Avoiding offer negotiation pitfalls – for new grads

One big thing I wanted to clear up is that I'm addressing college hires' broken mental models of compensation package and ranges, and that "narrow range" means different things to different people - the founder's definition of 'narrow range' is different than the engineer's.

Say as a founder, you offer 100k to someone. You're mentally allowing yourself to go to 115k base at most. That may be a relatively narrow range to you. But to most candidates (especially out of college) that 15k is a massive bump, and can make or break an offer. If they're afraid of asking for more because they assume they can't, then they will just end up saying "No", if someone else gives them more money.

We've actually prevented a couple cases of new grads feeling they had to turn down a $100k base salary offer at a startup, simply because they felt that asking for $115k would build bad blood. In every case the founder was happy to bump the base to $115k because it wasn't a large deviation, even though it felt like it to the new grad.