

Ask YC: Negotiating a job offer - wednesday

Recently, a friend and I both applied for the same entry level position at a fairly large company. We were both offered the same job with the same benefits package, but the salary I'm being offered is about 65% of what my friend was offered. I was pretty astonished by this, and I'm now looking to negotiate a better offer.<p>Some background: We're both graduating from the same school, with the same set of degrees. We have almost identical previous job experience. On paper, we're very similar looking candidates.<p>What gives? How should I approach my recruiter about the discrepancy in our paychecks? Have you ever been able to negotiate a better offer?
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aditya
The first rule of negotiation is to not give a shit.

If you care about the job, you risk losing it, if you don't give a shit, you
will more often than not walk away with a better deal.

If you're ok with the odds, just tell them that you think the offer is very
low based on your research online and after talking to career services at
school, along with the fact that you thought the interviews went great and
that you have student loans (all great reasons to ask for more money, come up
with more). If you got the contact info of your interviewer (not HR, the real
person who makes decisions) - email them expressing strong interest in the
position.

But, above all, be prepared to walk away at any time, if they think they have
you, then they have no incentive to give you more cash.

If this was a startup might advise would be totally different, at that point
you're doing a job out of love than just for money :)

~~~
wushupork
Speaking from personal experience this is totally true but needs to be
investigated more. The whole negotiation system in asian flea markets is based
on this. If the recruiters perceive that you want and need this job, then they
feel they have the advantage and will low ball you. If they think you're going
to walk away and perceive you to be in demand or have other options, then you
have turned the tables around.

I had one experience where I felt like I was tired of my job and I wanted a
new one and I'm sure that came through my attitude and I was totally
lowballed. On a separate occasion I was nonchalant and came with the attitude
of why should I work for you guys, the offer was so much better.

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brandon272
Before you approach the recruiter about this I would consider the potential
repercussions on your friend for sharing his/her salary information with you.

It could be that your friend is a better negotiator or it could be that there
was something on your resumes or in your histories that, while you may
consider it minute, was of some importance to this company.

~~~
wednesday
Without divulging too much information about this company's hiring process,
here's a little more information. The jobs are abroad, so the company looks to
hire people in pairs in order to ease the relocation process. We have
different recruiters, but our recruiters knew we were both applying for these
jobs as a pair.

This might be naive of me, but if I were one of the recruiters, I'd probably
assume that the two people being hired would discuss and compare their offers
before making a decision.

~~~
modoc
I'd switch to his recruiter:)

~~~
gaius
Recruiters are usually paid a percentage of your starting salary as a
commission - it's in their interest to negotiate hard on your behalf. Tho'
that your recruiter is screwing himself too is not much comfort...

~~~
rs
That's true.. but they're only given a tiny percentage of your salary. So, a
monthly increase of $200 may go a long way for the OP during the initial
stages of starting out in life, but that $200 might only materialise to (say)
$20 increase in commission for the recruiter - a deal not worth chasing from
the recruiters perspective.

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jonknee
Are you a woman? And yea, I know that shouldn't matter but you never know. I'd
say the scales just tipped in your favor for negotiations, you know for a fact
they are willing to go significantly higher.

Update: Geez guys, down vote the messenger. He asked about salary discrepancy
and I happened to ask about one of the top reasons. It's real and it's really
not fair, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't ask about it.

~~~
lisper
This was actually the exact comment I was going to make. Especially since the
job is overseas, some form of discrimination that would be rare in the U.S.
could well be in play here.

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barryrandall
Did the recruiter contact you with the offer or did the hiring manager? Do you
both work through the same recruiter?

Any number of variables could lead to the discrepancy. You're likely being
offered positions on different teams with different budgets. As crappy as it
sounds, salary offers are often based more on budget than relative worth.

Within a given company, there can be a wide range of recruitment approaches.
One recruiter may expect you to haggle more than another. My advice for first-
time job seekers is to do one, at most two offer-counter-offer rounds.
Remember that in these kinds of negotiations, the relationship is more
important than the particular outcome. Being hated on day 1 sucks.

