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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

> But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating.

Unless you have some kind of very unique skill or you have other offers and the company really, really wants you, how exactly are you supposed to negotiate?

Every comp negotiation I've ever had with a company has gone kind of like this:

    [Company]: Here's your offer for $X.

    [Me]: I'd like $Y.

    [Company]: Your offer is for $X.

    [Me]: Well, I think I bring skill A, B, and C to the table, and here is some data showing someone with my experience tends to make $Y.

    [Company]: We don't care. Your offer is for $X. Are you interested or not?

    [Me]: How about vacation time or benefits? Or maybe salary vs. equity? Can these be adjusted?

    [Company]: <yawn> if you don't want $X, there's the door. We have 35 other candidates in the hiring pipeline.

What magical incantations are you guys speaking that allow you to make any progress against these brick walls? I've never once, in my 25 year career history, ever gotten a company to offer more than their initial offer.

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Negotiation start and stop with BATNA - Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement.

The employers BATNA is they go to the pool of 35 other candidates. Yours is you go back to your job.

If your job hunting first when your sick to death of your job, your BATNA isn’t very strong.

If this is your only offer, your BATNA isn’t very strong.

If you’re one paycheck away from being out of the street, your BATNA isn’t very strong.

See where I’m going with this?

This comment reads the same to me replacing “BATNA” with “alternative”.

Obviously, as the other letters of the acronym only describe what kind of alternative it is.

I think a better way to phrase your critique would be: "acronyms harm the flow of your text - they're best used sparingly"

I am struggling to come up with a sentence where using the acronym "BATNA" provides additional utility compared to just using "alternative" (or "option").

In seemingly all situations, a decision maker is considering their most preferred alternatives rather than their least preferred alternatives.

The BATNA acronym helps people understand negotiating a bit better, but outside of education, I don't see that it has much use.

I would have thought the concept of 'leverage' is more useful.

I'll do you one even better: "Never land in a situation where you just got fired and have to find a job quickly. Easy, right?".

That's what 99.9% of all negotiation advice I ever saw boils down to. Basically beat the game before it beats you.

Really cute... until you remember most people don't live to "play the negotiation game". They want a stable paycheck and to raise their family.

But who's asking, right.

It boils down to being able to walk away .. but you're totally right, most people are never able to be in that position. It's a luxury for most.

True, and thanks for acknowledging it. I admit I am really tired of cookie-cutter advice lately and sometimes get triggered and call it out in less than a productive tone. Thanks for not reacting to it. :)

Because it matters that the BATNA is outside the negotiation.

Why does that matter? I would like to see a sentence or scenario where “BATNA” is not interchangeable with “alternative” or “option” or some other synonym.

I read the Wikipedia page, but I’m still unclear what information I gain from BATNA over just “best alternative” or “second best option/choice”.

Because it is more precise.

'Alternative' or 'option', leave the question 'to what?'.

Unless we’re in a situation where violence concludes every interaction, “negotiated agreement” is the presumed conclusion of every interaction.

I declined this job offer because I had BATNA.

I declined this job offer because I had a better option.

I negotiated more PTO because I had a BATNA.

I negotiated more PTO because I had a better alternative.

It's an educational concept. Not something you'd use in a sentence like that.

I think you're being a pendent.

Sure, but that’s why I originally replied to brtkdotse, since their comment did use it in a sentence like that.

> I think you're being a pendent.

Oh god help me....

I'm glad someone noticed!

(But a little disappointed my trap wasn't successful ..)

Despicable. A pox on your house.

Well you could have a negotiation like so:

Recruiter: The offer is $100k.

Me: I want 120k and WFH.

Recruiter: I checked with the manager. The best we can do is either 120k but you show up every day or 90k remote.

Me: I'm already paid 110k and work remote. Sorry.

Recruiter: Oh, alright. We can't afford that. We'll continue our search with other candidates. Thanks for your time.

Both "options" presented by the recruiter are "alternatives" and they're both "negotiated agreements" (i.e. a meeting in the middle).

BATNA is short for what you get when negotiations fail and you walk away with no deal. (In this case, staying at the 110k remote job is one party's, the other party's is to keep interviewing more candidates.)

I had once had this aversion to neologisms for the sake of them too. Then I took some math classes and understood that saying "ring" is better than saying "commutative group with multiplication satisfying the following axioms...". Ultimately, it's helpful to invoke words that a group of people commonly understands, even if it seems to the uninitiated that it's saying nothing of importance.

