The Exchanges

Q Let's try to summarize maybe the top five tactical tips that you've shared. If we were just to kind of go through and bullet points, just things people should keep in mind when they're trying to negotiate. Like one that comes to mind is don't speak. Don't share the number first. Try to get them to share number first. Is that, is that right?

A Yeah. You also have to know how to respond if they share the number first. I'd rather no numbers be discussed if you're open to just waiting it out and seeing. So important pieces. Uh, so the first one is you'd never be so sure of your worth that you wouldn't accept more. That's I think Chris Voss quotes that quite frequently. Uh, the other one is never split the difference. And I have a, I have a good story about that. So just because Somebody says, you know, you started a hundred, they, you say 200, they come in at one 50. That's lazy, right? One, one brief example of this. I had a chief revenue officer and they were paid 350,000 dollar base salary, 350,000 bonus. So 700,000 cash potential each year. Uh, so that's called on target earnings. They'll make 700. When we negotiated their severance, We said we wanted six months on target earnings. It was all agreed, right? The paperwork comes back and it says six months base salary, not on target earnings. So that means six months of base salary is like one 87 five, right? So they cut his severance in half by doing that. Now his response was, I'll just tell the CEO, like, let's up that 90 and it'll be down 90. He was going to split the difference to like two 60 or something, whatever the mass out to. And I said, instead, simply ask, was that a mistake?

AI assessment note: “the first one is you'd never be so sure of your worth”

Q I love these stories. Uh, another tip you should just, I want to double down on is don't, is don't negotiate over email, make it in person as possible or a video call, right?

A Yeah, absolutely. Just, you have to be more comfortable understanding the body language and the tone you're picking up these things that you can't control when somebody opens their phone. Like the worst thing is they're on their way to pick up their kids at school and they open your email and it just doesn't sit right with them and they're in traffic. Like you can't control whether someone's gonna do that. Or like I said earlier, being busy at the airport, rushed through security, or they just got off a call with somebody that's frustrated. But if I hop into a video call and I can see that you're visibly frustrated, like if for whatever reason you look like your toddler kept you up all night, I'd say, Hey Lenny, would you like to reschedule to a time that feels more comfortable?

AI assessment note: “Yeah, absolutely. Just, you have to be more comfortable understanding the body language”

Q like, what are you, what are you talking about? No, no, forget it. Or the, you know, they join, they get better comp and then they're like, oh, everyone kind of, they know that I pushed all this and I'm this kind of greedy person. And now the expectations are higher. What do you tell people to help them get past that and actually negotiate and actually go for it?

A Yeah. A couple of things here. So first of all, usually a company is extracting much more value out of you. Naturally, like five to one, 10 to one, a hundred to one, right? If you're, I know the audience is primarily product here. I mean, you're developing products that have infinite scalability in some capacity that's gonna make the company a lot of money, and they're a big piece of that. And product tends to be rewarded fairly well, right? But when you look at the money that the company's making in comparison, like you're not being greedy. And if you understand that value exchange, You can have that conversation with confidence. That's not to say that being a tall poppy isn't risky. That's the term you over negotiate. I would rather my clients over negotiate, reach a couple rungs up on the ladder and they get slapped down. They're still failing forward and they're growing in some capacity. And if you can ideally align work that doesn't feel like work, it feels a little bit more like play with strong compensation. You don't always need to negotiate hellaciously for the top of the band or break the bands just because you can, right? This isn't to be greedy, right? But it's just to understand that this value exchange isn't fair for you, regardless of how it works. Like the path to wealth is through ownership, right? And as a W two employer being taxed heavily. And it, it makes s…

AI assessment note: “when you look at the money that the company's making in comparison, like you're not being greedy”

Q Yeah. Okay. So coming back to this compensation number, so you've touched on this a bit, and I think this is an important part of your advice is when the number question comes up, who should speak first? What should your approach be if they ask you this question of how much do you want to make?

A Yeah, there's, there's a decent amount of nuance in this too. So one thing you should realize is that Especially earlier in your career, they're gonna push on this harder. And that indicates that the person asking is really more looking for a, a commoditized or a price sensitive hire, right? That can be okay, right? There's nothing wrong with, with sharing your number and getting a deal that, that moves the needle early in your career and even middle of your career. That changes the higher up the ladder you go. And this is one of the reasons I wanna share this is that what got you here won't get you there, right? So things start changing as you Mature in your career. And so when you're working with a top recruiter, they don't ask you about call. They won't. The problem is top recruiters only reach out to you when you're very well known. And they don't reach out to you very often. It's like, it's very difficult to optimize for inbound attention the higher up you go unless you become very popular.

AI assessment note: “There's nothing wrong with, with sharing your number... That changes the higher up”

Q you're like an IC product manager interviewing at Meta. What are the odds you can kind of flip these conversations or take a big chunk of that talk from them asking you, you know, their standard questions to you asking them what problems, what are the biggest problems? What would be awesome if I came in? Like all that stuff you shared about to extract To build this case later.

A One of the things I found frustrated about IC roles is they're not often rewarded as well as leadership roles, which is frustrating because there are a lot of very talented ICs. Now I have seen specifically with meta, I actually interviewed for a meta IC manager role, like an I nine, it was like 1.2 million a year. They were specifically hiring former CEOs. And I found that to be interesting. They hired a 150 growth PMs at this I nine level and they were rewarding them very well. I don't think it changes. I think that whether you're a leader of people or you're a leader of process, you're still a leader. And the reason I propose taking ownership of the conversation isn't to be steamrolling or talking over people or, or completely, like, I'm not saying do this devoid of context. You don't just blow out and like talk over somebody and ramble, right? Which I'm one to talk apparently. But, uh, you go into this conversation and you ebb and flow with them.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it changes. I think that whether you're a leader of people”

Q push back on. Just like, no, I'm not gonna tell you number. And you're giving us advice on how to say it in a nice way. And then just like, what did you have in mind? The fear is like, okay, they're gonna hate me. And they're gonna be like, well, it's not worth it. We're gonna move on. Has that ever happened? What are the odds that might happen?

A A couple of things about power, right? So if you have the ability to say no, you have infinite power, right? The nuance changes when, when you don't have a job and you need to pay your mortgage, you might answer that differently because you want something, right? Now, this isn't to shame somebody who's feeling that way, right? If you're out of work for six weeks in San Francisco, you're homeless, right? That's just the reality of the situation. So if I got to say a number to get a job, I think that's fine, right? But understand that once you're employed and somebody is asking you and your needs are already getting met, why do you need to get pushed around?

AI assessment note: “A couple of things about power, right? So if you have the ability to say no”