
Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money - arrogantrobot
http://www.articulateventures.com/thoughts-on-being-an-employer/salary-negotatiations-whats-possible-when-there-is-no-more-mone/
======
aplusbi
When I was negotiating my salary with my previous employer the only thing I
asked for was more vacation time. They refused and instead offered me an extra
$3000 so I could take unpaid time off.

They ended up working me to the bone for 6 months then laid me off once the
product shipped.

Little things like this can really give you insight into how a company works.
If a company is only willing to negotiate on money then maybe money is the
only thing they are interested in.

~~~
e40
I'll play devil's advocate here: making special deals on benefits other than
salary is a land mine. Everyone is used to the fact that people are paid
differently, but people are used to uniform benefits (all you out there:
please don't call out your exception to the rule... it really is generally a
rule). It's likely to have a negative effect or morale, whereas giving you
more salary won't. (Yes, people find out these things.)

~~~
aaronblohowiak
This is the main reason I am a contractor -- I take a LOT of time off. For my
clients, it is normal for contractors to have gaps in availability. For my on-
site colleagues, they know that the vacation is unpaid.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Increasingly it feels that contracting is the most straight forward way to
work for an organisation. They pay X, they get Y. No messing about with broken
promises and vague commitments.

~~~
psweber
I've also been able to comfortably do contracts for companies that have worked
friends (who are full time employees) to the bone. If they want a 60 hour week
from me, they have to pay me 50% more.

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praptak
This is in line with what one of my previous bosses taught me about
negotiations: negotiation is about truly understanding the interests of the
other side. In this case even those they are not aware of.

He also used to put crap clauses into contract drafts (if he knew they'd be
passed through lawyers), so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful
without messing with the actual matter of the contract. A true example of
serving the true interest of the other side :)

~~~
Karunamon
>..so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the
actual matter of the contract

There's actually a programming version of this referenced on an old
StackOverflow question - a "Duck", i.e. a feature submitted so management will
take issue with it and not something else more important.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-
jar...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jargon.html)
\- see entry #5

~~~
wpietri
Interestingly, map-makers put in fake geographical features, known as
"bunnies", so that they can catch people copying them:

[http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mapmakers-sleight-of-
hand...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mapmakers-sleight-of-hand-
Cartographers-put-2889584.php)

------
jtbigwoo
I think many successful people and organizations take a similar approach all
around.

Is your baseball team underfunded compared to others? Use the lowered
expectations to test theories and find market innefficiencies.

Are customers are worried that our company is too small? We'll give you the
email address of the CEO if you have a problem.

Don't have any money for raises? Offer employees special deals that no larger
employer would even consider (like the wave height deal in the story).

Take the weakest part of you and beat the bastards with it.

~~~
mooreds
It's more than just finding your weak points, it's about creative solution
finding that resonates with both parties. If Brenda had offered the author
unlimited mountain biking time, the author might have left the station.

------
Yhippa
This story made me happy.

I took a negotiation class a few years ago running through some examples where
each side had to negotiate X and got crib sheets talking about what were the
different aspects of the negotiation and how much each aspect meant to each
person.

We did the exercises and learned lessons but one thing I noticed was that if
we threw out conventional negotiation tactics and instead just showed the
other person what our value assignment to each aspect was we both ended up
maximizing our utility from the negotiation event. So you would think that it
would be great to just be an open book when entering a negotiation right?

The problem is that as soon as one person hides any information then the trust
factor that makes this work is broken. And for whatever reason (pride or lack
of authority) this happens all the time in real life.

That's why I liked this story. Apparently both parties came to the table open
and honest about what they wanted and the outcome I thought was favorable to
both parties.

~~~
triplesec
I believe this is the basis of the Prisoner's Dilemma

------
grecy
Great article.

It bothers me that people think like this:

> I was already getting paid almost as much as people who had been on staff
> for many more years than me.

Salary should be based on performance and expertise, not how many years you've
been sitting in a seat.

~~~
crusso
Are you're saying that companies shouldn't give yearly raises except for
inflationary increases? Wouldn't that be an implication of not considering
time with the company?

Rewarding loyalty to the business is not a meaningless gesture, nor should it
be an affront to new people.

The difficult thing from the employer's perspective is balancing the reward
for many different aspects of each employee that makes that employee important
to the company: leadership, loyalty, consistency, trustworthiness,
performance, expertise, efficiency, etc.

~~~
SatvikBeri
Companies shouldn't reward loyalty, especially when that means punishing
performance. Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-
specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company.

All other things being equal, a 25-year-old who just joined the company and
automated 5 people's worth of work is worth several multiples of the 35-year-
old analyst who'd been at the company for 10 years and was doing one of the
(now automated) jobs. Yet most companies will pay the 25-year-old
significantly less. This is just plain dumb and irrational, and encourages top
performers to go elsewhere.

~~~
crusso
_Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge
makes you more valuable to the company._

I couldn't disagree more. Loyalty is its own benefit that's worth compensating
people for. I value people who come into a group and do more than just
contribute a bunch of code. I value people who contribute to the culture and
the framework of the ongoing enterprise.

