This is all very interesting, but is complete fiction for most readers. 99% of job seekers aren’t going to receive competing offers from multiple companies conveniently at the same time.
This is all very interesting, but is complete fiction for most readers. 99% of job seekers aren’t going to receive competing offers from multiple companies conveniently at the same time.
This is addressed in the article:
> Turns out, it doesn’t matter that much where your first offer is from, or even how much they’re offering you. Just having an offer in hand will get the engine running.
> If you’re already in the pipeline with other companies (which you should be if you’re doing it right), you should proactively reach out and let them know that you’ve just received an offer. Try to build a sense of urgency. Regardless of whether you know the expiration date, all offers expire at some point, so take advantage of that.
Anecdotally, I have seen this work many times to great effect.
Me too. It was utterly bizarre. Spent 6 month looking for a job, with I don’t know how many failed interviews, then I got one offer for a 6 month contract, and suddenly the next two companies I interviewed with were falling over themselves to give me a permanent one.
I just do not see how that works. There’s no logical reason for it.
It is at least in part because of how recruiting works, especially in large tech companies. Companies have many candidates for each role, and can't easily review all of them. Between bureaucracy, how busy the hiring manager is, etc. many candidates get lost in the process.
This is why 1) it really helps to have a referral and 2) tell the recruiter when you have competing roles. Neither will change much about getting or not a role, but they will really help the prioritization and avoid you getting lost.
Paradoxically, that effect is bigger nowadays when the market is not as hot as it used to be, because recruiting is more stretched. Even some FAANG are very understaffed on the recruiting side
This is the same logic as dealing with VC investors. Nobody feels confident saying yes so they drag the process out. Then someone else does say Yes and they assume this other unknown party has figured out something they haven’t. Now they have a sense of urgency over losing out on something. Even if they don’t know what quality the entity offering the first Yes even saw.
In addition to your (presumably positive-enough) interview performance that the later company has themselves, they also have a "hire" recommendation from an entire other interview loop at a different company.
That's a strong signal, and probably puts you ahead of most people interviewing at the later company, who only have the one set of positive feedback.
That’s theoretically true, but the only proof they have of that is the 5 or so words I uttered saying “I have a different offer”. Why should those 5 words make all the difference. You could say them without any offer at all and suddenly get the job?
Yes, you can lie to people and have good things happen to you because they believed the lie.
Surprisingly, most people are not in fact lying most of the time.
(Also, in practice, there's supporting evidence like being able to spout off credible minor details that yes, are still easy to bullshit but again, most people usually aren't lying.)
I have also experienced this and subsequently bluffed it.
I told a startup that I “was talking to Meta”, and they were like ok we cant compete with that. I hadnt even done leetcode yet I was just doing emails with Meta’s recruiter. I told the startup that its okay because I will be stuck in team matching for 6 months, and the startup bumped my salary 30%.
Perhaps having the 6mo contract in hand increased your confidence and changed the way you were carrying yourself and interviewing (subtly to you, but meaningfully).
I think this is a real effect. Dating certainly has a version of this dynamic.
Literally nothing involving human behaviour is entirely logical. Coincidentally, as a hiring manager, hearing people describe “illogical” human behaviour with any sort of surprise is an inexperience indicator for me.
why is it relevant? do you hire psychologists?
Why would someone not then just tell every recruiter/company they are interviewing with that they already have offers are are in the pipeline at other companies even if they don't.
We've heard nowadays how hard it is to even get to the interview for many companies so theres probably plenty of candidates who do not have many other offers prepared or even close to prepared.
Another issue is timing. Theres been times when I've started the interview process with two companies but one is on a much shorter timeline than the other so now I have an offer for one whereas I am still waiting on an interview that isn't for even a couple weeks for another, if not longer.
