[lotsofpulp]

>How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role?

Get a competing job offer.

A minimum price lets labor sellers know if it is worth applying or not, and trends in supply and demand for that type of labor (based on which way the minimums are moving industry wide).

[seadan83]

Competing job offers and other interviews lined up are excellent, excellent, excellent to have!

For this reason always try to cluster job interviews together as much as possible so that the offers come out around the same time. This situation is generally going to be very favorable for you as an engineer!

Consider that some hiring manager probably has been played games with for months in terms of head count and interviewing poor candidate after another. When they extend that offer to you, they want you seated yesterday. Mentioning "I have 2 offers, I've had 100% offers for every interview so far, and btw I'm interviewing at a FAANG tomorrow." - that will perk up some interest and can elicit a pro-active better offer.

I've had one outfit ask me, "How much for you to just stop interviewing and come work for us?" This sense of urgency on the employer side is the only time where an engineering employee has more power than the company. Most employers will try everything to make this window of time short - usually by trying to get you to stop interviewing and do no salary negotiation, or give you an exploding offer, or counter and say there are competing candidates.

[JohnFen]

> Mentioning "I have 2 offers, I've had 100% offers for every interview so far, and btw I'm interviewing at a FAANG tomorrow." - that will perk up some interest and can elicit a pro-active better offer.

It's also a risky maneuver. There are a lot of companies that will immediately, as a matter of policy, reply "then take one of those offers".

That's not to say it isn't a gamble worth taking, of course. Just that it comes with some risk.

[bob_theslob646]

"It's also a risky maneuver. There are a lot of companies that will immediately, as a matter of policy, reply "then take one of those offers"."

Have they ever said that? Why would they interview you or make a job offer? I find this sentence hard to believe. Having a job offer is a signal that someone else did due diligence on you and is willing to commit capital at a year rate for your talents. Skin in the game.

Sure other companies don't have to compete on the price is if what you are trying to state that, but you didn't state that clearly.

[JohnFen]

> Have they ever said that?

Yes.

> Having a job offer is a signal that someone else did due diligence on you and is willing to commit capital at a year rate for your talents.

Sure, but applicants can and do lie about the existence of such offers, so ignoring such statements is not a terrible strategy. And that another company did "due diligence" is not as valuable as you might think. The investigation prior to an offer letter is often cursory, and different companies have different concerns they're looking for as well as differing levels of scrutiny.

Some companies also view an applicant leveraging other offers as a negotiation tactic as a bit of a red flag, depending on the sort of applicant they want to hire.

I'm not saying any of this is universal, nor that any of it is smart or appropriate. I'm just saying that I know there are a nontrivial number of companies that think like this.

> Sure other companies don't have to compete on the price is if what you are trying to state that, but you didn't state that clearly.

No, that wasn't what I was saying.

[jghn]

There is a 0% chance that I'd put in the effort to get an offer from a company just to set my price with a company I'd like to work for. No company is worth that headache.

If I happen to already have a competing offer, sure. But when job searching I'm not carpet bombing resumes, I'm targeting specific companies that I think would be a match.

[lotsofpulp]

Then that is the price of not having the headache. Markets work best when buyers AND sellers are constantly engaging in negotiations.

[janalsncm]

Markets also work best without information asymmetry.

[grogenaut]

wouldn't this mean that your company is also negotiating your salary down regularly?

[lotsofpulp]

They do, by not giving appropriate raises. Adjusting down nominally is typically done via terminating everyone and telling them to reapplying.

Though, in at least a somewhat healthy company, adjusting down nominally leaves too much of a bad taste, so layoffs are used instead where the remaining employees’ pay to qualify of life at work ratio goes down (more work responsibilities, more hours, less amenities at work, etc).

[jghn]

This is where pay transparency [1] comes in. If employees can see what other people are making and it's clear that old hands are getting the shaft, then old hands will leave.

Also the last few places I've been at have made a conscious attempt to reset once a year or two to combat this effect. I can't speak to prior employers as that was before I started to be privy to how the sausage was made. Companies that don't reset compensation aren't worth working for.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38167969

[lotsofpulp]

Transparency helps a lot, but is not sufficient. Labor buyers can also be knowledgeable about their labor supplier's other options, so if they are the only game in town (such as in smaller towns/metros), they might choose to adopt a more take it or leave it attitude.

[dymk]

That's why you find two companies you'd like to work for, and have them compete against each other. This is just job hunting basics.

[no_wizard]

In practice, this can get dubious.

