#131: Inside comp negotiation for PM roles at top companies like OpenAI and Anthropic | Colin Lernell (Co-founder @ Valued)

All right. We're live. Colin Larnell, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben. And, you know, it's been a couple of years since we had a long talk, since we first had our first long talk, I should say. And I'm excited to be able to talk to you guys in the community. Amazing. Yeah, you know, you've been in our sphere for, since basically the whole time we've been running the podcast, I remember when we had Akash on in the first 10 episodes, it was to discuss an article I think the two of you wrote together on his newsletter. Oh, right. That was the first time I think I heard of your name. And then since then, we both had stuff going on with Maven, sort of kind of like co-instructors there. And then all the while, you've been building your credibility in the salary negotiation space after having a very successful career as a product leader yourself. And what really kind of resurfaced you recently in my sphere is like you did this incredible talk. It's not public, but it was within the Supra community that Mark organizes about salary negotiation. And Mark pinged me right after. He's like, dude, you have to watch it. It was like there's so much engagement. People got so much value. Mark got all these pings from people afterwards. So when I watched it, I'm like, oh, we have to have Colin on the show. And then in parallel, we had a conversation about partnering with you, with the company that Mark and I are building with Insider Loops to help the people who crush the interviews with the help of our guides actually advocate for themselves in the negotiation process. And this is a very long-winded intro, but I'm almost done, and I have a question for you, I promise. That's going to get us going. And so the thing that I'd love to kick off today is a quick story. So we had someone who's a very, very successful product leader use our guides to interview with multiple companies, pinged us as kind of like friends asking, hey, I think I'm getting close to an offer stage. Is there anyone that you think I should talk to? And we're like, yeah, we actually have this partnership. It's valued. Somebody saw some product, didn't even call them, and then just gave us the space. So our friend ended up signing with you as a customer. And I was expecting maybe like a month later to hear kind of how it went or, you know, like happy, not happy, whatever. I was just surprised to hear like within a few days from making that recommendation, he pinged me and he was like, dude, this is going to be the best money I spend. Like I already know it's going to be worth every penny, so thanks for the recommendation. And so where I want to start with is like I was surprised by that. So like how can someone go from being kind of like skeptical about working with a firm or like a team like yours to kind of like this is worth every penny so quickly? Like what happens? That's a great question. Yeah, I feel like I'm going into sales mode really early in this conversation. But I think it's important first, like when someone is really talented and really successful in their career, a lot of things kind of go their way and they get a little bit of what I don't know what the term is in this case, but it's similar to survivorship bias where a lot of your, you just get things going for you. You make career decisions and they worked well for you, right? That's why you're in the position you're in. You may have negotiated really well, right? Doing very simple things in the past, you feel like you're really empowered. But there's just so many blind spots that you just don't know about and you have such a small sample size. And so a lot of what I've talked about, especially the more senior people come to us, the more they have objections, but the more they need a lot of the things that we do for them. And so there's a few moments that I feel where they get like an aha about, oh, this is why I decided to, you know, work with value or like why I decided to take a bet on them. The first is usually as soon as we start preparing for a call, like a recruiter call, like we go through a lot of prep for what is the comms background with this recruiter or the hiring manager? What is all your context here for what we want to get done? Was the information you shared or not? And then how are we going to talk about this? When you say like the recruiter and the context of the recruiter and the hiring manager, you're talking about like, let's say theoretical. I'm getting an offer from Anthropic. You would look at examples of people you've worked at Anthropic and look at your data and be like, hey, how does this hiring manager work type of thing? Or do you meant the candidate? Yeah, depends on the situation. So I'll think of one that I've done recently. So I worked with someone who was going to one of like Google Meta, right? One of the big tech companies. And the first conversation they were going to get the offer on this call. So they were like, hey, let's work together after I get the offer. Which is fine, like half the people do that. But there's so much that happens in that call subtly that people don't even know is happening. And these recruiters are smart, especially at the senior levels. The recruiters have seen these things dozens, hundreds of times, right? So if you think that you're being like really subtle and you're not giving away information or whatever, they'll pick up on the cues. And those cues will affect how much they're going to go to bat or feel like you're being solid in whatever your counter is going to be later on, right? So often we have to dig out of that and reestablish them if they've already done this kind of thing. So we help prepare them by thinking about for the recruiter, in this case, you asked about what's the comms, like what were your past few conversations