How To Negotiate Compensation Like A Boss

welcome everybody to a life engineered on this channel we take a structured and Engineering approach to your life and career I just started an email newsletter so if you'd like the latest from the channel go ahead and subscribe the link is in the description below today we're going to talk about a topic that I think is ridiculously under talked about in the world today which is salary and compensation negotiation today we have a special guest his name is Brian Liu he's helped hundreds of people better negotiate their salaries thanks for joining the channel today Brian thanks for having me Steve I'm the founder of Aurora and we're a company that empowers technical talent to negotiate their careers we're kind of like a career coach but with the specific expertise of negotiating job offers raises promotions and Severance packages and the goal is really to create these win-win deals between you and your company we charge a commission off of the negotiated Delta and our mission as a company is to give underrepresented professionals the confidence to negotiate and we achieve this through our pro bono coaching service yeah so what it means with this negotiated Delta is that if you are unable to negotiate for a higher salary they take no money only if you are able to negotiate a higher salary you compensate Brian and his company so it's a super interesting model one where it's just like why not like go and figure out how to get the skills to negotiate a higher salary because it's something that I think that will benefit you for the rest of your life yeah I appreciate that and we really do see it as as educational in addition to very practical just like a little bit of context on me so I personally came up with the idea for Aurora after my friend got a job offer that was below what she was currently making and she was this phenomenal engineer first generation college student from Stanford and I remember asking her if she's going to negotiate the job offer and she replied do you think I should and for me I was just so shocked that some of her caliber would question whether she should or should not negotiate and that led to me creating raw Brian's here to give us three tips about better negotiating your salary so I'll let you take it away for the first one the first quick way to understand is how to negotiate in a way that doesn't look greedy so this is a really common concern and hesitation for most people negotiating you don't want to damage relationships you don't want to look greedy to your manager think about how you can create value for the company and make this a win-win agreement and the best way to make it a win-win is to really think of the relationship you're negotiating with your manager as an alliance so what is an alliance it's a mutually beneficial deal whose terms need to be negotiated and where both sides benefit I think people have this sort of hang up that if they ask for more money everybody will think that they're greedy not just the people that they're negotiating with right so right like recruiters are armed with way to negotiate managers are armed with a way to negotiate but really those are kind of the only people that are really negotiating for the salary like your co-workers don't know that you're asking for more money upper management likely doesn't know that you're asking for more money and so it really is a private transaction when you ask for more ask looking for more money can feel uncomfortable and a way to make that feel more comfortable in the conversation is actually to focus on how you can create value first so at rora well we actually have our clients do is create a document at offerstage which outlines expectations and outcomes for the role and you do this with your manager right so once you basically create this document and you've aligned on expectations that totally creates a space for your manager to then ask like how can I advocate for your needs right you clearly outline that you're going to meet these goals expectations now it's any good manager is going to recognize it's their job to support their team and that's what creates the natural space for you then to ask for salary in a way that is win-win and not win lose yeah absolutely I I really think the concept of a mutually beneficial agreement is the winning mindset I think a lot of times people sort of approach it as in if I ask for another twenty thousand dollars that means the company loses out on twenty thousand dollars and this is sort of like like mindset of scarcity I think really holds things back yeah and what you want to realize if you're asking for let's say twenty thousand dollars more in base your manager is happy to give that to you if he's confident or she's confident that you're gonna create twenty percent twenty thousand more in value right then it's like yeah it's not my it's not coming out of my pocket right and I want more to get done if you follow this strategy you're just so much more likely to be successful so like one example is you know we had a client who had over 10 years of experience and he was a given an offer as an l62 engineer at Microsoft and we both believe that he should be leveled higher the thing we did at offer stage was we didn't actually negotiate with the recruiter right because the recruiter has no understanding of level we actually focused on aligning expectations for the role and making a case for l63 impact with the manager and offered to do additional interviews right this process itself took like a month and a half right but after that happened he they increased his level right and that automatically increased his base case his Equity his bonus and that is a win-win right because for the for Microsoft there's now higher expectations and greater impact from this candidate and for the client he got more comp and saved himself probably one to two years in his career at a lower level I really like this example as well because it's not about trying to advocate for the absolute maximum sort of like level expectation and compensation it's really about sort of right leveling so that you're sort of set up for Success within your next role yeah yeah because it's equally important not to yeah set up expectations too high and you're just gonna fail in the company for sure yeah let's move on to your second tip so the second quick win is to understand the concept of a batna so a batna is an acronym for best alternative to a negotiated agreement and the smartest negotiators they work to strengthen their batna when they're negotiating as well as understand what is the other side's batna a really common mistake people make with negotiating is they get so influenced by the company that they believe that they can't say no or that they have no best alternative right like this is really where recruiters are actually negotiating experts is that they're really Savvy at influencing you and making you feel like this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity that you can't say no to and it's a rocket ship and all these things that conjure to what you said earlier this scarcity mindset and you know part of that is recruiters and maybe effective negotiating by companies but it's also fears that we create in our own head right we get into this scarcity mindset especially in a job search it's stressful it's tiring and so you know in your mind you're telling yourself the story of like I have to accept this job offer there's nothing better in the market out there I'll never find another company the true reality is that you can actually have you know what we call an abundant mindset which is is saying like I have a financial plan and I have you know four more months I have these options I can do otherwise I'm confident in my ability to do XYZ he thinks right and you know the more objective reality really is that for engineering Talent you know you have more security and opportunity than your fear is telling you right even in this market right now and so we never at Aurora