Furthermore, I want newcomers to see how I treat the current employees with
respect and reward for being contributing parts of the team not just this past
week, but for years.

I'm not at all saying that just occupying a seat in the office should get you
rewards. It shouldn't. But occupying the seat AND being productive while
you're there is a benefit to me as a company founder.

Give me a competent employee whom I can rely upon year after year vs some
hotshot code slinger who is here today and gone tomorrow.

I call it the "Mike Krzyzewski" team building strategy.

~~~
SatvikBeri
It sounds like we actually agree in practice and I've just heard the word
"loyalty" used differently from the way you've heard it used. Apologies if I
used the wrong definition, and let me try to clarify my point:

I completely agree that contributing to culture and the business is valuable.
What annoys me is how much a lot of companies value seniority over anything
else. The attitude of "Well, X is older and has been here longer than Y, so
they should get paid more" is incredibly prevalent even in the USA. Especially
in tech-heavy jobs, I've seen plenty of cases where someone might contribute
5x or 10x as much value as the average person in their position...and receive
a 10% higher raise as a result.

~~~
toyg
People are lazy. Calculating seniority is easy and "objective", not
controversial; in fact, it's so linear you could even write a program to
automate it (I bet somebody did just that). Evaluating performance or actual
returns to the business, that's hard; the metrics are often very subjective,
and people will start arguing. Rule #6582 of the Safe Manager: Don't Give
People Excuses To Argue. So seniority it is.

This was unfortunately exacerbated by Trade Unions, which needed something
"objective" to force owners to pay up and keep members happy, so they built
their demands on this sort of easy metrics: seniority, hours of work, etc.

I'm sure if you could find a generic way to calculate productivity in an
uncontroversial way, managers and unions would jump on it, but in most cases
there ain't, so seniority it is.

~~~
zerooneinfinity
Employee evaluation forms is not a good metric to evaluate performance?

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EwanToo
Is it just me, or is it weird that this brand new blog (really just an advert
for a writing company) has had 3 blog posts, all 3 have been submitted to HN
(2 by the same person), and all 3 have gotten pretty high scores?

The other 2 stories being:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5304317>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5292431>

They must be good writers!

~~~
Articulate
EwanToo I am the writer- those two guys just showed me the site. I used to
blog on my company website (for like a month) but I quit because it never went
anywhere- but when it gets posted here people talk about it- comment etc. made
me want to write more.

~~~
EwanToo
I'm glad to hear you're a real person then :)

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engtech
"Weakness is strength. Strength is weakness."

Being a small flexible company means they can't compete on money, but they can
compete on flexibility and increasing quality of life.

I think that's all any employee wants from a job -- a good quality of life.
Money is probably the worst way of quantifying if they employee is already
middle class.

It's amazing even how "here's a week to fix that low priority problem that
bugs the shit out of you" would go to improve morale.

~~~
hammock
What if "that low priority problem that bugs the shit out of you" is your
crappy job?

~~~
adeaver
Then there are bigger issues at hand and no amount of money or 'alternative'
raises will make a difference.

------
spartango
I found this article awesome, but not only for showcasing the creative tools a
leader can might under tight resource constraints:

Beyond her creativity, Belinda shows great empathy for the author, and at the
same time draws on the author's own empathy. This is both powerful and
gratifying; at the end of the negotiation, each side feels that the other has
his best interest in mind and truly cares about them. This arrangement is not
a one-time compromise or an appeasement deal, and it certainly doesn't feel
that way. It's a relationship that continues to grow.

------
qxf2
One point the author, perhaps prevented by modesty, does not make is that
he/she too is a good negotiator. He/She wanted to make it work - actually
recognized the efforts of their boss as genuine and feels grateful for what
they learnt from the experience.

I have seen too many engineers go into negotiations with the attitude that
there is only one right deal - the one they have crafted and proposed on their
own. Yes, management does offer a lot of bull, but its important to re-
evaluate every new offer that is different from your own starting position.

------
MatthewPhillips
I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw
deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to
promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation
days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money.
Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any
where. And you look for another job.

> She told me that she wanted to pay me more, but the $2,000 increase, I was
> already getting paid almost as much as people who had been on staff for many
> more years than me.

That's an awful reason not to give someone a raise! Politics like this is why
so many companies lose good employees. If the author was worth more than the
more senior staff, she should have gotten paid more. People talk and there's
no real way to keep salaries secret, but who is easier to replace in this
situation?

> She more than gave me a fair deal. I stayed with the organization until I
> was accepted into graduate school. I did not financially benefit from that
> job in the short term, but in the long term- she put my career in a catapult
> and shot it forward.

Sounds to me more like she held you back. What could you and the company had
achieved had you been properly rewarded? Had to been giving the motivation to
take the next step within the company? Keeping you poor sends a clear message
that you should focus your efforts elsewhere.

~~~
campnic
Its not wrong for you to approach everything so skeptically, but I think you
have to see it from the authors perspective:

1\. He clearly has an altruistic bent (he'd just returned from the Peace Corp.
in Kenya)

2\. He liked his position for its flexibility and variety as noted throughout
the article.