with the recruiter? What were the tones of those conversations? How engaged is this recruiter? Like what info have they revealed and have you revealed? All that stuff's really important to keep top of mind. And we think about not just that recruiter, but like all the people in the background, the hiring manager, the skip leader, et cetera. But then we go, we create a talk track. We think about all the pushbacks that they're going to give, all the growing you're going to get and how you're going to respond to it. And it's just like with preparing for like PM interviews, you can go in and prep yourself and not do any mocks and not have like anyone else help you with this stuff, even regardless if it's AI or anything else. But you're going to be at a pretty big disadvantage if your first time talking is going to be going out there. So we do a simulation too. And beyond just like, here's a script, let's talk through it, et cetera, and like nail the script and massage it as we go through all the things that you might get pushed into. As we talk through that stuff, you get into a little bit more of the career conversation and the career choice conversation. So, okay, I don't want to ruin this relationship with this person, but I might actually like this other company more. Like all those little tiny things come out and we pull in those threads, and then we start talking it through with the candidate and we integrate that into here to allow them to have more options so that we could have a deeper conversation about the career later to see like, is it maybe Meta not your top choice? Or is this other company or not choice? Do you want to leave this open? Do you want to delay this further? There's just so many of those micro decisions that happen. And honestly, like when I was negotiating, I think it was the second time, it was in the same round of job interviews. I had a $2 million offer from a public company, smaller public company, and I was negotiating with a private company. And I got on the call and there was a miscommunication about what my comp expectations were. And so they came in at like almost half of what I was expecting. And I got like upset and emotional on the call and like not emotional. And like, you know, I got kind of like angry and lost my cool, started saying, oh, like, you know, that's way off, et cetera. All the things I knew not to do, but I kind of just like got thrown out. And Mike Tyson says, you know, you always have a plan until someone punches you in the face, right? Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face, I think is the quote. And it's very true. And so having someone there just to like talk you through the stuff that you know has seen so many of these things, and just like having that sense of, you know, peace of mind that you're, yes, you might know what you think the decision is in the moment, but being really sure that that's the right decision or being called out on it or having not missed an important detail that you might not have thought about, those subtle things are really what make it. And then in the end, when I talk to like the most senior product leaders at these companies, we're talking about people who make like, let's say five to $10 million per year, they come out of the whole process. And the biggest thing they tell me at the beginning is like, why didn't you tell me that this is going to be such a good like career, like coaching service, not just negotiation. The reality is that it's very, you know, we need to be focused. And what people are thinking about when they have an offer in two days is not what's the career advice, it's usually what's the negotiation that I need to do. But that is a thing we love doing and we love contributing. It's an important part of this whole process as well. Yeah, it's like you came for the salary negotiation, but got the, but, you know, loved the career, the career advice too. Which is something that's probably really hard to do with a firm that doesn't have someone running it who themselves is a product leader and someone who's in the, like I know there's some other comp negotiation firms or boutique shops that are not run by product people. And I suspect they're probably less helpful when it comes to like product career planning. So that's probably one of the unique things that you guys can offer. It's a little bit more about the system. Like for instance, the person that you referred to us, I happen to be out having fun in Germany at Oktoberfest while this was happening, right? So this was one of my team members who is not a product leader, but they're all ex-FANG recruiters or ex-executive recruiters. And, but the approach we take, the strategy that we employ when we do every negotiation kind of is from reverse engineering. What I saw top executives doing early in my career, I got very lucky to be able to hire, be part of the process of hiring, not just product leaders, but any executive at a high level at unicorn startups early in my career. And I just saw what they did naturally and kind of reverse engineered that. And then I find people who understand that as part of my team, we kind of coach them and we just built that into the process. The other big thing is, and maybe one of the reasons that this individual was bought in, but I can talk about another person, another person who was going for a seven figure role in big tech product leader. They were very skeptical about the main thing that we force all of the hundreds of people we work with to do, which is after the offer call, not to start negotiating right away, which is like the instinct of a lot of people. Even my friends don't sometimes come to work with me. I tell them, hey, like I've done this hundreds of times. Like, just trust me. I helped them through the process even early on. And they're like, no, I got this. I've done this so many times. And they come back and they're like, oh, great. I got this