Most people who switch industries assume they’re starting over, that a new field means a weaker hand when it comes to compensation, level, and title. Soumya thinks about it differently - the negotiation doesn’t start when you get an offer or even when you start interviewing for jobs; it starts the day you decide to pivot your career.

Here are some takeaways from our conversation, plus links to the full episode: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

Your negotiation starts on day zero, not when you get the offer

Soumya’s hot take is about timing. Most people assume the negotiation starts when you get the offer or when numbers are first brought up during the interviews. Soumya asserts it starts much, much earlier:

“Negotiation doesn’t actually start when you’re… halfway through the job interviews, but really day zero when you’re figuring out your entire career mind map, who you are, where you can add value.”

By the time you’re discussing salary, your leverage has either been bolstered or weakened by the narrative you’ve brought with you into the interviews. Before you even start applying to jobs, think through the career story you want to tell about yourself, why you’re applying to the company and the role, and why now. For career changers, this is especially important.

Career changers assume they have less power, and it costs them

When you move into a new industry, the assumption is that you’re starting from zero, so you must hold less power. Soumya sees this sentiment in nearly every one of her clients. She’s watched people at every stage, from new grads to those with 15+ years of proven impact, doubt their own work the moment they enter a new space.

A lot of it, she and Gerta agreed, is cultural conditioning. How you were raised to think about identity, self-pride, and self-esteem shapes how you show up before you say a word.

When you believe you have no leverage, you act like it. You concede on salary before anyone pushes back, and the imposter feeling starts running the conversation for you.

Do the inner work first: write down what you’re proud of

Before any of the outward positioning, Soumya spends her first several conversations with clients, sometimes over months, helping them feel good about what they’ve already done. She’s blunt that this is hard. When she asks someone to list ten things they’re proud of from their career, many can’t even list five.

Having dealt with imposter syndrome and anxiety herself, Soumya knows the exercise matters because those ten things are where your transferable skills live.

She also makes room for grace. “I might mess up some of these conversations and negotiations, but it’s okay. I’m learning,” is how she frames it for clients who are hard on themselves. The stakes feel enormous during a job search, which is exactly when people turn most critical of themselves.

Years of experience, but treated like a beginner

You can have years of experience and still get treated as “fresh” in a new field. Alex has seen this when he saw co-workers pivot to new functions when worked at Instagram / Meta. You could spend five years in product operations or product marketing, and to move into product management at many companies, you’d still start as an associate PM.

So where’s the leverage? Soumya’s answer is to find the points that actually transfer. Maybe it’s deep domain expertise, where you know healthcare, fintech, or the relevant field cold, the customers, the workflows, how the industry moves. And if title and pay won’t budge because you’re new to the space, there’s room to negotiate elsewhere, like professional development budget, wfh flexibility, or any benefits that are meaningful at your stage of life.

She added one more piece of prep that’s easy to skip: knowing what to say no to. Figuring out where you add value also means naming the places you don’t, and that focus makes your whole profile much sharper.

Your narrative does double duty: it helps you advocate for yourself and it helps people advocate for you

The narrative you build does two jobs at once. It gives you confidence walking into all your interviews, and it hands the hiring team the exact story they need to argue for you when you’re not in the room.

Recruiters and hiring managers are swamped. Soumya pointed out that popular early and mid-career roles can pull hundreds, if not thousands, of applications within hours. If your story clearly connects the dots for them, you make yourself easy to champion, and you show the value you’d bring from day one instead of “someday”.

She added a superpower that sits on top of expertise: genuinely loving the space. “I am obsessed or insanely passionate about this particular industry or problem” and explaining why makes you more memorable, and it tends to mean you’ll enjoy the work more once you’re in it.

Gerta noted this maps almost exactly onto two worksheets we give clients: one on the ten things you’re proud of, and one on why you want this specific role, specific enough that you couldn’t paste it into an application for any other company.

The first no isn’t a no

Early on, Soumya treated negotiation as one exchange: you make the ask, you get an answer, and that’s the whole process. She’s since let that framing go.

She put it simply: “the first no is not always a no.” You can keep the conversation open and look at the situation from the other side’s point of view. When you factor in what works for them alongside what you want, you can find additional pathways to align.

Gerta added the principle that’s operating underneath this all, which is information gathering. A big part of negotiating is figuring out the other side’s priorities by asking the right questions to get there.

Ask more than once

A lot of people ask just once, then stop. Our hunch is they’ve been burned before, where asking again got a bad reaction, so they filed away a personal rule to not push too hard.

Soumya and Alex reframed the whole thing around what Alex calls infinite games. Your negotiation isn’t happening in a vacuum. The person across from you may show up again later in your career, since the working world gets smaller the further you go and people change companies all the time.

That longer view changes how you interpret a bad reaction. If you ask gently and professionally and a company rescinds the offer, that’s an overreaction on their part, and it probably saved you from joining a team that couldn’t handle one honest conversation. Soumya’s take was that you didn’t make a mistake, it just wouldn’t have worked out if they couldn’t talk it through with you.

Soumya’s thesis is that the work starts well before the offer, and most of it is work you do on yourself. Give the episode a listen if you’re eyeing a career switch or just want to walk into your next negotiation better prepared.

The full episode here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

Connect with Soumya and see what she’s building: LinkedIn​

​
Warmly,

Gerta & Alex

Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

That first newsletter was about negotiation mindset. Today, we’re going to get more tactical: why it’s important to dig for why a company picked you, whether you should name a number, and the concept of anchoring.

1. Figure out why they picked you

When you’re arguing for higher comp, you want compelling reasons to justify your asks. And no, things like cost of living are not good reasons. As Professor Sharone put it, cost of living in your city isn’t the employer’s problem. Every other applicant signed up for that same city.

Coming up with stronger reasons takes some digging. You got the offer out of a pile of applicants, so ask yourself why. A company asks you why you want to work there, and you should be asking the same kind of questions back throughout the interview process: what they’re looking for most in this hire, what would make them call you a huge success a year in, what specifically made your application stand out from the rest of that pile.

Whatever they responded to - your specific background, a unique skill or expertise you have, the way you handle people - will be the backbone of your actual argument for a higher offer. A case built on what they’ve already told you they value goes much farther than a generic market stat or industry pay averages you looked up.

Most candidates go straight to the numbers and skip the digging.

Note: this is a sponsored newsletter. If you check them out below, it means a lot to us and helps keep our newsletter going!

2. Don’t name a number before they make an offer

When a recruiter asks about salary expectations when you’re early in the process or before an offer exists, Professor Sharone’s advice is to politely dodge. This covers the first call, the early screen, any point before they’ve decided they want you.

Naming a number early cuts two ways. If you go too low, you’ve capped yourself below where you could have landed. If you aim high, you risk getting cut for being unreasonable before they’ve warmed to you.

Either way, they don’t know you well enough yet to price you. Professor Sharone borrowed a line from another researcher for this stage: “the company is in shopping mode, not buying mode”.

A simple redirect can suffice, something like, “I’m sure we’ll be able to align on comp expectations, but I’d like to understand the role better before we get into numbers.” You come across as reasonable without boxing yourself in.

3. Anchoring doesn’t do what you’d expect

We often get asked, “should I just ask for 20-30% more than my target compensation?”

No. With a few exceptions, you want to tactfully nudge the company to share their numbers first, whether at the verbal offer stage or even in the later counter offers.

Now, we commonly get asked “But if I don’t share it, what if they anchor me too low?”

You may have heard of anchoring in Negotiation 101. It means the number that’s thrown into the discussion first will shape the rest of the negotiation and inform the ultimate number you end up with.

However, it’s not in the company’s best interest to anchor you too low. If they pay you too little, you become a flight risk, and now they’re thinking about retention instead of just filling the role. That works against them, so most companies won’t do it.

Negotiations are also about gathering information, not just making asks. When the company throws out a number first, you learn something. When you throw out a number first, you don’t.

There are plenty of levers that can move their budget even if they start you at the bottom of the range. The clearest one is a competing offer. Once that’s on the table, companies often move to closer to the top of their budget rather than lose you to someone else.

Anchoring matters, but in job offer negotiations it’s one piece of a much bigger picture.

Quick note: a company’s budget for a role and the range posted on the job listing are two different things.

That posted range exists mostly to satisfy salary transparency laws, now in effect in most major US states. Any company that knows negotiation 101 (and most do) isn’t putting its real number there.

When we say “budget,” we mean the actual ceiling: the most they’d pay for the role. That’s total compensation, base, plus bonus, plus equity, all of it. And the base salary they have in mind is almost certainly higher than what’s listed too, for similar reasons.

The full episode goes very deep, into Japanese deal-making, the calculus companies do behind who gets hired, and a house-buying story that locked in a property with a single letter. Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

Connect with Professor Ofer Sharone: LinkedIn​

​
Warmly,

Gerta & Alex

Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Our guest is Amanda Gustafson, who coaches leaders through these kinds of conversations. She took a winding path to get here, from a physics degree to running a theater in Troy, Michigan at 23, to a master’s in psychology, to a stint as a dean of faculty at a media arts school, to software consulting.

She also found us the way a lot of our favorite guests do, by cold emailing after following this newsletter for a while. We read all our emails (eventually), so feel free to email us!

Amanda’s main lesson is to treat a tough conversation like a collaborative project. Describe what actually happened instead of labeling the person, get curious before you jump in to fix, and build feedback loops that keep the problem from coming back. Below are some of our top takeaways from the conversation.

Full episode here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

1. Describe the behavior, not the person

When someone lets us down, we can be quick to jump to conclusions that define who they are. Maybe they missed an important deadline, they bombed a team presentation, they didn’t pull their own weight. Amanda’s training in psychology taught her to refrain from concluding that this is representative of who they are, and instead describe what actually happened.

For example, rather than “I was lazy this morning,” she would say: “I got up this morning and I had a to-do list and I drank coffee and scrolled through videos instead.” Just the plain sequence of what happened, with no indictment of character.

In the workplace, Amanda’s recommendation is to stay close to the actual events that happened: we agreed on noon, this is what each of us did, what got in the way? What were the assumptions going in? Facts, agreements, assumptions, and outcomes are something the two of you can actually work with. A verdict on their character will just put them on defense.

2. Don’t “solution before discovery”

Amanda’s mantra is “don’t solution before discovery.” Figure out what’s actually going on before you jump to the fix.

