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.
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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.

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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.
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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.

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​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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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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:

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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​

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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.

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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.

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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​
​

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​

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.

Hi Reader,

We recently had Jim Lose on the Gentle Power Podcast (YouTube | Spotify | Apple). Jim is a former Marine Corps officer and CEO of The Military Veteran, a recruiting firm that places veteran executives into high-growth, venture-funded and private equity-backed companies.

Jim spent the early part of his career as a battalion intelligence officer and built extensive experience working with senior military leadership, including leading regular briefings to the Commandant of the Marine Corps when he was assigned to the Pentagon. He's since spent 20+ years placing thousands of veterans into corporate roles, from junior officers transitioning into the private sector to senior military leaders filling executive and c-suite positions.

What we wanted to dig into: what does someone like Jim who sits between the candidate and the company actually see? And what can someone with a military or non-traditional background learn about advocating for themselves when it's time to make a career move?

Listen to the full episode here (YouTube | Spotify | Apple), and a few ideas from the conversation that stuck with us.

1. The military trains you out of self-advocacy

Jim touched on something we've seen with almost every veteran client we've worked with.

"From the very beginning as a second lieutenant, you pass on the praise to your subordinates and highlight their achievements, not your own."

This is a key cultural feature of the military, one that strongly emphasizes teamwork over individual achievement. One of the core values of the military is literally “Service Before Self.” in a job offer conversation, all of this works against you.

Alex knows this firsthand. He served in the Air Force as a military parachuting instructor, and when he transitioned into the private sector, Gerta had to coach him through the part where you actually ask for more. The instinct was just to accept the offer and move on. That's how the military works. You're told what you're paid.

When those habits follow veterans into corporate America, they tend to undersell themselves.

2. The salary question has a different dynamic in the military

Jim pointed something out that hadn't occurred to us until he said it.

Veterans talk about money with each other pretty openly. Everyone on base knows what everyone else earns because it's based on rank and time in service. It's public information.

That transparency disappears in the private sector. Salaries become private, comparative, and often deliberately obscured. Veterans step into that environment without the instincts you build when pay is something you've had to figure out and negotiate throughout your career.

For veterans, it’s more difficult to communicate their worth because they've never had to price themselves.

3. Interview widely before getting selective

One thing Jim coaches transitioning veterans on is to resist the urge to filter aggressively at the start of the process.

His reasoning: let’s say you get three offers that are all in a tight range, then the market has just told you something real about what it values you at. You can't learn that by sitting on the sidelines waiting for your dream role.

Get the activity going first. Then get selective when the offers are actually in front of you.

Smart advice for anyone changing industries, not just veterans.

4. The recruiter is not fully on your side, and that's fine to know

Job seekers working with a third-party recruiter will often assume that person will go fully to the mat for them on compensation.

Jim was direct: his core value is relationships over revenue, and he does coach his clients through negotiations. But he also made the point that it's harder for a company to say no to the candidate than to the recruiter in the middle like Jim. The candidate is someone the company has had extensive rounds of interviews with, had meals with during the recruiting process, maybe even met their spouse! There's rapport.

"I will usually have my clients negotiate their offers themselves."

That's the right call. A good recruiter sets you up and then gets out of the way. But there's also a subtler thing to be aware of: questions like "how would you feel if this offer evaporated?" are not casual. They're diagnostic. How you answer shapes how the recruiter coaches the company.

If you say you'd be devastated, the negotiation goes one way. Know what you're signaling to your third-party recruiter before you answer.

5. Lead with facts, not feelings

Jim's approach to coaching candidates through an offer conversation is simple. Leave the emotions out of it.

Approach it like an attorney making a case in court: here are the facts, here’s the market, here’s the evidence for the number I'm asking for. That's the frame.

Buying a house can be emotional. Structurally, it's an asset transaction. Comp negotiations are the same. The moment you let the anxiety show, you're risking forfeiting leverage.

