Negotiation Strategies

Teaching leadership through influence

As a team leader, the author identified four engineers with potential for leadership and used a simple task - organizing a team lunch - to teach them leadership through influence. After the team lunch, the author had a post-mortem with the engineer and two of the four engineers have since moved up to manager level. This experience has taught the author that leading through influence is more challenging than leading through authority, but can be effectively taught through simple tasks.

Convincing your executives to increase their hiring budget

This article discusses the challenge of hiring a full backend developer with at least five years of experience. The author had to convince their executives to increase the budget in order to hire a top-notch engineer, and they gathered data to demonstrate that a small budget would result in a loss for the company. They also compared their company's salary to the market price and found that they were offering much lower than the competition. After a month of convincing, the executives agreed to increase the budget, but the perfect candidate had already declined the offer. The author's advice is to bring a lot of data and present it in a way that executives will understand.

Eight Proven Tactics for Salary Negotiations

This article provides eight tactics for negotiating salary, such as making sure your agenda is clear, doing research to understand your market value and position within the company, and using body language and non-verbal cues. It also encourages people to find common ground with their boss, be flexible, and use the "Powerlessness" and "No" cards when necessary. Lastly, it advises to not use precise numbers and to be the first to mention a number when negotiating.

The Power of Acquisitions

This article outlines the steps taken to acquire businesses, customers, content, and users. It emphasizes the importance of research, sending emails, asking business questions, and building relationships. It also encourages CEOs to look for other points of leverage besides money when making acquisitions.

Go beyond salary to build up a complete job offer that candidates won’t decline

This article provides advice on how to handle salary negotiations. It suggests paying a fair wage based on experience, title, company stage, country, and city. It also suggests taking the time to understand what motivates the candidate and what they are looking for in a job, and then building an offer that includes a fair salary, equity, career opportunities, and learning opportunities. The article emphasizes that people should not be hired for cash, as they will likely leave soon after.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.