[Editor’s note: At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice. Bookmark it and come back later.]
[编者注：本文近 7000 字，您可能不希望在 iDevice 上阅读。请先收藏，稍后再回来阅读。]
Imagine something a wee bit outside your comfort zone. Nothing scandalous: just something you don’t do often, don’t particularly enjoy, and slightly more challenging than “totally trivial.” Maybe reciting poetry while simultaneously standing on one foot.
想象一下，稍微超出你的舒适区。没什么丑闻：只是你不太常做，不太喜欢，并且比“完全微不足道”稍微有点挑战性的事情。也许是单脚站立的同时朗诵诗歌。
If I told you I would pay you a hundred thousand dollars if you did five minutes of poetry recital while standing on one foot, would you do it? It’s an absurd image, but play it straight. There is no hidden gotcha here. You won’t be videotaped. Your friends will never see you make a fool of yourself. The revolution will not be YouTubed. The offer is exactly as simple as you think it is: poetry, foot, $100,000.
如果我告诉你，只要你单脚站立五分钟，朗诵一首诗，我就付你十万美元，你会做吗？这是一个荒谬的画面，但请认真对待。这里没有隐藏的陷阱。你不会被录像。你的朋友永远不会看到你出丑。革命不会在 YouTube 上直播。这个提议就像你想象的那么简单：诗歌，单脚站立，十万美元。
Would you read poetry for me?
你愿意为我读诗吗？
Of course you would. You’d be screamingly stupid not to. In fact, not only would you read poetry, you’d probably take a poetry class to make sure you did it right, or go to the gym to verify “Yep, sure enough, I can stand on one foot. Phew. Pass me the Shakespeare.” If you couldn’t stand on one foot, you’d fix that, because you know that is much easier than other things you routinely accomplish and you suddenly have a hundred thousand wonderful reasons to learn it, too.
当然你会。你如果不这样做，那简直是愚蠢透顶。事实上，你不仅会读诗，你可能还会去上诗歌课，以确保你做得对，或者去健身房验证“是的，没错，我能单脚站立。呼。把莎士比亚递给我。”如果你不能单脚站立，你会解决这个问题，因为你知道这比你日常完成的其他事情容易得多，而且你突然有了一百个绝妙的理由去学习它。
What if you were talking about this at dinner with your friends, and one of them said “Oh, no, I’d never do that. I just don’t do poetry. I’m an engineer. And besides, my father told me that people who stand on one foot look silly. And what do I need $100,000 for anyhow?” You would not clap them on the back and say “Damn straight! Man, poets, always trying to tempt virtuous engineers into their weird poetry-spouting flamingo-standing ways.” You’d say “Dude, it’s five minutes. Heck, I’ll help you practice.”
如果你在和朋友共进晚餐时谈论这件事，其中一个朋友说：“哦，不，我绝不会那样做。我就是不搞诗歌。我是一名工程师。而且，我父亲告诉我，单脚站立的人看起来很傻。再说，我要那 10 万美元有什么用呢？”你不会拍着他们的背说：“说得对！伙计，诗人总是想引诱正直的工程师走上他们那些奇怪的、吟诗作对、单脚站立的道路。”你会说：“伙计，这只需要五分钟。我甚至可以帮你练习。”
This is pretty much how I feel every time I talk to my engineering friends about salary negotiation. We overwhelmingly suck at it. We have turned sucking at it into a perverse badge of virtue. We make no affirmative efforts to un-suck ourselves and, to the extent we read about it at all, we read bad advice and repeat it, pretending that this makes us wise.
这几乎就是我每次和我的工程师朋友谈论薪资谈判时的感受。我们在这方面普遍很糟糕。我们已经把在这方面糟糕的表现变成了一种反常的美德徽章。我们没有积极努力让自己变得不那么糟糕，而且，如果我们读到这方面的任何内容，我们读到的都是糟糕的建议并重复它，假装这让我们变得明智。
Dude, it’s five minutes. Let’s un-suck your negotiation.
伙计，这只需要五分钟。让我们让你的谈判不再糟糕。
(New to the blog? Hiya. I generally write as an engineer for engineers. Non-engineers can benefit from many of the same techniques, though the hiring market isn’t nearly as in your favor at the moment as it is for engineers in most major US metro areas.)
（刚接触本博客？你好。我通常以工程师的身份为工程师写作。非工程师也可以从许多相同的技巧中受益，尽管目前招聘市场对你来说远不如对美国主要大都市地区的工程师有利。）
Why Negotiation Matters 为什么谈判很重要
Your salary negotiation — which routinely takes less than 5 minutes to conclude — has an outsized influence on what your compensation is. Compensation can include money or things which are more-or-less fungible replacements for money, but it can also include interesting things which you value from “more time with your family” to “opportunities to do tasks which you find fulfilling” to “perks which make a meaningful difference in your day-to-day quality of life.” That makes your negotiation five very important minutes. You generally can’t do a totally bang up job on any five minutes of work this year and have your boss give you an extra $5,000. You can trivially pick up $5,000 in salary negotiations just by sucking less.
你的薪资谈判——通常只需不到 5 分钟即可完成——对你的薪酬有着巨大的影响。薪酬可以包括金钱或或多或少可以替代金钱的东西，但它也可以包括你所看重的有趣事物，从“与家人相处更多时间”到“从事你觉得有意义的任务的机会”再到“能显著改善你日常生活的福利”。这使得你的谈判成为非常重要的五分钟。你通常无法在今年的任何五分钟工作中做得非常出色，然后让你的老板给你额外增加 5,000 美元。你只需在薪资谈判中少犯错误，就能轻松获得 5,000 美元。
Since salaries are shockingly durable over time, particularly if one is not good at negotiating, you can expect a $5,000 increase in salary to compound with your standard annual read-the-HR-chart-percent raise, cause a similar increase in your 401k contribution (which also compounds), and establish a higher peg for any further jobs you take (if you’re unsavvy and allow these other jobs access to your prior salary history, at any rate). Accordingly, over the next ten years, the value of $5,000 a year extra salary is close to $100k gross, and the value of $15,000 a year extra (very achievable if you’re e.g. a young engineer who doesn’t realize that the hiring market is on fire right now, even outside of tech epicenters like Silicon Valley) is over $100k even net of taxes.
由于薪水随着时间的推移惊人地持久，特别是如果一个人不擅长谈判，你可以预期每年增加 5,000 美元的薪水会与你标准的年度“查阅人力资源图表百分比”加薪相复合，导致你的 401k 供款也相应增加（这也会复合），并为你将来从事的任何工作设定更高的基准（如果你不精明，并允许这些其他工作获取你以前的薪资历史，无论如何）。因此，在未来十年中，每年额外 5,000 美元薪水的价值接近 10 万美元的总收入，而每年额外 15,000 美元的价值（如果你是例如一个年轻工程师，没有意识到招聘市场现在非常火爆，即使在硅谷等科技中心之外，这也是非常容易实现的）即使扣除税款也超过 10 万美元。
Shifting Your Mindset To Embrace Negotiation
转变你的心态以接受谈判
We’ll discuss tactical advice in a moment, but let’s talk about the psychology of negotiation first. I think that middle class Americans are socialized from a very young age to view negotiation as something that is vaguely disreputable and engaged in only by poor people. Think of the associations you have with the word “haggling”: do you think of a successful young professional talking about thousands of dollars in a brightly lit office? No, you probably think of an old woman arguing over a trivial sum of money in a dirty flea market.
我们稍后会讨论战术建议，但我们先谈谈谈判的心理学。我认为中产阶级美国人从小就被社会化，认为谈判是某种模糊地不光彩的事情，只有穷人才会参与。想想你对“讨价还价”这个词的联想：你会想到一个成功的年轻专业人士在明亮的办公室里谈论数千美元吗？不，你可能想到的是一个老妇人在肮脏的跳蚤市场里为一笔微不足道的钱争吵。
If I were a little more paranoid and a little more Marxist, I’d honestly think that you’re so misinformed about reality that that is almost prima facie evidence of a conspiracy to keep you in the dark about this, to the advantage of people who a) you won’t negotiate with and b) who will feel absolutely no compunctions about negotiating with you. Principally, this will be your employers. People say that your house is the biggest purchase you’ll ever make, but it won’t be the most consequential negotiation. If you’re sane only about 25% or so of your gross income is subject to the results of real estate negotiations. Close to 100% is subject to the results of salary negotiations. Thus, your salary negotiations are probably going to be the most important financial decisions you will ever make. We socialize middle class Americans to go into them unprepared, demotivated, and fearful of success.
