#95 How to negotiate salaries in UX design
53:23 Share

Even if you think that salary negotiation is kind of icky, you don't like asking for money, you know, you're just asking for like $5,000 more, $10,000 more. It's not a huge difference, right? After taxes, it is a big difference because your salary is cumulative. It adds up. It's not just a one-time thing. So if you can only get $5,000 more this year, by the time you're able to retire, that money would have turned to much, much larger sums if you're investing correctly. So even if you put in something like the S&P 500 or a mutual fund at

a very low rate of return, say 3% over 30 years, you're going to be doubling or tripling that by then. And that means you can retire sooner. So you're actually buying back your life. So an extra $5,000, that means you can retire maybe three months earlier. That's three months of your life you can spend doing whatever you want.

Hello designers and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. Today I will not be joined by Anfisa, I am joined by a very very special guest and a good friend of mine and we will be discussing about how to negotiate salaries as a UX designer even in a tough market. Yes, you can still do that. I'm

I'm going to introduce Hang. He's one of my favorite people on the internet, and I'm very, very lucky to have recently met him in real life. Hang lives in New York. He, I think recently, but I'll let him share more about his career journey, found

founded a company for recruiting with ethical parameters. That's also a goal that some people have, and he will talk more about that. Yeah, he's been working as a designer. He worked for Boston Dynamics. To me, that was fascinating. And he did a lot of amazing things. But I'm going to ask him as an opening question when we get there about his career journey and what

made him land into the recruitment space or become more interested or more passionate about this particular place in the design industry. There is another reason for which this episode is special. It's sponsored. Yay. And not just that, but it's sponsored by one of our favorite tools for designers. If you haven't heard already about Mobin, you got to go check it out right now.

I've been personally using Mobbin for a long time when I discovered it as an alternative to Dribbble and Behance, which we all know has limitations. Like you couldn't really search by patterns or components. And they were most of the times just a bunch of eye candy stuff that had no thinking behind them, no design rationale. And Mobbin solved that.

I've been using it even individually, but also my design teams at UiPath and Miro use it. So most of the senior designers I know tend to use Mobbin to inform their pattern choices or the way they tackle different interaction problems in their work. Yeah, I'm very happy where we got to partner up with them and I want to invite everyone to go check them out.

But make sure to mention Honest UX Talks when you're entering the field of where you heard about Mobin. And just thank me later, because you're going to love it.

So with this intro, I'm going to say hi to Han. Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. We recently had a public conversation that I think is still on your LinkedIn. We talked about AI and I know that we've had other conversations where it was always very interesting for me. So I'm very happy to get to have this conversation in public with our Honest UX Talks audience and

especially since myself and Anfisa at some point had this topic of how to negotiate your salary. But I personally am so bad at that. So I'm in absolutely no position to give any kind of advice, talk about best practices, tips and tricks. I have no idea. So I'm here to learn.

from you. But before we dive into this topic of how to negotiate your salary, maybe if you could share with our audience a bit about your background, career journey, and how did you land in this space? Sure. Yeah. So I've been a designer for more than a decade at this point. And about a year and a half ago, I went into design recruiting.

And that's because I felt like hiring or looking for a job as a designer was such a crappy experience. And I wanted to change it. And I thought the best way to change it was to actually become a recruiter and work on the hiring side. Because from a Kennedy's perspective, it feels like all the problem exists on that side. We're not the problem. And having done this for more than a year at this point, I realized that you know what, it's really the system that's at fault here.

And both sides are contributing to this negative system. But I would say on the hiring side, because the hiring side has more institutional power, they typically are the ones who are driving the subpar user experience, as we would call it. Besides that, I'm really, really passionate about salary negotiation because for the first five years of my career, and this is outside of tech, I did not get

a promotion or salary raise, even though I was doing my job really, really well. And I had the same salary all five years. And when I finally left,

And the person who replaced me got a higher salary. I thought about it and I was like, oh, that sucks. And my boss actually hired me back temporarily to help fill the gap now and then because she still needed my institutional knowledge. And I remarked on it. I was like, oh yeah, wow, she's getting paid a little bit more, huh? And my boss said, yeah, you just never asked for it. And at that moment, I'm just like,

That's what I was thinking in my mind. It's like, yeah, this sucks. All I had to do was ask for more money and I never thought of it. My assumption was that if I did good work,

And I did what my boss asked me to do. And I improved and upskilled each year, I would be rewarded for it. And the reality is that is not the case at all, you do have to take consideration of your own career goals, your own monetary goals, and be the driver's seat for that nobody else is ever going to watch out for you, you have to watch out for yourself. So

That actually kicked off this very aggressive trajectory for me. So when I got into tech, I negotiated the hell out of my salary. My first job in tech, they gave me an opening offer of $60,000. And honestly, I had to work so hard to get to that point that I was ready to accept. I was so happy with a $60,000 offer. But the voice in the back of my mind was like, no, just ask for more.