Gerta experienced this when hiring a video editor. The editor had quoted five clips per episode at his usual rate, and the path of least resistance would have been to just offer a bit more money for a few more clips.

Instead, Gerta asked him to use some of the paid time to walk her through his workflow. Turns out he was rebuilding work by hand: we mark our cuts and clip picks inside our video editing software, and he was redoing all of it in a separate platform, matching timestamps one by one. Once we cleaned up that handoff, the same rate got us ten clips, sometimes twenty, instead of five.

We advise something similar for job offer negotiations. When a client asks us “what should I negotiate first?”, the answer usually isn’t a number yet. The first moves are information gathering: how much room is there on base, on equity, on the elements of the comp package they haven’t mentioned, how urgently do they need to fill the role. Before you make an actual move, ask questions throughout the interview process to figure out the company’s preferences and constraints.

​

3. Build a feedback loop

Most hard conversations end with relief. People get to the finish line, think “thank goodness, nobody died,” shake hands on “we’ll do better next time,” and move on. Nothing actually changes.

Instead, borrow from the world of software development. “You would never ship a product without testing it,” Amanda said, so why end a performance conversation without one? Before you wrap, agree on the test: what does better look like specifically, and how will you both know the loop closed?

​

4. Bring it up before it grows

A big reason people dodge tough conversations is fear of the other person getting defensive. Amanda’s approach is framing plus timing. She opens by calling out why the conversation matters and what she’s after, so the other person hears “improvement” before they hear “problem.”

We (Gerta and Alex) run a version of this at home we call “turtles”. Any small annoyance either of us notices gets raised while it’s still a small harmless turtle, before it turns into a big ninja turtle. The longer a thing sits unsaid, the more it grows and bleeds into everything else.

Relevant meme we saw that made us laugh: “If I get a ‘we need to talk’ text, I need to know what it is now or I’m gonna throw up immediately.”

​

5. Amanda’s hot take: make the gap between value and price huge

We ask every podcast guest: “What’s your hot take on power or negotiations?” Amanda said, “The greater the difference in the right direction between the perceived value of what you’re offering and the price, the easier it is for people to say yes.” She aims for clients to walk away confident they will get at least a 10x return on working with her.

To get there, she starts with discovery. Her first question on the intro call is why the person booked it, and soon after: “how much is this costing you?” Once the pain has a number attached, the value of solving it is obvious, and her price looks small next to it.

This is how we coach candidates too. Companies rarely open at the top of their budget, because they haven’t been sold on your value yet. Make that value clear well before anyone says a number.

​

6. A negotiation from her own kitchen

We always ask guests to walk us through a real negotiation. Amanda’s was close to home (literally): she had been working on a weekend house project with her partner, which she followed up with an actual postmortem.

While they were working, he had taken the tools out of her hands and taken over the work. As she had learned in her master’s in psychology, she skipped the labels and described the behavior: “you actually took the tools out of my hand and started doing stuff.” He was surprised but heard it, recognized it himself, and said he would not do that again. She had opened by naming what she cared about, that working on the house together is part of her family culture and she wanted them to get better at it, which is what let him respond as a partner rather than getting defensive.

The mechanics were the same ones she uses with the leaders she coaches. Describe what happened and frame it around a shared goal. The same mechanics that lead to a smooth conversation with a direct report will smooth the conversations with the person you live with.

​

There was a clear theme across everything that Amanda shared, from the workplace to home. A hard conversation goes better when you treat it like a project you’re both working on, describe what happened without the labels, and build in feedback loops to track improvement.

Give the full episode a listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple

Connect with Amanda Gustafson: https://www.amandagustafson.com

​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

One of Gerta’s first negotiation classes was a graduate course she took at MIT more than 15 years ago while she herself was a college student. The professor who taught the popular “Power & Negotiations” course was Ofer Sharone, and this week we had the privilege of interviewing him on the Gentle Power Podcast (gentlepowerpodcast.com).

Professor Sharone’s path to teaching negotiations took many turns throughout his career. He earned his JD at Harvard Law School, spent his early working years negotiating $100M+ finance deals in Japan, then left law to earn a PhD in sociology and to research how people navigate the job search and workplace. MIT brought him in to teach negotiations on the strength of his legal background, and today he teaches negotiations at University of Massachusetts Amherst’s School of Public Policy.

It was an honor to bring on one of Gerta’s earliest teachers and influences on the work we do today. Listen to the full episode here (YouTube | Spotify | Apple), and below are key takeaways from our convo:

1. True power doesn’t come from aggression

On the last day of one of Professor Sharone’s “Power & Negotiations” classes, a student raised his hand and told Professor Sharone he’d enjoyed the class but felt they’d spent the whole semester on negotiations and crafting deals, but nothing about gathering and utilizing power.

Power, as Professor Sharone puts it, isn’t about enacting force or wearing the other side down. He sees it as getting the outcome you want through strategy, building relationships, and reflecting on the situation in front of you rather than defaulting to the instinct to win at others’ expense.

It doesn’t have to be zero-sum. If you can nudge the person across the negotiating table to work with you in finding collaborative solutions, the more power you accumulate.

This is why we recommend that you never play it cool or hard to get during salary negotiations, even if you have many competing offers. Staying collaborative, professional, and polite always goes a much longer way in thawing the other side’s resistance to making concessions than the aggressive route.​

2. Treat the salary conversation as joint problem-solving

Continuing from the previous point, Professor Sharone’s recommended approach is to treat salary negotiations as a “joint problem-solving exercise”. No hardball tactics, no extreme anchor, no haggling-towards-the-middle games. You come in having done some research and thinking about your priorities, enter the negotiation with curiosity and questions to learn about their priorities, and figure out together what they’re willing to pay to hire you.

Remember, you’ll never out-data the company. Employers, from startups to large public companies, buy access to accurate, stat-sig compensation data, while you’ve got Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and anonymous posts from people on Reddit and Blind. Doing some research can still be directionally helpful (Professor Sharone calls this a “signaling function”), but don’t over-rely on it.

You’ve heard us say this many times over, but we believe doing deep market research on salary ranges is largely a waste of time, and it can even backfire if you use it to lead your negotiation strategy (we wrote a case study about all this here).

3. Hearing “non-negotiable” is not the same as hearing “no”

Professor Sharone experienced this first-hand when we was negotiating his role to teach at MIT. He got on the phone with the Dean, was extended a genuinely generous offer, and did what he teaches his students to do: he asked for a few days to think about. The Dean said sure, but then added, “just so you know, Ofer, this is not negotiable.”

Hearing this threw him off at first, but Professor Sharone called a colleague at the school to gather some intel. He learned that the offer he received was indeed generously at the top of the department’s budget, and also discovered that even though the salary line item was fixed, his relocation and research budget was likely more flexible.

Professor Sharone went back to the Dean and didn’t ask for more salary. Instead, he asked to double his research budget and relocation bonus, which the Dean ultimately approved.

When you’re negotiating with a company and they say that something isn’t negotiable, don’t let that stop you from continuing to look for other areas where you can lock in additional value. There are countless more variables that you can play with, such as title, start date, signing bonuses, remote work days, more vacation, which office you’re located in, accelerated vesting, shorter equity cliffs, higher transportation and wellness reimbursements, and more.

​

There was so much in this episode, this newsletter covers only the first half of our convo with Professor Sharone. We’ll follow up next week with Part 2 of our conversation, where we discussed how companies think about who they’ll actually hire and the future of work in the age of AI.

To listen to the full conversation now, check out here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

Learn more about Professor Ofer Sharone’s work here: LinkedIn​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Negotiating with a collaborative tone and showing genuine excitement are not only the right thing to do but also very high-leverage. They keep the relationship strong and positive, and give you more room to move.

Also, a quick thoughts about numbers: I always recommend letting the other side go first. If you give a number or a range and the number or the bottom of your range falls below the top of their budget, you’ll leave money on the table. And if it lands well above it, you can come across as entitled and potentially damage the relationship.

I’m very grateful to Business Insider for sharing these insights from me and the other coaches to the people who need them right now.
​
Full article here: https://www.businessinsider.com/what-every-worker-should-know-before-negotiating-salary-2026-5​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Daniel spent years as an engineer. He was employee #10 at Astronomer, the company you might know from a certain Coldplay kiss cam moment, and he helped scale it from 10 to 300 people. He then left to build a business where he himself is the product.

Much of what we discussed revolved around how the frequency in which Daniel engages in negotiations drastically changed. As an employee of a company, you might negotiate once or twice a year, usually around a job change or a raise. As a self-employed consultant, Daniel negotiates every week now, and his last six months have been a crash course where he shared lessons learned that apply whether you’re pricing a project or asking for more at work.

Here are some good takeaways from our conversation, and links to our conversation with him here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

1. Negotiation is a muscle, and it atrophies.

Daniel mused how rarely most people actually negotiate. Every year or two, you push for a slightly bigger raise. Then maybe every three to five years a new job comes along, and the offer you sign sets your salary for the next few years. Outside those windows, you’re barely negotiating at all, and this muscle naturally weakens.

His life looks nothing like that today. “I negotiate every week now,” Daniel told us. “It’s wild, the crash course in negotiation I’ve had to take in the last six months.”

You don’t have to become an entrepreneur to know this. Negotiation rewards reps, and most employees barely get any. So when the comp conversation finally happens, one of the highest-stakes conversations of your career, you’re usually walking in cold and out of practice.

Where can you build this muscle? We recommend a few things: try negotiating something small every day, almost as a social experiment. You’ll see how many times you actually get a yes. Or you’ll get comfortable with hearing no, so you’ll be less afraid to negotiate next time.

Alternatively, try to improve on something in every deal, conversation, or meeting at work, no matter how small, by learning what’s most important for the other party and exploring if you can make them and you better off. There’s a lot of hustle and creativity that goes into negotiations. You just need to take many shots on goal.

2. Sell like a gardener, not a hunter.

We loved this quote that Daniel shared: “I’m a gardener, not a hunter.”

A hunter wants the kill: walk up, name the price, and close the deal. Daniel prefers gardening: planting a relationship and waiting for it to grow. As he put it, “Let’s establish a relationship. Let me understand your pain points. Let’s talk in a couple months when you really need me.”

He treats every new lead like something to nurture, on the understanding that some sprout on their own schedule. He’s found that the ones who say “not now” in January tend to come back in May.

We’ve seen this same pattern in our own business. Some of our clients first reach out months, sometimes years, before they decide to work with us, so the relationship was already established once the timing lined up.