如果我再偏执一点，再马克思主义一点，我真的会认为你对现实的了解如此错误，这几乎是初看起来的证据，表明存在一个阴谋，让你对此一无所知，以利于那些 a) 你不会与之谈判，b) 绝对不会对与你谈判感到丝毫不安的人。主要是，这将是你的雇主。人们说你的房子是你一生中最大的一笔购买，但它不会是最重要的谈判。如果你理智的话，你总收入中只有大约 25%左右受房地产谈判结果的影响。而接近 100%受薪资谈判结果的影响。因此，你的薪资谈判很可能是你一生中最重要的财务决策。我们让中产阶级美国人习惯于在没有准备、缺乏动力、害怕成功的情况下进行这些谈判。
The reality is that rich, successful people negotiate. (This is one important way in which they get — and stay — rich.) It is an all-day-every-day thing in much of the business world, which is where most rich people get their money.
现实是，富有、成功的人会进行谈判。（这是他们变得——并保持——富有的一个重要方式。）在商业世界的大部分领域，这都是每天都在发生的事情，而大多数富人都是从商业中获得财富的。
Your Counterparty Does Not Share Your Mental Model of Negotiation
你的谈判对手与你的谈判心理模型不同
Salary negotiations are very asymmetrical. Companies know this and routinely exploit it. Job seekers don’t, perhaps because they think doing so would be unfair and the word “exploit” makes them acutely uncomfortable. So we often default by pretending that the employer is evaluating the negotiation like we would. This is not true, and acting like it is true will harm both your interests and the interests of your future employer.
薪资谈判非常不对称。公司知道这一点并经常利用它。求职者不知道，也许是因为他们认为这样做不公平，而且“利用”这个词让他们感到极度不适。所以我们常常默认假装雇主会像我们一样评估谈判。这不是真的，如果表现得好像这是真的，将会损害你和未来雇主的利益。
For example, many people’s mental model of employment is that an employee with a $60,000 a year salary costs about $60,000 a year to hire. If they negotiate $65,000 instead, that’s $5,000 extra which has to come from… somewhere. If the negotiation breaks down, then that is $60,000 saved. This mental model is broken.
例如，许多人对雇佣的心理模型是，一个年薪 60,000 美元的员工，雇佣成本大约是每年 60,000 美元。如果他们协商到 65,000 美元，那么这额外的 5,000 美元就必须从……某个地方来。如果谈判破裂，那么就节省了 60,000 美元。这种心理模型是错误的。
First, get into the habit of seeing employees like employers see them: in terms of fully-loaded costs. To hire someone you need to pay for their salary, true, but you also have taxes, a benefits package, employer contributions to retirement, healthcare, that free soda your HR department loves mentioning in the job ads, and what have you. (Trivia: for a US employer of professionals, the largest component after salary is usually healthcare, followed by payroll taxes.) The fully-loaded costs of employees are much higher than their salary: exactly how much higher depends on your locality’s laws, your benefits package, and a bunch of other HR administrivia, but a reasonable guesstimate is between 150% and 200% of their salary.
首先，养成像雇主看待员工那样看待员工的习惯：从完全成本的角度。雇佣一个人，你确实需要支付他们的工资，但你还需要支付税费、福利待遇、雇主缴纳的退休金、医疗保险、人力资源部门喜欢在招聘广告中提及的免费汽水等等。（小知识：对于美国的专业人士雇主来说，工资之后最大的开支通常是医疗保险，其次是工资税。）员工的完全成本远高于他们的工资：具体高多少取决于你所在地的法律、你的福利待遇以及其他一些人力资源管理细节，但一个合理的估计是他们工资的 150%到 200%之间。
The fully loaded cost of an engineer receiving market salaries these days in California or New York is close to $20,000 a month. It is “only” $10,000 a month if they’re receiving a heavily below-market salary, such as if they’re working for a startup. If you have a kid brother who majored in Flemish Dance and got a modest full-time job at a non-profit, his fully-loaded cost is still probably $4,000 a month or more.
如今，在加利福尼亚或纽约，一名获得市场薪资的工程师的完全成本接近每月 2 万美元。如果他们获得的薪资远低于市场水平，例如在初创公司工作，那“仅仅”是每月 1 万美元。如果你有一个主修佛兰德舞蹈的弟弟，并在一家非营利组织找到了一份普通的全职工作，他的完全成本可能仍然是每月 4000 美元或更多。
This is a roundabout way of telling you that companies are not sensitive to small differences in employee wages because employees are so darned expensive anyhow. You see $5,000 and think “Holy cow, even after taxes that’s a whole new vacation. Five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars. It would be so very, very greedy of me to ask for five thousand whole dollars.” The HR department sees $5,000 and thinks “Meh, even after we kick in the extra taxes, that is only about 3% of their fully-loaded cost for this year anyhow, or seven hundredths of one percent of that team’s hiring budget. I wonder if the cafeteria has carrot cake today?”
这是一种委婉的说法，告诉你公司对员工工资的微小差异并不敏感，因为员工无论如何都贵得要命。你看到 5000 美元，心想：“天哪，即使扣除税款，那也是一次全新的假期。五千美元。五千美元。如果我要求整整五千美元，那真是太贪婪了。”人力资源部门看到 5000 美元，心想：“嗯，即使我们额外支付了税款，那也只占他们今年总成本的 3%左右，或者是该团队招聘预算的万分之七。不知道食堂今天有没有胡萝卜蛋糕？”
Virtually any amount of money available to you personally is mouse droppings to your prospective employer. They will not feel offended if you ask for it. (I received a comment that this is untrue for startups by someone today. For a funded startup which has enough engineers to warrant a foosball table, the company payroll is well north of $100,000 a month. Making a new hire is a big commitment, but they still have a lot of flexibility on the details because the details do not shave months off of their runway.)
对你个人而言，几乎任何数额的钱，对你未来的雇主来说都不过是九牛一毛。你提出要求，他们不会觉得被冒犯。（今天有人评论说，对于初创公司来说，这不属实。对于一家资金充足、工程师数量足以配备一张桌上足球台的初创公司来说，公司每月的人力成本远超 10 万美元。招聘新员工是一项重大承诺，但他们在细节上仍有很大的灵活性，因为这些细节不会缩短他们的运营周期。）
We’ve been talking about your employer as an abstraction, but in the instant case you’re talking to an actual person. Let’s call him Bob. It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but Bob is not super motivated to do so, because Bob is not spending Bob’s money to hire you. Bob is spending Bob’s budget. Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of his hiring budget: you get a new Macbook if you convince Bob to give you $5k extra, but Bob gets (if he is anomalously lucky) a dinner at TGIFridays if he convinces you to take $5k less. In fact, there are many organizations (and Bobs) for whom power, status, and money come from asking for more budget every year. If you turn out to be on the expensive side, that is great for Bob, because a) he manages a high-powered peon so he must be a high-powered manager and b) this will help Bob get more budget next quarter. So if you’re worried about what Bob will think of your moral character, or you want to compensate Bob because you feel you owe him for this job opportunity, do Bob a solid and negotiate in a spirited fashion with him.