And for whatever reason, I was able to negotiate to $115,000 from $60,000. And I can tell you exactly how it happened because it's a combination of luck and logic and a little bit of skill, but there's a lot of luck involved for sure. And from there, I went to around $250,000.

from 115 several months later, because I understood the leverage that I had at the time. And again, this is a special circumstance. I'm not going to say I was so amazing at it. It was just that I kind of saw what was happening, the leverage I had. It was a very unique and peculiar situation. Not everybody's going to have something like that, but it definitely showed me the power

of understanding leverage and understanding how to negotiate your salary. Now, in the current market, it's very different. You can't really do that anymore. But I will say that has been so beneficial to my life. There's been circumstances in recent years where I just really needed money badly because of unforeseen circumstances, illnesses, mental health issues, etc. And having that extra money made the difference so much.

Even if you think that salary negotiation is kind of icky, you don't like asking for money, you know, you're just asking for like $5,000 more, $10,000 more. It's not a huge difference, right? After taxes, it is a big difference because your salary is cumulative. It adds up. It's not just a one-time thing. So if you can only get $5,000 more this year, by the time you're able to retire, that money would have turned to much, much larger sums if you're investing correctly. So even if you put in something like the S&P 500 or a mutual fund at

a very low rate of return say three percent over 30 years you're going to be doubling or tripling that by then and that means you can retire sooner so you're actually buying back your life so extra five thousand dollars that means you can retire maybe three months earlier that's three months of your life you can spend doing whatever you want so you have to look at it in a different way rather than oh it's just a few thousand dollars here and there i don't need it right now no you will need it sooner or later

Thank you personally for this framing. I don't know why we didn't talk about this when we met and so on. It's really interesting for me and very helpful even just putting

Putting things into this kind of perspective, because just I'm on the other side of the spectrum in terms of thinking economically about getting a new job. And just as a very short, don't do this kind of story. When I was interviewing for Miro recently and I was talking with a recruiter, she asked me what matters for me, what's important, like, what do I want?

And I said, I don't care about the money. I'm just happy doing great work. And she was like, never say that again. And I realized that I'm so bad at that. It's absolutely no way to negotiate. Start with, I don't care about the money. Money is not important for me. I will do work for free. And I'm not a junior, right? So I'm 10 years into this design career. And still, I feel that I appreciate this putting into perspective that I'm actually getting time probably or...

my worth paid for what I'm worth. But yeah, you've mentioned briefly something about the current landscape or the current situation in the market, maybe just as a, let's say, setting the scene for the context in which this conversation is happening and the current landscape, which is obviously most of us know it's not the best moment for the design industry. How do you see being so involved in this topic and through your lens, how do you currently see the design market? And is it so bad? Yeah.

In short, yeah, it's fucking awful. But you know, this is such a great question. And I want to get to it. But I also want to mention something that's super important. Two things. One is, I think I know which recruiter you're talking about. And Miro, I want to say, first of all, she is amazing, not only as a recruiter, who

who's able to get you through the process and get the company, somebody who is really talented, such as yourself. I think both sides locked out here. But she intrinsically understood the importance of advocating for the candidate. And she told you, you should never say that. And not many recruiters do that, unfortunately. That is so important. It's such a moral...

and an ethical thing to do. And this is why I went to recruiting because we need more people like her. I'm just so happy to hear stories like that. And also I want to say that I hope people don't come out of this conversation thinking I am so bad at this because salary negotiation, there's no moral feeling behind it. It's not like you're bad at being a good person or something.

A lot of times we're not effective negotiators because we come from a place of deprivation. I don't know what your background is like. I would say that my background wasn't great growing up. We were really poor. And my parents being Chinese people and me being Chinese American, we place a huge emphasis, a moral imperative on work that makes us think, you know, money is not that important and work is, but you know, we're in a capitalist society right now, a very late stage capitalist society.

and we have to kind of change our mode of thinking, it doesn't mean that we're bad at something. It just means that perhaps the system is at fault. And maybe we shouldn't have to work so hard to demonstrate our worth and to ask for it. It should be clear across the board from both sides. So to me, it's a system level issue. And in some ways, we need to learn to work within the system, but it shouldn't be some kind of judgment that we are bad at something. Anyway, back to your original question.

Yes, the current environment is fricking terrible for everyone, especially if you're a junior level designer. And salary negotiation isn't just about asking for more money. It's understanding the power dynamics between two sides that are trying to work toward an agreement.

So if you don't have a lot of power, I think right now candidates just don't have that much power, then your ability to negotiate diminishes. With that said though, should you still negotiate? Yes, absolute fucking ludely. You should still negotiate because negotiation isn't just a one-time thing. It is a set of skills that you need to practice. And the best time to practice it is when you're in adverse environment.

So for example, do you watch basketball? I used to play. You used to play. Okay. Is there a difference between shooting free throws in the empty gym where no one is looking and shooting free throws when you're down by one point with a second left in the game and the game is riding on you and this is like the finals, the championship final. Is there a difference between those two situations? It's...

It's a significant difference. Now, practicing in an empty gym can help you prepare for that moment. But over time, the winningest winners out there, so you can talk about Michael Jordan or Luka Doncic, these awesome players, they're only there because they've taken the final shot in the most important games over and over again. They don't choke. They know when the chips are down, they're going to perform, they're going to get it right. And that is the same with salary negotiation.

