Reveal Your Glittering Jewels

Only negotiate salary after you have agreement in principle from someone with hiring authority that, if a mutually acceptable compensation can be agreed upon, you will be hired.

Salary negotiations are very asymmetrical.  Companies know this and routinely exploit it. Job seekers don’t, perhaps because they think doing so would be unfair and the word “exploit” makes them acutely uncomfortable. So we often default by pretending tha...

The reality is that rich, successful people negotiate. It is an all-day-every-day thing in much of the business world, which is where most rich people get their money.

If you think about it, you’ll quickly reach the conclusion that the company has spent thousands of dollars just talking to you, and that doesn’t even count the thousands they spent deciding to talk to you instead of whoever isn’t in the room right now.

For this reason,

The job of recruiters is to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but generally a recruiter is not super motivated to do so, because it is not spending its money to hire you. A recruiter is spending its budget.

This is...

“Interesting” is a wonderful word: it is positive and non-commital at the same time. If they tell you a number, tell them it is an “interesting” number, not a “wonderful” number.