My Journey from Econ PhD to Tech — Part 3: Negotiations part 1
By: Scarlet Chen
Tags: Job Hunting, Data Science, Economics, Salary Negotiations, Tech

Back to Ralph + Negotiations round 1

So, despite how much confidence I had going in, the reality is, I wasn’t even able to get passed negotiation round 1. Now that I realized how hard negotiations actually are in practice, I started researching Ralph again, and came across some of their clients’ stories on medium (you can click into Brian Liou’s medium to find more of these). In these stories, there are actual numbers: how much were the initial offers and how much were the final offers. One of their clients was in a very similar situation to me: two very similar initial offers that were both on the low side, and somehow, Ralph was able to get him out of it and get him a pretty decent final offer.

Now that I realized (1) I don’t have the ability to do it myself and (2) Ralph has a track record of being able to do it, I’m ready to sign with them. I added back into the advising WhatsApp group on Oct 15 Thu, and had another call with them the next day, on Oct 16 Fri, where I updated them with my situation (1) I got myself out of Uber’s deadline (2) I now have both Uber’s and Zillow’s numbers and (3) I need help negotiating — I know there are econ phds getting paid $270–280k, and that $300k has happened before (this is something I heard from an econ phd at Stanford) and given that I’m confident I’m at least top 10% of the Stanford econ department, I think that’s a reasonable goal.

The strategy they gave me was surprisingly simple — set a goal, and share it with the firms I was negotiating with, and ask the recruiter to help me get there. This is where their data comes in handy — they can tell me what’s a reasonable ask based on my profile (e.g. work experience or not, internship experience or not, tier of school, firms, etc.) and the offers they’ve seen for my role for the firms I’m negotiating with in this year’s market. Given my aspiration of $300k, and given their data points, eventually we settled on an ask of $325k total comp.

Remember that, I’ve already tried negotiating with Uber and Zillow once by myself, by asking them to change individual components of the offer, which didn’t work. While I was getting Ralph’s help, Uber grew impatient — the recruiter reached out to me to schedule a chat. Luckily, the chat was scheduled after my Ralph advising call on Oct 16 Fri. In the call, I told the recruiter my ask, and said this is a real offer in this year’s market from a firm in Uber’s calibre to a candidate whose situation is similar to mine: both me and him were a particularly good fit with the firm based on what we studied in our PhD. — this is where the $325k data point came from.

The Uber recruiter thanked me for sharing my aspiration with her, but said (1) this sounds very high; she hasn’t seen it happen before and (2) it’s a company policy that they only respond to counter offers with specific number, so for her to do anything I’d need to share my Zillow offer numbers with her (this is consistent with what she said in the email).

I shared the response with Ralph, and they said it’s not surprising — Uber indeed usually pushes to know counter offers, and that our strategy at this point would be to ask Zillow to increase their offer first. Given that, I emailed the Zillow recruiter on Oct 16 Fri asking for a chat, which eventually got scheduled to Oct 19 Mon.

That was by far the most nerve wrecking negotiation call I had in the entire process, because it is the hardest — I was asking for an increase with essentially no real bargaining power ( I wasn’t going to share Uber’s numbers), but it’s also the most crucial — if I succeed at getting Zillow to start moving, then I’ve got the ball rolling — I can then use Zillow’s number to push Uber, and then do an ask-and-sign and I’m done. But if I didn’t succeed in getting Zillow to move, I’m stuck.

I recalled what Haseeb said in his article about negotiations — the best deals are made between friends. — right, I should not think in terms of ‘I’m trying to manipulate the recruiter’, but that I’m trying to ask a friend for help.

Picking up the phone, I started small talking with the recruiter — nothing special, just Chicago VS Seattle weather, and whether it’s better to have ‘when it rains, it pours’, or rains everyday but a little bit every time. Then I got into the main topic: I said, both the Uber and Zillow opportunities are extremely exciting to me — both of them utilizes my unique skillset as a macroeconomist or as a housing market expert. But in addition to the fit with the team or the projects I’ll be working on, an orthogonal, but equally important element, is the money. This is not because I’m greedy or anything, but that I indeed have personal financial needs: my parents just retired in China, and since I’m the only child, they’ll be coming to the US to join me soon, which means I not only need to contribute to my own house, but also their house, and given that my husband and I are planning to have children in the next few years as well, it’s going to be a lot of financial pressure on me.Then, I shared my ask, $325k, and said, the reason why I think this is a reasonable ask is not that I need it due to my financial needs, but that this is how much I’m worth — I told him that this is a real data point from a friend of mine who is also a PhD data scientist who had a particularly good fit with the team.

(In other words, I shared 3 pieces of info (1) I love both Uber and Zillow in terms of the job content (2) independent of that, I care about money a lot, due to my personal financial needs — what’s implied is that, money could make a big difference when it comes to the decision and (3) my aspiration is $325k, and I think I deserve it because I’m an unusually good fit with the team and this number is backed by a real data point whose situation is very similar to mine — which is true — the hiring manager has said that he is looking to hire someone with domain knowledge in housing)

Hearing that, the recruiter took a deep breath, and said the number sounds really high — ‘anything with a 3 at the start is usually at the senior level’, but — he will go back to the comp team to explain my situation and ask for an increase — But if after he brings back the new numbers I’m still unhappy about it, I’d need to share Uber’s numbers for him to do anything about it.

I succeeded!!! I tell you what — I was happier then than when I got any of my offers — the offers were kind of expected but this increase wasn’t — I really didn’t think I have any real lever (since I wasn’t sharing Uber’s numbers), but somehow the recruiter responded to my ask.