I think the point of the article is that many people approach salary
negotiations as an optimization of just salary. But his real desire was to be
happy and money was only one component of that. The boss found ways to make
him happy without meeting his salary demands.

The story isn't a story of a 'clear win' for him, its an analysis of how to
approach negotiations. Salary negotiations aren't always about maximizing your
salary, you can make them more flexible by maximizing for your happiness. It
presents more flexibility to both participants.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I don't disagree with that. The author flipped a bad situation and found a way
to get out. That's exactly what you should do in that situation, rather than
standing your ground to make a point.

Perhaps where I disagree with you (and others who have responded to me) is in
how important it is to keep good employees. If the author really is worth more
than the more senior staff, the company has failed itself tremendously by
losing him. If he is worth more than the others today, what will he be worth
in the future (what is his growth potential). Putting up roadblocks for growth
in your employees has to be one of the worst things HR can do.

~~~
Evbn
You may be reading a lot of a extra meaning into a generic negotiating tactic
/ ego stroke comment from a boss.

------
kriro
"Bargaining for Advantage" is my goto book. It's really solid and highly
recommended for anyone that does any negotiation of any sort.

It has a test to see what bargaining type you are and doesn't just focus on
the "get the max tricks" like a couple of other books.

Pretty ethical in general.

------
alexhjones
This made me sad :-( I was dissapointed with my recent pay rise (+3%, 18months
after the last rise). Maybe I didn't negotiate well but I was open and honest.
I don't care if I'm paid more than my peers, or that there's no more money in
the pot, it's still a shitty deal with no sweeteners. I guess that is what you
get for being someone else's employee.

~~~
newman314
I don't know where you are but it helps to document your accomplishments ahead
of time and socialize that. I'm not talking about being an obnoxious self-
promoter but making sure people acknowledge your (actual) contributions.

I find that many wait for their managers to automatically do the right thing
and then get disappointed. I've always advocated being more proactive about
this.

Let's say I want a raise and a promotion this year. I outline it in my goals,
and as the year progresses have meetings with my manager to make sure I'm
doing everything possible to reach that goal as well as documenting things
along the way. When it comes time for review, one of two things will happen:
either you have communicated clearly what you want and you get most of it, or
you get screwed either by your manager or his/her manager. If that's the case,
you then need to decide if something went wrong, or if it was not in good
faith. If so, it's time to leave.

Also, protip: find out when budgets are being set, that's the time to
push/remind for more money/whatever. Usually by the time reviews come around,
things are pretty much set in stone.

Don't be sad. Keep kicking ass and follow what I've written. I'm willing to
say that you will likely have a more positive experience next go-around.

PS. This only works if you do actually work hard and get shit done. If you
like goofing off and just want more $$, it will NOT work.

------
rocky1138
This is a great post. A concern is that this only works when the base salary
covers your needs. If it doesn't, you can't pay your rent with surf time.

------
jschuur
Don't negotiate salaries. Negotiate responsibilities. The salary comes after
that.

------
droithomme
Article assumes a situation where company can not pay market rate because
there is "no money". No money means either they are not profitable and not
funded enough to succeed, or they are lying to the candidate. Whichever one it
is doesn't matter because in either scenario accepting position is a poor move
for a talented and capable candidate in an environment when there are many
positions available for competent people. These insights terrifically simplify
negotiations in this scenario to: "No thanks."

~~~
wpietri
That's true only if you value money and nothing else.

I know plenty of people who work at below-market wages for nonprofits because
they support the mission. This fellow had some of that, but he also valued
surfing time more than extra cash. People also value recognition, good
colleagues, solid benefits, low stress, and a bunch of other things.

Just because people value different things than you doesn't make them wrong.
De gustibus non est disputandum.

~~~
droithomme
Those claims are fallacious.

It has nothing to do with the supposed greed that you absurdly assign to the
engineer. It has to do with critical evaluation of the company's financial
condition. A company that can not pay market rate because they don't have
enough money can't afford to be in business and will not continue to do so for
much longer.

There are lots of jobs out there, just like there are plenty of potential
romantic partners. Sure, someone could date a homeless crack addict. Perhaps
those who don't do so are shallow according to the same sort of argument being
used here.

~~~
wpietri
Well, let's test your theory. The article describes a real place that was
being run on a shoestring. Looking at resumes, this was 2006-2008, so it's
circa 5 years later. Are they out of business?

<http://www.kzyx.org/>

Looks like they are still going. Just like every shoestring nonprofit I know.

And the reason is exactly that _people get paid in things other than money_.
They could also have run the radio station with market-rate salaries. They
would have had a drastically smaller staff. But because they wisely recognized
that money isn't the only thing that matters, they looked for people who could
take substantially lower salaries but valued other things they could offer.

------
ttyrq
A better job elsewhere :)

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zem
this woman is my new hero. i only hope that i am in a position to do that for
someone some day.

------
newman314
My go to books for negotiating:

* Getting Past No

* Getting To Yes