3. “Too expensive” usually means “I don’t trust you yet.”

Interestingly, price is rarely the actual objection. Daniel said, “People will say it’s too expensive when what they really mean is, I don’t trust you.”

He used to take “too expensive” at face value and assume it was about the number he was charging for his service. Over time, he saw that price was not always the true blocker. If he told a brand-new prospect that he charges $50K for a promised $200K return in a month, they wouldn’t take him seriously since they had no reason to trust him yet.

Instead, show the other side you understand their pain and what a real solution looks like. “If you believe that I understand your pain and that I’m the person who can solve it, well then I’m not too expensive,” he said. “It’s just a matter of what ratio of that outcome you want to pay.”

This happens all the time in job negotiations too. Companies don’t quote you the top of their budget upfront. They haven’t been sold on your value yet, so your job is to make that value obvious well before you start discussing numbers.

4. Daniel’s hot take: the best negotiations are when both sides are sitting on the same side of the table.

“A lot of people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what negotiation is,” Daniel said. “They think of negotiation as you versus the person you’re negotiating with.”

If you assume that framing, you’ve turned the conversation into a confrontation, which means eventually butting heads. Daniel instead asks himself a different question to guide his negotiation strategy: what does each side actually want? Get clear on the shared goal first and the rest gets much easier.

This is also how we coach our clients. When a client drafts something like “Can you do this number?”, we have them reframe it to “Can the team…” rather than “Can you…” That small change in language changes the dynamic from “me versus you” to “the two of you versus the constraint”. The budget becomes the third stakeholder in the room, the thing you’re both working on together to solve.

When it comes to salary, remember that you and the hiring manager are usually on the same side. Interviewing is a slog for the company too, they chose you and made you and offer, and if the negotiation falls apart they’re back to booking hours of calls with other candidates. This far into the interview and offer process, nobody wants the deal to fail.

5. Tie your pay to the other side’s outcome.

Daniel hired a coach named Dan, partly to learn how a skilled salesperson sells. Dan’s offering was what convinced Daniel to hire him. “It charge this much, and you can book as many one-on-ones with me as you want until you’re happy.”

Daniel uses this same logic to structure his AI enablement work, keeping a Slack channel open so his clients can reach him whenever they need him. His pay rises and falls with their results.

Our pricing is similar. A big chunk of what we charge is a success fee, a percentage of the gap between your offer when we start and where it ends up. We mostly earn on the increase we actually help you win, so our incentives are aligned with yours.

6. When comp comes with milestones, take control of the conditions for hitting them.

Milestone-based pay came up in our conversation too, and we’re flagging this because we’re seeing more of it recently in client offers. We’re seeing really big comp packages even in this employer’s market, but sometimes a big portion of the comp (even in the seven-figures) is tied to hitting specific targets.

This looks great on paper, but the real question is whether you’ll actually hit those numbers. What if your hiring manager leaves six months into your role, leaving you to make your case to someone new who wasn’t there for any of it? At LinkedIn, Gerta had four managers in two years, a new one roughly every six months. This made it difficult and tiresome for her to advocate for herself anew with every leadership shuffle. Plenty of milestones stay fuzzy too, vague enough that meeting the bar often comes down to one person’s interpretation.

Daniel does plenty of milestone work himself, and he advised that if your pay hinges on a milestone, explicitly lock down what you need to reach it. For a freelance consultant, that might mean data access or a proper development environment. He boiled it down to: “How can I make sure that the company is as aligned as possible towards me reaching these milestones?”

If you don’t set the conditions for your own success, it may get too murky and you could be missing out on big payouts.

7. In an internal negotiation, the person who brings the receipts wins.

Early at Astronomer, a certain product Daniel worked on (we’ll call it “Alpha Feature” for confidentiality/privacy sake) was in rough shape. The CEO came from sales, sales looked strong, so from where he sat everything seemed fine.

But Daniel saw a problem brewing. People online were starting to call Alpha Feature a dying product, and Daniel was aware of how dangerous this was from a public opinion standpoint. “Memes are easy to squash in the beginning, but once a meme has set, it’s impossible to squash.”

He also knew that internally, a raw complaint from an engineer could get waved off as griping about hard work, so he came with evidence. He pulled together Reddit threads and Hacker News posts of people writing off Alpha Feature and brought all this to the CEO to show that this sentiment was spreading publicly.

Daniel’s approach worked. The CEO was convinced, he directed more resources to rebuilding Alpha Feature, and Daniel was later awarded an equity refresh for this work. His team even took a competitor’s article titled “Why Not Alpha Feature” and turned it, point by point, into the Alpha Feature 2.0 roadmap. Daniel said, “If two people propose ideas and one person has receipts or a demo, that person is going to win.”

The same is true for any internal ask. Whether you want a raise, a promotion, more budget, or a change in direction, the person holding evidence is much harder to dismiss than the one arguing based on “vibes”.

Daniel’s career arc is a case study in controlling the things most employees leave on the table, from how often you negotiate to how your pay is built. Give this episode a listen if you’re weighing a move into starting something of your own, or if you just want to handle your next offer better.

The full episode here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

Learn more about Daniel’s consulting work at imberman.ai.

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

A few weeks ago, we hosted a live Q&A for people who’d just been laid off from a handful of large tech companies. Alex Daniels, a corporate attorney who spent years at Cooley, one of Silicon Valley’s top law firms, joined us to field questions. Nearly 100 people showed up and we ran out of time.

So we recorded an emergency episode of our Gentle Power Podcast. Alex Daniels joined us again as did our friend Grace Ling (a creator and UX designer who we had just interviewed for her own Gentle Power episode), who stayed to co-host and ask a few questions of her own.

The topics below came directly from recently laid-off employees trying to figure out what leverage they actually have as part of their severance, whether they need a lawyer, what to do first, and more.

Listen to the full episode here (YouTube | Spotify | Apple), and read on for a written account of what we covered.

By the way: if you’re based in California and want to talk to an employment lawyer, reply to this email and we’re happy to put you in touch with one from our personal network.

1. Protected class status is the foundation of your leverage

Most employees in the US are at-will employees, meaning a company can let you go at any time, for almost any reason.

The key word is “almost”. Companies can’t fire you for an illegal reason, and if you’re in a protected class, that changes what leverage you have.

Protected classes include pregnancy, parental leave, disability, and medical history, though the exact list varies by state. California’s list is long and keeps growing (and many states follow California’s lead on employment law). Alex Daniels mentioned that in some cases, even hair style is a protected class, tied to religious or cultural reasons.

The principle is that if a company fires you on the basis of your protected class status, that can be considered unlawful termination and you just might have a claim.

2. You don’t need “smoking gun” evidence

A lot of people assume they need hard evidence before they have anything to work with, such as an internal memo, a direct quote, or anything definitive.

Alex Daniels described two types of discrimination. Most people imagine what’s called “express discrimination” is the only thing that meets the bar: someone at the top made an explicit call to target a specific group.

But there’s also “tacit discrimination”. It’s unspoken, subtle or invisible in any single instance, but identifiable in a pattern.

If a disproportionate number of people laid off from your company were on parental leave at the same time or returning from medical leave, that pattern itself has weight. As Alex Daniels put it, juries don’t need the smoking gun. They look at the full picture, and the full picture often favors the individual over the corporation.

3. Everyone technically has a case

Alex Daniels joked, this is America, and you can sue for almost anything.

The real question is whether you can get your case pushed through the legal process to a settlement or court. If you can establish your protected class status, show that the company knew about it, and demonstrate a plausible connection between that status and your termination, that’s usually enough to start the process. You don’t need to guarantee a win. You need enough of a foundation that the other side has to take you seriously.

Once that’s true, the company now has to weigh the cost and unpredictability of litigation against the option of just resolving it. That calculation almost always favors resolution.

On that note, litigation is expensive and slow for everyone involved.

That’s why companies push separation agreements and want you to sign quickly. They want a release confirming you won’t sue them, so they can stop thinking about you. The severance on the table is, in part, the price of that certainty.

Alex Daniels thinks about the math this way: even if a company believes it has a strong defense, going through litigation can take months or years, and jury awards for discriminatory practices can be significant. Most companies look at that calculus and prefer to resolve things before they get there.

4. The threshold question: is your situation worth pursuing?

Alex Daniels said that it depends, and the only way to know for sure is to talk to an employment litigator.

That said, he offered a useful starting frame. First, are you in a protected class in your state? That’s the foundation. Second, does your situation have the markers that make a claim viable? Were you on leave when you were let go? Did the company know? Were there patterns in who got cut that point toward your class being a factor?

If the answers lean toward yes, a consultation with an employment attorney is worth the time. They’ll give you a clear read on what you’re actually working with.

One caveat though is that even if you have a solid claim, the damages you’re awarded might not outweigh the time and energy of pursuing it.

Bumping what we shared in a previous newsletter: a rough rule of thumb to think about whether legal action makes financial sense. Employment litigators work on contingency, taking 30% to 40% of whatever they recover for you. That means if your current severance is worth $50K, you’d need to walk away with more than $100K for the math to work after fees, plus whatever you’d assign to the time and stress of a formal dispute. Alex Daniels’ rough rule: 2X your current severance package is the floor worth clearing before it may make sense to engage an employment litigator.
​

5. State law matters more than federal law

In most employment situations, your state law is what actually governs the protections available to you.

Alex Daniels illustrated how much state laws can differ by comparing California and Texas. California bans non-competes in almost every situation. Texas allows them broadly enough that he joked you could put a non-compete on a fast food worker. California has a long and expanding list of protected classes, while other states are slower to follow.

The takeaway is to know your state laws before you sign anything, because what you can negotiate depends largely on the protections available in the state that you work.

6. If you’re a remote worker, your W-2 is your guide

This question came from the remote workers on our Q&A: if you live in one state, say New Jersey, but your company is headquartered in another state, say New York, which state’s laws cover you?

Alex Daniels’s rule of thumb: it’s wherever you’re actually performing the work. Your W-2 state withholding is the practical indicator. The state collecting taxes from your labor is most likely the one with jurisdiction over you.

For most people this is simple because they live and work in the same place. For remote workers with offices across state lines, take two minutes and check the state withholding on your W-2s or pay stubs before you sign anything.