6. Where you start compounds for years

Jim helped a client negotiate recently. The increase wasn't massive, but he walked us through the math.

Even an additional $15K in base salary, assuming no raises, is $75K over five years. And there will be raises. And the next offer you get will anchor off this one.

We say this often: not negotiating today doesn't just affect today. It sets a baseline that compounds across your entire career. The gap between what you accepted and what was available grows wider the longer you carry it.

7. Gentle power works in both directions

Jim told us about a candidate mentioning another competing opportunity to a company. The candidate told the company: “I have another option moving forward, so my availability shifts after next week.”

It changes the dynamic without burning anything, especially when communicated politely and professionally. As Jim put it, "It gives a way to get more without turning everybody off."

That's exactly the principle behind the name of this podcast. The goal isn't to extract the maximum at any cost. It's to move the conversation toward a better outcome while keeping the relationship intact. Because when you accept the offer, you’ll be working with them every day.

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

Connect with Jim Lose on LinkedIn, and learn more about this work here: https://www.themilvet.org

Have a great weekend,

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 screenshot went viral recently. Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill Gates, was negotiating a paid collaboration with a creator who’d asked for $4000. Phoebe counter-offered at $400.

That’s 10% of the ask. The creator was offended enough to leak the conversation. Unsurprisingly, the deal didn’t happen.

We actually think Phoebe made some smart moves here. But she also made a few avoidable mistakes that cost her the deal and, more importantly, the relationship.

What Phoebe did well

1. She was warm and cordial. She opened with genuine excitement: “would love to do something together.” That’s necessary in any negotiation, though obviously not sufficient on its own.

2. She depersonalized her side. Saying “this is just super out of the budget for us” keeps it away from being about the creator’s worth and makes it about her constraints. Smart.

3. She time-bounded it. “Super out of the budget for us right now” left the door open for future deals and meant any concession from the creator would only be short-term. Also smart.

WHERE SHE FELL SHORT

Mistake #1: She counter offered. The first few moves in a negotiation are about gathering information, not making asks or pushing back.

Mistake #2: She didn’t put a buffer in between her and the creator. Phoebe did the negotiation herself. Given her public profile, she probably should not have been the face of it. It’s generally good to have at least one other person to answer to. It’s hard to believe she doesn’t call the shots when it comes to money, and that perception matters.

This matters even more because of her family name, which she can't decouple from whether she likes it or not. If someone from her staff had handled this instead, a creator might reasonably assume Phoebe was just removed from the process. That's a cushion.

When Phoebe negotiates directly, the natural read becomes “why is a billionaire trying to squeeze me out of a few thousand dollars?” The dollar amount stops mattering, and her name becomes the story. That's a real reputation and brand risk that a buffer could have absorbed.

(Someone online pointed out that Phoebe may have someone who manages her social media on her behalf, but that doesn't matter because it's still her account in her own name. Again, perception can matter just as much as, if not more, than reality).

Mistake #3: She didn’t take her time. She could’ve still ended up at $400; it’s not completely out of the question even though it’s only 10% of the price the creator quoted.

In negotiations the sky is really the limit if handled creatively. And we don’t think anchoring is as important in negotiations as many people think. But she’d have to spend a lot more time addressing the “what’s in it for me” question that would naturally come up on the creator’s end. Phoebe may have thought it was obvious (e.g. grow together as the company grows, open doors given her connections, send referrals, etc.), but she seemed to rush through and ultimately hurt the relationship.

Negotiations aren't just about the number, but also how the other person walks away feeling.

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,

This week on Gentle Power, we reacted to a short video from Alex Hormozi on negotiations. It's about a line you can use when a buyer asks you for a discount, and it's been shared a lot. We watched it live on the episode and then picked it apart.

To be fair, there’s a real negotiation principle buried in it, but there’s also a few assumptions that subtly undermine it.

Alex also shared a story about his most embarrassing moment, which illustrates why using this line is risky.