我们一直在抽象地谈论你的雇主，但在这种情况下，你是在和一个真实的人交谈。我们称他为鲍勃。鲍勃的工作是尽可能便宜地让你与公司签约，但鲍勃并没有太大的动力这样做，因为鲍勃不是在花鲍勃自己的钱来雇佣你。鲍勃花的是鲍勃的预算。鲍勃通常不会因为削减招聘预算而获得大的绩效奖励：如果你说服鲍勃多给你 5000 美元，你会得到一台新的 MacBook，但如果鲍勃说服你少拿 5000 美元，他（如果他异常幸运的话）会得到一顿 TGIFridays 的晚餐。事实上，有许多组织（和鲍勃们）的权力、地位和金钱都来自于每年要求更多的预算。如果你最终被证明是薪资较高的一方，那对鲍勃来说是件好事，因为 a）他管理着一个高能力的下属，所以他一定是一个高能力的经理，b）这将帮助鲍勃在下个季度获得更多的预算。所以，如果你担心鲍勃会怎么看你的道德品质，或者你想补偿鲍勃，因为你觉得你欠他这个工作机会，那就帮鲍勃一个忙，和他进行一场充满活力的谈判。
You don’t owe Bob for giving you this job opportunity, by the way. Internalize this: everyone in this discussion is a businessman. (Some might call themselves “regular employees,” which just means they’re businessmen with self-confidence issues and poor business skills.) If the deal makes economic sense, it will happen. If it doesn’t, firm handshakes will be exchanged, non-specific promises will be uttered, and everyone will forget about this discussion in a matter of hours. You will not be blackballed for negotiating. Bob couldn’t care less and, even if he did care, he has better things to do with his time than worry about a candidate he didn’t hire. Bob is working through a list of a dozen people right now, and his manager Dave is being such a hard case about that project’s schedule, and he’s not sure he can make his daughter’s piano recital, and the cafeteria’s carrot cake was a little dry. Bob is far, far less invested in this negotiation than you are.
顺便说一句，你不欠鲍勃给你这个工作机会。请记住这一点：这次讨论中的每个人都是商人。（有些人可能称自己为“普通员工”，这只是意味着他们是缺乏自信和商业技能的商人。）如果这笔交易在经济上合理，它就会发生。如果不行，大家会握手，说些不着边际的承诺，然后几个小时内就会把这次讨论忘得一干二净。你不会因为谈判而被列入黑名单。鲍勃根本不在乎，即使他在乎，他也有更重要的事情要做，而不是担心一个他没有雇佣的候选人。鲍勃现在正在处理一份有十几个人名单，他的经理戴夫对那个项目的进度非常苛刻，他也不确定他是否能赶上他女儿的钢琴独奏会，而且自助餐厅的胡萝卜蛋糕有点干。鲍勃对这次谈判的投入远比你少得多。
Your Negotiation Started Before You Applied To This Job
你的谈判在你申请这份工作之前就已经开始了
Your negotiation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Generic career advice is a little outside the scope of this post (though I’ve previously written a bit with engineers in mind that folks from many walks of life tell me was useful), but to make a long story short, many people think job searches go something like this:
你的谈判并非发生在真空中。泛泛的职业建议有点超出本文的范围（尽管我之前写过一些针对工程师的建议，许多各行各业的人都告诉我很有用），但长话短说，许多人认为求职过程是这样的：
- See ad for job on Monster.com
在 Monster.com 上看到招聘广告 - Send in a resume.
发送简历。 - Get an interview. 获得面试机会。
- Get asked for salary requirements.
被问及薪资要求。 - Get offered your salary requirement plus 5%.
获得你所要求的薪资，外加 5% 的薪资。 - Try to negotiate that offer, if you can bring yourself to.
如果你能说服自己，就尝试协商这份报价。
This is an effective strategy for job searching if you enjoy alternating bouts of being unemployed, being poorly compensated, and then treated like a disposable peon. (I served three years as a disposable peon in a Japanese megacorp and might be projecting a tad bit here. Regardless, my loss is your gain.)
如果你喜欢交替经历失业、薪酬微薄，然后被当作一次性小卒对待，那么这是一种有效的求职策略。（我曾在一家日本大型企业做了三年一次性小卒，这里可能有点投射。无论如何，我的损失是你的收获。）
You will have much, much better results if your job search looks something more like:
如果你的求职过程更像这样，你将获得好得多的结果：
- (Optional but recommended) Establish a reputation in your field as someone who delivers measurable results vis-a-vis improving revenue or reducing costs.
（可选但推荐）在你的领域建立声誉，成为一个能带来可衡量成果的人，例如提高收入或降低成本。 - Have a hiring manager talk with you, specifically, about an opening that they want you, specifically, to fill.
让招聘经理与你具体谈论一个他们希望你具体填补的空缺。 - Talk informally (and then possibly formally) and come to the conclusion that this would be a great thing if both sides could come to a mutually fulfilling offer.
非正式地（然后可能正式地）交谈，并得出结论：如果双方能达成一个互惠互利的提议，这将是一件好事。 - Let them take a stab at what that mutually fulfilling offer would look like.
让他们尝试提出一份对双方都有利的报价。 - Suggest ways that they could improve it such that the path is cleared for you doing that voodoo that you do so well to improve their revenue and/or reduce their costs.
提出改进建议，以便为你扫清障碍，让你能够施展你擅长的“魔法”，从而提高他们的收入和/或降低他们的成本。 - (Optional) Give the guy hiring you a resume to send to HR, for their records. Nobody will read it, because resumes are an institution created to mean that no one has to read resumes. Since no one will read it, we put it in the process where it literally doesn’t matter whether it happens or not, because if you had your job offer contingent on a document that everyone knows no one reads, that would be pretty effing stupid now wouldn’t it.
（可选）给招聘你的人一份简历，让他们发给 HR 备案。没有人会看这份简历，因为简历这个制度的设立就是为了让人们不必看简历。既然没有人会看，我们就把它放在流程中，它是否发生都无关紧要，因为如果你的工作机会取决于一份大家都知道没人会看的文件，那岂不是太蠢了吗？
You might think that desirable jobs at well-managed companies (Google, Microsoft, hot startup FooWithTheWhat.ly, etc) have layers and layers of bureaucratic scar tissue (a great image from 37Signals) to ensure that their hiring will conform to established processes and that offers will not be given to candidates sourced by using informal networks and interpersonal connections. If you believe this, you have a dangerously incomplete mental model of how the world operates. I have a specific recommendation for you to make that model more complete: start talking to people who actually work for those companies and who have hiring authority. Virtually no company has a hiring process which is accurately explained by blog posts about the company. No company anywhere has a hiring process which is accurately explained by their own documents about how the hiring process works.
你可能认为，在管理良好的公司（谷歌、微软、热门初创公司 FooWithTheWhat.ly 等）中，理想的职位会有一层又一层的官僚疤痕组织（37Signals 的一个绝妙比喻），以确保他们的招聘符合既定流程，并且不会向通过非正式网络和人际关系获得的候选人发出录用通知。如果你相信这一点，那么你对世界运作方式的心理模型是危险地不完整的。我有一个具体的建议可以让你更完善这个模型：开始与那些真正在这些公司工作并拥有招聘权力的人交谈。几乎没有一家公司的招聘流程能被关于该公司的博客文章准确解释。没有任何一家公司的招聘流程能被他们自己关于招聘流程如何运作的文件准确解释。
I won’t give names, but all of the following are companies you’ve heard of:
我不会点名，但以下所有公司都是你听说过的：
- Ironclad non-compete with an IP assignment provision of major multinational… struck from the contract with four sentences of discussion.
一家大型跨国公司的铁腕竞业禁止协议，其中包含知识产权转让条款……经过四句话的讨论后从合同中删除。 - Major popular tech employer offered desirable employee $X as a salary because “it was the max the HR department allows for that position.” He got hired that week at $2X. All parties — hiring organization, HR, and employee — think they pulled one over on the other participants.
一家知名的热门科技公司向一位理想的员工提供了 $X 的薪水，因为“这是人力资源部门允许该职位的最高薪水”。他那周以 $2X 的薪水被录用了。所有相关方——招聘组织、人力资源和员工——都认为他们骗过了其他参与者。 Funny story goes here. I now can’t tell you the funny story, because literally two hours before publication someone emailed me for advice about a situation that he believes is incredibly unjust at his company, and it is exactly the funny story to the letter. Now if I tell you the funny story he might think “Dang, I write Patrick in confidence and it ends up on the blog.” So, no funny story today. Suffice it to say that in my old age I treat Dilbert less as farce and more as documentary.