The word "BATNA" is used a lot in discussions on negotiations. These books are full of tips on thinking about/finding out your counterpart's BATNA, coming to the negotiation table with a strong BATNA, conveying your BATNA to the other person, etc. In this context, the word/acronym conveys a very specific meaning that unspecialized English words like "option" and "alternative" don't capture.

BATNA is kind of a dog whistle that this is a slighty hostile business deal. Hostile under the hood. Smiles and handshakes on the surface.

That is every negotiation I’ve ever seen, frankly. What else would you expect?

Friendly tends to be called ‘charity’

Friendly would be win win. We'll pay you so you dont worry about money, and we win because you are great. Batna (looks better as a word) is there but in the distance.

Win/win also has some teeth under it somewhere, or they’d just give you everything yes? In your scenario, why not give you a billion dollars vs a million vs 100k?

BATNA (and I am every familiar with the term, as I’ve had to do a significant amount of negotiation) is the ‘plan B’ if there is no acceptable ‘good’ agreement.

If someone has no acceptable BATNA, their negotiation is essentially ‘please don’t beat me up too bad’, not ‘let’s see if we can agree on something that works for both of us’. No BATNA means you aren’t effectively negotiating, just begging to not be abused too badly.

Sometimes an employer doesn’t have a BATNA option, but that is rare. Usually it’s the employee which doesn’t have a plan B.

A BATNA when doing negotiations over salary, for instance, might be taking another offer with an otherwise less desirable company. Or continuing a job search for more time. Or becoming a sugar baby for an older woman somewhere, etc. or filing for bankruptcy.

Knowing what your own (and what the other sides) plan B is, is important to actually have a successful negotiation, because when your offer starts to look less desirable than their plan B, it isn’t going to go well.

Since you said you have a lot of negotiation experience, how do you negotiate if you were let go and have to quickly find a job?

Sure. But it’s a domain specific term within negotiation that easily researchable if someone would want to learn more.

Just trying to be helpful :)

Yeah this was always step 1 to negotiations as I learned it. The goal was always to try and schedule interviews so you could land multiple offers at one time. If you have 2-3 offers and an existing job your position is insanely strong.

If you are unemployed and this is your first offer in 3 months you cant really negotiate... just take it if it is a reasonable offer.

> See where I’m going with this?

No. Could you elaborate?

The crass answer is maybe you’re not able to negotiate well enough to get more than the initial offer.

The less crass answer: In almost every company, you’re being hired on a salary band, so unless you’re at the top of that band in the initial offer there is room to go up, so you can typically push a bit higher. The trick is to make a request that’s higher than what they initially offer but not so high that they outright reject it without additional conversation, and if they are play hardball, and don’t budge on anything, you just reject their offer. It does mean you have to be comfortable rejecting an otherwise decent or good offer, but presumably most companies are willing to negotiate with a good candidate so this shouldn’t be a problem in practice if the negotiation is done in a considered way.

Not in Europe. I have successfully raised my paycheck during negotiations, likely two, maybe three times, over 23 years of career (I mean I sucked at anything business-related throughout 95% of it but hey), and it was done begrudgingly and I burned some bridges and was then first on the chopping block when the company started struggling.

As mentioned upthread in another comment: all the negotiation advice boils down to "start looking for a job while you have a job". Nobody is ever giving good advice how to get a good salary when your arse is on the wall (i.e. you have no option but to find a job in the next 2-3 months).

Hiring manager here. The best way to negotiate is to have multiple offers. Hiring is not fun on our side either. Hundreds of candidates with mostly-identical resumes apply for every open posting. Evaluating resumes and interviewing is a huge time suck. Unless we're at the absolute top of the pay band for the role I'd rather give an extra $10K to someone than go back to the pool, but only under two conditions. One, the applicant has to be rated very highly by the interview panel, not just "I'd be OK with hiring this person." Second, I have to believe that there is a reasonable chance the applicant will actually walk away if I don't raise their offer.

People can & will walk away for reasons other than competing offer. It also depends on how badly they want to get a new job. I both have and have seen others interview on the basis of "sure, why not" and if the pot isn't sweet enough then whatever.

That said, people in this position should cite how sweet that pot needs to be upfront instead of after the fact. But that doesn't always happen.

But see - that's part of "negotiation" too - you need to make them want you before you hit them with higher demands. If you're up-front you might not even get the interview.