This episode was recorded because we ran out of time in the original Q&A. If you’re in the middle of a layoff situation right now, or you know someone who is, the full conversation is worth listening to: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

To connect with Alex Daniels, add him on LinkedIn or visit his website, DecryptedLaw.com.

And important legal disclaimer: Alex Daniels is a lawyer, but he’s not your lawyer. Everything above is general guidance, and employment law has a lot of edge cases that depend on your specific situation and location. We’re also neither advocating for nor recommending that you take legal action against your employer.

Speak directly with an employment attorney in your state if you’d like to explore your options. If you need any recommendations for CA-based employment lawyers, reply back to this email and we’re happy to connect you with some we know in our network.

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Navigating a layoff and unsure what your options are? Book a free call.

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

If you’ve been following international news, there are massive protests happening right now in my (Gerta’s) country of origin, Albania. People are taking to the streets to protest against the government’s dealings with the Kushners to develop a luxury resort on a highly coveted, beautiful island in the Albanian Riviera, one of the fastest-growing travel destinations in Europe.

The protests are reminding me that some of the smartest negotiations don’t look like negotiations at all.

There’s no big showdown with a lot of back and forths, no perfect comebacks that win over the room. It can be a lot more subtle than that. Someone makes a series of small, indirect moves, the other side barely registers them as moves, and by the time anyone realizes what’s happening, the negotiation has advanced so far that there’s nothing left to push against. The smartest moves are almost impossible to see coming, and even harder to stop once they’re rolling.

I find the clearest examples of this in a strange place: protest movements. I have a Master’s in Logistics Engineering, so I’m probably wired to notice that these subtle negotiation moves almost never play out above the surface where people notice.

The negotiations happening beneath the surface

Take Occupy Wall Street. In September 2011, a crowd settled into Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, and everyone watched the signs, the speeches, and the drum circles. What actually kept the protests going, however, was a kitchen serving thousands of meals a day, a medical tent, a library, generators for heat, and a steady stream of water and blankets that volunteers had to organize and restock around the clock. Strip away the politics and you’re left with a micro city that ran on logistics. It held for two months, which is a genuinely impressive supply-chain feat for half an acre of park and stone in Lower Manhattan.

The part I find most fascinating though is how city officials responded.. They mostly didn’t pick a public fight with the protesters. They went after the operation instead. In late October, fire officials swept the park “on safety grounds” and carried off the generators and gas cans that were keeping people warm as the weather turned. A few weeks before that, the park’s private owner announced the area needed “a deep cleaning”, and everyone understood that “cleaning” was a polite word for “clearing.” When the final eviction came in November, the kitchen and the library were loaded into a sanitation truck and hauled away.

Every move by the city was positioned as ordinary administrative action – a fire-safety inspection here, a sanitation concern there, the sort of thing that’s hard to argue against in public and far more effective than sending in officers swinging. You can rally a crowd against a riot line. It’s a lot harder to rally one against safety codes.

The Arab Spring, that same year, ran on a similar logic from the other direction. While governments kept trying to clear the squares, activists had already moved the real coordination somewhere harder to reach. They used Twitter and Facebook to shift rally points on the fly, warn each other when security was closing in, and connect the people who had water and medicine with those who needed them. The crowd in the square was what was happening in the open, while the actual organizing was happening on phones, adapting faster than anyone in power could respond to.

In all of these stories, the decisive actions lived one layer below the obvious ones, down in the operations and the conditions, the part no one was defending because nobody thought to look there. The people who came out ahead, on either side, were the ones playing in that layer.

​

How this applies to your negotiations

Negotiations you may face work the same way and it’s the opposite of how most of us are taught to do it. When a conversation gets hard, most people will push on the obvious thing. A sharply refined argument, a bigger number, one more reason why you deserve it. Most of the time this goes nowhere, because the other person’s “no” was never rfacing off squarely with your argumentin the first place. It’s propped up by something underneath that your negotiation moves aren’t engaging with.
​

Say you’re asking for a raise and your manager keeps stalling. You can keep listing your wins and watch her nod and stall again, or you can get curious about what’s actually in her way. Maybe she’s worried about how it looks to your peers, or the budget’s frozen until next quarter and she can’t tell you that, or she needs something concrete to bring to her own boss before she can say yes. Solve that, and the raise stops being a fight you’re struggling to win. The “yes” shows up much more easily, because the thing blocking it is gone.

Deals work similarly. The client who keeps stalling often isn’t stuck on price, whatever they tell you. Sometimes they got burned by the last vendor and need to feel safe before they’ll commit, and as soon as they do, the number you were stuck on stops being the blocker.

So before your next hard conversation, spend less time sharpening the argument and more on the layer operating underneath. Ask what’s really keeping this person where they are, and whether you can change that instead of fighting the part you can see. That’s where the real negotiation happens.

If you want to go deeper, there’s a good paper on this, what researchers call “the logistics of resistance”. It covers Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and a handful of other movements far more thoroughly than I can here. You can read it here: https://jeds.thebrpi.org/journals/jeds/Vol_12_2024/8.pdf​

Warmly,

Gerta​
​Cofounder, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Our Gentle Power Podcast guest this week, Angela Liao, has negotiated from every seat at the table. She spent years on the supplier side in Asia, negotiating on behalf of manufacturing companies with customers like Apple and Google. After Asia, she went to work at Tesla in the US, then to Google, where she now leads device strategy and negotiates manufacturing partnerships.

Having been on both sides of high-stakes business negotiations, Angela has developed a keen sense of what companies actually care about in these types of deals, what gives each side their leverage, and why companies with the biggest brand name don’t always hold the most power.

Below are some of our top takeaways in our conversation with her.

For the full episode, check out the Gentle Power podcast.

Quick note: this is a sponsored newsletter, and we’re excited to share this one because we actually use Lovable ourselves. We built our own website, www.YourNegotiations.com, with it, and it’s genuinely one of the easiest and most important tools we use for our business. If you check them out below, it means a lot to us and helps keep our newsletter going.

​
​1. The side that seems weaker often isn’t

Most people assume that if you’re Google or Apple, you walk into any supplier negotiation with all the power.

But as Angela explained, the best suppliers get to choose which customers to prioritize for scarce resources. Because a good manufacturer with strong technical expertise, a specific manufacturing capability, and a long track record in the industry is hard to find, the ones that check these boxes hold a lot of power. When multiple companies are competing for capacity from the same manufacturer, that manufacturer decides who gets it first.

This pattern shows up in job searches too. Candidates who assume a top company automatically has all the leverage are limiting their own negotiation potential. Sometimes you’re the rare candidate with a specific background, sometimes the team has been searching for months, sometimes you just applied at the right company at the right time. You almost always have more leverage than you think.

​

2. Asking Culture vs Guessing Culture

In many Asian business cultures, hierarchy matters significantly, and maintaining harmony across all parties is very important. You show respect to people who are older than you, even if they’re on the other team or in lower roles. It’s much more common to communicate with inference and subtlety than with direct statements, and saying no outright can be interpreted as an aggressive move. (This is Guessing culture.)

In the US and much of Western Europe, the expectation is directness. You’re expected to ask for what you want, and say no when you mean no. (This is Asking culture.)

Angela shared a moment from her Tesla days: a German supplier flatly rejected a 5pm meeting request, then proposed 5am on Angela’s time zone. No softening and no apology. They knew Tesla needed the deal and held the meeting on their terms. Blunt, but entirely clear about where the leverage sat.

The risk in any cross-cultural negotiation is applying the wrong frame. What reads as hesitation in one context might be a firm no in another. What sounds evasive might be respect. Knowing which world the other side is operating from is key to your success in the negotiation.

When job searching, the asking vs guessing cultures can differ even across industries and companies. When in the job search, it’s worth reaching out to those you’re connected to who work at the companies to get a better understanding of how you should be communicating with the recruiters, hiring managers, and their teams. You want to make sure you’re speaking the same language.

​

3. An aggressive opening tells you something useful

In a negotiation Angela led, a large contract hinged on how two companies would split a government incentive available to both parties for entering a new market together.

The other side came in asking for 100% of it.

Before treating that as just an aggressive move, Angela read it as information: that government incentive was clearly their top priority. If they were willing to anchor that hard on one term, they were probably more flexible elsewhere.

She also flagged the other side of anchoring. There’s a point where you go far enough that the other side doesn’t push back, they get offended. The relationship frays before you’ve gotten to anything real. Ultimately, it’s important to read the room well. Aggressive anchors are often not meant to offend you, rather treat them as a map into the other party’s priorities. And if you give them what they want, they may be a lot more open to giving you something else that’s important to you.

​

4. When the negotiation gets stuck, stop fighting over the same term

The negotiation over that incentive ran for months. Both sides were at a wall.

Angela’s team made a decision: let the other side have more of the incentive. But they didn’t walk away without getting what they needed. They locked in commitments around their share of future product generations and a per-unit incentive on everything shipped.

The other side got what they cared about most in that moment, and Angela’s team got what they actually needed for the long term. Neither side felt cheated, and the partnership held.

This is one of the most underused moves in negotiation. If something matters more to the other side than it does to you, use that. Let them have it, and ask for something more valuable in return. The deal gets bigger than the contested term.

​

5. You can’t negotiate what you haven’t clarified

One of the most consistent patterns we see with our clients: they walk into an offer negotiation without really knowing what they want. Not broadly, but specifically. What life stage are they in? What are they optimizing for over the next three years?

Angela made the same point from her side. Base versus equity versus flexibility versus benefits: none of those are the same ask, and which one matters most changes with where you are in your life.

We had a client once who was about to become a mom. Every conversation centered on one thing: she wanted the company to cover a parental benefit while she traveled for work. It was a real need. But when we worked through her full priority list, something shifted. That benefit cost a few thousand dollars a year. We focused first, instead, on her total compensation, and managed to add more than $40K to her offer, which more than made up for the bespoke benefit.

Getting clear on what you actually want before you start negotiating is an underrated but important chunk of the work.

Listen to the full episode on the Gentle Power podcast.

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

In light of the recent mass layoffs that have hit many notable companies, we hosted a live Q&A this week on negotiating severance agreements.

We also brought on our friend, Alex Daniels, to share his legal POV. Alex is a corporate attorney, a former Google employee, and cofounder of a boutique law firm that works with startups and professionals.

A lot of people couldn’t make the session and asked us for the recording, but to respect attendees’ privacy and to encourage open and candid conversation, we aren’t sending it around.