这里本该有个有趣的故事。我现在不能告诉你这个有趣的故事了，因为就在发布前两小时，有人给我发邮件寻求关于他公司里一个他认为极其不公正的情况的建议，而这情况和那个有趣的故事简直一模一样。现在如果我告诉你那个有趣的故事，他可能会想：“天哪，我私下里写信给帕特里克，结果却被发到了博客上。”所以，今天没有有趣的故事了。我只能说，随着年龄的增长，我越来越觉得《呆伯特》与其说是闹剧，不如说是纪录片。- “We can’t hire engineers fast enough through our standard processes so, meh, I guess we’ll circumvent them by just tossing $1 million per employee at whomever they currently work for. Who cares, it isn’t my million.”
“我们无法通过标准流程足够快地招聘工程师，所以，算了，我们绕过这些流程，直接向他们目前工作的公司支付每位员工 100 万美元。谁在乎呢，反正又不是我的 100 万美元。”
When Does A Salary Negotiation Happen?
薪资谈判何时进行？
Only negotiate salary after you have agreement in principle from someone with hiring authority that, if a mutually acceptable compensation can be agreed upon, you will be hired.
只有在获得拥有招聘权限的人的原则性同意后，即如果能达成双方都接受的薪酬，你将被录用，才能进行薪资谈判。
This is really, really important because it has direct implications for your negotiating strategy. First, the company is going to spend a lot of time and effort on getting you to the point of agreement-in-principle. Pretend you’ve gone through six rounds of interviews. (You probably won’t if you get hired on informal networks, because all barriers vanish when important people want a deal to get done, but let me give some advice to someone a little less well-situated.) Do some quick mental math on what that actually cost the company, with reference to “one man-month of an engineer’s time costs $20k” like we discussed earlier. You’ll quickly reach the conclusion that the company has spent thousands of dollars just talking to you, and that doesn’t even count the thousands they spent deciding to talk to you instead of whoever isn’t in the room right now. Walking away from the negotiation means that they lose all that investment. (Yeah, sunk cost fallacy and all, but since people predictably act in this fashion you should, well, predict that they will act in this fashion.) They really want to reach an agreement with you.
这真的非常非常重要，因为它直接影响你的谈判策略。首先，公司会花费大量时间和精力让你达到原则性协议。假设你已经经历了六轮面试。（如果你通过非正式渠道被录用，可能不会有这么多轮，因为当重要人物希望达成交易时，所有障碍都会消失，但让我给那些处境稍差的人一些建议。）快速心算一下这实际花费了公司多少钱，参考我们之前讨论的“一名工程师一个月的成本是 2 万美元”。你会很快得出结论，公司光是和你谈话就花费了数千美元，这还不包括他们决定和你谈话而不是和现在不在场的其他人谈话所花费的数千美元。放弃谈判意味着他们将失去所有这些投资。（是的，沉没成本谬误等等，但既然人们会可预测地以这种方式行事，那么你也应该预测他们会以这种方式行事。）他们真的非常想和你达成协议。
The second implication is that the inner serf worrying “If I even attempt to negotiate this, the deal will fall through” is worrying for nothing. They’ve got thousands invested in this discussion by this point. They want you. The absolute worst outcome of negotiating an offer in good faith is that you will get exactly the contents of that offer. Let me say that again for emphasis: negotiating never makes (worthwhile) offers worse. This means you need what political scientists call a commitment strategy: you always, as a matter of policy, negotiate all offers. (In this wide world I’m sure you can find a company who still makes exploding offers, where you get one yay-or-nay and then the offer is gone. You have a simple recourse to them: refuse them and deal with people who are willing to be professionals. You’re not a peasant. Don’t act like one.)
第二个含义是，内心深处的农奴担心“如果我尝试谈判，交易就会告吹”是杞人忧天。到目前为止，他们已经在这场讨论中投入了数千美元。他们想要你。真诚地谈判一份录用通知，最坏的结果就是你得到这份录用通知的全部内容。让我再强调一遍：谈判绝不会让（有价值的）录用通知变得更糟。这意味着你需要政治学家所说的承诺策略：作为一项政策，你总是要谈判所有的录用通知。（在这个广阔的世界里，我确信你可以找到一家仍然提供“限时优惠”的公司，你只有一次同意或拒绝的机会，然后优惠就消失了。你有一个简单的补救措施：拒绝他们，并与那些愿意专业行事的人打交道。你不是农民。不要表现得像个农民。）
This also means you do not start negotiating until you already have a Yes-If. (Yes-If we agree on terms.) Do not start negotiating from No-But. (No-But we might hire you anyway if you’re really, really effing cheap.) You don’t want to work for a No-But for the same reasons that smart employers hate hiring candidates who are a No-But (No-But maybe if not on my team, etc). If they’re leaning to not hiring you, you will compromise excessively on negotiation to get them to hire you. Compromising excessively is not the point of the exercise. It is a seller’s market for talent right now: sell to someone who is happy to buy.
这也意味着，在你已经有了“如果可以”的条件之前，不要开始谈判。（如果我们在条款上达成一致，就可以。）不要从“不行，但是”开始谈判。（不行，但是如果你真的、真的非常便宜，我们也许还是会雇佣你。）你不想为“不行，但是”工作，原因与聪明的雇主讨厌雇佣“不行，但是”的候选人（不行，但是也许不是在我团队里等等）的原因相同。如果他们倾向于不雇佣你，你会在谈判中过度妥协以让他们雇佣你。过度妥协不是这次练习的目的。现在是人才的卖方市场：卖给乐意购买的人。
This means that any discussion of compensation prior to hearing Yes-If is premature. If you’re still at the job interview and you’re talking price you are doing something wrong. (Read the room: it is entirely possible that you came for a job interview, finished it, and proceeded directly to a salary negotiation. That’s probably suboptimal, but it is OK. Just don’t give the employer the option of having the schedule be job interview, salary negotiation, and back to job interview if they discover that you have a spine.) The ideal resolution to the job interview is for both sides to be optimistic about the arrangement, and then you close with a warm handshake and “I look forward to receiving your offer by, oh, would tomorrow be enough time for you to run the numbers?”
这意味着在听到“如果可以”之前，任何关于薪酬的讨论都为时过早。如果你还在面试中就开始谈论薪资，那说明你做错了什么。（察言观色：你完全有可能在面试结束后直接进入薪资谈判。这可能不是最佳选择，但也没关系。只是不要让雇主有机会在发现你很有骨气后，把流程变成面试、薪资谈判，然后再回到面试。）面试的理想结果是双方都对安排感到乐观，然后你热情地握手并说：“我期待收到你的录用通知，哦，明天你有足够的时间来计算吗？”
You then have a high likelihood of doing your salary negotiation over email, which is likely to your advantage versus doing it in real time. Email gives you arbitrary time to prepare your responses. Especially for engineers, you are likely less disadvantaged by email than you are by having an experienced negotiator talking to you.
然后你很有可能通过电子邮件进行薪资谈判，这可能比实时谈判对你更有利。电子邮件给你任意的时间来准备你的回复。特别是对于工程师来说，与经验丰富的谈判者与你交谈相比，你通过电子邮件受到的不利影响可能更小。
The First Rule Is What Everyone Tells You It Is: Never Give A Number First
第一条规则就是大家告诉你的：绝不先给出数字
Every handbook on negotiation and every blog post will tell you not to give a number first. This advice is almost always right. It is so right, you have to construct crazy hypotheticals to find edge cases where it would not be right.
每本关于谈判的手册和每篇博客文章都会告诉你不要先给出数字。这条建议几乎总是正确的。它是如此正确，以至于你必须构建疯狂的假设才能找到它不正确的极端情况。
For example, if your previous salary was set during the dot-com bubble and you are negotiating after the bubble popped, you might mention it to anchor your price higher such that the step down will be less severe than it would be if you engaged in free negotiations unencumbered by the bubbilicious history. Does this sound vaguely disreputable to you? Good. This vaguely disreputable abuse of history is what every employer asking for salary history, salary range, or desired salary is doing. They are all using your previous anomalously low salary — a salary which did not reflect your true market worth, because you were young or inexperienced or unskilled at negotiation or working at a different firm or in another line of work entirely — to justify paying you an anomalously low salary in the future.