If you don't practice when things really matter, when you don't have the leverage, you don't get that experience and you're not going to really make that next jump. What I mean by that is right now, even if you don't get what you want, even if you don't get the outcome you're looking for, even if the other side says, no, we're not giving you any more money, just the fact that you're trying

You're going through the process of looking at the other side's leverage, understanding their needs, their pain points, your alternatives. That's going to help you because down the line, you're going to be a much better negotiator because this adverse environment has made you a better negotiator.

And people think salary negotiation is just about getting more money. And it's not the case. Salary negotiation is actually a much wider thing. It determines your career trajectory in many ways. You might not realize it, but it does. Being a better negotiator is going to make you a better designer.

It doesn't just give you more money, it's going to help you learn how to work with other people, how to collaborate, understand their needs, and understand how you can work with them. And also, oftentimes, because you're asking for more money, asking for more, the other side, they're going to respect you more, and they're going to take you more seriously.

I truly believe that the first five years of my experience in UX design, me getting that much more money meant people expected more out of me. If I could deliver on that, it meant my career grew faster than if I had just taken a $60,000 offer and they had really low expectations for me. I would have fit into that. So it definitely has an effect, a much wider effect than most of us give credit for.

I have two follow-up questions. One is, do you think that people are afraid to negotiate because they think they're going to get their offer, resign it? Yeah. And does it really happen? Have you heard? Oh, yeah. Like if you ask for more money, they're going to say, okay, then bye. We're not going to even give you the first offer anymore. Is this a legitimate fear? It is absolutely a legitimate fear. It definitely does happen. It's happening more now so than ever before. In the past few years, back in 2022, it didn't really happen, right?

What company would say that? Because there was so much more negotiation back in 2022 because more powers was on the candidate side. Now, the question then becomes, should you do it when that's at risk? When I coach or mentor other folks who are currently negotiating, I don't tell them you have to do this. You know, we talk about

the reality the power dynamics and also how they feel about it what is their fear generally speaking i would say when people talk about getting their offers rescinded due to asking for more money that fear is overblown in our head is happening way more common than it actually is happening in reality now do i know people who's had their offer rescinded yes that has happened before

And sometimes it's due to the way they ask for more money. They could be maybe a jerk about it, which is not something I recommend, or it could be the other side is just not great. But generally speaking, different companies have different philosophies. There are certain companies known for never rescinding offers no matter how much more money you ask for. And then there are other companies who do so. So knowing which companies will do what or what their compensation philosophy or negotiation philosophy is, is super important.

Now, I believe Google never rescinds their offer. So you can actually ask for more money. But you could be kind of a jerk about it even with them. I don't recommend it ever, but they typically would not rescind. Now, other companies might. And you really have to consider the risk and reward behind it. And also what it says about the company when they do something like that.

I thought it's a myth. I'm sad to hear that it actually happens. I can see why it could happen. Like if you have two candidates that are very close and one of them accepts less money, then you're going to get that one probably. Let me actually give you a few scenarios where it can happen because companies typically do not rescind offers out of nowhere. There are clear situations that call for something like that.

Now, when we talk about rescinded offers as candidates, we typically kind of paint the hiring manager recruiter in a very bad light. We say they are offended.

by us asking for more money and to retaliate, they're pulling the offer. That typically is not the case. People are professionals. They don't see it as such. Now, does this actually happen? Yes, it does. There are some weird people out there who get off on being complete jerks to people who are power hungry, who really want to leverage their power in really awful ways. You're not going to be able to avoid those people.

And to be honest, my opinion is it's better to find out this early because they're not going to change just because you joined their company. Let's look at the more rational scenarios because I think these are more important to talk through as opposed to talking about the bad actors, which is unavoidable, right?

this kind of stuff happens. You can try to plan for it, but you shouldn't live your life in fear. You should still negotiate. So let's talk about those scenarios where it's more rational. What's happening right now is companies are inundated with highly qualified candidates, at least in the US. They have multiple options. So one thing they might do is you have two top candidates who are neck to neck. They like

candidate A a little bit more. So they'll extend an offer to candidate A and they'll do something called an exploding offer and say, you only have a day or two to accept this offer or reject it because we have a second candidate on the wings. And during this time, they're telling candidate B the second choice, but the close second choice that, you know what, we haven't made a decision yet. So hold on tight. We'll let you know. They will never tell them, Hey, you're actually our second choice because nobody wants to be the second choice. It's going to hurt their feelings.

And if candidate A tries to negotiate for more money, they might pull the offer and say, you know, let's go with candidate B because it'll be easier and faster that way. That can happen. And that's really due to the power dynamics at play here.

