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Ask a lot of questions, because the more information you have,
the more power that you will have.
Compensation has a lot more elements to it, typically, than most people identify.
At senior levels, a compensation package is going to have
maybe as many as eight or ten major components.
We tend to think about base salary, cash incentive bonus,
and equity grants, kind of the big three.
But there's relocation allowances,
home buying programmes,
pension gross ups, signing bonuses.
Special project based incentive options and
as many things as people can dream up.
So the first thing you want to do when you're in a compensation discussion with
anybody, is find out how many of those elements might possibly come into play?
Do you have project based bonuses?
Do you do you use signing bonuses?
How do you award option grants?
If I'm relocating, how do you deal with relocation?
Is a home buyout part of that, blah, blah, blah.
And so, now you've got a framework of what's possible.
And there might be something on that list that could be really,
really valuable to you.
If you go to work for Stanford, your kids get to go to Stanford.
I mean, if you got college aged kids,
I mean, I know people who have stayed here because of that, that's huge.
And so find out what the list is.
And then, the other thing, I tell people, a compensation
discussion is a little bit like working at a mixing board in a sound studio.
You ever see these things, they got all these they're trying to manage the sound.
Probably there's a guy back there behind the wall doing that right now.
And you got about ten levers that various levels of the sound,
you can't push them all to maximum because you just get garbage.
It's the same thing in a compensation discussion,
you can't push everything to maximum, but you can probably push something.
And one of the things, as I tell people, try to find the soft money,
if there is any.
I mean, maybe the individual you're talking to has a severe salary cap and
they just can't go any higher.
But they've got a lot of discretion on a signing bonus.
Well, money's money, okay?
And so maybe you don't get that extra 25 or $50,000 in salary,
but you pick up $100,000 signing bonus.
Well, that's pretty good because you can have a salary negotiation again,
in a year.
But maybe you can negotiate it to six months and get a review in six months.
Again, what's the review cycle?
That's one of the items on the list, people don't tend to think about.
So recognize at the end of the day that if you push
too many of the levers, you could blow the deal.
But you can push some, and people expect you to push some money.
And they're, I think, particularly impressed, if you do it intelligently,
particularly if you push something that's not one of the top three.
And if you've done your homework, first off, I mean, at a minimum,
if you're replacing somebody, you should be able to get everything that
that individual got, because that's already been approved in the system.
So that's a starting point and usually if you ask, you can find out what that is.
If you know what industry counterparts at their competitors get for the same job,
that's useful information.
And so, again, do your homework, figure out what the elements are.
Push the one that in particular is worth more to you to get,
than it is to them to give it to you.
And that's where you can really, if you push on something where they're resisting,
that's going to be hard.
So go find somewhere else.
So it's another version of an open door [LAUGH].
But go find something that's easy,
as opposed to fighting over something that's hard.
And I mean, at the end of the day, I always,
Try to encourage people in that negotiation,
to try to get the company to accept that you want to bet on your own performance.
So go for bigger upside on bonuses, shorter reviews, project bonuses.
Okay, I'll go in at this level,
it's a little less than what I want in terms of salary.
But given that, is it possible that I can have a review of six months?
And if the performance warrants I get that adjustment.
That's pretty soft, they're not given much, they're not giving away any money,
they may well agree to that.
And if you perform, then you get it in six months.
If you don't perform, you weren't going to get it anyway.
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