His advice flies in the face of every negotiation course&#x2F;book. Yes, you must know the range they are willing to pay; but once you know... you don&#x27;t wait for them to make an offer, you ask something at the high end of what they&#x27;re willing to offer, possibly above (but close enough to) the higher margin(* ).<p>The one who first names the price forms the baseline of negotiation. Say their range is 100-140k. If you say, &quot;tell me what you would pay&quot; and they say 100K, you&#x27;re screwed, no way you can say &quot;150k&quot; from there and still be taken seriously. If OTOH you say 150k at the start and are lucky enough to get the answer &quot;no way we can give you more than 140k&quot;, from there it&#x27;s a simple job of asking for  an extra concession that you know they can make (&quot;Hmm... ok, say I could accept 140k, but only if the company allows me to WFH when I need to&quot;)<p>( *) Of course, not from the start. He&#x27;s right about that. They need to be invested in the hiring - if they already spent a lot of effort trying to assess your skill before making an offer, you&#x27;re in a much better position to ask a lot. Presuming that they like you, of course.