Not gonna lie, last time I went through the interview process I just told them I have other offers already even when I didn't. It worked in my favor I believe but feels like to get the best outcome you just have to be okay with basically lying out your ass - and that goes both ways, as the employer and the employee since it seems like even the companies feel fine with dragging their asses on concrete unless you have other stuff going on.
Presumably there’s a karmic payoff for this, or someone at X company knows someone at Y who can tell them whether or not you’re actually in the pipeline or have received an offer. Perhaps there’s an element of bluffing or calling bluffs in all of this.
I like karma, but wouldn't checking have the appearance of illegal collusion between the companies? For example, would it look like they were price-fixing?
"Oh, your honor, I was only checking whether they had an offer. We totally weren't discussing how we'd not raise our offers, with the goal of suppressing wages."
iirc there’s already an app for that in some sense, and a good amount of plausible deniability and backroom politics that can make up for any potential lawsuit. Similar issue to “proving” any kind of discrimination: a smooth corporate operator can CYA well enough to create a fake paper trail to justify any sort of decision making.
I mean, that sounds like a level of due dilegence that a lot of companies are unlikely to follow. I suspect that most don't even check the references that you give them.
False. Whatever you got told in primary school was a lie.
Would you be compelled to tell them the offer was from company Y? Or are you saying this is all predicated on Y being a famous company?
It is a labor law violation to disclose such info.
there is also the risk of getting black listed for lying.
I’d file that under the karmic payout thing. I personally hire and fire people but don’t have The Blacklist handy, and I’m not really sure that it exists outside of Roko’s basilisk-esque sense, in which it could be really bad if it really did.
Sure works for realtors too!
It’s always easier to get a new job when you already have one.
Quantum entanglement
As a hiring manager, this might help negotiate pay up if I already wanted to hire you, but if I was on the fence, knowing someone I'm not thrilled with has an offer does basically nothing for me.
As a hiring manager, if I was on the fence, knowing someone I'm not thrilled with has an offer makes me try to figure out what I/we missed and I would reexamine potential gaps in our recruiting processes with the candidate, which are always wrought with biases. And luck is such a big factor (on both the company- and candidate-side) in getting a positive signal.
As a hiring manager with over two decades experience I tend not to think this way unless I know who the other hiring manager is, have reason to believe that they are strong at hiring, and that the role they are hiring for is similar enough to mine for it to mean something.
That's not to say I don't think about where I might have blind spots for a candidate—as you say, all processes are biased—but I've seen too many bozos in this industry (especially as the money started to become its own draw) to take a random offer as signal for anything. More context is necessary or it's just garbage in garbage out.
Agreed. In my last job search I went months with no offer, then 4 within a week. Precisely because I leveraged the first one to speed the others along.
If you’re good at running your interview process you will have 3-4 at a time. That’s usually where I’m at, I’m interviewing with 12 and get it necked down to 3 or 4 getting to the offer point. I try to stretch out the fast movers and speed up the slow ones but just be honest with recruiters. You’re in the pipeline with other companies and you’re not ready to respond yet.
Edit: I saw other comments. I am both “old” and I have a mechanical engineering degree (not CS) and I do just fine interviewing with startups. I worked really hard at the practice of interviewing, this has more rewards and lower risk than basically any other skills you can learn so invest it.
> I worked really hard at the practice of interviewing
What did you do?
Not the OP but I tell everyone on the market that one of the highest ROI things you can do is just go through your own past career history with a fine toothed comb and simply remember all the different things you did and be able to tell the story of each concisely and informatively (if possible, recall actual numbers and quantifiable impacts etc.).
When in an interview, when you're asked a question about your past experiences, the larger the library you have to draw on, the more likely you are to find an example that's relevant and persuasive. Even questions of the form "How would you deal with [hypothetical scenario]", I encourage applicants, if possible, to answer it in the form of "Oh yeah, that's interesting, we had to deal with a very similar case at [one of my previous jobs], here was my approach towards it".
