

Avoiding offer negotiation pitfalls – for new grads - mallyvai
http://offerletter.io/blog/201411-avoiding-negotiation-pitfalls-for-new-grads.html

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mallyvai
One big thing I wanted to clear up is that I'm addressing college hires'
broken mental models of compensation package and ranges, and that "narrow
range" means different things to different people - the founder's definition
of 'narrow range' is different than the engineer's.

Say as a founder, you offer 100k to someone. You're mentally allowing yourself
to go to 115k base at most. That may be a relatively narrow range to you. But
to most candidates (especially out of college) that 15k is a _massive_ bump,
and can make or break an offer. If they're afraid of asking for more because
they assume they can't, then they will just end up saying "No", if someone
else gives them more money.

We've actually prevented a couple cases of new grads feeling they had to turn
down a $100k base salary offer at a startup, simply because they felt that
asking for $115k would build bad blood. In every case the founder was happy to
bump the base to $115k because it wasn't a large deviation, even though it
felt like it to the new grad.