However, we’re sharing below some of the most useful things that came out of the session:

Quick note: this is a sponsored newsletter, and we’re excited to share this one because we actually use Lovable ourselves. We built our own website, www.YourNegotiations.com, with it, and it’s genuinely one of the easiest and most important tools we use for our business. If you check them out below, it means a lot to us and helps keep our newsletter going.

Sponsored by Lovable

Build in Minutes with Lovable

Turn your idea into something real. Describe what you want and Lovable builds a site or app people can use. Launch a business, portfolio, or tool—fast, simple, and without coding.

Start Building Today

​

1. Your state law matters more than where your employer is headquartered

The law that governs much of your situation is the law of the state where you reside, not where your employer is headquartered.

Most people live and work in the same state, but there are edge cases, e.g. you live in New Jersey but commute into the NYC office for work every day.

If you’re a fully remote employee (e.g. you worked at Meta, which is headquartered in California, but are assigned as a remote employee and you live in Michigan, then Michigan state law applies to you).

A good starting rule of thumb is to check what state tax withholdings apply to your W-2/pay stubs. That state is what likely applies to your case.

State laws vary significantly on things like WARN notice periods, background check rules, and protected class protections. Before you do anything else, find out what your specific state law covers.

2. Know whether you fall into a protected class

There are many protected classes that you could fall under, such as but not limited to age (if you’re over 40, federal law covers you under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act), gender, pregnancy, or disability. Being in a protected class doesn’t mean you can’t be laid off. But if your termination connects in any way to that characteristic, you may have legal grounds that can translate directly into negotiating leverage.

One thing worth knowing if you’re over 40 and got laid off as part of a reduction in force (RIF): federal law may require your employer to give you a list of job titles and ages for everyone considered in the layoff, including people who weren’t cut. This comes from the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA), and it applies when the company is also asking you to sign a severance agreement that waives your right to sue for age discrimination.

The list won’t have names on it, but it will show the age distribution across titles. If the age data in that disclosure looks skewed toward older workers being let go while younger ones were kept, it may be worth chatting with an employment attorney before you sign anything. Once you sign, it’s much harder to pursue a claim.

And if you’re over 40: you’re entitled to a minimum of 21 days to review your severance agreement, and 7 days to revoke it even after you’ve signed.

​

3. Is legal action worth pursuing?

The two times in a job when you have the most negotiating power are when you’re starting the job and when you’re leaving it.

Companies don’t want claims, headlines, or prolonged disputes. Juries tend to be more sympathetic to individuals than to large corporations, and companies price that into how they handle these situations. That dynamic gives you more room to push than most people feel like they have in the first days after a layoff.

Alex Daniels shared a rough rule of thumb to think about whether legal action makes financial sense. Employment litigators work on contingency, taking 30% to 40% of whatever they recover for you. That means if your current severance is worth $50K, you’d need to walk away with more than $100K for the math to work after fees, plus whatever you’d assign to the time and stress of a formal dispute. His rough rule: 2X your current package is the floor worth clearing before it may make sense to engage an employment litigator.
​

4. Signing deadlines are usually not as hard as they look

Several people in the session asked whether the deadline on their agreement was a real cutoff. It’s often not.

Companies routinely re-date agreements when negotiations run past the deadline. If you’re over 40, they’re legally required to give you at least 21 days to review, which effectively sets a floor on how fast they can push you. For others it varies, but don’t treat the date in the letter as set in stone. It’s worth politely asking for more the time to review everything.

​

Emergency podcast episode with Alex Daniels coming soon!

This session had more way more questions than we had time to answer. If you were recently laid off and want to think through your specific situation with us, you can book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call.

We also recorded an emergency Gentle Power Podcast episode with Alex Daniels yesterday where we covered more topics on severance negotiations. We’ll share here in our newsletter once the episode is published. Stay tuned!

To connect with Alex Daniels, add him on LinkedIn or visit his website, DecryptedLaw.com.

And important legal disclaimer: Alex Daniels is a lawyer, but he’s not your lawyer. Everything above is general guidance, and employment law has a lot of edge cases that depend on your specific situation and location. We’re also neither advocating for nor recommending that you take legal action against your employer.

Speak directly with an employment attorney in your state if you’d like to explore your options. If you need any recommendations for CA-based employment lawyers, reply back to this email and we’re happy to connect you with some we know in our network.
​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

We’ve seen many layoffs at top companies across our circles recently, and wanted to use today’s newsletter to discuss negotiating severance agreements.

One caveat upfront: severance is harder to negotiate than a job offer. When it’s a new job offer, both sides want the deal done. In a severance situation, the company holds more control and has less incentive to move.

But this doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying to negotiate. If you’re being laid off, at this point you don’t have much to lose anyway, so why not try?

Below are some things to keep in mind, but first:

​

PSA: Free Q&A with Employment Lawyer, Alexander Daniels (Tomorrow, Tue May 26)

We’re offering a free Q&A session tomorrow at 12pm PT / 3pm ET on how to effectively navigate the layoff process and negotiate severance agreements. We’ll also be joined by our friend and employment lawyer, Alexander Daniels, to help us answer all your questions. RSVP here and/or send this link to anyone you know who may benefit: https://luma.com/2plqj1ur​

​

An example of what’s negotiable in severance

A quick case study from a past client we worked with (note: for privacy reasons, we changed some details about the client and his situation, but the following example still illustrates the broader takeaways on negotiating severance):

• He lived in and worked remotely from a West Coast state that has a state law making non-competes unenforceable against employees who are laid off or terminated without cause.

• Our client was laid off through a reduction in force (RIF) from a large company headquartered in the East Coast (i.e. he was terminated without cause).

His severance agreement included anyway a reference to a non-compete clause he’d signed when he started the role: he’s prohibited for 12 months from working for a competitor in any capacity involving the same type of work. It’s reasonable to assume this was boilerplate language included in all offers regardless of the states that employees live in.

So these were the cards our client had in hand:

• First, the non-compete was unenforceable by our client’s state law. He could use this to his advantage.

• Second, his original employment agreement said that if the company decides to enforce the non-compete clause against him, they would pay him 50% of his base salary for the 12 months he’s restricted by the non-compete (this is often referred to as “garden leave”). The garden leave equates to 26 weeks of pay, but his severance only offered 17 weeks of pay. So enforcing the non-compete clause against him would cost the company more than the severance pay they were offering.

Though our client was hoping to apply to new companies in the same industry as his outgoing employer (which they could interpret as violating the non-compete), he was planning to take some time off before applying to jobs and didn’t feel that a non-compete scenario would significantly apply in his situation. And at end of day, he was protected by his state law anyway.

So, we helped our client ask for additional severance pay and extending COBRA health care coverage in exchange for keeping the non-compete clause in his severance agreement. With our guidance, our client politely pointed out to the company that the state law made a non-compete unenforceable, but that he’d be happy to abide by the clause in exchange for added severance pay and COBRA extension coverages.

We also gently noted to the company that enforcing the non-compete would result in them owing our client 9 additional weeks of pay than the pay they offered in the original severance agreement, so why not agree on avoiding that scenario altogether in exchange for increasing his severance pay and extending health care upfront.

This was a great example of a win-win solution even in a layoff situation: we found leverage via the state law that protected our client, and he used that to get more pay and health insurance in exchange for maintaining the non-compete, which was what the company cared more about and was something that our client was happy to agree to.

​

Your leverage points when being laid off

Severance packages aren’t one-size-fits-all. They depend on your role, seniority, and the company’s situation.

In a mass layoff, leverage is generally low. It’s still worth exploring getting a better deal, especially if you’ve been at the company for a long time or have great relationships with your leadership who could potentially backchannel and advocate on your behalf.

In a one-off termination, especially if you’re part of a protected class and believe discrimination may have been a factor, it’s worth consulting a qualified attorney before signing anything.

As we’ve said before: the two times you have the most leverage are when you’re getting hired and when you’re leaving. A layoff doesn’t cancel out your leverage, but what you can negotiate largely depends on the specifics of your situation.

Whatever the circumstances, don’t sign anything you don’t fully understand. If a clause seems overly broad or unclear, ask questions before signing. Look into local laws that might apply to your situation. And if something feels off, it’s always worth a second opinion. If you’d like to chat through your situation one-on-one with us, we have several spots for free consultations. Grab time with us here (Calendly link), or reach us directly by replying back to this newsletter.

​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

During Alex’s last job search before we started YourNegotiations.com, he interviewed for a role he was super excited about. The company was a market-leading rocketship, he would report directly to the founders to help build out an entire team, and the recruiter was very friendly and responsive.

But there was one thing Alex noticed that the recruiter said on every single call, from the first screening to the check-ins between interview rounds:

“Just so you know, we have a company policy where the first offer we give is the best and final offer.”

The recruiter was apologetic about it too. He told Alex that the founders felt strongly about the policy, and that this approach helped attract top talent. By the third or fourth time he said it, it became clear that the recruiter was managing for a specific outcome: to have Alex not negotiate.

Quick note: this is a sponsored newsletter, and we’re excited to share this one because we actually use Lovable ourselves. We built our own website, www.YourNegotiations.com, with it, and it’s genuinely one of the easiest and most important tools we use for our business. If you check them out below, it means a lot to us and helps keep our newsletter going.

Sponsored by Lovable

Build in Minutes with Lovable

Turn your idea into something real. Describe what you want and Lovable builds a site or app people can use. Launch a business, portfolio, or tool—fast, simple, and without coding.

Start Building Today

​

Why this happens

Companies are under pressure to close hiring processes quickly. Many companies have an internal metric called “Time to Close”, which measures how long it takes to fill an open role. Recruiting and talent acquisition teams are evaluated on it, and sometimes bonuses hinge on this metric. A shorter Time to Close indicates an efficient hiring process.

When a recruiter tells you the first offer is best and final, or that things like working remotely, start date, or PTO aren’t up for discussion, they’re not necessarily lying, they’re optimizing.

If candidates hear “this isn’t negotiable” and stop pushing, the process moves faster. That outcome benefits the recruiter and the company.

Companies have their own incentives in these conversations, and those incentives are often not aligned with yours.

Side note: third-party recruiting firms’ incentives are less aligned to yours than you may think. They typically want to just fill the role and move on quickly, so though they’re technically on your side, they will not go above and beyond to help you negotiate the best possible offer.

​

What happened next

Alex negotiated anyway. The final offer he signed was more than $200,000 above the initial offer.