If I know what will make me leave my current job, it's not worth my time to "get the interview" if they won't give me that amount.

Also, as a hiring manager, the one way people found themselves with me saying "That's great, go screw" was when it was clear they were playing us comp-wise by lowballing us to get their foot in the door & then raising the bar once the offer came. That's deceptive, and a character flaw I don't want to deal with in an employee.

Now if you mean keep your cards close to the vest and don't reveal your number until after they give theirs, then I agree. That's good negotiating tactics. But it's not always possible. And now we're back to who is in direr straights: is the candidate willing to walk away if the company demands a number & they don't want to give one? Is the company willing to lose a candidate in this situation? Whomever blinks first wins the day on this one.

> when it was clear they were playing us comp-wise by lowballing us to get their foot in the door & then raising the bar once the offer came. Isn’t this just the mirror of a relatively common business practise? At least among smaller companies (maybe non US)

As a candidate, if I detect that happening I also nope out as soon as possible.

Agreed. Regardless of reason, you need to be prepared to walk away if you are serious about negotiating.

I'll take this a step further and say that the optimal time to be job hunting is *before* you're motivated to find a new job: either wanting to leave your current one or finding yourself unemployed.

People always talk about competing offers, but your negotiating power will never be higher than when you literally don't care if you get an offer or not. If I'm perfectly content in my current gig, the only way I'm leaving is for a *serious* upgrade. And it's no skin off my teeth if I walk away from a bad deal.

Unless you’re seeking your first job in a specific industry, this advice is the most valuable in this thread. Competing offers are beneficial only if you’re already a well-known figure in your niche.

Not really, you just have to convince them they are.

Sometimes you're desperate for a job and they have you over a barrel, but there's no reason they need to know that.

The magic incantation is competing offer.

If they know you have alternatives, they are much more likely to negotiate. In fact the modern version of this guide is try to get several offers and negotiate them against each other (not you versus the company). Might be more difficult in the current market.

I'm not sure how this works in practice. This means that timing of the offers needs to align pretty closely. How long will a company let you sit on an offer before they move on? I've only ever interviewed or worked at companies that are at most a few hundred people. When I get an offer, I'm pressured for an answer within days. Once or twice I've been able to stretch that to like 2-3 weeks.

People just need to lie more often. In many cases, they will not verify anything. If they require proof, you can say everything was a verbal offer with no official documentation. That's often how it is because many recruiters don't want to go through the paperwork process before there's an agreement.

That said, I've found the "competing offer" element to be of little to no value. Even when I had 7 competing offers, not one of them negotiated more than maybe 10% on the amount. The one that gave me the largest bump didn't even need to know about competing offers - they just wanted to know what would get me to sign. I said X and they did it.

> That said, I've found the "competing offer" element to be of little to no value. Even when I had 7 competing offers, not one of them negotiated more than maybe 10% on the amount.

Thank you, glad to see not everyone in this thread is a super-rich SV engineer that never had to even lift a finger to get the next job.

>The magic incantation is competing offer.

Depends on the company. If you were applying where I work and tried to use a competing offer to get a better offer, they'd just suggest you go with the other offer.

Depends on what an employer is looking for: A relatively better pool of candidates or those who don't know how to ask for things.

Ask all you like, you'll just get a generic "thanks, we decided to move forward with another candidate" response maximum at reply number three.

Wish more people on HN worked at least 5 years outside the USA. It would give them valuable insights.

So in other words, the offer is non-negotiable?

In that case you could still work for that company, but would your company offer a higher salary with any other negotiating strategy?

This competing offer thing is relatively new and restricted to the top internet and wall street kind of companies. Where there is too much money and they just want people at the top of the ladder all the time, even if they don't need them.

This kind of requires companies winning above and beyond anybody else. Those are rare.

Every where else, its work as usual and people as usual. Nobody is important. People join and leave all the time. They could care less about whatever other offers you have.

That does not match my experience. In small companies, I've asked for more and simply gotten it. At large companies, I've asked for more and in most cases they are willing to move the number as long as I don't push the role up to a higher level/band in their HR structure. And my most recent role, they specifically told me that they would need to give me a higher role/title for the money I wanted... I replied, "Great, re-write the offer for a different role, then." They called me back a couple days later with exactly that.

