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Ask HN: Should I worry about having a job offer retracted?

5 points by jacorreia ↗ HN
At my school, many students are about to receive offers for summer co-op terms within the next two weeks. However, none of them have ever even considered negotiating their offers, and when I try to show them how easy it could be for them to make a couple thousand dollars extra they immediately start protesting:

"If I try to play hardball they'll just offer it to the next highest ranked student" "In the contract it says the company can just fire you provided 2 weeks notification, especially if you start trying to change the offer" "Most companies have large HR departments that scope out other companies' intern salaries, so it's no use negotiating anyways" etc, etc.

So my question is: Is the fear of having a job offer retracted at all reasonable?

I'd love to hear any experiences from either side of the negotiating table!

6 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 25.0 ms ] thread
Bahamut
I feel like earlier on in your career, you have less of an ability to negotiate unless you bring something special to the table.

However, it doesn't hurt to test the waters if you have multiple offers I think - you probably don't really want to be at a company that plays hardball with you anyway, but that may be my own personal views showing here.

ylabidi
I don't think there's an issue with negotiating per se. The question here is what would you negotiate about, and what are your arguments for that negotiation? If you have demonstrated abilities that warrants a salary raise, I think in some places where employee performance is valued, you won't even have to ask about it. Otherwise, you better work out your line of reasoning before attempting such negotiation.
patio11
This models the hiring manager like he is a professor or judge of a competition. He isn't. He does not care about truth or light or merit or beauty, to a first approximation. He is just a corporate officer with a mandate to buy certain industrial inputs while staying within a budget.

He wants to purchase your services and makes a bid. That bid will virtually never consume the entire budget, because he has the rational expectation that he does not need to spend the entire budget to acquire your services.

You say "I will offer you my services, but the bid was too low." If he is still willing to purchase your services at the higher number, he accepts. Otherwise, a few words are exchanged, and he re-offers the original bid.

People make salary negotiation feel like it is a Greek tragedy. It is not. It is a routine financial transaction. The really big "but!" attached to that is that it is the routine financial transaction which will have the largest impact on your personal finances, by several orders of magnitude, at least until you decide to purchase property.

byoung2
Always negotiate your salary. I have gotten 10% higher starting salaries a half dozen times in my career simply by asking. My first full time junior programming job offered $50k, I countered with $60k and we met in the middle at $55k, a 10% increase. The next job I negotiated $58k to $70k. The hardest part is just being ballsy enough to ask.
S4M
Bear in mind that they already spent lots of money one way or another on you before they made you the offer - at the very least, interviewing cost them in developers time. The worse that can happen if you ask more money than they offer is that they tell you "We are sorry, but we offered you the maximum our budget allows, but we will consider something in 6 months - 1 year", in which case will still be able to accept it.

It's not in their interest to dismiss someone they judge competent just because he asks for more money.

helen842000
I worked as a recruiter for a number of years and never saw an offer retracted because someone tried to negotiate.

They will either say no, sorry or they may ask you why.

It's harder to have a good reason when just starting out.

You can always say "If I didn't push for better it wouldn't show much initiative would it"

Increases early in your career really help you when moving up/on.