I’ve helped a few people negotiate salaries at tech companies, and my experience has been people always bring me in too late. You want to have multiple active offers at the same time so you can get them to bid against each other. For example, when I came back to Google I did:
Google made me an offer
Facebook beat Google’s offer
Amazon declined to match either offer
Google beats Facebook’s offer
Facebook beats Google’s offer
Google matches Facebook’s offer
The ideal for you is lots of back and forth, which is the opposite of what they want. They want to cut it short and will say things like “You’re asking for a lot, but I think might be able to get it for you if I talk to my boss. If we can do $X can you confirm you’ll accept it?” You want to be positive enough that they’ll come back with an offer of $X, but not so positive that you have no negotiating room left if they accept it.
You can often get the timing to work late in the game by stalling the company that gave you the offer, and telling other companies that you already have an offer so you need an accelerated process.
I’ve helped a few people negotiate salaries at tech companies, and my experience has been people always bring me in too late. You want to have multiple active offers at the same time so you can get them to bid against each other. For example, when I came back to Google I did:
Google made me an offer
Facebook beat Google’s offer
Amazon declined to match either offer
Google beats Facebook’s offer
Facebook beats Google’s offer
Google matches Facebook’s offer
The ideal for you is lots of back and forth, which is the opposite of what they want. They want to cut it short and will say things like “You’re asking for a lot, but I think might be able to get it for you if I talk to my boss. If we can do $X can you confirm you’ll accept it?” You want to be positive enough that they’ll come back with an offer of $X, but not so positive that you have no negotiating room left if they accept it.
You can often get the timing to work late in the game by stalling the company that gave you the offer, and telling other companies that you already have an offer so you need an accelerated process.