A few months into working at the company, Alex recalls a time when the leadership team was doing everything they could to recruit a senior product leader from another company. They invited him into the office, threw him a lunch party with the whole company, and interestingly, went through multiple rounds of back-and-forth negotiations trying to get the compensation right. The founders talked openly about wanting to sweeten the deal to get him to sign.

This was the same company with a firm policy that first offers were best and final.

The policy was something the recruiting team used with all candidates. And when the founders wanted someone badly enough, they negotiated.

​

What this means for you

You don’t have to be adversarial about any of this. Knowing the dynamic exists doesn’t mean you play it combatively.

Rather, you should show up informed, advocate for yourself respectfully, and don’t let a well-rehearsed line stop you from trying to find a better deal that leaves everyone better off (don’t forget, they want you to sign too!).

When someone tells you something isn’t negotiable, you don’t have to take it at face value. Treat it as an opening position, not a final verdict.

​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

If you have an offer coming or are mid-process, we’re always happy to help you think through how to approach it. Book a free call here: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

We’re back with Part 3 of our conversation with Arben Malaj, one of the most renowned economists in Albanian history (and Gerta’s father!). If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, Arben walked us through what it was like to serve as Albania’s Minister of Finance in the late 1990s, during one of the worst financial collapses in modern economic history. 60% of Albania’s population lost their savings overnight in a wave of Ponzi schemes. Arben was 36, barely in politics, and somehow became the person the country’s government assigned to clean it up.

This episode picks up there. We cover how he actually navigated that role, what he did to build trust with his team, the negotiations he ran with the IMF, and what he’d tell someone today who’s hesitant to step into a bigger position than they feel ready for.

Below are a few key takeaways from our conversation, and full episode here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​
​

Quick note: this is a sponsored newsletter, and we’re excited to share this one because we actually use Lovable ourselves. We built our own website with it, and it’s genuinely one of the easiest and most important tools we use for our business. If you check them out below, it means a lot to us and helps keep our newsletter going.

Sponsored by Lovable

Build in Minutes with Lovable

Turn your idea into something real. Describe what you want and Lovable builds a site or app people can use. Launch a business, portfolio, or tool—fast, simple, and without coding.

Start Building Today

​

1. Future regret as a tool for decision making

Arben told us something we didn’t expect. He was asked by the outgoing Socialist Party leader, Fatos Nano, former Prime Minister of Albania, Arben’s former professor and a man he deeply respected, to become head of the party after they lost the election. Arben declined.

We asked Arben directly: does he regret it?

He said he does.

His reasons for saying no made sense at the time: the party was heading into a weaker position of opposition, internal factions were fighting, and there was no clear succession plan. He didn’t want to be the person trying to hold something together that hadn’t been set up for success.

But he still regrets it even though the decision was wrong on the merits back then, because Albania’s political situation today makes him wonder whether a different choice could have mattered.

Which brings us to a decision making framework we often use ourselves: how will you think and feel about your decision in 10 weeks, 10 months, and 10 years?

​

2. How you dress and present yourself is part of your power

We opened the conversation a little off-script, talking about how Arben is famously well-dressed no matter the occasion.

He said the way you present yourself shows you respect the people you serve. First impressions shape how someone perceives you, and that first perception becomes the starting point for any negotiation or relationship.

Gerta challenged Arben, asking “so then you’re promoting the idea of judging a book by its cover?” Arben said, “be a good book and also have a good cover.”

​

3. Career isn’t an elevator

In light of Arben’s lightning-speed rise in his career, and us having helped numerous clients get promoted (including a client who got promoted not one, but two levels up in a single negotiation), Gerta asked him what advice he’d give someone who’s being considered for a role that feels like a bigger jump than they’re ready for. His answer was, as often, a quote: “The elevator for career doesn’t work. Take the stairs one by one.”

Arben explained that confidence to take a bigger role comes from having proven yourself at each step before it. Arben had 11 years of visible, high-stakes experience before becoming minister: bank branch director, EU project manager, economic consultant, part-time professor. When the moment to step up arrived, it wasn’t actually as large a jump as it looked from the outside.

Arben also noted that the people who struggle in high-visibility roles often have strengths in one area but not others. Some are strong academically, but may not be able to manage in a crisis. Some can communicate, but don’t have the knowledge gained from experience. The ones who are ready usually have both, i.e. you need a well-rounded experience, not just being a subject matter expert in a single domain, to achieve and sustain a quick jump in your career.

This reminded Alex of how the Air Force runs its officer promotion system. To be considered for higher rank, officers are expected to occasionally rotate through assignments outside of their designated career fields. Pilots do teaching stints as instructor pilots, engineers from research settings lead airmen on the front line, and acquisition officers get embedded directly inside defense contractors so they learn government contracting from the industry side. Breadth of experience is seen as key for an officer to lead larger and more complex organizations as they promote to senior ranks.

​

4. Care and community-building are instrumental in winning in negotiations

On his first day as minister, Arben sent an email to his entire staff. He thanked them, told them they’d be credited with his success, and promised to support them in their professional goals.

He noticed early on that one of his team members had a health issue that required travel abroad. At the time, getting a visa required a minister to vouch for you directly. He did it every time and for everyone who needed his support.

Arben also had an open-door policy for anyone who wanted to pursue graduate programs abroad. He guaranteed their job would be there when they returned and told them to bypass department heads if those heads were being obstructionist. Some people don’t want their best people to leave. Arben’s view was the opposite - you show care for your team, and they’ll return in kind with their dedication and best work.

The way people perceive your intentions shapes what they’re willing to bring to the table.

​

5. Negotiate from integrity, not from position

Arben was asked to become minister a second time. Then a third. He kept saying no, and he kept getting pulled back in. At one point, he was ready to leave for a fellowship at Georgetown University, and the call came again.

He wasn’t using leverage in the traditional sense. He was clear about what he could and couldn’t commit to, and he made that clear upfront. When international financial institutions pushed the Prime Minister to bring Arben back as Minister of Finance, Arben agreed, but on one condition: if the party didn’t win a third mandate, he was out.

In describing his reputation with the IMF: “It’s not easy to negotiate with Arben, but if he agrees to something, you’re guaranteed that he’ll do it.”

Arben went into every negotiation knowing exactly what his non-negotiables were, and garnered a reputation for being difficult to move, but reliable once committed.

​

Now for a fun fact

Arben didn’t want to become Minister of Finance. He said no multiple times. He had his own consulting practice and a part-time teaching post. What changed his mind was a phone call from his college roommate’s mother, crying, asking him to protect her son. That roommate, Bashkim Fino, was about to become Prime Minister, working under a very tough President. Fino made it a precondition to accepting his party’s nomination to become Prime Minister if Arben would become Minister of Finance.

​

This is Part 3 of our conversation with Arben, listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple​

See you next week with the fourth and final installment of our conversation with Arben.

​

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex​
​Founders, YourNegotiations.com

​

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

The recruiting process has a lot of unwritten rules, and most candidates follow them without question.

When a company asks you what your preferred salary is, it seems normal to give it to them. It just feels like what you're supposed to do, so you do it. That's just what the process looks like, right?

It doesn't have to be.

The norms favor employers, and that's not an accident

There's a quote by American author Eliot Schrefer: "Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people." In the job search context, you could swap "dead people" for "companies".

The recruiting process wasn't designed with your interests in mind. It was shaped over time by companies, in part because they've historically held more perceived power in these conversations. They're the ones with their hands on the compensation levers, after all. But when something feels like a standard part of the process, it's worth asking yourself, "Standard for whom?"

A good example is the salary question. When a recruiter asks for your preferred compensation early in the process, they're not just going through the motions. That number, if you give it, can anchor everything that follows. And yet, so many candidates share it because it feels rude not to, or they don't want to come off uncooperative, or because they assume everyone else does.

Alex experienced this firsthand when he last applied to jobs before we started YourNegotiations.com. He recalls an early conversation with a recruiter who was pressing him hard for his number, but Alex respectfully held the line on not sharing it.

The recruiter peppered him with reasons why it was fine to share:

• "It helps me advocate for you with the team."

• "You know, this is a standard part of any process, regardless of what company you're talking to."

• "All of the candidates I'm speaking with share their numbers, it's pretty common to just share it."

Even if any of these reasons are true, it's not an argument for why sharing benefits you. It's an argument for why it's normal. But those aren't the same thing; lots of things can be considered normal that aren't in your interest.

If you’re asked for a number or range early on, tactfully deflect sharing it and instead say something like: “Thank you for asking! I’m currently focused on exploring that this is a mutually good fit. I’m confident we can align on compensation.”

There are many ways you can phrase deflections, and much of it depends on your unique circumstances, whether you’re in between jobs or currently working, the company culture, the demeanor of the recruiter, if you were referred, whether you have an existing relationship with the hiring manager or someone from the team, and more. You can book a free 15-min call with us to get specific tips for your situation.

You have more leverage than you think

Don't forget: you as a competitive candidate have leverage too with your experience, qualifications, and optionality (i.e. you should always apply to multiple roles when job searching; never just one at a time).

Negotiating may feel risky, but reframing the process for yourself can have you show up in all your conversations from a more empowered state of mind. You’re not asking a company for favors, but you’re exploring together to find a win-win deal for all parties involved.

For more about how to get into the negotiation mindset, we covered this in-depth in this past newsletter.

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

We held a free negotiations Q&A recently (if you missed it, we'll announce future ones here on our newsletter), and there's one question that comes up every single time:

"When a company asks me what my preferred salary is, what should I say?"

TLDR: don't give them a number or range. Let's dive deeper into this.

Be careful with early compensation questions

Sharing your preferred salary number will never help you, except in very rare edge cases.

Imagine that negotiations are like a game of cards, and the cards in your hand are your leverage. Your preferred salary number is a powerful card, and it’s hard to win the game by revealing it. The company has their own cards too, such as the “true max budget for this role” card, and they will never proactively reveal their cards either.

Note that in many US states, companies are mandated by law to share their salary range on job postings. These salary ranges are not truthful, as most companies follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.

So if you share your number first, it will either:

• fall below the top of their budget. And they may agree to it, but you’ve now left money on the table, because the company knows that you’d be open to accepting less than what they’ve budgeted for.

• fall above the top of their budget. This introduces risk that they think you’re entitled, can’t afford you, or feel that you’re too far apart that you won’t be happy in the role even if you did accept. You’re a higher flight risk if you’re unhappy in the role, and companies want to hire people who will be there for the long term.