Now, should you still ask for more money? My opinion is yes. You should still try to understand what is the situation, why they're doing these things. Actually, let's go back a little bit because when people talk about salary negotiation, they think it only happens when offer is extended. And really salary negotiation happens way before then. So during the interview process, in the first, second round, every time the hiring manager recruiter delivers a good news and said, I want to

We loved you. You were a great candidate and we're going to get you to the next round. You pass this round. Well, you should first say, thank you so much. I love hearing this news. Then follow up with the question, what made you choose me over the other candidates? And that is extremely valuable information.

oftentimes they drop important nuggets like, oh, we really liked you because of this. You have a unique value proposition. You have experience in designing for AI and no other candidates have that. So if you know that early on, that's leverage for you to negotiate for a little bit more. Now, if they're saying, everyone's really strong, we just thought you'd perform really well.

and we decided to put in two other candidates as well, then that's going to change your power dynamics or leverage as well. So if you learn early on that there are other candidates who are really close to you and they're pulling this exploding offer where you only have 24 hours or 48 hours to make a decision, you might not have that much leverage. Should you still ask for more money? Yes, unless your current financial circumstances are in such dire straits that if you were to

lose out on this job offer possibility, you face financial ruin, then you might play your hand a little bit differently. But if you're not there, then you should really consider the risk and reward. There is very little data right now on how often companies are rescinding offers. But even if there were data, it's really hard to extrapolate all the nuances because most of the time when offers rescinded like that is because the candidate has done it in such a way where it's rude or unprofessional or they took too long to make their decision.

So in my experience, if you're setting the right expectation saying, Hey, I need about 48 hours or 72 hours to make a decision. I'm going to need to talk to my family, my wife, my husband, my partner, my dogs or cats, whatever, to come to this really important decision. The other side will be professional and give you that time and space to make it. And if you were to couch your ask in very logical or very persuasive language, that's going to help as well.

So there are certain do's and don'ts that typically are violated whenever an offer is rescinded. So one example is typically when you're asking for more money, you start with the largest asks first.

And then you slowly ask for smaller and smaller things over time. If you start by asking for small things and suddenly ask for a really big thing after it agrees with small thing, that can come across as you negotiating poor faith. And it's usually things like that that causes companies to rescind offers. So if you are doing it in good faith, in logical manner, and you're setting the right expectations, they're probably not going to pull an offer. And if they do, it's a red flag and a bullet dodge.

Okay, so what I'm hearing is that if you're listening to this, don't get discouraged. Continue to negotiate unless your life depends on that job or it's something very extreme with your personal situation and you don't want to risk anything. But if you, in most cases, negotiating in good faith, still a better option. But what about the case in which it's your first design job? You're a junior designer and you're applying to your first role. And what would give you the opportunity

per hand in any negotiation since you don't have any experience. In a way, I think most junior designers feel, and sometimes I think it's almost in a way, I don't want to say it's justified, but I feel it's natural to feel that this company is giving me a chance, right? They're in a way doing me a favor for paying me to build this experience since I haven't done anything like that before. Is this the right way to think about it or not?

Can you negotiate if you're a junior designer in this market, but in general as well? Yes, you can negotiate. Can you get what you want? You might not be in the current market. What I said earlier about you should always negotiate stands true again, because it's valuable experience and this is the best time to get that experience. This is the only time really.

besides your next salary negotiation, right? You don't get to try this again. You don't really get to practice until the next time it really, really matters. So definitely do it. The other thing I want to talk about is the limitations in the conversation we're having right now. You're asking great questions.

But the responsible answer is almost always, it depends. And the first thing we should usually do is to create a framework, a decision-making scaffold so that you have a better idea of where to go, how to think about it and what to ask for. So it's not as clear cut as yes and no. Oftentimes it's about your unique situation, the environment that you're going to, what their situation is like.

And also your needs and your risks and your rewards. So when you take into all these considerations holistically, then you can really come up with a better decision. So keep that in mind. That might be a little bit too big for this talk. What I really want to get through is that again, it depends. And what I'm saying is more of a general sense. Again, you should definitely negotiate if you're a junior designer, you might not get what you want.

And if you do negotiate, you should start thinking about it in terms of your unique value proposition. They still picked you and they picked you out of probably many, many, many other candidates. This is not a random thing. And you really should think about why they picked you, why you're different from other people or how you're different from other people. Try to figure out how much this is worth to the company.

because it's always worth something. And the more you can get out of it, the better foundation that you've built for yourself, because most likely you're probably a little bit younger, you might be straight out of college. And there's a really great article by Business Insider that shows how if you can negotiate for $5,000 more when you're out of college, if you ask for a higher raise every two or three years, so instead of getting a 1% raise every third year, you get say a 3% raise every three years. And with the $5,000,

starting salary for your first job. And that's a difference of about a million dollars over 45 years. So by the time you retire, you will have made a million dollars more. It also means you can probably retire several years sooner, if not half a decade sooner. So all this is really, really important.

I'm now revisiting past negotiations in my mind and trying to calculate how many years before I can retire did I add by not considering these things in the past. But yeah, I think I can still make up for that. So you want to negotiate. Let's say you're in a good position. You've made it through the process. How do you know what's the right salary? How do you know what's the right amount you should be getting for a job?

Every time I get an offer, I'm like, is this bad? Is this good stock? I don't know how to evaluate it. How do you establish how much do you want in a job? That's a very open-ended question. It's a great question. There's so many ways to look at it. I think the most important thing, let's start with the philosophy of it. Looking at it from the right perspective is really important early on. And one thing that people often do is they think about it in terms of what do I want out of this?

