I've negotiated with some very large companies at times.
No one can operate a company as a single giant monolith. They're all subdivided into departments or subcompanies or subunits in some way or other. And these subunits often have more or less leeway and authority to act by themselves (depending on the exact organization).
My favorite story is when the manager across from me happened to have signing authority for the relevant subunit. So he just grabbed a sheet of A4 out of the printer, scribbled down what we agreed upon, put his signature under it, and handed it to his secretary "Please file this in Kim's file". Didn't even blink. <5 minutes. Legally binding written contract.
Another time I made a cultural mistake, I actually gave a Very Large customer my best offer upfront (negotiating as a small company owner this time). I should have tacked on 20% or so, just to give the manager something to negotiate over. Lesson learned: Big company managers aren't just able to negotiate; some actually almost feel cheated if you don't give them anything to negotiate over! ;-)
Now, I could negotiate to an extent with a smaller company where I would be a “special snowflake”. If they were looking for someone with my combination of skills.
But the company changing events I did at the smaller company I worked at from 2018-2029, gets me an attaboy for adding 5% to my divisions revenue, a message on our Slack channel and life goes on.
Why are they hiring people that need a visa and need to relocate across the world?
The ask for compensation for getting dropped before the start date should usually be an easy one for a company to accept since that shouldn't be normal operating procedures. Otherwise, they're aware that they're explicitly screwing over people and aren't serious about hiring. Now we're back at my earlier claim, and you dodged a bullet.
You don't need to be special, but you definitely shouldn't think of yourself as a cog in the machine. If you do think of yourself as a cog, or this is an offer you can't refuse, then you've already given up your bargaining power, and you are willing to accept this.
You are a cog in the machine with a company that has over a 1 and a half million employees.
Andy Jassy is my skip x 7 manager and he doesn’t know me from Adam. I doubt my skip x 3 manager would know me if he ran into on the street.
How much bargaining power do you think you really have? If any of us got hit by a bus, they would have an open req out before our body’s were in the ground and only be remembered when our name came up during a git blame.
No one can operate a company as a single giant monolith. They're all subdivided into departments or subcompanies or subunits in some way or other. And these subunits often have more or less leeway and authority to act by themselves (depending on the exact organization).
My favorite story is when the manager across from me happened to have signing authority for the relevant subunit. So he just grabbed a sheet of A4 out of the printer, scribbled down what we agreed upon, put his signature under it, and handed it to his secretary "Please file this in Kim's file". Didn't even blink. <5 minutes. Legally binding written contract.
Another time I made a cultural mistake, I actually gave a Very Large customer my best offer upfront (negotiating as a small company owner this time). I should have tacked on 20% or so, just to give the manager something to negotiate over. Lesson learned: Big company managers aren't just able to negotiate; some actually almost feel cheated if you don't give them anything to negotiate over! ;-)