例如，如果你的前一份薪水是在互联网泡沫时期设定的，而你正在泡沫破裂后进行谈判，你可能会提及它以提高你的锚定价格，这样降薪的幅度会比你在没有泡沫历史束缚的情况下自由谈判要小。这听起来有点声名狼藉吗？很好。这种对历史的模糊不清的滥用，正是每个要求提供薪资历史、薪资范围或期望薪资的雇主正在做的事情。他们都在利用你之前异常低的薪水——一份未能反映你真实市场价值的薪水，因为你当时年轻、缺乏经验、不擅长谈判，或者在不同的公司或完全不同的行业工作——来为未来支付你异常低的薪水找借口。
Never give a number. 绝不给出数字。
“But Patrick,” you cry. “I don’t want to be difficult.” You’re not being difficult. You’re not doing anything immoral. You’re not being unprofessional. They’re businessmen, sometimes they don’t have all the information they would love to have prior to making a decision. They’ll deal.
“但是帕特里克，”你哭喊道，“我不想变得难缠。”你并没有变得难缠。你没有做任何不道德的事情。你也没有不专业。他们是商人，有时他们没有在做决定之前掌握所有他们想要的信息。他们会处理好的。
They already deal with every employee that they’ve ever had who was not a doormat at negotiations, which includes essentially all of the employees they really value. Ramit Sethi (more on him later) introduced me to a concept that he calls Competence Triggers: basically, if you have to judge someone’s skill based on a series of brief interactions, you’re going to pattern match their behavior against other people who you like. When people with hiring authority think of winners, they think of people like them who live and breathe this business thing. They negotiate things as a matter of course: that is a major portion of the value they bring to the company. Volunteering a number when asked says the same thing to people with hiring authority that flunking FizzBuzz says to an engineer: this person may be a wonderful snowflake in other regards, but on the thing I care about, they’re catastrophically incompetent. It will also cause them to retroactively question competencies they’d previously credited you with.
他们已经与所有在谈判中不甘示弱的员工打过交道，这其中包括了他们真正重视的所有员工。拉米特·塞西（稍后会详细介绍他）向我介绍了一个他称之为“能力触发器”的概念：基本上，如果你必须根据一系列简短的互动来判断一个人的技能，你就会将他们的行为与你喜欢的其他人进行模式匹配。当拥有招聘权力的人想到赢家时，他们会想到像他们一样，对商业事务了如指掌的人。他们习惯性地进行谈判：这是他们为公司带来价值的重要组成部分。在被问到时主动报出数字，对于拥有招聘权力的人来说，就像工程师在 FizzBuzz 测试中不及格一样：这个人可能在其他方面很出色，但在我关心的方面，他们却灾难性地不称职。这也会让他们追溯性地质疑你之前被认可的能力。
I have literally heard that feedback, in so many words, from folks with whom I’ve had successful business dealings. (A funny in hindsight story: I cost myself five figures with a single email. The particulars are boring, but suffice it to say I fairly recently made a wet-behind-the-ears-engineer error in quoting a client. He noticed. So did my bank statement. My bank statement kept quiet, but the client opined that it made him think less of me until we actually got to work together.)
我曾从与我成功进行过商业交易的人那里，听到过字面意义上的这种反馈。（一个事后看来很有趣的故事：我因为一封邮件损失了五位数。具体细节很无聊，但足以说明我最近犯了一个菜鸟工程师在报价上的错误。他注意到了。我的银行账单也注意到了。我的银行账单保持沉默，但客户认为这让我在他心中的形象大打折扣，直到我们真正开始合作。）
So anyhow, you may well hear reasons why you should give a number.
所以无论如何，你很可能会听到一些理由，说明你为什么要给出一个数字。
Objection: “I really need a number to move the process forward.”
异议：“我确实需要一个数字才能推进流程。”
What you should think: “You’re lying to me to attempt to get me to compromise my negotiating position.”
你应该这样想：“你正在对我撒谎，试图让我妥协我的谈判立场。”
What you should say: “I’m more concerned at the moment with talking to you about discovering whether we’re a mutual fit. If we’re a great fit, then I can be flexible on the numbers with you and you can be flexible on the numbers with me. If we’re not a great fit, then the numbers are ultimately irrelevant, because your company only hires A players and I only work at roles I would be an A player at.”
你应该这样说：“我目前更关心的是与您探讨我们是否相互契合。如果我们非常契合，那么我可以在薪资方面与您灵活协商，您也可以在薪资方面与我灵活协商。如果我们不契合，那么薪资最终是无关紧要的，因为贵公司只招聘顶尖人才，而我只从事我能成为顶尖人才的职位。”
(Don’t talk like that normally? Fine then, talk like yourself, but say substantially the same things. Engineers overestimate how different we really are from business people: we say “10x engineer,” they say “A player,” but at the end of the day we believe that there are vast differences in productivity between workers. OK, gut check: is this something we actually believe to be true or just something we wish for? If it is actually your best guess about the state of reality, that has immediate news-you-can-use implications about how you should conduct your life.)
（通常不这样说话？那好吧，用你自己的方式说话，但实质上表达相同的意思。工程师们高估了我们与商人之间的差异：我们说“10 倍工程师”，他们说“A 级人才”，但归根结底，我们都相信工人之间的生产力存在巨大差异。好的，扪心自问：这真的是我们相信的事实，还是我们只是希望如此？如果这确实是你对现实状况的最佳猜测，那么它对你如何生活具有立竿见影的实用意义。）
Objection: “This form needs a number.”
异议：“这个表格需要一个数字。”
What you should think: “You’re lying to me to attempt to get me to compromise my negotiating position.”
你应该这样想：“你对我撒谎，试图让我妥协我的谈判立场。”
What you should say: “Give me git access and I’ll fix it in a jiffy! both people laugh No, seriously, speaking, I’m more concerned at the moment with discovering whether we’re a mutual fit… Oh, it’s physically impossible? Put in $1 then to get the ball rolling, and we’ll circle back to this later.”
你应该这样说：“给我 git 权限，我马上就能搞定！[两人都笑了] 不，说真的，我现在更关心的是我们是否相互契合……哦，这在物理上是不可能的？那先投入 1 美元启动，我们稍后再讨论这个问题。”
Objection: “We want to figure out whether you’re an appropriate candidate for the position.”
异议：“我们想弄清楚你是否是这个职位的合适人选。”
What you should think: “You’re lying to me to attempt to get me to compromise my negotiating position.”
你应该这样想：“你对我撒谎，试图让我放弃我的谈判立场。”
What you should say: “It’s so important to me that this is a good mutual fit for us. Let’s talk about why I’m a great fit for this position: I know you’re concerned about $FILL_IN_THE_BLANK. In addition to my previous successes doing it, I have some great ideas for what I’d do about that if I was working at your company. Would you like to drill into those or is there another job area you’re more concerned about to start with?”
你应该这样说：“对我来说，我们双方能很好地契合非常重要。我们来谈谈为什么我非常适合这个职位：我知道你担心$FILL_IN_THE_BLANK。除了我之前在这方面取得的成功，如果我在贵公司工作，我还有一些很好的想法可以解决这个问题。你想深入探讨这些想法，还是有其他你更关心的工作领域可以先谈谈？”
Objection: “I’m sorry, great try at a dodge there, but I just can’t go forward without a number.”
反对意见：“抱歉，你试图回避得很好，但我没有一个数字就无法继续。”
What you should think: “You’re lying to me to attempt to get me to compromise my negotiating position.”
你应该这样想：“你对我撒谎，试图让我放弃我的谈判立场。”
What you should say (if you’re an engineer): “Well, you know, I would hate to have to walk away from the negotiation over this. Working with your company looked like it would have been such a wonderful opportunity. I hear the hiring market is super-tight right now, would you like me to introduce you to other candidates? Maybe we can shave a couple of months off of you filling this position.”