What are my expectations? And I think that is really, really important if you're trying to find personal satisfaction, which is important, of course. I'm not discounting that in any way. But bear with me here. If your goal is to make as much money as possible, I think that goal is oftentimes not strongly correlated to your personal satisfaction. And if you look at it that way, then your goal in every scenario or every negotiation is to leave no money on the table.

And what I mean by that is when you're working with a company or negotiating with the company, they have an idea of how much money they want to pay you. There's a range in their mind already. They'll say, here is the initial offer for Hang. And then we're willing to pay Hang up to another $20,000. But if Hang asks for more than $20,000 or we get to that ceiling, we're going to pull out and then go with somebody else. It's not that simple, of course, but there is definitely a ceiling, right?

Think about it from your perspective as a consumer. There's a trinket or some kind of product you want it, but there's a limit to the price you're willing to pay for it. If it exceeds that price, you either don't purchase it or you seek an alternative. So if you think about it that way, then your goal is to reach that ceiling. And your goal is to figure out that ceiling for this company. They're of course never going to tell you that. So you're going to have to

deduce based on the evidence that you have available to you based on your interviews and the questions you've asked and answers they've given you and your read of the situation to figure that out. From that perspective, it becomes a very different game than if you were to approach it from the perspective of me trying to hit a target in my mind. Because I feel that in some ways, the best salary negotiators are the ones who

don't have those expectations. And as long as they get to that theoretical ceiling, the maximum what the other side is willing to pay, then they're happy. And that's kind of how I've been approaching it for better or for worse. And we can talk about some of the drawbacks of doing something like that, because there are drawbacks, you do have to make a decision. And I'm not saying one way is always better than the other is just that these are two different approaches

And I personally side with one, but you can choose your own philosophy, of course. What are the drawbacks? I think I'm personally less satisfied than a lot of other people. There is something to be said about the amount of money you earn right now. It's not correlated to how much money you're earning later on.

And when you choose the option for the most money every single time, that can affect your career in some ways. I'm not saying you shouldn't negotiate. I'm saying I made a mistake early on in my career where I chose certain companies that pay me a lot more than other companies. When you put it on paper, it becomes so clear. It's like, oh, well, yeah, of course, this company is going to pay you $100,000 more. Of course, take that. But there are drawbacks to that because I wasn't able to really evaluate the value of

of non-monetary things. So nowadays what I do is I try to turn everything into a number as much as possible. So what I mean by that is one thing you'll notice is when you get an offer from a company, the offer is broken up into different pieces. It's not always apples to apples comparison. They might have a base salary and there's sign on bonus. There's a yearly bonus. There are stock options. If the company's public, they'll give you shares of the company.

If it's a startup, they might give you theoretical percentages of the company that could potentially turn into money later on or be completely worthless. So these things are hard to compare. How do you compare, say, Google's RSUs to a Series A startup that hasn't gone public yet and their ownership percentages? It's hard to evaluate that.

What I try to do is to figure out the correlation or the translation between these different things. Another example would be there are two companies that I'm interested in. One has a better manager. The other one has a product that's more exciting to work on or is more in line with where I want to go long term. I try to ask myself the question of, okay, so both companies paying me the same amount of money, where would I go? Let's say they all pay the same exact amount and one's better manager, better product.

And I eventually choose, okay, I'm going to choose a better manager because to me, that's more important. Now I ask myself, how much more does a second company with a better product have to pay me for me to give up on that better manager for the better product? And I think about it from a monetary point of view. And I realized, okay, if they pay me $40,000 more, then I'm going to choose that.

So that's in a way helping me equate or try to try to evaluate the differences between an apple to an orange. The apple is worth more, but how much more $40,000 more so that I can figure out how much more to ask for from second company. Right? Because you can tell a second company, I don't like your manager. I like the other manager more. So you need to improve this manager. That's not going to happen. Impossible.

But you can ask them for more money, right? You can ask them for more money. That's something that they can change. And you can say, can you meet this? And they say no, then you can say, I'm going to go back to option A. So that's one way to look at it. You're kind of turning everything to money, which has its drawbacks, but that's one way to make a decision. The other way to look at it is, so this has happened to me quite a few times.

one company gives me a large amount of base pay and it's just money, guaranteed money. And I think base pay is probably the most valuable asset when it comes to compensation, more so than sign-on bonuses, because sign-on bonus is a one-time thing. Base pay is yearly.

And also all your future races are based on percentages, right? So if you get a high base pay and they give you a three or 4% raise next year, that's 4% off the base pay as well. And then the second company has lower base pay, but it gives you a ton of stock options. Now, the question I ask myself is how much do the $50,000 worth of stock options, how much is it worth compared to

base pay and i come up with a ratio so a dollar of base pay equals maybe 60 rsus from this other company and then i have a better idea of getting a final number and comparing them and then i can have a better idea of this is how i would ask the second company to raise their

money or raise their offer to make it worth it to me. So when you get an apple and orange, you're trying to turn the second orange into an apple of some kind. So you can make a comparison and say this apple is slightly bigger than this other apple. I'm going to choose this one. It sounds like we need you to build an app where we can just input all these parameters and then the app, maybe it could be the AI agent for negotiating as a UX designer. Because for me, it's really hard to

I don't have the exercise maybe, and maybe I don't have the critical thinking. Maybe I don't have the capitalist thinking required to attach a number to a bad manager, but it would be amazing, right? If I could just calculate what's the best option for me, considering my personal goals, my needs, what I like, what I don't like. And then, yeah, just having this kind of, here's the score.

for this job, and here's the score for this job. I had a friend who used to do that in an Excel. So he would have different columns for different things that mattered to him, and he would rate them for each of the job opportunity and have a score at the end. And for me, it felt like very transactional. I don't know.

what about my gut feeling? But gut feeling can also be one column. Like I have a strong, positive gut feeling and that's important. And you can also like, I think you should build a system, like some sort of calculator. We need you. We need you to democratize your thinking and just extrapolate that into something we could use very handily. Yeah.