advocate for anyone to make a decision that legitimately risks their basic needs you know food shelter Etc but that's really actually not often the case for engineers and Tech workers yeah absolutely I think that uh you know a senior engineer is ridiculously hirable even in today's Marketplace and macroeconomic climate you know even if it doesn't feel like it and I feel like recruiters it's in their best interest to sort of make you think otherwise you do have Alternatives and you do have choices and you would be really surprised at like what a company will do if you actually just say no ultimately your greatest leverage in a negotiation is walking away from an offer exerting your batna and I think a lot of candidates just they kind of don't even think about the opportunity cost of of the future opportunities they're foregoing by accepting maybe an offer that doesn't feel quite right or is undervaluing them and they just don't take into enough account the option of bidding on themselves yeah the imagery of I don't know if you've ever gone on vacation and gone to a market and you're trying to negotiate on price and when you say no and walk away how many times people sort of like flag you down yep right and then actually give you a better price now obviously it's you know higher Stakes than trying to buy a hat you know when you're on vacation and I think there's a there's something to it right there which is there is an option which is to say no and to go and find something better and people are sort of really fixated on not the Alternatives that are that are in front of them but on the opportunity or offer that has been sort of provided to them by the recruiter or by the company yeah and I try to tell our clients all the time too that like no now doesn't mean that you're like on a black list that the company will never hire you again right there's a really good chance that the manager loved you he's gonna want you more right if he couldn't get you this time right and so you know what one story I'll share too on on this quick win is that one of our clients was basically I'm searching for about let's say four months I think it was and he was getting pretty down on himself and he ended up getting an offer at a startup in Boston for about a hundred thirty thousand dollars and he had I think it was like six or seven years of experience so this was like pretty much like an entry level type of offer for kind of his skill set and experience you know he had the offer and he was it's so tempting to accept right because you're like so down on yourself and I told him like look I totally understand how tired you are of interviewing but I believe that if you can continue to search and bet on yourself a much better offer will come and you know to his credit he had to kind of bet on himself and make that courageous step but when he did and he declined the offer two months later he got an offer from Tesla for over three hundred thousand dollars right and you know I just checked with the checked in with him a couple months ago he's gotten a promotion he's and just the difference in career trajectory is like completely you know that's Bonkers that's that's a hundred percent more than a hundred percent increase in salary all right what's your last tip so the last Quick win is to understand this really common myth that most employees frankly have inside companies is that your work will speak for itself so at Aurora I commonly say the phrase only the squeaky wheel gets the oil and it's really true you know we're a startups of like 10 people right now and it's true right now and it only becomes more true the larger your organization becomes so there is definitely a strategy to making noise right you don't want to do it all the time but just doing good work is a Surefire way to being invisible inside a company and never succeeding in negotiating your compensation so there are two quick hacks you can do in your job right now to be to set yourself up for Success when it comes to a compensation negotiation later and so the first quick hack is to negotiate for feedback you should be directly asking your manager for feedback on how you're performing or if your manager is busy you should bring to him your understanding of what you think your manager's feedback might be right make your manager's life easier and own your own growth the next thing you want to do is once you get this feedback is map this feedback to work that allows you to develop the skills that close the gap in terms of the feedback being given and then you need to execute and once you execute you want to close the loop by basically showing your manager you've closed this Gap right this is like a feedback loop that should really be communicating and making noise about as fast as possible as fast as you're achieving and excelling the second quick hack is to over communicate I think that especially when it comes to like asynchronous email male communication it's pretty hard to actually do too much of it and so you know we recommend to send your manager and your skip manager a weekly and a monthly like he calls it a state of me email right and what that is is basically what have you accomplished where are you blocked and what are your priorities right this is making your work visible especially in large organizations like Amazon that would otherwise be invisible if you don't do this proactive communication I think visibility is one of the most important things that people neglect on the job there are just so many things that are going on on a typical development team that it's essentially impossible for a manager or anybody else that's sort of like looking at your performance over any period of time to actually know what's going on on the ground floor there's just too much stuff a lot of the advice is to us or over communicate or or to sort of like you know make sure that you're sending that out to your manager to others really over communication is just proper communication I think in this case right and so you don't want to be the guy that's just like hey you know I I checked in uh I checked in yesterday checked in today too but you know just making sure that people sort of understand you know the type of impact that you have on a team I think is really really important I am a big advocate for a brag document or a brag book where you catalog your achievements for the upcoming year and so definitely for the things that you've achieved you know make sure that your manager is sort of aware of all the Kick-Ass stuff that you're doing on the job I think on that communication it's there's a subtlety to it because I I don't think it should be just summarize your work right what you need to do is distill what does your manager care about what does your skip manager care about what's the like the simplest most critical piece of information to share and make sure you're doing that filter and surfacing that and that's like communicate as much as you can absolutely thanks for coming onto the channel I really appreciate it if they want to know more about you and your company what should they do yeah thanks so much for having me it was it was really great and I hope it was informative I really can't emphasize how important it is to learn how to advocate for yourself that will pay such dividends for your career and really your life to learn more about Aurora you can go to www.teamrower.com we have like an affiliate link with Steve and you can get 150 off using our service if you come through a life engineered YouTube channel and yeah it's great chatting yeah and I just want to emphasize again you know their payment model is one where they don't get anything unless you actually reap a benefit so it's really that mutually beneficial thing that Brian was talking about earlier in the video so thanks again and we'll see you next time foreign

Channel: A Life Engineered

Views: 19,129

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Id: ciMZ7tylBXs

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023