Listen to the full episode and hear Alex’s most embarrassing moment here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple

1. The tactic and what it's actually claiming

Hormozi's suggestion: when someone asks, “can you do it for less?”, respond with "well, I could do it for more." Here's the full clip:

The logic is that anyone asking for a discount has already decided to buy. They're just testing to see if they can get a lower price. By anchoring upward instead of down, you flip the dynamic and often close without giving anything away.

On the surface, it’s clever. Anchoring does matter in some negotiations. And yes, tone matters a lot in how you deliver it.

2. The assumption that breaks the whole thing

But here’s the problem.

Hormozi says that when someone asks for a discount, they've already decided to buy. If that's true, the rest of his advice doesn’t matter much. They were going to buy anyway.

And if it's not true? If the person is genuinely on the fence and you respond with "I could do it for more", they might get turned off and you just might lose them. We've seen it happen.

This one unstated assumption does a lot of work in Hormozi’s clip. It's the kind of thing you miss when you're getting 30 seconds of advice with no context.

3. The gimmick problem

This is also why we've largely stayed away from short-form tip content. That format rewards novelty and memorability. It doesn't leave room for the caveats, the exceptions, or the part where you actually have to execute it under pressure.

We've worked with clients who get very fixated on the exact phrasing of things. What should I say when the recruiter asks me this? What's the exact line? They get so locked in on a script that they stop listening to what's actually happening in the conversation.

Ironically, that's when you're most likely to say something that lands wrong.

4. Authenticity isn't just a soft concept

There's another real risk when you borrow someone else's line wholesale: it shows.

We pointed out on the episode that if Hormozi has millions of followers and this clip has gone viral like much of his content, the person you're talking to may have seen it too. The moment they recognize the move, you risk collapsing the whole conversation. Now it's awkward and you look like you've been running plays.

Same thing happened when people started using ChatGPT to write emails. The language got more polished, robotic, and littered with em-dashes.

There’s a dating analogy here too. Memorizing pickup lines is the wrong investment. Building confidence, showing genuine interest when engaging with others, being present in the conversation: that's what actually works. Negotiation is often not that different.

5. What we actually teach instead

We never tell clients what to say word for word. When you're focused on recalling a specific phrase, you're not present. You're not reading the room. You're running a rehearsal in your head while the real conversation is happening in front of you.

What we give people instead are principles with logic behind them. Show genuine excitement upfront, don’t volunteer a number, turn the question back onto them if you need space. And of course, we'll hop on as many calls with our clients for them to practice saying things in their own voice.

This works better because once you understand why a principle makes sense, you can apply it in the best way that fits the moment and deliver things in a way that sounds authentic to you. You don't need to memorize anything, you just need to understand the logic.

6. The elevator pitch story (Alex’s most embarrassing moment)

We took a side quest on this episode where Alex shared one of his most embarrassing moments. This mortifying but hilarious story is a great example of why not to memorize scripts.

Senior year in college, Alex competed in a business plan competition. As part of the contest, he had to give a 60-second elevator pitch for a movie trailer website called The Trailer Post. He wrote the pitch the night before, memorized it word for word, timed it to exactly 60 seconds.

The next day during the actual pitch, Alex started off flawlessly. Every word, every beat, every pause, was delivered perfectly on cue. Then around second 45, Alex paused. His brain went blank and he couldn’t remember the next sentence. Mind you, this was in a university gymnasium full of hundreds of people.

What followed was an incredibly painful 10 seconds (though it felt like 10 minutes to Alex) of pausing, freezing, stuttering, mumbling, a full “deer in the headlights” episode. He did remember the final line – “...and that’s The Trailer Post!” – so Alex exclaimed it with overcompensated enthusiasm, which caused his voice to crack. The applause at the end of his pitch was the kind you hear when the crowd feels sorry for the person on stage. To add insult to injury, in order to return to his seat, Alex had to walk through the entire crowd looking at him with pitiful stares.