You'd be surprised how many companies will simply pull you out of the candidate process and decline the offer. Companies you would probably work for, to be honest.

This works when you're pitting say, Netflix vs Meta or Apple vs Microsoft, or Google vs Amazon etc. but if you go down the ladder just a little, you'd be shocked at how much this doesn't work, is all.

I feel like its too general of advice to say you can simply play two companies off each other.

There's other tactics too, like setting a high minimum acceptable amount of compensation upfront, that one can use.

Its all a little risky in a way

[dymk]

I believe that this has been your experience - I can only offer my own as another data point.

I've done the "two competing offers" thing four or five times at companies big and small. I've never had a company rescind an offer or ghost. In fact they all seem to expect a competing offer; all have asked "Are you interviewing anywhere else?" at some point.

I agree with discussing a minimum early on in the interview process. It's a good smoke test to ensure neither party's time is being wasted.

[sokoloff]

I’ve never heard of a company pulling an offer because a candidate was applying somewhere else.

As a hiring manager, I’ve certainly never done it, because I basically don’t care where else you’re considering working. I’ll put our situation (project, team, comp, culture, etc) forward and you decide if you think it’s your best option. We might negotiate a tiny amount, but if you find a place that’s a lot better for you, you should go there, but I’m not pulling back the offer we made.

[no_wizard]

I do want to clarify, its not common (the pull the offer part), but I've had a friend go through it, and I once had it happen.

More often, alot of times the company will say something about going with the other offer, like you stated, or something in that ballpark.

A couple times though, I had a company dutifully try and convince me that the perks and work-life balance were better, even thought the salary maybe was not. That was an interesting one.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

If you told me I got a ton of vacation time for a significant salary cut I would seriously consider the offer. Or some 4-day workweek setup. Those are the kind of things I would take a significant chunk of less money for.

[jghn]

It rarely happens that I'm both looking for work and also am open to more than one company at that time.

But I haven't been in a true job hunt where I'm just hoping someone picks me out of a pile for over 20 years.

[dymk]

Neither have I :-)

[buildbot]

or “unethically” (depending on your ethics!), you could just _say_ you have a competing offer. Unless there is like some secret hiring manager slack where people ask each other “did you really send that person an offer?”.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

You don’t even have to disclose the company during negotiation, I’ve simply said “I have an offer from a Series A company with X equity and Y salary” so they have something to benchmark against

[eschneider]

Sure, you can do that. But aside from the ethics of it, there's always a chance that they won't counteroffer and just say "Maybe you should go with that higher offer."

You really don't want to bring up a "competing offer" unless you're prepared to take the counteroffer/just walk away.

[tyingq]

You did used to be able to similarly overstate your current salary, and then something quite a lot more formal than "secret slack channel" evolved. And it's often not accurate. Urgh.

[rglullis]

There is, but if I give more details my life will be in danger.

[pxx]

The counteroffer can easily be conditioned on seeing a copy of your offer. They don't need to see it today, but they might when you start your job...

[nixass]

In what world would this be considered normal lol

[vsareto]

How far are they going to go to validate it’s legit if you make one up?

But say you don’t want to forge one for just any company because that might not be legal. You could make your own company with a site and make offer letters that way.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

All you say in this case is that "the actual offer letters are proprietary information of the company that I'm applying to and I'm not at liberty to share them" or some similar verbiage.

FWIW I've done this several times (multiple offer scenarios where I have companies compete against each other for me) and never once has a company asked to see actual proof of the other offers on condition of hiring me. If that was a condition, I would say, sorry, I'll go with one of the other ones

[LtWorf]

Well, I can print a piece of paper...

[photonbeam]

The timing on this is rather difficult though, and its non trivial time and effort

[lotsofpulp]

In any market, sellers should always be constantly seeking buyers and negotiating prices if they are interested in receiving the highest prices.

[LispSporks22]

Honestly after sometimes weeks long latencies waiting on “proceeding to the next step”, ludicrous leetcode exercises and design Twitter, or worse - their business - from scratch on this here virtual whiteboard, I’m so buggered I’m gonna take the first number out of their mouths.

[the_only_law]

Yeah I had a situation where I had an offer for Job A, but really preferred Job B (Job A required me to move which I really didn't want to do). The recruiter for Job B gave me the impression that the interview process was going to be quick enough that'd I'd have time time to take it before I would have to accept A instead. Instead, I hear nothing, assume I was ghosted until fucking weeks after I moved and started Job A, Job B calls asking me to do a final round.

Even worse, im just now getting interviews/rejections for jobs I applied to months ago.