions.
If he were actually interested in asking for nothing he'd undercut their offer if it were higher than his minimum, and keep insisting on being paid as little as possible. But he doesn't seem to have done that. Whatever he's done he's not actually talked them into letting him pay for the meal, so to speak - and I can't imagine that doing so would have been particularly hard.
Indeed. Negotiation is about understanding what "finished" looks like. Winning is not always a desired outcome.
There are two drivers in a negotiation - concern for self, or concern for others. There are five approaches to negotiation depending on the degree of the drivers - integrate; oblige; compromise; dominate; and avoid[1].
There are times where you dominate your counterpart, and there are times when it makes sense to capitulate. You choose your approach based on your objective and your drivers.
No mention is made of strategy, however. Negotiation is tactical, and it is useful to understand its place in a wider context.
This strikes me as a very good point. I've read How to Win Friend and Influence People, and the 48 Laws of Power. Do you have any books you can recommend that take a more nuanced approach to negotiation and working with people?
>They're the ones who know that you can get a box of cereal for $3.79 instead of $5.29 at another store.
That's not a "maximizer" (in the sense that you describe his other characteristics), that's an el cheapo, "my time is worthless", "I use coupons at dates" case.
People generally have a solid understanding of what is fair and what isn't. When we start a negotiation from a point of unfairness and unreasonableness, both sides are then on the defensive which anyone who has read Dale Carnegie knows is a recipe for failure. I'm not sure I buy into the OP's idea of asking for $0 since that's just as unreasonable but it's unreasonable in a way that brings the other side closer instead of pushing them away. If you sincerely say you want to work for what you make, the majority of people will want to give you what you deserve. Are there people out there who will immediately try to screw you? Yes but that happens, you get as far away from them as possible. And if you can't recognize those people, you have far bigger problems than learning how to maximize your negotiations.
Negotiations seems to work best when they are discussions, not attempts to get the most of of the other side. Of course, if you're working for a boss who used to be a used car salesman or a sociopath, by all means, be prepared to have to fight for everything you want. And be prepared to be miserable to boot.