After each interview, do a "l'esprit de l'escalier" retro, write down all the questions asked, what your answer was at the time and what you would have ideally answered now given the fullness of time to think about it. If there's a significant delta, that's a sign to go back and prepare more until your "real time" performance approaches your retroactive performance.
As terrible as the Amazon interview process is, they’re very up front in telling candidates exactly this: Here are the LPs, come up with stories for each one and make sure it’s STAR format.
Everything. MIT has open sourced their coursework so I took all of it. I studied, I worked my way through TAOCP, cracking the coding interview (less helpful honestly) and tons of leetcode, I spent 4 years doing this and interviewing to get an idea of the system architecture problems and see how I was progressing.
It worked, after 4 years of studying I landed a SF job and 6 months later I was at Apple, year after that I was at Netflix. You get out of this life what you put into it, and in software it’s all out there for you to get. You don’t need a degree, you don’t have to pass the bar or boards, you just need to prove yourself and be willing to hustle
And even if you receive two or more offers at once, many organizations don't bother negotiating. One time I received two offers at once, and neither organization was willing to change anything substantive about their offers.
In this case, one organization had an onerous IP policy and that other did not. I asked for some carve-outs, and the first organization came back with a single line added to the IP policy that did not change anything meaningful. I told them that I could not accept that offer as written and wanted more changes, but they refused further negotiation and told me to take it or leave it. I waited a few days, rejected their offer, and accepted the other offer.
(I think that they were willing to add the single meaningless line to make it appear they were willing to change things without actually changing anything substantive.)
The morale of my story is that you may not be able to negotiate a better offer, but at least you have a choice when you have multiple offers.
Yeah well at least you tried, sometimes that’s just how it plays out. You might be surprised by how many people don’t even realize you CAN negotiate a job offer. I think it’s a little more well known among tech workers maybe?
It's also quite difficult to manage.
I was lucky enough to have 3 companies that all gave me offers (a couple years back when the market for tech was at its peak). It played out like this article recommends. After an offer was on the table, the other 2 kept throwing better and better offers at me.
However, interviewing at 3 companies, over the span of 2 weeks, with an existing (remote) full time job was hard work. Likely impossible if I hadn't already checked out at the FT job. It was also mentally exhausting, with how companies like to do multiple rounds.
I agree with you within the scope of top tech jobs. The tech interviews process is fairly uniquely grueling because it's both very high paid (so a costly mistake to hire poorly) while lacking much professional certification.
In many other careers the interview process is, if not shorter, at least more behavioral and less mentally draining because you're already pre-screened by licensure or rigid advancement structure of some sort.
Considering the ration of job applications to job offers right now seems to be 1 in 500, your right on point
In the current job market, only if your in the top 0.01% will you ever have to worry about this.
I really hope things improve but I'm pessimistic...
A priori, this is a very strange assertion.
Assume that X% of companies are interested in you and you pursue Y leads to result in X% * Y offers. A large number of people will receive 0 offers and they'll be long term on the job market until they make a change to either X (job hunting strategy) or Y (pool of roles considered).
A large number of people will receive >1 offers because they're competitive in the marketplace. Only some tiny number of people will receive exactly one offer unless Y is very small.
That many people only receive one offer is more of a sign that they're not strategic in their job hunting approach (which is upstream of them not being strategic in their negotiations) and this is a fixable problem.
Every single time I’ve been job searching (10x) I’ve always had 2-3 offers on the line simultaneously; I honestly assumed this was the norm.
Has that been recently? I've read the market has been brutal lately, but I haven't had to look myself, thankfully.
I’m job searching right now, and it’s definitely not the doom and gloom that I’m hearing about.
I think it’s a challenging environment for developers who are either inexperienced or who have skills that are out of date. I have found that companies are a bit more picky than i remember about knowing the exact tech stack they use, but they are still making offers and those offers are pretty good.
Note that I’m applying mostly to mid-sized non-public companies. I’m not sure what it’s like applying to MAANG-types right now.