Some more reasons why sharing a number first is risky:

• Limits your bargaining power: If you share your number upfront, you may be limiting your bargaining power later in the negotiation process. Once you’ve disclosed your desired salary, the company may be less willing to negotiate higher than that figure.

• Lack of information: You may not have all the information you need to make an informed decision about your desired compensation until later in the interview process. By sharing a number upfront, you risk locking yourself into an end result based on incomplete information.

• Perception of being inflexible: If you share a number upfront, especially if it ends up being far above their budget, you may be perceived as inflexible or difficult to work with. This might not be the case, but perception can be just as important as reality in the hiring and negotiation process.

• Different compensation structures: Different companies may have different compensation structures, including stock options versus shares, vesting periods and cliffs, stock buyback windows, various bonus types, commission-based pay, and more. Sharing a number doesn’t necessarily capture these complexities, so you may be missing opportunities later to arrive at creative solutions that will make the offer worth accepting.

On that note, sharing a range is very similar to sharing a number, because when you share a range, you’re implying the bottom of your range is an acceptable amount to you. So we recommend not sharing a range either.

sharing a number first is risky

Even if you've done all your research and you believe your number is reasonable, you're still somewhat operating in the blind. This early on in the interview process, you probably don't have a sense of the company's priorities. Are they urgently trying to fill the role because they need someone to lead a big, upcoming product launch? Did they just close a massive funding round so are swimming in cash for new hires? Are they about to fundraise and want to show investors that their team is growing fast? All of these factors can influence how much more or less a company is willing to deviate from industry averages.

This is why we think spending a lot of time doing market research on compensation ranges is a waste of time. At the end of the day, every company will have their own internal reasons for how much they'll actually pay to fill an open seat at the time that you're applying.

To illustrate this point, sharing this case study of someone who was exploring working with us, and he continued to negotiate while he was still deciding whether he wanted our help. It started as a very promising interview process that seemed to be trending towards an offer, but unfortunately he made some mistakes on his own and the company decided to not move forward his candidacy.

One of the key things he did wrong was rely heavily on market research to drive his negotiation. When he shared a number, the company responded with incredulity, saying that even their senior leaders don't make that much. The vibes completely shifted south from that point on, and the company ultimately moved on.

do this instead of sharing a number first

If you’re asked for a number or range early on, tactfully deflect sharing it and instead say something like: “Thank you for asking! I’m currently focused on exploring that this is a mutually good fit. I’m confident we can align on compensation.”

There are many ways you can phrase deflections, and much of it depends on your unique circumstances, whether you’re in between jobs or currently working, the company culture, the demeanor of the recruiter, if you were referred, whether you have an existing relationship with the hiring manager or someone from the team, and more. You can book a free call with us to get specific tips for your situation.

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

There’s a video of Meryl Streep going around where she describes how she doubled her compensation for “The Devil Wears Prada” in 2006.

What went down?

TLDR: The Devil Wears Prada (2006) team called Meryl Streep to offer her the role. She said no. They doubled her ask.

Here's a breakdown of her negotiation tactics, her leverage, and how that’s applicable to everyday negotiations like job offers:

1. “They called me up and they made an offer… They needed me, I felt”.

Meryl had conviction that the role required her specifically. That’s the best possible leverage you can have. In job offer land, that’s the equivalent of having the written offer in hand.

👉 In this hiring environment, that’s really hard to pull off, but definitely worth trying, and if you do get the written offer, know that you have the most leverage.

2. “And if they didn’t want to do that, I was okay because… I was ready to retire”.

She had a low walk-away bar (i.e. she could walk away easily), so she could negotiate more persistently. What does this mean for you? The jobs you don’t want are the easiest to negotiate because the stakes are low. And having another offer (ideally a stronger offer) helps the negotiation immensely with the job offer you do want.

👉 So get another offer even if you’re not excited about it, and negotiate both!

3. “They went right away and said sure. I’m 56 years old. It took me this long to understand that I could ask for what I want”.

If Meryl Streep only started negotiating at 56, chances are we all have limiting beliefs too and are leaving money and value on the table by not negotiating.

👉 Always negotiate. You don’t have to do it aggressively, which we actually recommend against. You may not double the initial offer. But you will most likely get a better offer.

A couple broader points

Before The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Meryl Streep was already considered one of the best actors of her generation. She didn’t need the role, whether for money or fame. So we can reasonably assume that she negotiated just for the sake of negotiating. That level of confidence really helps negotiations but it’s hard to fake (even if you are a world-class actor!). The confidence comes from actually having real leverage, like another offer. That’s why we always advise against lying in negotiations.

Finally, Meryl asked for double and they said yes right away. As a thought exercise, it’s worth considering how much more budget they had available for her if she hadn’t asked for a specific number (which is what we recommend - don't ask for specific numbers). What if she'd never named a number and instead let them reveal their ceiling?

Maybe they could have tripled her ask!

Warmly,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

A Reddit post caught our attention this week.

Someone spent three months unemployed, got through six interviews, received a verbal offer, and countered on three things: a hybrid schedule, an extra week of vacation, and a 7% salary bump. The company responded by saying they no longer believed he was a fit, and they rescinded the offer.

Here's the full Reddit post:

A lot of people in the comments were furious on his behalf. And honestly, the company's reaction does seem extreme. But when we read the post carefully, a few things stood out that are worth paying attention to. See our takeaways below:

1. He negotiated before the offer was official

The post describes getting a call where the company went through the offer details. That sounds like a verbal offer, not a written offer letter with his name on it and a signature line. That distinction matters more than most people realize.

A verbal offer isn't a hard commitment. Until the company has put something in writing, it's much less costly for them to walk away, especially if the conversation heads somewhere they didn't expect. The bar for warmth and professionalism in all your communications is especially higher before you reach that written offer stage. More on this here.

2. Tonality matters

He didn't share the exact language he used, which means we can't know for sure what landed badly. He might have relied on some irritator phrases, which are commonly believed to work in negotiations but we’ve seen these backfire more often than not.

If his ask for a 7% increase was framed even slightly as "I deserve this based on my experience," that can read as entitled, even if the underlying request was completely reasonable.

The same ask lands very differently when it's framed with enthusiasm: "I'm thrilled for the possibility of joining the team. I was wondering if there was any flexibility on the base?"

Show excitement first, always. We wrote more here about the importance of showing enthusiasm, and why it can never really hurt you during salary negotiations.

3. Know your priorities and negotiate them in order

He countered on three things at once: schedule flexibility, more vacation, and a higher salary. That's a wide ask. When you front-load a counter with multiple requests, you're spending a ton of negotiation capital in the opening stages when you may not even know what elements of the offer that the company may be more flexible on.

Know which asks matter most to you, and lead with those.

For more on this, see our past article about using your personal priorities to build your negotiation strategy.

4. Other opportunities are your real leverage

He went into this negotiation from a weak position: three months out of work, one offer on the table, nothing else in play. When that's the reality, you might inadvertently push too hard out of desperation because this one offer feels like everything.

The best protection against that is to apply broadly and keep multiple opportunities moving at the same time. Having real alternatives in play carry more weight than any percentage argument or market data point.

Having multiple opportunities will also change how you show up in all your conversations. Your mindset is just as important as your tactics. We wrote more about negotiation mindset here.

CAVEAT: Sometimes a no deal is the right outcome

A company that immediately withdraws an offer in response to a professional, reasonable counter is showing you exactly who they are. If they can't handle a respectful, straightforward conversation about compensation, you may have dodged a bullet. (That's assuming this was handled thoughtfully by the applicant, of course.)

That's cold comfort when you're three months unemployed, but that’s exactly why keeping multiple opportunities in play matters so much. When one basket falls, you don't want all your eggs in it. More on no-deal scenarios here.

See you next week,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

Paula Schwarz has a complicated relationship with the word "negotiation." She grew up immersed in a German pharmaceutical family empire, one of the largest in Europe. She was expected to look good, stay quiet, and not ask too many questions. She did the opposite of all three and ultimately left it all behind.

Before we even got to tactics on this episode, we went deep into identity, leverage, and not knowing what you want until you've been pushed hard enough to find out.

Paula joined us on the Gentle Power Podcast to talk about her work in refugee camps on Samos, the Angel House co-living network she runs across Greece and now San Francisco, and her upcoming meeting with the French President Macron.

Listen to the full episode here (YouTube | Spotify | Apple), and as always, some top takeaways below.

Quick note: this is our very first sponsored newsletter, and we're genuinely excited about it. We only took this on because we think Superhuman is actually worth your time. If you check them out below, it means a lot to us and helps keep our newsletter going.

1. You can't negotiate well if you don't know what you want

It sounds obvious, but most people skip this step entirely.

Paula asked us what she should focus on in her upcoming meeting with French President Macron. We asked her to rank her priorities. She paused, thought about it, and once we walked through her priorities live, the order of them was very different from where she'd started.

This happens with job seekers all the time. They usually come in saying they want more money. But when we dig into their priorities, they almost always discover something new: turns out they’re not willing to accept an offer with more pay if it means a step down in title. Or they want flexibility, because they're a parent and two extra hours at home matter more than an extra $40K a year.

The priorities question is what shapes the whole negotiation strategy.

2. Sell the vision first. The ask is the next step.

Paula's meeting with President Macron is a good case study in sequencing.

She had big ideas: an AI incubator, easier visa pathways, sponsorships for people who can't afford what Angel House offers.

Our advice to her: don't lead with the full ask.

This is something we advise clients in early deal conversations too. You shouldn’t try to sell the final outcome in the first meeting. Rather, your goal for the first meeting should be to sell the next step in the process. In our impromptu strategy session with Paula on the episode, we recommended that in the first meeting with Macron, she should paint the dream, make it vivid, make it real for him. Then the ask is simply: who on your team should I connect with to explore this?

She wouldn’t be making the full ask in the first interaction, but gaining a small win by connecting with someone from his team to take a few steps closer to her overall goal.

3. Knowing the other side's interests is half the job

Paula asked whether she should use vulnerability to get what she wanted from Macron. We instead pivoted her toward a different tact: what's in it for him?

A French president dealing with regional instability wants things too. A compelling story about AI that helps refugees move through bureaucratic systems faster, built by someone who's already doing it at scale across 14 co-living homes from Greece to San Francisco. That has all the right ingredients.

When you lead with what's in it for the other person, the conversation changes. You go from asking for something to offering something.