I want to emphasize again that this depends on context. And it's really just a conversation starter because at the end of the day, you still have the option of ignoring this and going with your gut feeling, which could be very much valid.

All this is doing is to help you center yourself so that at the end of it, when you look at it, you can feel like, "Hey, I made a right decision." Or it's to help you move the conversation forward. Because oftentimes it gets very confusing. It's just like you get two or three offers and you have such a hard time evaluating between them that you are driven to inaction. You procrastinate. So this is to help you move forward.

Because if you do this at the very least, you'll see two or three sides up their offer. You still have the option of selecting one out of the three, but the difference is that if you didn't do this, your offer stays the same. If you do this, your offers go up. So now you have a better foundation to choose from, which to me is very important. I'm not saying this is the most rational way or the best way. It's a vehicle to get you further along, to get you more resources.

I can't tell you how often somebody that I am coaching through the negotiation process ignore this at the end of the day and go with their gut feelings. And I'm all for that. I push them to say, hey, if you feel comfortable with this, you should do this. That's what's most important. You feeling comfortable with this. However, because we did this, your most comfortable choice, your favorite choice is now $30,000 more than what it was before. And this helped us get there.

And I think that's the most important thing as opposed to adhering religiously to this algorithm and then being bound by it at the end. That's not the point of this. It's just to get you somewhere better. I love that. I think that that's really the way I think about all the decisions I'm making in my life. Like this is a rational path to making this decision. Or I could just take the emotional path with the gut feeling intuition kind of magical thinking, right?

and go for that route. And then of course, I'm owning all the risks that come with it, right? So the rational choice is always more predictable. So the outcome is more predictable if you're going for the rational path.

So I have two more questions. One of them is very tactical. I'm going to start with this one. And the other is a bit sensitive. The tactical one is, I have a negotiation coming up. How do I prepare for it? Do these typically happen like in a face-to-face or video-to-video conversation? Or are they on email? Where do they happen? Like, what's the format? What's the context? In most cases, how can I prepare? Because for me, it feels like I would go to the

court and I would have to have a case and like just act like this lawyer.

How do you prepare? What do you need to come in with in a negotiation? So to start off, what is the best medium for negotiation? I think that's different for everyone, but I typically recommend people do this face to face, ideally in person. Now that's less likely to happen post COVID. Try to do it over a video because a lot of it is reading body language, seeing facial expressions and, and

and taking in everything. It's not so simple as to say, well, you ask for more, they give you more, right? It's a conversation. It's not just about the raw numbers. Now, a lot of people find that to be very intimidating or very aggressive for any number of reasons. And some people prefer doing this over the phone or over email. That's still doable.

I think that's still better than not doing it. So if that's your favorite way, if you feel most comfortable with a written email, by all means, do that. It's better than not doing it at all. However, I do think it's important to be able to do it in person if you can. Now, everyone's different. Some people find that to be a lot more difficult

are not in line with their mode of communication. And that's fine. I personally just find that I get more out of it in person because it's conversation. You don't jump into a conversation right away and say, I need $20,000 more. It's like, Hey, let's talk about your pain points. What are you hoping to get out of hiring me? What are the goals that you see in the next six months or 12 months that we will be hitting together?

It's only through this conversation do you start to understand how much you're worth to them and how much more you can ask for. And oftentimes it's not asking for more money. It's almost a roundabout way. There have been times where I didn't ask for it, but just through our conversation, the other side said, you know what, we're going to opt this offer because we're just so excited to have you on board right away. And that's the best part of negotiating because both sides are getting what they want out of it. You're reaching this new level of understanding.

Now, how do you prepare for it? The most common advice is of course you practice, right? You practice with a friend, a coworker that you trust. That's important. You want to get through this so you're not really nervous. I have noticed that a lot of people tend to go on and on and on when they make the ask. They say, "I would like $10,000 more because of these reasons." And they just go on and on and on and on. And that kind of weakens your case in a way because it kind of shows how nervous you are. Knowing when to stop

is super, super important. I would much rather you say, I want $10,000 and not say anything after that and just kind of have this pregnant pause and wait for the other side to ask for more questions or ask for more information before you respond. I think that in itself is still better than somebody who drones on and off. Now, of course, giving good reasons after that is great, but again, you don't want to drone on and off. The other thing you want to do is to prepare biographies.

by learning as much as possible and getting a better sense of the market. So one thing I like to do is to reach out to ex-designers on this team who are no longer part of the company. They're more likely to give me information because they're no longer there, right? One thing I do is I go on LinkedIn. I look under the search filters for past companies. So if I were interviewing at Miro, I might

look for somebody who quit recently and say, I'm interviewing for this position. I would love for some advice that you have. And if you're really, really busy, I would love to buy you coffee or even give you a hundred dollars, just a gift card of some kind. There were cases when I tell people you should pay like $500 for this information. Why? Because you're going to get way more than $500 if you know what the theoretical ceilings are, right?