thing. I got 20% more or something like that. I was like, all right, but did you think about this? Did you think about the level? Was 20%, are you sure that that was the most you could have got? Like all of this stuff that they didn't consider. So this one part of the process that we do with everybody, and I taught this to your cohort as well, is that after what I saw the executives do when I was at Udacity or in my career, was they would never start countering right after they got an offer. They would get a job offer and their first instinct is to go into due diligence mode. So for them, it's a huge high stakes thing to take an offer. Even if the offer is huge, they're like, every mistake I make at this point in my career is critical. I need to make sure that I'm doing this well. So they would start to say, I wanna talk to a board member. I wanna talk to the CEO. I wanna talk to the SCIP executive. I wanna talk to this person over here, here, and make sure that this is gonna be the right fit for me, that the role is what we talked about now that the interviews are over. They didn't all intend to do this as a negotiation play, but a byproduct of it was sometimes the CEO would come out of the meeting with this person where the CEO was just intending to sell them and they're like, give this person whatever they want. Give them a higher title. Give them more money. And I was like, well, all of the bands, all the stuff we were being strict about like 10 minutes ago just got thrown out because the CEO had met this person. And the reason for that is that the act of showing that level of rigor and agency and building conviction and kind of like taking this decision that seriously generates a strong signal to the CEO that evokes some kind of like emotional reaction that's maybe a little irrational that's like there's something this person's doing that feels different and unique and strong and I want them even if it means flexing to get it. Is that why that happens? It's a great hypothesis. This is one component. So it's actually many layers of things and sometimes it's way more of one or the other but they're all positive. So the same thing, we see this work with someone who's like an L3 engineer, right? The same type of thing works with them meeting their hiring manager coming into the thing. It's a mix of things. So number one is just human psychology and there's a couple of elements under there. The other element is like how that person is thinking about this candidate as an ROI versus as just another IC3 like who's in the band, let's hire them or not. And then there's another component in the background which is just the fact that the people you're negotiating with, the recruiter, doesn't know what's possible. They will tell you it's a final offer because in their mind, they're like, if I bring this back to the comp committee, they're gonna say like, are you crazy? Like what do you mean? Like this person's gonna need this. We actually had someone negotiate with Nvidia recently and the recruiter literally told them, I can't believe you think that this is possible. Laughed at them, said, this is crazy. Said, okay, I'm just gonna like go back to the thing but don't expect anything. This is like, they weren't even like trying to negotiate. They're just like, you're crazy to ask for this. And they got double the equity and they got everything they wanted because the recruiter just didn't understand all the things they had set up in the background. So on the psychology side, there were a couple of elements that I've observed that happened during this process. Number one, people are just gonna fight for you if you're a human. And like, if they talk to you, they're gonna be like much more attached to you than if you're just someone in an email, which is why it's important that that CEO met with that person, right? So they could have seen their resume. We could have done the biggest pitch in the world, but they saw them, they talked to them. Now they're a human. There's two elements of that. Number one is just like recency bias of like you like the person more that you last talked to, right? In interviews, this happens too. If you guys have been on panels as hiring leaders, I interview five people, but the person I'm most excited for is the last cool person I talk to usually. And so you have to, that's why the process is there to try and calibrate and kind of calibrate across all of them. So that's one part of it. The other part is that when we do these alignment due diligence calls, it's a lot about, okay, here's what I've heard so far about what the priorities of the role is, the vision for the role, how we're gonna approach it. Here's maybe a little bit about my like three month or six month plan of how it go into it just for illustrative purposes so we can have a conversation about details, some due diligence questions. And it's all just what you would do when you jumped into the role in the first month or so, right? To figure out like, let's plan together what this would actually look like. And then it becomes loss aversion as opposed to, hey, I don't have this candy yet. I'm gonna say no to them or I'm gonna not offer them a lot. It becomes more of I'm gonna lose a colleague that I already think I have, right? Like I'm so excited working with this person about all these cool things. And so now it's loss aversion and people are much less likely to want to lose something that they think they already have versus no matter how much more valuable it is, it's easier to say no to something you don't have. So that's a big part. That's the psychology part of it. The other part about ROI, usually when it gets the negotiation phase, the recruiters and even sometimes the hiring leaders will say, especially a big tech where it's like very process driven. They're like, the hiring leader has nothing to do with compensation and nothing to do with negotiation. And they genuinely believe