4. Women negotiate better when they're doing it for someone else

Many studies show that women negotiate better when it’s done on behalf of a friend, a teammate, a family member, but it’s much harder for them to do for themselves.

Paula said she felt something similar for a long time. The moment things shifted was when she stopped thinking about what she was "allowed" to want and started thinking about what the people around her (primarily her three kids!) needed from her being well-resourced.

When we coach clients through this, we sometimes try reframing entirely. Think about your kids, your parents, the people who will benefit from you earning more. That reframe alone has helped people push for amounts they couldn't justify in their own name.

5. Expand the pie, don’t split it.

Paula touched on European versus American negotiating culture: in Europe, she finds, the dominant instinct is toward collective fit, not individual ask. The word "negotiation" carries a connotation of selfishness.

We believe, however, that the best deals, and the most farsighted ones, are the ones where both sides leave better off. If you get a $25K raise, your company doesn't necessarily lose $25K. Maybe they’re saving $100K by not spending resources trying to fill your seat if you leave.

The split-the-pie model makes every negotiation feel adversarial. The expand-the-pie model gives you room to be creative and to trade on variables the other side values differently than you do.

Paula's full story, including Maha Car, Maya Code, the Angel House, and how she's reviving an Uber-for-refugees platform, is all in the episode. It's worth the full listen: YouTube | Spotify | Apple

Learn more about Paula and her work:

• Website: https://www.paula-schwarz.com

• MaharCar (rideshare for vulnerable populations): https://marhacar.org/

Best,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

We recently had Pri Upadhyay, the talented product management coach behind "Product with Pri", on the Gentle Power Podcast (YouTube | Spotify | Apple). Pri spent 18 years in tech, including time at Google and Salesforce, then built a coaching and training business for product managers, helping senior PMs, directors, and VPs navigate job searches and transitions.

Pri is a career coach who's come to believe negotiation is one of the most underrated skills in her field. Her clients often don't even use the negotiation support that comes with her program.

We covered the psychology of leverage, the mindset traps that silently tank offers, and two personal stories (a grade negotiation at Columbia and a divorce mediation) that both leveraged the same principle: you have more power than you think, even when everything says you don't.

1. Negotiation is underrated, and most people prove it by ignoring it

Pri's clients often come to her exhausted after months of a brutal job market. They've finally landed an offer, and the last thing they want to do is risk it by negotiating.

Pri observed that people don't just fear rejection, but actually don't believe negotiation is worth learning. It's a skill they've categorized as advanced, optional, or only for people in a strong position.

"Even if you can get just $10,000 more, the bare minimum, why would you leave that money on the table?" she said. We hear this from our own clients too. The fear of losing the offer usually far outweighs the actual risk of asking for more.

For what it's worth: we've helped hundreds of people negotiate offers. We've never seen someone lose an offer from negotiating. How you ask matters, of course (a cordial, well-timed, strategically framed ask is very different from a poorly handled one), but the fear of asking itself is almost always bigger than the actual downside.

2. The "beggars can't be choosers" trap

After months of searching with few interviews, candidates start to internalize a story: "I should be grateful for whatever I get."

Pri sees this pattern clearly in her product management clients. They'll say things like, "I've been a principal PM for five years, but I'm happy to take a senior PM role." Maybe that's intentional, and if it is, fine. But often it's just exhaustion wearing the costume of flexibility.

"If you go into the job market seeing yourself as a beggar, others will see you that way too," she said.

We think about this a lot in our own work. The norms of the job search have largely been written by employers. When a company asks for your preferred salary on an application, that's not a neutral question. It's a move designed to reduce their own workload. Candidates tend to comply because the norm feels inevitable, but it isn't.

3. The company isn't optimizing for the cheapest hire

One of the things candidates get backwards: they assume that if they ask for less, they'll be more attractive.

But companies trying to fill the right role aren't choosing whoever will accept the lowest number. They're looking for fit. "They're not optimizing for whoever will take the least amount of money," Pri said. This is especially true at the senior PM to director levels she works with.

We'd go further: asking for what you're worth, clearly and professionally, often signals something good. It shows that you know your value, that you've done your research, and that you communicate directly.

4. Information gathering is most of the negotiation

A lot of people think negotiation is the moment you make an ask or push back on an offer.

But the conversation around what the company actually needs (why they're hiring, what their urgency is, what matters most to them) is where the real leverage comes from. If a company needs to close this role in the next month because of a product launch or an investor deadline, that changes what you can ask for and how you should frame it.

"Crossing the river to the other side," as Pri described it, i.e. understanding your counterpart's goals before you make any ask, is the move most candidates skip entirely.

In compensation negotiations specifically, the back-and-forth over numbers isn't where you win or lose. It's the information that comes before it that will set you up for success.

5. Negotiate your grade. Then your divorce.

Pri shared two personal stories around negotiations:

First, as a 24-year-old international student at Columbia, she received a grade she disagreed with from an adjunct professor. She ended up negotiating the whole thing over email, carefully mapping out how the grade had been distributed and making the case that one component was being overweighted relative to what was originally stated.

Second, when navigating her divorce, she found a mediator rather than going straight to court, partly to protect her energy but also because litigation felt like giving away something beyond money. She chose a male mediator intentionally, based on advice she received about her specific situation.

"I didn't want to give away my power like a lot of women do in divorce," Pri said. "Just take all the money, just sign the papers. I'm like, no. Negotiate."

The thread connecting both stories: she had less institutional power in each situation - as a student, an immigrant, and a woman navigating divorce. And in all cases, she found leverage anyway.

7. Know what you're actually negotiating for

Pri's third hot take was the most personal: get clear on what matters to you before you start.

For one client, the most important thing wasn't base salary, it was flexibility.

Different people at different stages of their careers are negotiating for different things: income, impact, speed, flexibility. The negotiation strategy follows from knowing which one matters most.

That's where the work actually starts.

Listen to the full episode here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple

Learn more about Pri's work here:

• Pri’s website: https://www.coachpri.com

• PM Skills Quiz: https://www.coachpri.com/pm-quiz

• Pri’s newsletter: https://productwithpri.beehiiv.com (for experienced PMs who want to grow their career & amplify their impact)

• Book free 15-min career strategy session with Coach Pri: https://www.coachpri.com/career-brainstorm-call

Best,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together:

P.P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.

Hi Reader,

Imagine you prepared for your negotiation carefully, picked your moment, and framed the ask cleanly. And they still said no.

Most people walk away from that thinking they did something wrong. They second-guess their phrasing, timing, the numbers that were discussed, maybe they shouldn’t have pushed so hard.

That instinct is understandable. It’s also a reasoning error that many people tend to miss or discount called “resulting.”

1. What “resulting” actually is

Resulting is when you judge the quality of a decision by its outcome.

The term comes from poker. Annie Duke, a Penn PhD and renowned professional poker player, is credited with popularizing the term and has written extensively about this logic trap.

You can make the statistically correct move and still lose the hand. Variance is real, and the cards that come next are outside your control. A bad bet doesn’t always mean you played your hand wrong.

Players who fall for this start deviating from good strategy after a loss. They let one bad outcome quietly corrupt and upend their entire strategy for the rest of the game.

2. Resulting shows up everywhere

In salary negotiations, resulting sounds like this:

“I asked for more equity and the conversation got awkward. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“I countered and they seemed annoyed. I need to ask just once next time.”

“My friend’s offer got rescinded when they negotiated. That’s proof that all negotiations are too risky.”

Each of those conclusions could be completely wrong. The ask might have been correct, and the outcome might have been driven by factors you’ll never see: a budget freeze, an internal decision already made before you got on the call, a hiring manager having a bad week.

The same trap runs the other way, and that version is just as distorting:

“I shared my number first and they accepted, so anchoring early works.”

“I said I’m flexible on comp and they extended an offer, so my flexibility had them choose me over other candidates.”

Maybe. Or maybe the process you used quietly capped what was possible and you got a sub-optimal outcome. One good outcome doesn’t validate a process that might be costing you elsewhere.

(Note: if you don’t negotiate, you’re likely leaving money on the table, because companies almost never give their absolute best and final offer in their opening shot.)

3. The same trap in other contexts

A startup founder raises a round on mediocre terms during a hot market and concludes they’re a great fundraiser. The next cycle arrives, they run the same playbook, and it falls apart. The first round didn’t teach them what they thought it did.

A salesperson closes a deal after leading with a discount, then quietly adds “go in low on price” to their mental playbook. Three other deals that week lost margin the same way. They don’t connect the dots.

A manager gives someone direct feedback, it lands badly, and they stop giving direct feedback altogether. The feedback might have been right. The delivery might have been right too. One uncomfortable reaction doesn’t make the approach wrong.

In all three cases, the outcome is doing the reasoning instead of the person.

4. The better question to ask

After any negotiation, skip “did that work?” Ask instead: “did I make a sound decision given what I knew at the time?”

Did you assess your leverage honestly? Did you ask at a reasonable moment, frame it in a way that preserved the relationship, and stay grounded when they pushed back? If yes, it was a good decision. A rejection doesn’t change that retroactively.

If you’re job seeking, there's also a structural way to protect yourself here: apply to multiple roles at once. When you only have one live opportunity, every outcome feels definitive. Spread it out and a "no" becomes what it actually is: one data point, not a verdict on your entire candidacy and self-worth.

This is one of the things that separates negotiators who keep improving from ones who plateau. They evaluate the process, adjust when the process was actually flawed, and hold steady when it wasn’t. A principled ask that gets a “no” is just one round of the game. It’s not a reason to shrink for the rest of the game.

For what it’s worth: in hundreds of client negotiations, we’ve never had an offer rescinded because someone negotiated compensation. Not once. Part of that is the approach. We make sure every ask is cordial, well-timed, and strategic, because the way you negotiate is just as important as whether you do.

And if you're not sure whether your strategy is sound in the first place, that's exactly where we can help. We've helped hundreds of senior executives and mid-career professionals negotiate with companies of every size and type, and at this point there's basically no response from a recruiter or hiring manager that catches us off guard. If you’re job searching, book a free call with us to learn how we can help you add $100K+ to your job offers: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call

Best,

Gerta & Alex
Founders, YourNegotiations.com

P.S. Know someone interested in negotiations?

Send them our way and we’ll thank you with $250 for each person who becomes a client. No cap.

A quick intro or an email to alex@yournegotiations.com works.