So try to get that information, try to understand the bands or how they negotiate because every company has a different philosophy. And if you know how this person successfully negotiated or how they unsuccessfully negotiated, then you know what the right entryways or the right language might be. There are also sites like levels.fyi that gives you pretty clear pay bands for designers based on the levels, right? So there are a lot of things you can do.

And it's really just about preparation and doing your research ahead of time. Super, super insightful stuff. I recognize myself as the over-explainer in your example. I would absolutely justify everything. Like I am capable of saying I have a child at home. Just because I'm guilty, there's always this constant feeling of feeling guilty for asking what I deserve or feeling guilty.

I thought it was something Eastern European that's like our communist legacy, psychological legacy of feeling inferior and just thinking

thinking we don't deserve money and good stuff in the world but yeah maybe it's just because i'm a woman how about that have you noticed empirically from your work or have you seen studies that say that women are typically less inclined to negotiate and that men are not just better but more determined to do that and what's your take on that and this is the sensitive question i wanted to ask

Sure. It's a great question. It is sensitive for all the wrong reasons, in my opinion. And there are plenty of studies that show how women might negotiate differently, how they perceive risk differently. But the most important study is probably that women make about 82% of what men make. And you can also break that down by ethnicity and also location, seniority, etc. And I think if you were to look at just tech, the disparity is not as bad as 82 to 100.

But it's definitely there in some cases, and especially when you look at how they're promoted, because pay isn't just about within the same level or pay band. It's also about your career opportunities. And there are definitely fewer women at executive levels than there are men. And if you look at the intersection of being Black or being Asian American or Hispanic, it's even worse. It's pretty, pretty bad.

Do women negotiate differently? I don't have a ton of empirical data on that because negotiation itself isn't really that well studied. It is studied, but it's difficult to standardize in some ways because it's like language in some ways. It's not just mathematical. What we really should be focusing on isn't how women are acting.

think so much as how women are treated because there is more data there. And I think these things are cyclical. Well, not cyclical, but they feed into each other. If you're treated a certain way, you eventually act a certain way because it's clear to you over time that doing things a certain way can be more punitive. And that's different across the board, right? Like men can probably get away with more aggression than women can.

One thing I also noticed is that I personally am a very aggressive negotiator as an Asian American man. And that works with my personality. It doesn't work for a lot of other people. I'm not talking about gender or race, just, you know, personality wise. You have to negotiate in line with your personality. Otherwise, it's incongruent. And people can be a little bit weirded out by that. And that might work against you in some ways. But do women do it differently? Again, I'm not sure.

all very anecdotal. I would want to focus on this instead, which is as an Asian American man in tech, I've never been given an exploding offer, which is an offer that expires within 48 to 72 hours. The one time I was given one, I ignored it and they came back anyway later on. It was as if they never said it. It was a very weak exploding offer. So it's like a non-exploding offer in many ways. I've heard from many women that

they've received exploding offers. Now, anecdotally, it feels like when hiring managers or recruiters are extending offers, it seems like they're treating people differently or their tactics change, which makes sense, right? I think negotiation is very much like playing poker. And there's a famous saying, you don't play your cards, you play your opponent across from you. You reach your opponent and you make your decisions responsibly.

based on what you know of them and how they're likely to react as opposed to what you have in your hand. And I think that is so important because you're working with incomplete information and that's very well documented. People have biases. They think they can treat women a certain way to get what they want. They think they can treat an Asian American person a certain way to get what they want. They act differently depending on how you look, where you come from, and what they believe about you. So again,

Again, if you look at the studies, it's really hard to pinpoint exactly why or how people are doing these things exactly. But we do know that across the board, women typically make less than men. And I

I would say the way they're negotiated against is different. But again, anecdotal. Got it. Well, I don't have much to add to that from my personal experience. Anecdotical own experience. I don't know if I've been treated differently. I absolutely felt

different. Like I didn't have so much power. Not now when joining Miro because I'm already 10 years into this career. I have an established presence and whatnot. So I'm in a better position now. And I think it's shown even when I said, I don't care about the money.

In the end, I was able to reframe that and say, no, wait, I care about the money, but it's not my main selling point. Like I wouldn't join a job just because it pays me a lot of money. I have to like the product, the team, the perspectives and so on. So I loved your point about showing up in an authentic way of negotiating.

