Thoughts on Salary Negotiations

Let’s face it, most people are terrible negotiators. That’s why so many people dread shopping for a car; they don’t like the thought of haggling with a tough, experienced salesman. They are outmatched in that game; it’s like bringing a dull butter knife to a gunfight.

It doesn’t get much better when you are negotiating a job offer. At least when you’re shopping for cars you can consult fairly accurate pricing guides on the Internets; for the job market however the online salary guides are outdated at best and grossly misleading at worst. So candidates often have very little to go on when they consider whether an offer is a good one.

Regardless of all the inefficiencies however, the job (pricing) market is remarkably efficient in practice. Most of the candidates I see have salary expectations that are fairly close to what I would consider to be their fair market value. Perhaps it’s because they have interviewed at many places and have developed a feel for the market; it might also be that recruiters have given them some indication of their market value. And recruiters should have as good of a pulse on the market as anyone.

We do get outliers, of course, where weak candidates ask for outrageous salaries, but most likely they will get the message after they’ve interviewed with a few companies. Conversely we also get great candidates who are accustomed to a low salary and have no idea how much more they might get in a fair market – though that tends to be the rare exception.

It’s interesting that the job market in Southern California for .NET web engineers is large enough to provide sufficient liquidity for predictable pricing, yet small enough that each transaction can affect the overall market price, if only subtly. Each offer I make can influence what other candidates and their recruiters expect to see offered on the next job.

Anyway, the more interesting topic for you as the candidate is obviously how you can maximize the salary component of your offer. In a way that goal is a bit short sighted, as the salary is often not the most important component of the offer. The job’s responsibilities, career path, technologies used, company reputation & prospects, benefits, etc., may affect the attractiveness of the job much more than the salary.

Still, if you are interested in maximizing the salary component of the offer, that will be the subject of my next blog post.