I have troubles taking your article seriously. These whole paragraphs of text, nobody would say that over the phone (wouldn't even write that in an email).
I can't imagine the person on the other side NOT dropping you when you're being this incredibly difficult. I certainly would have.
Maybe you're in the valley and they're really struggling to get candidates?
Take it seriously, I've used this one and OPs to earn quite a bit more money.
The most important thing these authors are trying to teach isn't dogma to repeat verbatim, it's an overall mindset and high level strategy. And you're right that know one you know talks like that... So don't, make it natural by tailoring the phrases to your needs, it's a framework with examples not something to memorize.
It's certainly less refined but provides a rough draft on how to play offers off each other. I found his wording slightly rude in his text examples so I mixed and matched strategies with the other articles and adapted the wording for my needs. I ended up negotiating a 50% salary increase and a signing bonus by using this strategy.
To answer my question, yes, you are in the valley and you got offers from 6 large companies including: Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft (LinkedIn), Amazon.
Thus it is utterly inapplicable to anyone not living in the valley (or not having that many offers at once). The offers were tightly packed and half of the companies dropped off rather quickly as you noticed. You should understand here that there isn't that much room to negotiate when dealing with 2 companies that ain't Google/Facebook.
I think you give too much credit to yourself for negotiating while the outcome actually had fairly little to do with that. Don't get me wrong, it is great that you managed to get the job and it's fantastic that you wrote about it =)
They are standard offers in the area (the cost of living being insane). On a rather low to mid level actually? Looks like one of the company decided to bump you one level and that's why you got a better offer in the end (you both worked hard for it AND you got lucky).
Given how great you are doing at interviewing. You should go at it again within 1-3 years for the level higher (maybe L5 at Google/Facebook, ICT4 at Apple). Think of what you're having now as a stepping stone =)
I was reading this comment on my phone and had to jump on my computer to say: you should absolutely take this article/Haseeb seriously, yes people say these exact things over the phone.
I was looking for a new job in the recent past along with a family member (both software eng. roles), and spent a good chunk of time doing research - reading articles like this - and practicing (eventually via companies early in my "pipeline"), and while I didn't use these lines verbatim, the conversation was actually a lot closer to that than you think.
And we both received NON-TRIVIAL adjustments to non-negotiable offers. And we were both very surprised it worked.
It may seem stilted or awkward, but I think that's the point. Recruiters and experienced managers have their own script that is more-or-less designed to make you feel awkward; make you feel like you're getting a great deal and asking for more is greedy. If you get more comfortable with being awkward, while still remaining professional and having clear expectations (vs. saying "not good enough, want more"), and you have a good alternative, you can use these strategies.
I'm arguing against the specific examples, not negotiating in general (that is a good thing to do). I really don't see these long messages/emails getting anywhere, in my experience HR have dropped the ball for less than that. It's over the top to send them long messages in writing that you will never accept whatever number they give and reserve the right to disagree anytime.
One of the offers was FAANG, but a small office. To be clear, I did not do most of this over email, but I used very similar wording in my phone calls.
I never had more than 2 offers at once, and I don't think you need to try and time everything so that you can bet everyone against each other. You really just need 1 other good offer, which was my case. And non-negotiable deadlines have always been extended. Some companies got annoyed that I didn't decide within a few days(especially startups, probably since they are trying to hire super fast), but others were very patient and willing to let me finish interviewing as long as I was upfront with the timing.
> It's over the top to send them long messages in writing that you will never accept whatever number they give and reserve the right to disagree anytime.
I don't think that is the take away at all. You need to be clear that you are still interviewing and thinking things over, and once I got offers from my top choices, I made it clear exactly what it would take to get me to accept immediately, and that counter-offer was not a fantastical number. If you set goal posts, you can always point to them as your reason for not accepting. It's definitely bad form to not provide any feedback on what you're willing to take once you get far enough into the negotiation.
If you're not a compelling candidate, and for at least one of the companies, I wasn't compelling enough, they absolutely will stop the conversation.
But I think it's a case-by-case thing. Not every company will respond the same. I also spent a fair amount of time researching what different companies probably paid for a generalist SWE, which for FAANGs is a lot easier these days, so I knew what some boundaries were.
Counter example: Got offer from two companies, the second a few weeks later.
Preferred the second but their offer was slightly lower. They could match easily (big company) but they didn't want to. I got calls by HR and by the manager to convince me to take the job but they wouldn't bulge on the offer.
Well. Went to work for the first company. I still got a call from HR after I started working at the company, to try to get me. I was upfront, I like your company and your project more, I want to work for you, all you have to do is to match £XYZ salary and I can start working for you on the XYth (notice period). They still refused to match the offer.
I use similar language in all my salary negotiations. Never had pushback, and every time I’ve gotten massive comp bumps as a result (up to ~50% increase, which happened twice).