如果你是工程师，你应该这样说：“嗯，你知道，我真不想因为这个而放弃谈判。与贵公司合作看起来会是一个绝佳的机会。我听说现在的招聘市场非常紧张，你希望我向你介绍其他候选人吗？也许我们可以帮你节省几个月的时间来填补这个职位。”
What you should say (if you’re not an engineer): “Damn, I guess I should have studied engineering.”
如果你不是工程师，你应该这样说：“该死，我想我当初应该学工程。”
What you should say (if you’re a little put out by that comment): “Well, you know, salary is only one component of the total compensation package. In terms of total compensation, we’re probably looking at something like $FILL_IN_NUMBER_HERE.” (Suggested calculation: take the package value from your last company and add 5~10%. If you don’t know how to calculate the value of your compensation package, learn that, but as a rough guesstimate salary + 30 ~ 50% for full-time employees in professional roles and the multiplier tends to scale up as your base salary scales up.)
如果你对这个评论有点不悦，你应该这样说：“嗯，你知道，薪水只是总薪酬方案的一个组成部分。就总薪酬而言，我们可能在 $FILL_IN_NUMBER_HERE 左右。”（建议计算：取你上一家公司的薪酬方案价值，然后增加 5%~10%。如果你不知道如何计算你的薪酬方案价值，请学习一下，但粗略估计，对于全职专业岗位的员工，薪水加上 30%~50% 是一个大致的估算，并且这个乘数会随着你的基本薪资的增加而增加。）
P.S. I double majored in making things and making things up. The joking comes from a place of love. OK, love and schadenfreude, in solution with each other.
附注：我主修两门专业：创造事物和编造故事。这些玩笑是出于爱。好吧，是爱和幸灾乐祸的混合体。
Listen To What People Tell You. Repeat It Back To Them.
倾听别人告诉你的。然后重复给他们听。
Properly run negotiations are not jockeying contests, they’re persuasive exercises. (We’ll give the company a pass on the “what’s your number?” question because it is an established social ritual that they get one free pass at screwing you. You still don’t have to cooperate with it, though.) You know what people find persuasive? Their own words. People love their own words. When you talk to them, you should use their own words. Seriously, watch the eyes light up.
运作得当的谈判不是一场争夺赛，而是一场说服练习。（对于公司提出的“你的期望薪资是多少？”这个问题，我们可以放他们一马，因为这是一个既定的社交仪式，他们有一次免费坑你的机会。不过，你仍然不必配合。）你知道什么能说服人吗？他们自己的话。人们喜欢他们自己的话。当你和他们交谈时，你应该使用他们自己的话。说真的，看着他们的眼睛亮起来。
Did the solicitation for the job say “We are seeking someone with strong skills at scaling traffic in a fast-moving environment”? Pick out the key words. Scaling traffic. Fast-moving environment. “Scaling traffic” doesn’t sound like how I’d phrase it if I were writing or speaking for myself, but if you’ve just described your need to me as scaling traffic, by golly I will tell you how great I am at scaling traffic. Reinterpret or rephrase the (true!) bits of your own story such that it fits the narrative framework which they have conveniently told you that they are going to respond to. Did you previously work at a small business which was unencumbered by lots of process? Sounds like a fast-moving environment, right? Call it exactly that, then.
招聘启事上是不是写着“我们正在寻找一位在快速变化的环境中具备强大流量扩展能力的专业人士”？挑出关键词。流量扩展。快速变化的环境。“流量扩展”听起来不像我自己会用的措辞，但如果你刚刚告诉我你的需求是流量扩展，那么我一定会告诉你我在流量扩展方面有多么出色。重新诠释或重新措辞你（真实！）的故事片段，使其符合他们已经方便地告诉你会做出回应的叙事框架。你以前是不是在一家没有太多流程束缚的小公司工作？听起来像是一个快速变化的环境，对吧？那就直接这样称呼它。
Micro-tip: Take notes during job interviews and salary negotiations. It’s easy: go to the convenience store before the job interview, buy a writing instrument and a $1 notebook, jot down occasional notes when appropriate.
微小提示：在面试和薪资谈判中做笔记。这很简单：在面试前去便利店，买一支笔和一个 1 美元的笔记本，在适当的时候偶尔记下笔记。
Can I do that?! Of course you can. Do you know anyone who you’ve ever thought “Man, I thought they were competent, but then it turned out they had a notebook so I had to write them off?” No. Taking notes says “I’m attentive and detail-oriented and I care about what you say.” (Make sure you can take notes without playing with your pen or otherwise appearing to fidget.) In terms of specific things that should get your pen moving, among others, I would focus on specific words they use and concerns they have so that you can come back to them later in the conversation. Numbers are another good thing to hit the notebook, because numbers should only ever trend in a direction of “Better to you,” so you don’t want to do something stupid like saying “So how many days of vacation was that again?” and let a 24 suddenly become a 20. (You might think “I’m going to write down the offer so I have proof of it for later.” Get offers written, that goes hopefully without saying, but get it written by them and/or follow-up the discussion with an email recapping the important points and asking if you understood them correctly. Your notes will not convince their HR apparatus to honor the agreement in event of a retroactive miscommunication, but an email from their decisionmaker likely will.)
我能那样做吗？！当然可以。你认识这样的人吗？你曾想过“天哪，我以为他们很能干，但后来发现他们有个笔记本，所以我不得不把他们排除在外”？不。做笔记表明“我很专注，注重细节，我关心你所说的话。”（确保你做笔记时不会玩笔或表现出烦躁不安。）就应该让你动笔的具体事项而言，我尤其会关注他们使用的具体词语和他们关心的事项，以便你可以在稍后的谈话中回到这些点。数字是另一个值得记在笔记本上的好东西，因为数字应该只朝着“对你更好”的方向发展，所以你不想做一些愚蠢的事情，比如问“那又是多少天假期来着？”然后让 24 天突然变成 20 天。（你可能会想“我要把这个提议写下来，以便以后有证据。”希望不用说，提议要写下来，但要由他们写下来，和/或在讨论后发一封电子邮件，总结要点并询问你是否理解正确。你的笔记不会说服他们的人力资源部门在追溯性误解的情况下履行协议，但他们决策者的电子邮件很可能会。）
People say the damnedest things. For example, someone might spontaneously volunteer during a job interview that they’ve been interviewing for the position for six months. (None of my clients would ever say that, of course, but then again one would hope none of their consultants would chop five figures off their own invoice with an email.) If they say the position has been open for six months, take a note of that. During the salary negotiation, if they have a pricing objection, one of your first responses should be “I appreciate that this is a little more money than you might have been thinking about, but this is an opportunity to get this position filled without delaying your business by another six months. What is the value of that six months of execution to you?” (Conversely, don’t say stupid things during job interviews such as “I need this job because…” You never need a job. Being needy means that the party who is not needy has automatic leverage over you: your BATNA to the negotiation is very poor. Instead of being needy, aim for “I’m enthusiastic about the opportunity with working with you, assuming we can come to mutually satisfactory terms.”)
