Expert Negotiator

Your job is to write code / design systems / understand customer requirements / philosophize about beauty. When it's time to close a deal and get the best possible conditions, your company lets an expert do it, a person who has made a career out of negotiating well. Nothing personal, but we'll get a better WinWin situation that way.

Therefore, when you're looking through NegotiatingPatternLanguage and interviewing for your next job, consider letting a specialist handle negotiations for you. Explain the situation for them, and let them argue your case. It's not implausible that they'd charge a thousand dollars but get you a package $10k better. The agent has to be deeply trusted if you're going to allow them to do DontHaggleJustWalk. It's also not very verifiable: you can't do the negotiation again to see what you would have achieved by yourself.

That's the theory, anyhow. I've never done it, though I have friends who swear by it. They're not inarticulate, but they're not naturally great negotiators either, whereas the managers they speak to probably are.

Professional athletes and actors depend on their agents. Why not programmers?

I guess the counterargument is SpecializationIsForInsects.

Considering where that conversation went, it doesn't make a very good counterargument. There is a place for a specialist and when you yourself can't do the best job with the facts at hand, it becomes the place of a specialist to do what you cannot. Peter's comment after this makes a good point, though. I do believe it's best to be able to do it yourself to begin with... in fact, in order to get a better look at the people you're negotiating with and perhaps to keep them off balance, it's an even better bargain if you can obfuscate yourself behind a negotiations specialist ;) --ClintonLabombard

"Why don't programmers have agents like actors and athletes?" The answer is related to the nature of the profession. The individual contribution of a programmer is not quantified, it's not recorded, and it's not broadcasted on Television every Monday night. This means it's difficult to judge the true worth of a programmer as opposed to an athlete if he is not sitting right in front of you. Furthermore, the true worth of a programmer (Linus and Larry Wall excepted) is not related to his reputation for drawing crowds, or increasing the reputation of his company. --StephanBranczyk

How might someone contact an ExpertNegotiator?

And if you're not in touch with the market enough to sell yourself, how can you figure out whether someone else is doing a decent job of it? For my money it's better to negotiate yourself and learn the NegotiatingPatternLanguage than to put your faith in someone whose ass isn't on the line in the deal. --PeterMerel

If you're not a good negotiator yourself, this is one of the advantages to using a headhunter. They negotiate good salaries every day.

Some do, but during the DotComBubble quite a few incompetents, seeing money to be made, got into the headhunting business. It's good if you can establish a fiduciary relationship between you and your headhunter.

It's in their best interest to get you a good salary, since they take a percentage. On the other hand, they won't necessarily get the best possible offer, because (A) that might be more time consuming, yet they need a volume of placements, and (B) they often have some kind of ongoing relationship with the company that they don't want to threaten.

Nonetheless, for most programmers it still adds up to a plus -- with the right headhunter.

Perhaps the best ally that you can have when seeking a new job is a sales or marketing person that you've worked with before. They have faith in your ethics and abilities, awe at your accomplishments, and the skills to sell that to someone else. Therefore, always get in good with at least one person in sales or marketing. Cultivate and maintain those relationships even after they've left the company, they could be very valuable when you want to leave.

Emotion greatly affects negotiations and sales. If you're a programmer, you're likely to be more of a logical person than an emotional one, so you could probably use some help there from a pro (at getting the other party to feel the right emotions). As an added benefit, they always have a very different viewpoint that will help you to see things you hadn't thought of, and can give you advice that will help you throughout your career.

If you are buying a house, consider a buyer's agent. Most real estate agents technically work for the seller as a subagent--they may help you find a good house to buy, but when the negotiation starts they cannot assist you with getting a good price. (And they may actively work against you).

Some buyers agents even will still try and bill the seller. (When I bought my house, my agent worked this way--he was a buyers agent representing me, but the seller still paid his share of the commission. Many seller's agents aren't willing to refuse a bona fide offer solely on the grounds that the agent across the table is acting as a buyer's agent rather than as a seller's subagent. But some might...)

You know this is normally how it works right?