"That's the Trailer Post" has now been a running joke in his family and amongst close friends for years (in fact, we’re cracking up right now writing this 😂). But the point is that this whole ordeal could have been avoided by just knowing the idea well enough to talk around it naturally.

That's exhibit A.

7. what SHOULD you take from the Hormozi clip?

The anchoring idea is worth keeping. If someone's asking for a discount, they've revealed something. You can use that signal rather than immediately conceding.

But the specific line? Use it with care. Understand why it might work before you deploy it. Make sure it fits the context and, honestly, make sure it fits you. If it doesn't come out naturally, it'll probably come out weird.

Tactics aren't transferable the way they look in short clips, but the logic is transferable. Start there.

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

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,

Something exciting happened last week: Gerta was featured in Business Insider!

This article covers the negotiation myths in comp negotiations that we see most often, including ones that most career coaches still repeat. The reason Gerta's take is different is that she spent years on the other side of the table at Salary.com, advising hundreds of companies on how to pay their employees. She's seen what the data actually says, and more importantly, she's seen how companies actually use it.

Here's a quick summary of the four myths she addresses in the article:

1. That market research tells you what to ask for.

At Salary.com, Gerta had access to hundreds of thousands of data points filtered by industry, location, and company size. What she saw was that companies would pay for that data and then often go in a different direction anyway.

Every organization and every team has its own compensation philosophy and its own budget. The best leverage is, of course, to get another offer. But you can still negotiate an incredible deal even if you don’t have other offers, as long as you navigate the process with professionalism, diplomacy, and strategy; for example, by preserving your leverage by not oversharing.

2. That you should give a number.

Most people think they need to come in asking for a specific number. Gerta's advice is the opposite: don't give one.

You can't know what a company's budget actually is. It's shaped by internal factors you're never going to see from the outside. Giving a number means you either leave money on the table or risk them thinking you’re greedy or that you simply won’t be happy there.

3. That playing it cool helps your position.

Some candidates go into negotiations trying to seem hard to get. Gerta says this usually backfires.

Showing genuine excitement for the role actually offsets the friction of negotiating. Companies want to hire people who want to be there. Enthusiasm and negotiating aren't in conflict, they actually support each other.

4. That over-communicating builds trust.

Over-communicating and being transparent is a great quality in an employee, but in a negotiation, it works against you.

Sharing too much, including details of who else you're interviewing with, how long you've been job searching, or your personal plans, gives the other side information they can use. Keep more to yourself than feels comfortable.

Those are the highlights, but the full article has more context of the specific reasoning behind each point. It's worth reading in full.

The full piece on Business Insider here: https://www.businessinsider.com/salary-consultant-warns-against-common-negotiation-myths-2026-4

And if you’re job searching or have an upcoming negotiation and want to talk through your specific situation, book a free call with us: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/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: 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,

This week on the Gentle Power podcast (GentlePowerPodcast.com), we hosted Tallulah Le Merle. Tallulah spent seven years as a management consultant at Kearney, has done fractional COO and advisory work with AI scale-ups, and is now a partner at a conscious-tech investment firm called Fifth Era. She also has a book coming out called The Case for Hope in the Age of AI.

The thread running through all of it is a deep, practical fluency in human dynamics. This turned out to make for one of the more genuinely interesting conversations we've had on the podcast.

The negotiation thread kept weaving in and out of some bigger ideas: cultural differences in how power shows up, why authenticity is an actual strategic asset, what it means to hold your ground without becoming a wall, and a concept Tallulah calls "WOO".

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

1. WOO is a real skill, not a personality trait

Tallulah took a StrengthsFinder assessment and her top five strengths were: humor, communication, empathy, orchestration, and WOO.

WOO stands for Winning Others Over. And she was quick to separate it from manipulation. The mechanism is empathy first: really reading what matters to the person across from you, then tailoring how you show up and what you say so that it lands in their world rather than yours.

"I'm using language you've already used with me. I'm not like, hey, I'm over here and you need to come across this bridge to me. I'm walking back to you and bringing you across with me."