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vaksel
Who knows might be a clerical error, contact the HR and tell them that you
know the going rate for this position is 60-70K for example, and ask them to
explain why you are getting paid so much less

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keefe
I'd recommend you just not fool around with this and be straight. Say hey, you
offered me X and I think I can get Y at other companies, will you offer me
more or should I go elsewhere? I wouldn't mention your friend at all. There
are many people with more $$$ than you, why should you get it? You need to be
aware of the current power in the negotiations. The current job market gives
the employer a few extra points, but if you are an awesome programmer you may
have a lot of offers. Actually having other offers is helpful. This is also a
risky "bird in the hand vs two in the bush" kind of a thing.

At least the notes on these should be useful :

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-
Management/15-665B...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-
Management/15-665BPower-and-NegotiationFall2002/CourseHome/)

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-
Management/15-067C...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-
Management/15-067Competitive-Decision-Making-and-
NegotiationSpring2003/CourseHome/)

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flipper
Having sat on both sides of the recruiting table I can tell you that most
companies will pay the market rate to get the right person. Trying to save a
few dollars to get someone 'cheap' is usually disastrously expensive. On the
other hand, often the correlation between what someone gets paid and how good
a fit they are for a job is quite loose.

If this company thinks enough of you to offer you a job then unless they are
mad they are prepared to pay market rates to get you on board. You have
established that they're prepared to pay ~50% more to get your friend, and
there's no obvious discrepancy in your attributes, so there must be room to
negotiate.

Having said that (like others have said), whether you get more depends on
whether you are prepared to walk away from the job. If they know you're
desperate they probably won't offer you more.

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soundsop
For immediate negotiating help, I recommend the book You Can Negotiate
Anything: [http://www.amazon.com/You-Negotiate-Anything-Herb-
Cohen/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/You-Negotiate-Anything-Herb-
Cohen/dp/0553281097)

For longer term and more general help with persuasion tactics (which might be
used to get you to agree to a lower offer), I recommend Influence: The
Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini: [http://www.amazon.com/Influence-
Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-
Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X/)

You will easily recover the cost of these two books using the knowledge from
them.

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mikebo
The timeline might be kind of tight, but your best bet might be to interview
at another company and get an idea how they value your skillset.

Also, check out glassdoor.com and see if the company has any salary
information posted there.

~~~
JoelPM
I agree. Getting an offer from another company will provide some perspective
(as well as an alternative should you decide against the current one).

Also, can you get more info on what "entry-level" means at the company? At IBM
(my first job out of college) I started as a band 6 - if you're coming in as
band 6 and your friend is coming in as band 7 there will definitely be a
discrepancy in salary. (I don't think the offer letter will include this info
and you most likely won't find out until your annual review unless you ask.)

At another company I worked a lot depended on how you did in the interview
process - I saw people with a couple years experience get hired as SE1
(software engineer 1) or SET (software engineer test) while a new college grad
might get hired as a SE2 (software engineer 2) - just because he did better on
the (technical) interviews.

So, if possible, find out what your exact position will be and how it compares
to your friend.

And finally, the best time to find a job is when you don't need one. It might
be worth taking the current job just to get experience and buy time to look
around.

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banned_man
How badly do you want the job?

If you don't want it that badly, just turn the offer down, because the company
has already screwed up once and you're not even working for them yet.

If you want or need the job, try to push your offer up 30% but settle for 20%.
This won't put you at the same level as you friend, but take comfort in the
fact that he'll be axed before you. At 6 months, quit if you're getting crappy
assignments, not learning anything, or otherwise being underestimated; if
you're getting good projects and doing good work, negotiate another 15% raise
at the end of the year, and another 15% at the end of the year after that,
closing the discrepancy.

Do not mention the discrepancy to them. You won't make any friends by doing
this, since most companies hate when employees discuss or compare salaries
with each other, and you don't want to put your friend's career in jeopardy.
If it's that much of a big deal to you, then don't take the job.

~~~
psranga
Walking away doesn't work if all companies are the same (and they are).

As soon as you start negotiating, they'll know you got the info from your
friend (these HR people are not dummies even though they don't code :)). Don't
tell them though; given them plausible deniability. Say something idiotic like
you looked at cost of living and think that this is too low or something; just
give them a excuse to up their offer.

Since they like hiring in pairs, you have some pretty good leverage. Go for
it, you'll probably succeed.

I learned the hard way that all salary offers are open to negotiation (even if
the person making the offer claims that it's not).