I'm in loops at multiple FAANGs right now and it's not even that bad. Feels similar to when I did this last time? But I do get the impression that they're all just throwing out any resumes that don't already have a FAANG on them. If you're already in the club then it's ok, but I think it's harder than ever to join the club so to speak.
this is EXACTLY where everyone should be applying… too many people are nuts to work at faang, I can live 50 lifetimes and never understand it.
When the FAANGs stocks were soaring and they handed out options like candy, even low level devs at those tech companies were making the kind of money usually reserved for medical doctors and attorneys. There was a huge gulf between SV pay and pretty much everywhere else.
Now, those companies have mostly lost the luster they used to have, and the comp differences aren't as large.
The last time any faang gave options to low level employees was probably 2009 or earlier
For me, it was. Couldn't find anything for 4 months, and suddenly I had 3 offers. It often works out like that. It's as if companies suddenly smell you've become desirable or something.
Seriously. Getting even one underwhelming offer is beating the odds these days.
This article must've been written in Spring 2022. Tech hiring is now like 2008 or post-dotcom.
The question is whether it will return to what it once was.
The big tech companies are monopolies, no longer afraid that they have to employ "all the engineers" to prevent competition. ZIRP isn't there to give rise to startups, or to give the tech companies unlimited leeway in development.
If interest rates drop or big tech is broken up, we might see a sharp rise in salaries. But now there's also more competition from overseas, both in terms of great talent and competition from large international players.
edit: the article was from 2016, and can confirm. I was making bank then and getting free at-work massages, boba, and towel service.
your whole problem is that you want to work at big tech. I still get a whole lot of perks (not massages :) ) working for small private companies making MUCH more money now than 2016… big tech bubble is killing a whole lot of careers these days, tech hiring now is actually pretty good, I get emails from companies and recruiters (even though I virtually do not exist publicly, e.g. linkedin etc…) weekly or less
Right, I've received one job offer in the last decade. One. Took me a year and a half of searching to get it. Don't skip the degree or get older. ;-)
3 companies in a row I got recruited by folks from other companies - skipped the degree and about to turn 40, so older is relative - the biggest diff I have had is I am obvious and honest that I am always looking and actively build the network, especially the youngins - I have gotten 4 jobs (and its accelerating given the last 3) from folks I helped teach or train in the past who went on to do something interesting.
Hmmm, the nugget about focusing on younger folks you've trained sounds interesting, I hadn't previously thought of that. However, there have been very few juniors around in my last few jobs. Maybe because they were contracts.
In a 25 year career, I've never really managed to significantly negotiate compensation upwards, either at the job offer phase or for raises once I'm in. It's always a "take it or leave it" offer and yea, I've chosen to leave it a few times.
Recruiter: "Here's your offer for $X compensation."
You: "I was actually looking for something paying $X+Y."
Recruiter: "Well our offer is $X."
You: "This data shows that comparable jobs with the work I'm taking on are paying $X+Y."
Recruiter: "Our offer is $X. Do you want the job or not?"
You: "Well, I'm not willing to join for less than $X+(Y/2)."
Recruiter: "OK, well, bye. We have 35 other candidates lined up to talk to. Good luck."
Not sure how it's different when you have multiple offers. The company offering a lower comp will just say "Well, their offer is higher. Have fun at Company B. Thanks for interviewing!" Reading stories of these Captains Of Industry just asking for more and getting it, or getting companies into a bidding war over them is... kind of wild. It's like we're living in different universes.
Not an expert, but my impression is that many companies (maybe especially startups) don't say "we offer $X". They will try to ask you how much you expect as early as possible: if that's way too high, they won't even interview you, if it's too low you're screwed because they won't go higher anymore.
I don't think I'm negotiating to get a better compensation than what is reasonable. On the contrary, I'm negotiating to get a fair compensation.
