[readams]

In a negotiation, don't focus on what you think is fair. Instead consider your best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA). You need to have them believe you have lots of other excellent options, and negotiate against that. One way is of course job offers elsewhere, and usually the best.

[eastbound]

I agree with that. I have plenty of applicants who did that, and through the process it became very clear they didn’t care what they were bringing on the table and what was the value of their work, they just cared to up the stakes and get more. As a buyer, someone who wants cutthroat rates today will also want to increase their rate after their skills are demonstrated in the company (“See my skills are useful. Give me 20% more now or I leave”), it 100% lose during the rampup period, then the extra makes it 20% more expensive. Obviously none of them work here.

I’ve tracked a few of those profiles. Startups they joined fail or struggle. I guess that’s how you make money.

[JSDevOps]

Why on earth does BATNA Need to exist as an acronym

[tomcam]

Because it’s an OAT (occasionally useful term)

[guimaraes]

Wait a minute...

[Agingcoder]

Wam?

[MattPalmer1086]

The same reason other acronyms exist?

[ManchesterDev]

I do agree with this. But bluff will be called about other offers, and not enough time to get any active before supplying my response.

[crdrost]

Note that you have a best alternative, even if you don't improve it.

The goal is to have an active comparison, “if they just said no to everything here is what I would do and what that is worth to me.” And, you want to know the other party's best alternative, too, because you want to be able to say “I know we can do better than outcomes A and B.”

Negotiations “want” to be zero-sum and you have to constantly prop them up. There's actually strange parallels to this in theology and political science, complex multidimensional things getting collapsed to Left vs Right or God vs Satan and so forth. So we want to focus on one number, the salary, and party X wants it higher but Y wants it lower, now you have a zero sum game.

But the point of negotiation is the multidimensional space. “I want to work with you, we're on the same team here, we both want me to continue at this workplace and flourish...” is possible precisely because the space is not us-vs-them.

It's a little bit of a pipe dream but the ideal negotiation kind of sounds like, “oh, you're not able to pay me more than my manager? OK, what about getting me to be a team lead so that I am on the right trajectory? You don't have a spot for that? Well I have been thinking about starting a family, how about we explore a policy that would make it easy for me to take a chunk of that time off. No? What about these wonderful experiments with the four day work week, do you want to try those? Hum. Well, if we are really stuck on all of those, here's articles about how private companies with ESOPs beat the pants off of other companies, how can we get me some equity? Takes too long? I mean I can wait, just not forever. Want to meet in 30 days and we'll keep in touch on Slack about some of these ideas and float them to senior management?”

(Here notice that the “best alternative” is explicit, “we meet again about my career development in a month.”)

[smodo]

This is one of the key understandings regarding negotiations. They are not adversarial by nature. They can devolve into a tug of war but only if the scope is extremely limited. Expanding the scope by openly considering multiple benefits and outcomes is usually a good idea. Also, it’s good to know where you want things to go after the deal. If you foresee more opportunities in the future, you can set those up now.

[ManchesterDev]

I think I got about 60% of that, but the penultimate paragraph helped a lot. I’ll have to get a beer and mull over what those best alternatives might look for me if it’s a no to salary.

[scoofy]

I believe the previous comment is referencing the book Getting to Yes, which I think is fairly standard curriculum in business school. I have not read it, but it's on my list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes

[crdrost]

So if there was a reference there was totally unintentional, haha. Haven't read the book.

Like I said in a small aside, this actually has a weird parallel in Christian theology, which is one of my geeky interests. In particular the panreligious mystic Gurdjieff has a “Law of Three” where instead of creating an opposition, a dualism, a zero-sum “good vs evil, right vs wrong” scenario, you understand a Third Force as reconciling the other two.

So, the wind wants to push a boat in one direction, the waves want to push it in a different direction: but it is the operation of the sail and keel and captain/helm who has a destination in mind, which takes these opposing forces and creates a new reality, a Course or Journey. In this new reality both of the forces which would have opposed each other are actually satisfied, they come to a negotiated equilibrium where they each succeed. The wind did not quiet the waves and get it's way; the waves did not stop the wind. But because they are blowing freely in opposite directions, the mediation takes place and a larger space is realized.

So then it is fun to read Christian theology in this light. The idea is that the Trinity is actually viewable as precisely this sort of triad, and so in this sense of reality is negotiated reality, the Christian message is that God is a negotiation. And this sounds like New Age poppycock until you realize that it's basically the view of St Thomas Aquinas. Like all of the scholastics very much viewed the Trinity as an interdependence, you literally cannot speak of the Son without talking about the Father in a parent-child dynamic: that's what it means to be a son. And that dynamic you can't talk about without the spirit of familial love that pervades it, but that Spirit of love cannot be talked about independently of the parties involved either. And so the medieval view is kind of that God is sort of Unity at the core of existence, rather than Opposition.

So that's the stuff that I geek out about that informed my view on what negotiation is and how it works in the ideal case.

[janstice]

The other factor is that it’s just a job - you are not getting married! You can take their offer, and if it doesn’t work out or if something better comes along, you can just resign.

[readams]

Another commenter noted also that this shouldn't be a bluff. Here's an example of the kind of thing that could be helpful: "I love working here and I can really see continuing my career here for a long time. So I'm really hoping we can come to an agreement so that this makes sense."

This gets them thinking about you as a market participant and not about how small a raise they can give you. Even if you don't have active offers, understanding your value in the market is really important.

[MattPalmer1086]

BATNA is not about bluffing. It's about you genuinely understanding what your best alternative is if you can't reach agreement. This helps you negotiate better.

So if you think you can definitely get better offers (even if you don't have one now), that will influence your negotiating position to go for a higher offer.

[MattPalmer1086]

A personal example of this. A company I was working for made a lot of people redundant, although they wanted to retain me. I wasn't happy with the situation, not least because I would end up shouldering a lot more work in the reduced team. I knew I could find work somewhere else at least on what I was getting (with less responsibility). So I asked for a raise to retain me.

They refused, and I resigned immediately. I found a much better role, on more money, with better career opportunities quite quickly. My BATNA meant I could ask for the raise with some confidence. Of course you have to be willing to follow through; I wasn't bluffing.

[ManchesterDev]

That’s helpful, I’ve never thought about it like this before. It’s kind of what you believe is the best alternative out there and using that. A bit like hypothesis testing and gathering evidence.

Probably easier to be as aggressive as you were if there has been a significant negative change in the company vs a positive friendly environment which I have.