Part 1
Assignment / Summary
Benjamin engaged in a negotiation with the head of HR at Austrian Post AG regarding his salary and job title during his first corporate role. He initiated the discussion after feeling that his responsibilities far exceeded his age and pay level, creating a sense of being undervalued. Benjamin aimed to negotiate for a higher salary and a more prestigious job title, which he perceived as important at the time. The organization’s strict policies on salary negotiations limited his leverage, as agreements outside designated negotiation windows could delay future pay reviews by nearly two years. Additionally, the company held significant bargaining power, as Benjamin was new to the corporate environment and had limited experience navigating organizational dynamics. The negotiation was set against this backdrop of unequal power dynamics and restrictive policies.
Answer
Plan
My plan has 3 parts.
I will start off by listing responsibilities. I use my my technical expertise to snow job HR person and compare myself to “market average responsibilities” which is significantly higher. I emphasize my extra commitment to the company. I then let them make a first offer so they anchor their minimum higher and then I would highball them for 500E - 1000E above their offer to anchor the maximum even higher. Then we would hopefully meet in the middle for an increase of about 20%-35% than before as baseline. Then I can still nibble upwards towards my goal of a 50% pay increase.
Next up to underline my point I will find people and voices to support me within the company, like colleagues or a boss that speaks highly of me and using that basically as an internal letter of recommendation. I would also definite selling points of my skills or do something incredible the week before to show off my skills to further my point.
Lastly I would explore non-monetary options like my willingness to work on the weekends or during the night in case of emergency → cheap to me, valuable to Post and also do a bogey tactic with the prestigious title. I would first act like it’s a big issue for me but then settle for same title with yet a higher pay.
Like this I would like to achieve my 50% increase of pay from 3000E to 4500E fulltime.
To make sure this works I would like to befriend the HR people first via going out to lunch with them and never be aggressive during negotiations to stay on a good personal basis. I am also aware that the empty threat of the company policies is just cheap talk and let time play in my favor by requesting more “time to think” before finally signing to get even more out of them. I am also aware of the “company benefits” which have no value to me and I will also signal that I have no interest in using them and therefore have no value to me.
If all fails I would advance to my last tactic: chicken. I would almost blackmail them with phrases like: “I will behave like a junior then, I will stuff I am assigned and go home”.
If that fails too I would still be willing to work as a contractor instead of on their payroll for a higher hourly rate or quit entirely for some other job since my sunk cost is not as high as for them. It would also be feasible to do quiet quitting after some time to gain more payoff for me without extra cost (work) since I am not planning on staying with this company for longer periods of time anyways.
Commentary
-
BATNA low for Post, low for me → not much bargaining power, but also not much power differences
- for me hard to find another job
- for Post hard to find skilled developer at that pay level
-
both parties have high sunk cost - more power for me
- Post: 3 salaries, 3 months of training me
- Me: 3 months of wasted time with training I can’t use elsewhere
- still a bit less sunk cost for me
-
sweeteners - more power to Post
- Post has lots of sweeteners I don’t want and can’t exclude from my contract
- food coupons nobody uses
- bicycles nobody uses
- other stuff nobody uses or values but still something they provide to create “value”
- Post has lots of sweeteners I don’t want and can’t exclude from my contract
-
away from positional to cooperative bargaining
- don’t start off with way too high salary (anchoring) and meet in the middle
- only as second step after they have made a more reasonable offer
-
company policies are just a trick - empty threat
-
I would use snow job tactic since I have technical expertise
Part 2
Evaluation
I was at first not on track with my results of achieving a 50% pay increase. Then I was able to find out about the head of HR needing to pass this decision by upper management so I helped him to run the decision past them and how to advocate for my cause. I adapted and improvised accordingly and still achieved my (hopefully 50%) increase.
What is bugging me is that we could not form an agreement right then and there, but I don’t think there is any way around that. But apart from that I am please with the outcome. I am still expecting not quite a 50% increase, more like 30% since the involvement of the higher authority will not work in my favor.
I did make a mistake by calling out the hardball tactic of higher authority even tho it was justified. I should have done that less aggressively. I think it was good to not have to default to chicken or threaten with quitting or “behaving like a junior”, that would have probably not worked out well. I think I navigated through the “policies” quite well and came to a satisfactory outcome.
Was negbot a worthy partner? I think that the negotiation was fine but a lot of information which would be crucial to the actual negotiation that I had in mind. With a bit more information, e.g. the complete document we handed in in the beginning, it would be much better. I also think that you could fool the negbot in funny ways, I would quite like to explore breaking the system actually.
To answer briefly:
- I did adapt to include pleasing the higher authority and working with the head of HR instead of against him
- I did use the tactics I planned on using, except for the more agressive hardball tactives as the last resort
- I would have shifted more quickly to cooperation, but overall I am okay with my style
- NegBot was a mediocre partner which would be a very good partner with more information about the negotiation