Common mistakes in salary negotiation
I used to work in trading and I think some of the principles I learned there apply directly to salary negotiations.<p>Two key things I think about all the time are price discovery and competition. Price discovery means that in some illiquid markets, you don&#x27;t really know what a thing will trade at unless you try to trade it (which itself reveals some information to the counterparty but that&#x27;s not important in the job case)<p>From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc. Interviewing is the only real way to learn &quot;the market&quot; - what offers to you would actually look like, and other information as well. Like if you always get offers at the low end of a range - or if you always fail interviews - is very good signal that you can act on.<p>Competition - when we traded bonds, we&#x27;d always go to multiple dealers for quotes. The dealers would know that we always ask at least X of their competitors by rule, so they knew that whatever number they gave us, we&#x27;d compare against others. That prompted them to strike the balance between a good deal for them and a price we&#x27;d actually accept. From that point of view, the best negotiating advice is to have multiple offers, because (1) you see what the highest one is (2) you can see how close or dispersed they are and you can infer something from that (3) they give you leverage. EG: let&#x27;s say you want job X most, but job Y gave you $20K more on the offer or whatever. You can always tell job X &quot;I&#x27;d love to work with you but it&#x27;s hard to accept a lower offer, can you match?&quot; This isn&#x27;t even a game, you&#x27;d be saying this sincerely. Or, if your offers are close, you can push the highest one a bit because you know they aren&#x27;t so far out of the norm with more confidence.