That's a skill beyond charm, and it's directly transferable to negotiations. If you're going into a negotiation thinking about what you need, you're missing half the work.

2. Power looks different in different cultures

Tallulah grew up in the Bay Area but spent twelve years working in Europe, primarily in the UK. She noticed a real difference in how power operates.

In the US, she described power as more extroverted, more direct, and more visible. In British and other European corporate contexts, she saw a different style: leaders who spoke rarely but with enormous gravitas precisely because they didn't speak constantly.

"When they do speak, it has so much weight."

Both approaches work as long as you're being authentic. Performing a style of power that isn't yours will leak in all the ways that matter.

3. Authenticity isn't a soft idea. It's a negotiation asset.

We talk a lot about this, but it was nice to hear it come from someone whose whole career has been in high-stakes professional negotiation.

We got into the topic of lying in negotiations, especially the common (and bad) advice to fabricate a competing offer. You never want to do this because recruiters negotiate every day. They have enough data points to know when something feels off.

Lying doesn't just fail ethically. It fails strategically. Offers have been rescinded for exactly this.

Authenticity, on the other hand, creates trust before you even get to terms. People want to do business with people they believe.

4. The rule of 3 in consulting negotiations

One of the most useful tactical frameworks Tallulah shared came from her years managing client relationships in consulting.

When a client brings you a new need or asks for something outside the original scope, you don't immediately treat it as a negotiation. You let it come up three times.

First time: hold the space, acknowledge it, help them think through whether they can solve it themselves. Second time: gently probe whether it's actually within scope. Third time: now it's a real conversation, and you address it deliberately.

"Let people ask three times before you really take it seriously as something that needs to be negotiated."

This connects to something we teach our clients all the time: don't take things at face value. A company's first offer is rarely their final one. An early "no" is often not a final one either. The Rule of 3 is just a more systematic version of that patience.

5. Holding firm without shutting down

Tallulah talked about how the best negotiators aren't rigid. They're clear.

"This is what I know I'm worth. Do you see that? Yes or no. And then I would walk away."

That's a very different posture from bracing for a fight. You're not trying to beat someone. You're stating your position clearly and seeing if there's alignment. If there isn't, that's also useful information.

Tallulah also shared an example from her own fractional work: a startup she loved that couldn't meet her full rate. Rather than walking away or silently resenting the gap, the parties acknowledged the constraint. They worked together to find a creative solution that fulfilled the needs of all involved. That's negotiation too. But you need to be clear about your values and your priorities first.

6. Negotiations are a pie-expanding exercise, not a zero-sum fight

One of the things Tallulah pushed back on was the mental model most people bring to negotiations: that both sides are fighting over a fixed thing, and for you to win, the other side has to lose.

"People think of it as this really intense, aggressive, zero-sum fight. Each side is already against each other."

She prefers a collaborative frame. Think about what matters to them. Find the places where your interests genuinely overlap. Add value where you can, especially when it costs you nothing.

We liked the way she tied it back to her WOO strengths: if you go in genuinely curious about the other side, the whole dynamic of the conversation shifts. You're not there to take. You're there to find something that works.

7. Vulnerability is not weakness. It's a position of power.

This came up in the context of personal negotiations, dating specifically, but it landed as a wider point.

"If you just go shoot your shot, ask for your needs, share your wants, that just shows you're so anchored in yourself."

Not shooting your shot because you're afraid of rejection is not caution. It's fear running the decision. That applies whether you're asking someone out or asking for a raise.

Being clear about what you want, and being willing to hear no, is one of the most underrated things you can bring to any negotiation. It signals that you're not negotiating from desperation.

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

Connect with Tallulah and her upcoming book at tallulahlemerle.com.

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,

Today we're diving into one of the most common points people give ground before they even realize it: early compensation questions.

The tactics here aren't complicated. But we’ve seen in our client work that when the pressure's on, even the most experienced and senior professionals start second-guessing the basics.

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.

What to say instead when asked for your number or range

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.

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.