So I'd call their bluff. When they ask if you want the lower offer, say no. I can tell you that most places have recruiters being told to get you in the door for as little as possible... but still to get you in the door.

> [Company]: <yawn> if you don't want $X, there's the door. We have 35 other candidates in the hiring pipeline.

That's partly bluff. Hiring a good candidate is costly.

If they make you an offer, they have already sunk the costs of screening you. Having you exit at the negotiation stage is never free for them. You always have some wiggle room.

You are correct but here's the kicker: most companies are as blind as newborn kittens when it comes to the costs of hiring and firing people.

So they are shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly but why do you care, you still didn't get hired.

>Unless you have some kind of very unique skill or you have other offers and the company really, really wants you, how exactly are you supposed to negotiate?

You can play hardball or softball. Hardball works when you have competing offers, and risks your offer being pulled.

Alternatively, you can just ask nicely. I've had luck saying something akin to "hey I'm super excited to join BigCo. I'm just curious, is there any way to move up the comp at all? Just checking, I don't know what the bands are, but if you can come up some, that'd be great. Either way, let me know I don't want to hold anything up, I'm excited to start".

Guess what? Sometimes the hiring manager has the power to come up 5,10,15k if you just ask. I've had luck and other times I've been told "nope" but i've never had anyone be upset.

> risks your offer being pulled

This is almost never a real risk. At worst they will say they can’t budge on price and you need to decide within some deadline (which is also somewhat of a bluff).

Maybe instead of:

> [Me]: I’d like $Y

You could try:

> [Me]: That matches my base salary at the moment but my current employer gives me healthcare and a car allowance so I would be out of pocket if I moved from my current job. In addition I currently am eligible for a 10% bonus. Would you consider an additional $5k/yr to cover some of this? I would love to move… although I can’t justify a pay cut, but think this is a really good opportunity and would love to work with you so hope we can make something work.

Ie you gotta give them a reason to justify paying you more, and to think that paying more is required for you taking the job. Also you have to be realistic in how much you ask (smaller amounts are more likely to be accepted, larger amounts pay more but are more likely to be rejected outright as if something is too large you can’t really counteroffer)

[Company]: We don't care. Your offer is for $X. Are you interested or not?

I am not.

They could say that, but they haven’t to me in the past.

Of course people can say no to things, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask when there is a good probability that they would say yes (particularly if you ask for the right amount in the right way) and very little downside.

This, I've never worked for a company where negotiation was an option. The current company has a team that's part of HR that does salary stuff and they pretty much have final say on the offer that's a take it or leave it deal. You can maybe push back once through your recruiter asking them to reconsider based on years of experience or something, but only really if they somehow didn't have that information initially.

Slight correction:

The last company's letter would be:

    [Company]: We have decided to move forward with another candidate. Thank you for your time and good luck on your search!

And I agree, these HN threads always shock me to no end. I keep finding apparently you can negotiate when you are in the demonstrably weaker position. I still haven't heard those magical incantations and I, like you, keep asking but nobody is telling.

Apparently they are secret.

Every hiring manager with any experience should anticipate that candidates are likely to negotiate.

Therefore, any offer should be backed by logic of the form "we want to hire this candidate for $Y or less. We will make an initial of $X (X < Y), so that we have room to negotiate upwards when they ask."

In my experience, usually Y==(X * 1.1).

Strange, I've never had a company not go up from their initial offer. It's almost like it's baked in.

IME I've found there to be the expectation that there's about 10-15% available for negotiation to make the candidate feel like they got a win. Of course, some exceptions may apply.

You live and work in the USA?

Negotiations require two parties willing to negotiate.

In your example one is not, so negotiations aren't possible.

Successful negotiations require more than two parties. That’s the whole point. If you are only getting one offer then you are leaving money on the table. You need to “create a market” by getting multiple. And if you’ve only got one, then stall as much as you can to find another (which could be a counteroffer from your current employer).

“Negotiate from a position of strength” is evergreen advice.

> We have 35 other candidates in the hiring pipeline

Sounds like low skill, or entry-level work. or nah?

It's a combination of the current market and the area of work. One Elixir position I want had their hiring guy say on Slack they now have 900+ applications and that's some short 2 weeks after the job ad was posted. Crazy.

1. Tell them you have one other offer (or late stage interview).

2. Ask for more money and/or more shares (if you think the shares are any good).

“Thank you; have a nice day and good luck in your search!”

90% of the time it's the companies saying that.

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