Some companies (bigger ones) will just say "we hire you for this title, so the compensation is $X and we don't negotiate because we want it to be fair for your colleagues". Then I don't think you can negotiate much, but at the same time they're probably not screwing you. It's just what it's worth to them, take it or leave it.
This has not been my experience at all -- even as recently as last year it was
Recruiter: "Here's your offer for $X"
You: "Well I'm also negotiating an offer with Z for $X + 200k
Recruiter: OK well how about $X + 200k and a 50k signing bonus?
Multiple offers are key -- seriously, timing that properly is the biggest thing you can do to optimize your job search. Even if you can't give exact numbers, the mere presence of a competing offer will make a company offer you top of band.
at my company the dollars are what they are - take it or leave it. However you can often get an extra week of paid vacation if you ask. You don't eken have to know it is exactly what we can give - the hiring manager wants you and has been told $x by hr but know vacation is an option and will offer it if you just don't say yes instantly.
I would NEVER work for a company where dollars are what they are - that is fucking mcdonald’s and I would in passing tell everyone their employer is either financially insolvent or a sweatshop. jesus!
I think they're doing just fine without you then. Don't seem very sorry either :P
companies will always find slaves, always been that way
Pretty sure this is largely related to the industry and type of position you're applying for, and whether it's a big or small company.
At a big company with known positions (e.g. junior, mid-range, and senior devs), salaries for each of those positions may fall within a narrow range with little to no leeway. At a smaller company, where roles are more amorphous, starting salary may span a huge range depending on your specific qualifications, how their business is going, etc.
So true. Even companies I've heard back from, it's impossible to predict when. I've has a few take 2+ months!
Yes, our system is a multiverse of psychological distortions and senseless inequality. Some people straight out of university with no skills will receive large offers from multiple companies and will use that to negotiate themselves a big pay package then they will feel good about themselves and feel like they earned it...
But in reality it's just an illusion. Companies want to hire people who are delusional and believe that they deserve what they got. Big tech doesn't really need these people or their skills, in reality. They're merely cogs in the big machine. Big tech could easily have found someone better for a lower price; they get so many applications. The whole thing is like a psychological operation. They don't want to build up an elite class which understands how broken the system is. They want a delusional elite class who believe the grotesque myth of the meritocracy. People who don't believe in meritocracy are a huge threat; they cannot be allowed anywhere near the elite because the system is so unmeritocratic, it wouldn't take many interactions to snap the elite out of their comfortable trance.
Business leaders start getting imposter syndrome after they interact with people who understand reality. Business leaders sometimes start viewing themselves as mavericks/mafia boss and sometimes start behaving in dodgy ways.
It's like if you do something and you later discover that it was causing harm; you can either feel bad and correct your behaviour or you reinvent your self-image as a 'bad guy' and double down on the harm... Most people choose the latter, unfortunately.
I have had this situation multiple times in my life. It was probably a lot more common for tech in the last 10 years especially in the US.
Edit: I'm seeing a lot of comments on this thread that has not aligned with my experience. I have, in tech, as a software engineer used multiple offers to increase a lower offer by like 15% for a company I preferred and I have also held an offer on the hook so to speak to use it leverage someone else to good effect.
Best way I've found is no negotiate tell recruiters and head hunters what you want to make (saying that's what you make currently) when you respond to their initial message. Either the conversation continues where they offer a bit more or it ends.
You think they're going to check? Just call up the competition, ask them to divulge information about current hiring, which legally can't be divulged?
You're negotiating based on potential.
It doesn't seem you read the article completely. It is pretty long.
> 99%…aren’t going to receive competing offers
Then it’s not for them. You don’t see me complaining about advice for plumbers bc I’m not a plumber. The advice is for the 1%. Anecdotally I know numerous people, including myself, who have been in this situation.
And now that so many jobs require hours of take home assignments, it’s even harder to align interviews at the same stage.
You would have to be incredibly underwhelming to not receive multiple offers simultaneously.