I think that all of us can put on specific kind of technique successfully, right? So what makes sense in our personality? For me, what's always working when I'm negotiating is just being straightforward. Hey,

look, I hate negotiating. I'm not good at this, but I want this much money. And this is what I said I'm going to do. I'm doing it. I'm uncomfortable, but I have to do it because this is what I decided that I'm going to ask for. Not necessarily in salary negotiations. Sometimes it's with brands or Instagrams. Sometimes I'm not risking so much, but just being honest about who you are. And yeah, sometimes people are like, this is not negotiating. And

And they take advantage of this, let's say, candor that I put on. But sometimes they're like, dude, we get you. Yeah, sure. Let's discuss it. And then this leads me to an interesting point that always helped me psychologically when trying to negotiate.

You're not negotiating with the person to give you money from their pocket. It's like the company has budgets. That person will not lose anything if they choose to negotiate for you and go back and say, look, this person wants more money. What can we do about it?

So you're not doing you a real favor, right? They're not paying you from their pocket. It's just budgets in a company, capitalism, spreadsheets and stuff like that. So just go ahead and ask for somebody else's money, which is not even a person's money. It's just a company that could very much give you that money without even knowing, right? So it's not a direct favor in a way. Don't feel guilty. My point is.

One thing I forgot to mention is that when I'm coaching other people to negotiate salaries, 80% of my time is not spent on the tactical stuff. Like here's how you ask the question or here's how you ask for more money. 80% of the time is spent on the emotional aspects, trying to get people over this mental block of I don't feel comfortable asking for more money. I don't deserve more money. I just want the offer.

And a lot of people don't outright say it, but their actions start to lean toward that. And you start to ask, why are you doing this this way? And as you explore deeper and deeper, you realize there is this mental blocker. And I personally had that for many years early in my career. I still do. So even today, when I'm negotiating with a company,

I oftentimes get somebody to help me because it is very emotional. Even if I know all the tips and tricks, at the end of the day, the tips and tricks aren't the hardest points. It's getting you to do something that you're perhaps anxious or afraid to do, and that requires support from other people. But I do want to mention that saying, I don't want to negotiate or hate negotiating is actually a really good tactic.

because you're kind of putting your cards out there, you're being authentic, and that can make you very likable. And oftentimes, negotiating can fall into that, weirdly speaking, because people often hire based on biases, like how much do I like this person? It's not great,

But I don't see a huge problem with leveraging it for yourself at times. The other thing you mentioned is super important, which is they're not doing you a favor, right? This is something that you deserve because you are giving them your life and your time.

to help them make a lot more money. The person who is negotiating with you, if they give you more money, it's not like they make less money. They still get the same salary. It's the company's money, right? And if you can look at it that way, it's very powerful. There's actually a really good skit. If you watch The Office, when Michael Scott

branched off into his own company called the Michael Scott Paper Company. They ran into the ground, they sold at cutthroat prices that at a loss basically, and they had to negotiate with David Wallace and I forgot his name, Idris Elba and Michael Scott had to negotiate with them. And David Wallace said to Michael, "I know you're running out of money. You're bankrupt in just a few days. There's no way

that you're surviving. I know this business. I've been in this for decades. I know what the costs are. There's no way you're surviving. We're going to give you $20,000. That's more than you'll ever get." And Michael Scott said, "Okay, I see what you did there. I'll present the other side." There's a shareholder meeting coming up and all the shareholders are wondering why is their most profitable branch bleeding money? Maybe they're thinking of changing their CFO, which is you.

And that flipped it completely upside down because now you're not negotiating your weakest points. You're negotiating David Wallace's job. And David Wallace at this point is thinking, well, I can do what's right for the company and not budge, but then I would be out of a job.

So eventually David Wallace gave them their old jobs back, benefits and everything, which he said was worth over a million dollars. The company's not worth a million dollars. It's not. But David Wallace's job is worth that much money to him. And he used the company's money to buy it.

So again, I'm not saying this was a very ethical negotiation, but it's a really good way of looking at how people negotiate and different leverages they have. You don't want to fixate on your weakest point. And just because the other side is looking at it this way, you can try to look at it from a different angle and see what their wants and needs are and focus on where you have the most power and leverage.

I love it when Michael Scott is surprising. He has that smartness that you never see. It's just where did this genius moment come from? Great way to end this. Thank you so much for all the incredible insights. I'm personally smarter after talking to you, but this happens every time. It's not just this time.

I hope everyone took notes and now you're going to go with a plan in your next negotiation endeavor. And I really appreciate your time. I really appreciate your wisdom. And I just want to tell everyone that they should add you on LinkedIn. And I think that's the platform where he's most active and he shares a lot of wisdom and tips and knowledge and complaints about LinkedIn.

the recruitment industry and practices in the market. So he's definitely one of the most articulate voices and one of my favorite people in the design space. So LinkedIn and remember to check out mobin.com and mention that you're there. From Honest UX Talks, that's very important for us.

And also you can rate us on Spotify, give us five stars or as many stars as you want and send us topics for future episodes because we want to have relevant conversations that make sense to you and your context. So thank you so much. Hang.

Thank you, Alana. This has been a delight. I had so much fun. We can talk for another two or three hours easily. And again, I'm very honored to be on the episode sponsored by Mobin. They're wonderful. I've used them before. Great tools. Just understanding how other companies and products have different types of interaction models. And what else? Yeah. Rate this five or 10 stars on Spotify and Apple, please.

I'd be honored. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you all, Anna. I had so much fun. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.