I’m told, and quite willing to believe, that your salary has more to do with the five minutes of salary negotiation than the next several years of work. I am also told that salary negotiation is very much a skill.
As such, it seems it would be worth a fairly substantial amount of time and money to practice and/or get coaching in this skill. Is this done? That is, how likely am I to be able to find someone, preferably someone who has worked on the business end of salary negotiation at somewhere like Google, who I can pay to practice salary negotiation with?
ETA: I’ve read extensively about how to negotiate (though of course there’s always something more). What I’m interested in is practice.
Referrals are the best source for finding someone involved in negotiation at a specific company. I believe that Google has HR negotiate salaries, so if you know any Googlers, asking them to introduce you to someone in HR will probably work.
If you haven’t done so already, you can get ~80% of the value here just by practicing with a random friend playing the role of hiring manager. As you mentioned, most of the value is in ingraining the behaviors through practice, not in the extra knowledge you get. So you don’t necessarily need a specialist for this.
If you are interested in Effective Altruism (donate 10% or more of your income or work at an EA organization) then I would be happy to help. I have successfully negotiated 80%+ raises before, and taught 7 people to negotiate with average results of 30% or more raises. About half of the teaching was role-played practice. Feel free to email me at satvik.beri@gmail.com .
Note that the comparison (more to do with X than Y) isn’t very helpful for cases where X and Y are not exclusive, and/or related. For this particular topic, the quality and quantity of work in many fields has a direct effect on your ability to negotiate for salary (for three reasons: your actual ability to positively impact the business, your confidence in asking for what you’re worth, and your (prospective) employer’s comfort level in treating you differently from your nominal peers).
Also, 5 minutes of salary negotiation is bull crap. There is no excuse not to spend dozen hours of research and have multiple 30 minute conversations every year or two. Of course, you should put the same level of thought and effort into other areas of job-satisfaction (commute, hours, duties, etc.) as well.
Note that the comparison (more to do with X than Y) isn’t very helpful for cases where X and Y are not exclusive, and/or related.
I find it helpful to model salary as
(value contributed) X (percentage extracted through negotiation)
in most cases. For a huge swathe of people a marginal hour in negotiation is worth much more than a marginal hour in contributing value. And “a marginal hour invested in Y produces more than a marginal hour in Z” is very useful information.
Also, 5 minutes of salary negotiation is bull crap. There is no excuse not to spend dozen hours of research and have multiple 30 minute conversations every year or two. Of course, you should put the same level of thought and effort into other areas of job-satisfaction (commute, hours, duties, etc.) as well.
I agree that you should be willing to spend a lot of time on negotiation, but would like to clarify that investing even an hour is often exceptionally valuable.
I’m told, and quite willing to believe, that your salary has more to do with the five minutes of salary negotiation than the next several years of work. I am also told that salary negotiation is very much a skill.
As such, it seems it would be worth a fairly substantial amount of time and money to practice and/or get coaching in this skill. Is this done? That is, how likely am I to be able to find someone, preferably someone who has worked on the business end of salary negotiation at somewhere like Google, who I can pay to practice salary negotiation with?
ETA: I’ve read extensively about how to negotiate (though of course there’s always something more). What I’m interested in is practice.
Referrals are the best source for finding someone involved in negotiation at a specific company. I believe that Google has HR negotiate salaries, so if you know any Googlers, asking them to introduce you to someone in HR will probably work.
If you haven’t done so already, you can get ~80% of the value here just by practicing with a random friend playing the role of hiring manager. As you mentioned, most of the value is in ingraining the behaviors through practice, not in the extra knowledge you get. So you don’t necessarily need a specialist for this.
If you are interested in Effective Altruism (donate 10% or more of your income or work at an EA organization) then I would be happy to help. I have successfully negotiated 80%+ raises before, and taught 7 people to negotiate with average results of 30% or more raises. About half of the teaching was role-played practice. Feel free to email me at satvik.beri@gmail.com .
I believe Ramit Sethi is the general recommendation here.
Note that the comparison (more to do with X than Y) isn’t very helpful for cases where X and Y are not exclusive, and/or related. For this particular topic, the quality and quantity of work in many fields has a direct effect on your ability to negotiate for salary (for three reasons: your actual ability to positively impact the business, your confidence in asking for what you’re worth, and your (prospective) employer’s comfort level in treating you differently from your nominal peers).
Also, 5 minutes of salary negotiation is bull crap. There is no excuse not to spend dozen hours of research and have multiple 30 minute conversations every year or two. Of course, you should put the same level of thought and effort into other areas of job-satisfaction (commute, hours, duties, etc.) as well.
I find it helpful to model salary as
(value contributed) X (percentage extracted through negotiation)
in most cases. For a huge swathe of people a marginal hour in negotiation is worth much more than a marginal hour in contributing value. And “a marginal hour invested in Y produces more than a marginal hour in Z” is very useful information.
I agree that you should be willing to spend a lot of time on negotiation, but would like to clarify that investing even an hour is often exceptionally valuable.
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