人们会说出一些令人惊讶的话。例如，在一次工作面试中，有人可能会不经意地透露他们已经面试这个职位六个月了。（我的客户当然不会说那样的话，但话说回来，人们也希望他们的顾问不会通过一封电子邮件就从自己的账单上砍掉五位数。）如果他们说这个职位已经空缺了六个月，请记下这一点。在薪资谈判中，如果他们对价格有异议，您的首要回应之一应该是：“我理解这可能比您预期的要多一点，但这是一个机会，可以立即填补这个职位，而不会让您的业务再延迟六个月。这六个月的执行对您来说价值几何？”（反之，在面试中不要说诸如“我需要这份工作，因为……”之类的蠢话。您从不需要一份工作。表现出需求意味着不需求的一方对您拥有自动的筹码：您在谈判中的 BATNA（最佳替代方案）非常糟糕。与其表现出需求，不如争取“我很高兴能有机会与您合作，前提是我们能达成双方满意的条款。”）
Micro-tip: Notice how often I say “We” and variations on “mutual win.” Those work pretty well. The only thing better than “We” is “You” (and variants), because people care a heck of a lot more about their problems than about your problems. (This advice is stolen shamelessly from Dale Carnegie.) This means that a) you should talk about their problems, concerns, and wishes and b) you should guard against your own natural tendency to bring up irrelevant things like your own problems, which typically will not help you sell the decisionmaker on adopting the mutual win you’re proposing. Similarly, I generally try to phrase things positively rather than score debating points. (“You just said X, but that was contradicted by your earlier statement Y, which means…” wins debating points but does not win friends and influence people. You might try something like “Good good, but taking into account your earlier concerns about Y…”)
微提示：请注意我经常说“我们”以及“互利共赢”的各种变体。这些词语效果很好。唯一比“我们”更好的词是“您”（及其变体），因为人们更关心他们自己的问题，而不是您的问题。（这条建议是无耻地从戴尔·卡耐基那里偷来的。）这意味着：a) 您应该谈论他们的问题、担忧和愿望；b) 您应该警惕自己提出不相关事情的自然倾向，比如您自己的问题，这通常无助于说服决策者采纳您提出的互利共赢方案。同样，我通常会尽量用积极的措辞，而不是为了辩论得分。（“您刚才说了 X，但这与您之前的 Y 说法相矛盾，这意味着……”这能赢得辩论分，但不能赢得朋友和影响他人。您不妨试试“很好，很好，但考虑到您之前对 Y 的担忧……”）
Research, Research, Research
研究，研究，再研究
Many people will tell you that you should familiarize yourself with the approximate salary range for the position in your region. This advice is easy to act on (go to a salary aggregation site, guess what “the position” is, pray that this gives you a better number than rand(40000,120000)), but it leaves a lot to be desired. It is 2012. Facebook and LinkedIn exist. You should, before any job interview, have intimate knowledge of the target company. Prospective peers within the company are one obvious way to get it. So are ex-employees, folks who’ve had dealings with them professionally, etc. Key things you want to learn:
许多人会告诉你，你应该熟悉你所在地区该职位的近似薪资范围。这个建议很容易付诸实践（去薪资聚合网站，猜测“该职位”是什么，祈祷这能给你一个比 rand(40000,120000) 更好的数字），但它还有很多不足之处。现在是 2012 年。Facebook 和 LinkedIn 都存在。在任何面试之前，你都应该对目标公司有深入的了解。公司内部的潜在同事是获取这些信息的一个显而易见的方式。前员工、与他们有过专业往来的人等等也是如此。你需要了解的关键信息：
- What do they value?
他们看重什么？ - Who do they value within the company? (Roles? Titles? Groups?)
他们在公司内部重视哪些人？（角色？头衔？团队？） - What does the career path look like for successful people within the company?
公司内成功人士的职业发展路径是怎样的？ - Roughly speaking, how generous are they with regard to axes that you care about?
粗略地说，他们对你所关心的方面有多慷慨？ - Do they have any compensation levers which are anomalously easy to operate? (For example, if you asked around, you might hear a few people say that a particular firm pushes back modestly on out-of-band increases in salary but they’ll give in-the-money option grants like candy.)
他们是否有任何异常容易操作的薪酬杠杆？（例如，如果你四处打听，可能会听到一些人说，某家公司对超出范围的加薪会适度推诿，但他们会像发糖果一样发放实值期权。） - All the fuzzy stuff: what’s the corporate culture like? Yadda yadda.
所有模糊的东西：公司文化是怎样的？等等等等。
You can even bring a lot of these questions to the job interview, which is (again) prior to the negotiation. (Maybe not “So are you guys tightwads?” but culture-esque questions like “What are the projects this company thinks are really key to its future and how would a motivated person go about getting on them?” are both a) totally fair game and b) will win you brownie points just for asking. Similarly, a lot of employees will, out of company loyalty, attempt to sell you on taking the job with the company by trading you very useful information.)
你甚至可以在面试时就提出很多这样的问题，这（再次强调）是在谈判之前。（也许不是问“你们是不是很吝啬？”，但像“贵公司认为哪些项目对其未来至关重要，一个积极主动的人如何才能参与其中？”这样的文化类问题，a) 完全合理，b) 仅仅提出就能为你赢得好感。同样，许多员工出于对公司的忠诚，会试图通过向你提供非常有用的信息来促使你接受这份工作。）
The more you know, the more options you have when doing negotiation, because you’ll have more things and more motivational things which you can offer in exchange for things you want. It will also help you avoid making mistakes like e.g. getting into a rigid classification system where the classification you’re aiming at will make forward advancement towards your goals very difficult. (Example: there are some companies where Product and QA are run like separate fiefdoms which haven’t forgotten the most recent war, and in those companies getting hired as an engineer may not be a career enhancing move if you like making things for a living. There are other companies where people cross-function in those responsibilities all the time and applying for a job advertising as “Support Engineer” makes lateral moves onto customer-facing projects trivial. You can find which one you’re applying to by taking any engineer out for coffee.)
你了解得越多，在谈判时拥有的选择就越多，因为你会有更多的事物和更多能激励你的事物，可以用来交换你想要的东西。它还将帮助你避免犯错误，例如陷入僵化的分类系统，在这种系统中，你所追求的分类将使你实现目标的进展变得非常困难。（例如：有些公司，产品和质量保证部门就像独立的封地，没有忘记最近的战争，在这些公司里，如果你喜欢靠制作东西为生，那么被聘为工程师可能不是一个职业提升的举动。还有一些公司，人们经常在这些职责中跨职能工作，申请一个广告为“支持工程师”的职位，可以轻松地横向调动到面向客户的项目。你可以通过请任何一位工程师喝咖啡来了解你正在申请的是哪种公司。）
New Information Is Valuable And Can Be Traded For Things You Want
新信息很有价值，可以用来换取你想要的东西
There was a post recently on Hacker News about someone’s experience with a job offer from Google. They wanted more money. The recruiters offered to think it over, and came back with the reply that Google’s food benefit was worth a significant amount of money, with a calculation to back it up. That is a pretty brilliant reply. Google’s food benefit is about as old as the company. Approximately all people wanting to work at Google are aware of its existence. However, the explicit calculation of what it is worth is new, so if you bring up that calculation, by implication you’re offering newly found value to the negotiation. This successfully convinces people that they didn’t really need that extra money. It is so successful at this that Google recruiters apparently have this entire interaction scripted, since multiple people report having the exact same experience.
最近 Hacker News 上有一篇关于某人谷歌工作邀约经历的帖子。他们想要更多的钱。招聘人员表示会考虑一下，然后回复说谷歌的餐饮福利价值不菲，并附上了计算依据。这是一个非常巧妙的回复。谷歌的餐饮福利几乎和公司一样历史悠久。几乎所有想在谷歌工作的人都知道它的存在。然而，对其价值的明确计算是新的，所以如果你提出这个计算，就意味着你为谈判提供了新发现的价值。这成功地说服了人们，他们并不真的需要那额外的钱。它在这方面非常成功，以至于谷歌招聘人员显然将整个互动都脚本化了，因为有多人报告有完全相同的经历。
You should steal this tactic. You are an expert in your own skill set, life story, and (ideally) value you can create for the company. However, the person you are talking to is not. If they ever resist about something which you want, consider reaching into the treasure chest that they are buying mostly blind and revealing one of the many glittering jewels inside. They are going to get them all anyhow if they buy the chest, but each one you bring out decreases the perceived risk of buying it and therefor increases its perceived value.
你应该学习这个策略。你是自己技能、人生经历以及（理想情况下）能为公司创造的价值方面的专家。然而，与你交谈的人却不是。如果他们对你想要的东西有所抵触，不妨从他们几乎是盲目购买的宝箱中取出一颗闪闪发光的宝石。如果他们购买了这个宝箱，他们最终会得到所有的宝石，但你每拿出一颗，都会降低购买它的感知风险，从而增加其感知价值。
Company: We can’t see our way to $88,000.
公司：我们无法接受 88,000 美元。
Applicant: Well, I know you do a significant amount of business with your online store. At my last company, I increased sales by 3% by $YADDA_YADDA. What would a 1% increase in sales be worth to you?
