Aw crap, I can see you zoning out already because I mentioned that dirty, dirty N word: NEGOTIATING. It's a totally understandable misconception though because traditionally, negotiation is often portrayed as this horrible zero sum game where two opposing parties go in and grind each other down on price or quality. Sounds like fun!... NOT.
But this is the WRONG way to do negotiation. It's for amateurs. And we're definitely not amateurs - we're professionals, right?
Unfortunately, the vast majority of us programmers are notoriously bad at negotiating.
Patrick McKenzie (@patio11 / kalzumeus of Hacker News fame) sums it up best:
"We overwhelmingly suck at it. We have turned sucking at it into a perverse badge of virtue. We make no affirmative efforts to un-suck ourselves and, to the extent we read about it at all, we read bad advice and repeat it, pretending that this makes us wise."
And companies know this. As a result, we get taken advantage of - worse, we actively shy away from understanding, practicing, and mastering this skill from fear or ignorance.
Let's do the math. Say you started working right out of college at 23 and retire at 65.
65 - 23 = 42 working years.
Just a $5000 raise at your first job, carried across your lifetime is
$5000 * 42 = $210,000.
But this isn't just about the money, man! Obviously, your quality of life will improve. You can buy those shiny new toys you've been eyeing - maybe that new Macbook Air, or a plasma TV. You could finally take a vacation to your dream destination. But let's go further than the mere material benefits...
The best part (of course) is that this skill keeps on giving. Not only will you reap immediate rewards, but you'll also carry this salary increase across to your next job. And the next.
For life. It adds up to a HUGE amount of money across your lifetime.
I really hope that by now, you've warmed up to the idea of negotiating your salary. But you're probably wondering where to get started - you can't just go up to your boss and ask for a pay raise, right? That's where I come in!
My name is Han, and I'm a software engineer just like you except I've poured a ton of time and effort into mastering the art of compensation negotiation from the MASTERS. I stumbled across this skill in my first job out of college, and since then I've studied and honed this craft: practicing, teaching, and applying it on myself and my friends.
The results? I've had a 100% track record of getting me and my friends a pay increase at each job OUTSIDE of the normal review time. These pay raises are not trivial - most are 20% increases if not higher, definitely not the nationwide average of 3%. In fact, some of these compensation adjustments happened even before getting hired, and others when I requested a meeting with my boss, not the other way around!
However, this can be a very uncomfortable experience if you don't know what to expect. I'd like to show you a proven system that will walk you through the entire process and handle all the exception cases so there's nothing to fear.
To keep in touch with me and learn more about my salary negotiation framework, just fill in your name and email below. I'll send you more information about my experiences, including the mistakes I've made (of which there are a lot) so you don't have to make them yourself. In addition, I'll go over the following topics:
Just enter your name and email in the form below. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Cheers,
~ Han, The Negotiator