I've hired a lot of people recently, so maybe my opinion here will be interesting.
With one notable exception, all the women flagged "negotiate me down" signals harder and more often than the men. I asked, "So your salary ask is $X monthly?" And instantly returned, "Yeah, but we can talk about it..."
That just screams "negotiate me down."
I don't do it, because I want to pay my people top of market, have them think of themselves as the best, and build a culture of inspired performance. I actually negotiated that woman's pay up 25% of her ask (which was too low), but even with cultural considerations in mind in a high-margin high-dollar industry, it was still painful for me not to negotiate down.
To be very blunt and crass about it, hopefully for helpful illustrative purposes, it's like the guy who has a, "Please don't kick me" sign on his ass. You can restrain yourself not to, but it's painful.
If you're going to be their manager, it's in your interest to have their salary outcome have parity with other people doing similar work. Later on, if the employee gets unhappy with their comparative situation, it's much harder to fix a disparity with annual raises than it would have been to do the fair thing to begin with.
If their pay is too low, you have made yourself a persistent problem that will be hard to fix.
Thanks for this. I recently left a pretty damn good job except that I was extremely underpaid. They tried to point out they were trying to fix it with a generous annual raise, which was nice, but no where near enough.
I've been struggling trying to explain the situation to myself but you nailed it.
If you still like the original place, you can always go back after a few years, using your new rate as a negotiating tool.
The other option (while still at the original place) is to get an offer from another company. Then, assuming you have your manager's support, take that to HR and ask for an out-of-cycle increase.
Often by the time it gets this far, people are discontented enough to be at the point of walking away anyway.
I'm thinking 110K. He says 85K "but with some extra vacation that can be 80K".
Personally, I still offer the salary I think is right. But the lesson is: don't negotiate yourself down. Don't say "but I can lower that" immediately. Wait for them to say "that's beyond what we pay" or something.
With one notable exception, all the women flagged "negotiate me down" signals harder and more often than the men. I asked, "So your salary ask is $X monthly?" And instantly returned, "Yeah, but we can talk about it..."
That just screams "negotiate me down."
I don't do it, because I want to pay my people top of market, have them think of themselves as the best, and build a culture of inspired performance. I actually negotiated that woman's pay up 25% of her ask (which was too low), but even with cultural considerations in mind in a high-margin high-dollar industry, it was still painful for me not to negotiate down.
To be very blunt and crass about it, hopefully for helpful illustrative purposes, it's like the guy who has a, "Please don't kick me" sign on his ass. You can restrain yourself not to, but it's painful.