求职者：嗯，我知道你们的网店业务量很大。在我上一家公司，我通过 $YADDA_YADDA 将销售额提高了 3%。那么，销售额提高 1% 对你们来说价值多少呢？
Company: Well, I don’t have that figure in front of me, but…
公司：嗯，我手头没有那个数字，但是……
Applicant: Would it be safe to say “millions of dollars”?
求职者：说“数百万美元”可以吗？
Company: That sounds about right, yeah.
公司：听起来差不多，是的。
Applicant: Great, I can’t wait to get started. Getting me that extra $4,000 would make this a much easier decision. Considering that this is conceivably worth millions to you, we’d be silly not to do business with each other.
求职者：太好了，我迫不及待想开始工作。如果能给我额外增加 4000 美元，这将使我更容易做出决定。考虑到这可能为您带来数百万美元的价值，我们不与彼此合作就太傻了。
Company: I’ll see what I can do.
公司：我看看我能做些什么。
Applicant: Let me help give you some options! [See below.]
求职者：让我来给您提供一些选择！[见下文。]
(This hypothetical applicant is doing well on the negotiation but apparently needs to do more research on what conversion optimization specialists can get away with charging these days. Here, let me help: six figure salary with all the usual perks as an employee, “senior engineer project rates” through “you might not believe me if I told you” as a consultant.)
（这位假想的求职者在谈判中表现不错，但显然需要对当今转化优化专家能要到的薪资做更多研究。让我来帮帮他：作为员工，六位数薪水加上所有常见福利；作为顾问，从“高级工程师项目费率”到“你可能不相信我告诉你的数字”都有可能。）
Anyhow, simply by bringing attention to something which was hopefully already in bold print on their resume, they just increased their perceived value to the company, thus justifying the company moving a lever which (again) the company isn’t really sensitive to at the end of the day.
总之，仅仅通过提及简历上本应加粗显示的内容，他们就提高了自己对公司的感知价值，从而证明公司可以调整一个杠杆，而公司最终对这个杠杆（再次强调）并不真正敏感。
You Have A Multi-Dimensional Preference Set. Use It.
你有一个多维度的偏好集。利用它。
Don’t overly focus on your salary number. It is important (of course), but there are many parts of your compensation package, and many more things that you value. Should you and the other party reach an impasse on any part of it, offer to table that part of the discussion (to be returned to later) and bring up a different topic. You can then trade improvements for concessions (or apparent concessions) on the earlier topic.
不要过分关注你的薪资数字。它固然重要（当然），但你的薪酬方案包含许多部分，还有更多你重视的东西。如果你和对方在任何部分陷入僵局，提议将该部分讨论搁置（稍后再回来讨论），然后提出一个不同的主题。然后，你可以在之前的主题上用改进来换取让步（或表面上的让步）。
Employer: “We were thinking $80,000.”
雇主：“我们考虑的是 8 万美元。”
Applicant: “$80,000 is interesting (*) but not quite where we need to be to get this done. Do you have any flexibility on that number?”
应聘者：“8 万美元很有趣 (*)，但离我们完成这项工作所需的目标还有点距离。这个数字你们有弹性吗？”
Employer: “I think I can convince HR to approve $84,000 but that is the best I can do.”
雇主：“我想我可以让 HR 批准 84,000 美元，但我只能做到这个程度了。”
Applicant: “I appreciate that. $84,000, huh. Well, it isn’t quite what I had in mind, but the right package offer could make that attractive. How much vacation comes with the package?”
申请人：“我很感谢。84,000 美元，是吗。嗯，这和我预想的有点不一样，但合适的薪酬方案可能会让它变得有吸引力。这个方案包含多少天假期？”
Employer: “20 days a year.”
雇主：“每年 20 天。”
Applicant: “If you could do 24 days a year, I could compromise on $84,000.”
求职者：“如果能每年 24 天，我可以在 84,000 美元上妥协。”
Employer: “I think I can do that.”
雇主：“我想我可以做到。”
For those keeping score at home: the applicant never gives up anything but the employer will walk away feeling he got a good deal.
对于那些在家中记录分数的人来说：申请人从未放弃任何东西，但雇主会觉得他做了一笔好交易。
* Micro-tip: “Interesting” is a wonderful word: it is positive and non-commital at the same time. If they tell you a number, tell them it is an “interesting” number, not a “wonderful” number.
* 微提示：“有趣”是一个很棒的词：它既积极又没有承诺性。如果他们告诉你一个数字，告诉他们这是一个“有趣”的数字，而不是一个“很棒”的数字。
Hopping around the offer also helps you defuse common negotiating tactics like “I have to go to $EXTERNAL_AUTHORITY to get approval of that.” (This is in the negotiation playbook, because it works well: it injects an automatic delay in the process, and gives you a scapegoat for refusing a request while not being guilty of the refusal yourself. You should strongly consider having an $EXTERNAL_AUTHORITY of your own. Significant others work well. Note that in the US your would-be employer is legally prohibited from breathing about the subject of your marital status, so something like “We’ll have to talk that over” or “That sounds reasonable, but I’ll have to run it by the family” has the dual virtues of being a socially acceptable reason to delay any major decision while also being equally available to unattached young’uns. I talk shop with my family all the time. I’ll certainly continue discussing employment with my family after it includes my fiancee, too.)
围绕要约进行周旋也有助于你化解常见的谈判策略，例如“我必须向$EXTERNAL_AUTHORITY（外部权威）寻求批准。”（这在谈判策略中很常见，因为它很有效：它会在流程中自动注入延迟，并为你拒绝请求提供一个替罪羊，而你自己不必承担拒绝的责任。你应该认真考虑拥有自己的$EXTERNAL_AUTHORITY。重要的其他人就很合适。请注意，在美国，你未来的雇主被法律禁止提及你的婚姻状况，因此“我们得好好谈谈”或“这听起来合理，但我得和家人商量一下”之类的说法具有双重优点：它既是延迟任何重大决定的社会可接受理由，也同样适用于未婚的年轻人。我经常和家人讨论工作。在我的家人包括我的未婚妻之后，我肯定会继续和家人讨论就业问题。）
Anyhow, say your decisionmaker says that approving deviations from the company’s salary structure is outside of his discretion and those evil ogres in HR will likely deny his request. That’s fine. Express sympathy with him, because he just said he wants to give you more but can’t, then refocus the discussion on things which are within his personal authority. (Vacation days, work hours, project assignments, travel opportunities, professional development opportunities, and the like are good areas to probe at.) You can then use the unspent “You wanted to do something nice for me” obligation which he just acknowledged on one of the things which he has authority to grant you.
无论如何，假设你的决策者说批准偏离公司薪资结构超出了他的权限，而且人力资源部的那些邪恶食人魔很可能会拒绝他的请求。没关系。向他表达同情，因为他刚刚表示他想给你更多但做不到，然后将讨论重新聚焦到他个人权限范围内的事情上。（假期天数、工作时间、项目分配、出差机会、专业发展机会等都是可以探讨的好领域。）然后，你可以利用他刚刚承认的“你想为我做点好事”的未兑现承诺，让他为你做一些他有权批准的事情。
For Your Further Perusal
供您进一步阅读
I’m deeply indebted to a few buddies of mine, principally Thomas at Matasano and Ramit Sethi, for teaching me to be less of a doormat in terms of negotiation. Thomas has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about doing negotiations with clients. Check out Hacker News search with [tptacek negotiation] for some good advice, or (if you’re in Chicago) take him out to coffee.
我非常感谢我的几个朋友，主要是 Matasano 的 Thomas 和 Ramit Sethi，他们教会我在谈判中不要那么软弱。Thomas 在与客户谈判方面知道的比我所能知道的要多得多。在 Hacker News 上搜索 [tptacek negotiation] 可以找到一些不错的建议，或者（如果你在芝加哥）请他喝杯咖啡。
Some years after I wrote this article, Josh Doody, one of my buddies, wrote the literal book on salary negotiation. If you learn best from books, I recommend it. If you’d prefer more personalized advice, he has that available, too.
在我写这篇文章几年后，我的一个朋友 Josh Doody 写了一本关于薪资谈判的书。如果你最适合通过书籍学习，我推荐这本书。如果你更喜欢个性化的建议，他也有提供。
