Personal anecdote: I literally just asked while on the phone with the recruiter for negotiating for a six-month contract last year in NYC. At the time, I was getting about $67K.
Recruiter: "Our client is offering $45/hr for the position, what do you think of the offer?"
Myself: "How close to $50/hr can we get?"
Recruiter: "He can do $50/hr."
That was all it took, and that was the discussion about it verbatim. It's hard when you're already in the position and you have to negotiate a higher raise with your boss because you need to prove you're worth it by performance(and whether or not you meet their metrics, etc etc), but in the interview process, that's how it went for me.
As someone who's been on the hiring side most of my career: I've never given my "best and final offer" to a potential hire right away. Doing so is leaving money on the table, as most hires accept the first offer made to them unless it's totally out of the ballpark.
But that also conversely means that not asking for more than you get offered is leaving money on the table.
If they clamor to accept right way, I'm left wondering if I offered too much.
I've also never terminated discussions with someone, or known about situations where that happened, without providing at least one counter offer. I'm sure it could happen, but as long as you're not being an ass about the way you're doing it, few people will turn around and decide not to hire you just because you try to get more money. If anything I want the people who have the confidence to ask, rather than the one that just quietly accept what's offered.
> If they clamor to accept right way, I'm left wondering if I offered too much.
I doubt that it's ever "too much", but sometimes it can just be a matter of appeasement or desperation. I told the same story above to a friend of mine who had been out of work for at least one or perhaps two years after finishing a degree from a video-game school as he was being offered a position as a web developer. I encouraged him to ask for just a little more than what he had offered, but he sent back an acceptance of the original offer from the employer as he was afraid of rocking the boat, and simply just wanted to get paid as bills began to mount up.
The original offer was for a $50K salary, which isn't terrible for starting out of school. In my eyes, I was slightly disappointed that he didn't even really try to get another $2000 or $3000, but in his position, he didn't want to risk losing the original $50K just for a little more.
I can understand that people are worried. But for anyone who reads this who fall in the worried category, I usually ask for at least 20%-30% more. Asking for just a tiny increase has never been something I'd even consider. There are situations I might settle for an increase in that range if the original offer was high enough, but I'd certainly ask for more than that. If asking for an increase that low is rocking the boat, there will be other problems with that employer...
A counter-intuitive trick for those who have trouble getting offers and/or worry about talking up their offers: Look for jobs below your desired salary range.
Most people look for jobs where any stated salary range match what they expect based on past experience - I see that in candidates for jobs I hire for all the times. Most candidates fit squarely within the range.
If you look for jobs slightly lower, it will often mean you interview against less skilled candidates than yourself. As long as you can convince the hiring manager you're not overqualified and looking to leave as soon as possible, it significantly increases your chances of an offer.
Once you have an offer, if you stand out skills wise, you'll be in a far stronger position to ask for more, even if you're asking for more than their salary range - everyone will have "invested" in you as their preferred choice, and standing out in terms of skills makes it easier to justify to HR to offer even beyond the top end of the range, sometimes beyond what they'd planned on stretching to.
I've seen this work from both sides of the table - psychologically it's hard to give up what is seen as a great deal, even when the other side makes the deal less and less attractive (by bumping up the salary requirements), and in the end people (on both ends) tend to be happier with deals where they've had to negotiate.
This method leaves the minimum on the table in theory, so I see why you find it attractive.
But it also leads to the situation where people's compensation is mostly based on how good they are at negotiation, not how good they are at their job. I would argue that this is not only unjust, but actually in the long term poisonous to your business.
People talk. They compare salaries. If the results are out of whack with perceived contribution, people get upset. If they're the kind of person who wouldn't negotiate a higher salary with you in the first place, they simply leave the company. And you're out a valuable employee because you tried to screw them on the margin for not negotiating.
Not a quick effect, granted, but if you plan to operate your business for longer than a couple years it seems to be very important to me.
I don't agree people's compensation will be mostly based on how good they are at negotiation. The range we'd consider will be based on our understanding of their skill.
But within that range, we'd never start at the top, not least because we need a buffer to deal with the candidates we really want that do negotiate.
If the rest are the kind of persons that don't know their worth and can't stand up for themselves enough to ask what they think they're worth, perhaps they're not worth that much in the first place.
I'm about as left wing as you get (enough so that I know plenty of people who where openly watched by security services in Norway back in the day...), but I also realized a long time ago that I was wasting my time (being politically active) fighting for what was in fact other peoples benefits, as I could easily get jobs at well above average rates while the people whose interests I fought for had no interest in it, or actively disagreed with the level of redistribution I believe is fair.
As long as the vast majority of people support a system that makes the above the natural corporate response, I don't see it as screwing them. I see it as rewarding the people who have skills that are valuable to the business (ability to stand up for themselves, and to negotiate) at the expense of those who can't really be bothered taking responsibility for themselves.
This isn't an issue where someone for whatever reason can't - everyone can look at the offer and say "is that the best you can do?", or "I was looking for X amount more; if you can meet that I can sign right away". If someone is so scared about standing up for themselves or care so little, I really don't want to pay them more. If that makes them leave sooner, then so be it.
Your argument makes great sense if you're hiring business development people, or sales people. Both of those kinds of jobs reward skill at negotiation.
But if you're hiring software engineers, it's just not true. There's a pretty strong negative bias against negotiation for most engineers, and it's not useful to the job. Being good at demanding higher compensation does not correlate with programming skill. I don't know what kind of employee you're hiring, but you really might be driving away some of the best people that way.
That said, I'd advise really just about anyone to get over themselves if they don't negotiate. You should always negotiate when you take a job, or at least try.
Any developer that needs to talk to product people, customers or other teams spend a substantial amount of time negotiating. Even when dealing with other team members you're constantly engaged in negotiation.
In my experience there's a strong correlation between ability to assert yourself and negotiate, and your ability to get your point of view through to a team and develop consensus around your solutions.
A developer can write brilliant code, but if they struggle to assert themselves enough or negotiate to get buy in for their views, they can often get steamrollered completely and the team end up shipping some mediocre solution that wasn't as hard to defend, written by someone who isn't afraid to make their voice heard.
Conversely, I've seen teams where some "high profile rock star" team member leaves, only for the rest of the team to breathe a collective sigh of relief that it's now ok to throw out his code and change most of the decisions he made that they disagreed deeply with but that they were unable to stand up to, despite in some cases outranking said developer.
As a result of those experiences, I want developers that can stand their ground and that are not afraid of fighting for what they want and believe is right, and that know how to do it in a manner that isn't confrontational but wins them respect. And no, I don't believe for a second that the meriot of the code itself is sufficient - so often it boils down to heated opinions.
A lot of other offers I had gotten at the time didn't budge after the initial offer, and they hadn't been as good as the one I accepted. I do see your point, though.
It seems my hosting provider's DNS company is under DDOS. Wait a while, it should let up. Alternatively, hitting reload a few time seems to work for me.
More specifically, when they make you an offer for $x/year, you say "how about $(x + 15)" instead of "holy crap yes yes yes!"
You can also try it at your current job if you've been there a while and haven't seen more than "cost of living" adjustments in your salary for a while. Though the sad reality is that it's usually a lot easier to ask another company instead and get your raises by switching jobs.
Years ago an interviewer asked me "Bob wanted me to ask you if $X was the number, would you be happy?"
I told him yes, I'd be happy with $X, but I'd be really happy with $(X + 3000). I got ($X + 3000).
How do you ask for it? (or how do you get there?)