<story><title>Google&apos;s &quot;free food&quot; is not free</title><url>http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>I&apos;m writing a post on salary negotiation today, so I zeroed in on two supporting details here that you should remember for later: when pressed on price, savvy negotiators said:&lt;p&gt;1)  Give us some time to think about it.&lt;p&gt;2)  We are going to re-focus the discussion on a different compensation lever where we can present something you&apos;re already going to get as if it were a new incentive justifying your concession on a lever you&apos;re currently interested in.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;You can do both of these as a job seeker.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(For example, if you have extra-curricular interests like many desirable tech employees do, the extra-curricular interests can be used to justify an increase in your compensation vis-a-vis a hypothetical employee who punches out of the Internet at 5 pm.  It doesn&apos;t particularly matter that you&apos;re going to continue blogging and OSS regardless of the outcome of this negotiation, you just frame the discussion such that that becomes newly discovered value which gives the other party something to hang their hat on for getting you that last $10,000.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>Yeah, I did both of those in my salary negotiations with Google.  They talked me down from my starting salary, but they also increased my stock options &amp;#38; GSUs.&lt;p&gt;The other important point is - you are the only one who says &quot;Yes&quot; when asked &quot;Is this acceptable to you?&quot;  If the free food is not worth $15-20K (which actually seems ridiculous - I&apos;ve heard numbers for both what average employees value it at and what it actually costs Google, and they&apos;re nowhere close to that), then say &quot;I&apos;m sorry, I don&apos;t value my food that highly.  I&apos;ll take the cash or go elsewhere.&quot;  This, of course, requires that you have somewhere else to go.  But remember that Google wants highly-qualified employees just as much as highly-qualified employees want to work at Google.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google&apos;s &quot;free food&quot; is not free</title><url>http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>I&apos;m writing a post on salary negotiation today, so I zeroed in on two supporting details here that you should remember for later: when pressed on price, savvy negotiators said:&lt;p&gt;1)  Give us some time to think about it.&lt;p&gt;2)  We are going to re-focus the discussion on a different compensation lever where we can present something you&apos;re already going to get as if it were a new incentive justifying your concession on a lever you&apos;re currently interested in.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;You can do both of these as a job seeker.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(For example, if you have extra-curricular interests like many desirable tech employees do, the extra-curricular interests can be used to justify an increase in your compensation vis-a-vis a hypothetical employee who punches out of the Internet at 5 pm.  It doesn&apos;t particularly matter that you&apos;re going to continue blogging and OSS regardless of the outcome of this negotiation, you just frame the discussion such that that becomes newly discovered value which gives the other party something to hang their hat on for getting you that last $10,000.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dlss</author><text>Way to put a positive spin on the article :)&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t forget the lesson though -- if you use an extra-curricular in a negotiation it&apos;s no longer extra-curricular.</text></comment>