that's true. And it is never true. The hiring leader, even if they don't know it, if they have some political savvy, they have a big influence on how much you're able to get and unlock in your compensation. But when you go into this conversation, if you don't go into this conversation rather, they think of you as, okay, you're another IC5, IC6, or a director level candidate. You're another one there. And so this is the process. We'll try and get you if we can't get you. So what? But if you start the conversation by this is all the priorities and all the things that we're going to accomplish together and why it's so critical to this org or to the company, right? You're just summarizing. You're just aligning to make sure that's right. But in their mind, they're like, oh, this person is going to unlock career things for me. They're going to be, they clearly understand what this is about or they're super engaged in it. And so they start thinking again about the ROI of the role, not about whatever process and what we pay typically in IC6. Cause that's not really what matters to a business. What matters to the business is let's get the best person and it's going to be a really good ROI for us. And it starts becoming that business investment decision and for the individual, also a career investment decision. Is this the person that's going to help unlock my career as well, as well as what the business needs. And so that happens a lot in these, especially in the more senior roles as well. Yeah. I mean, almost if I was going to summarize kind of like Ben's question of like, what is the things that they see in the beginning? Or what are the things that, what do they think coming in and what do they think coming out of the first initial touch points? I think a lot of people coming to sound engagement being, hey, like, I just need to be very good at the mechanics of giving a counter offer and knowing what to ask for and knowing what's possible and saying the right things in the right order. But I think when they interact with someone like you, they understand actually like, I was thinking about negotiation in such a narrow scope. Like the map is so much bigger and not only so much bigger, but it's also like, there's a bunch of like one way doors. But if I like, you know, go through them in the wrong way, there might not be a turning point and those unforced errors can cause, you know, be the consequence of like, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, depending on your seniority. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's very true. What early on, everybody kind of knows the major one at this point in your career, you're like, don't give up your comp expectations early. At least I hope like at least 80% of people who are at a certain level are going to do that. But honestly, there are many people who do give their comp expectations anyway, including senior people. And a lot of the reason why I see very savvy people do that is a lot of honestly, it's just falsehoods. They're like, I really have a good relationship, especially when you're late in your career, you're getting these through good referrals, you might actually know the hiring manager from a previous role. And they say, oh, I just want to protect the relationship. This is someone who's close in my network that was referred to me, I don't want it to go wrong. What they don't understand is if you do the negotiation, well, even if you don't answer comp expectations, I've never seen anyone like lose an offer because they didn't answer comp expectations early, unless it was like a ridiculous situation with an early startup. They think that like, oh, I'm going to somehow burn the bridge with this person by advocating for myself or pushing hard here. But at the end of a good negotiation, like most people think, oh, this person is someone I want on my team. I felt that myself. When I have good negotiators, I'm like, okay, this is someone who's going to fight for the resources, is going to be able to like be politically savvy, get people aligned, understand how to get things done. And, you know, there are points at which you start becoming greedy, but it's usually like three or four layers beyond what people think, especially if you're a top candidate. Yeah. Go ahead, Marc. No, I was just going to comment. Like, yeah, it's one of those kind of cases where I think people think, you know, how you do one thing is how you do many things. And I think the other thing that I'm seeing, I'm curious if you're seeing, is I think compensation at the senior IC level and leadership level in the last, like let's say call it 12 to 18 months has like skyrocketed for like really, really top talent. I wouldn't say like all talent, but like for like, let's call it like the 0.05%. And I think a lot of these really talented people that haven't been through this cycle or haven't even interviewed for a while, they think they're asking for something crazy, but actually like what I'm seeing is like, dude, you're not asking for enough. Like that's like, like that's like okay. Yeah, someone might be like seven, like the most I've ever made is whatever, six or 700K. So I'm going to like, if I can get to like a million, that would be like. if I can get to like a million, that would be like crazy. But in reality, the market clearing price for them could very well be like over $2 million a year. And the company will still feel like it's getting a great deal. And people don't know that if they don't have the data points. Because it's basic economics. It's supply and demand. Yeah, and part of it is having the intel and like that's hard to get. You get through network, you get, like we have it because we've seen a lot of them. But a lot of it is just the algorithm I take. And this is just my personality, which is kind of why I got good at this early, is I don't take no or like rules as the state of being. I take it as a challenge. Almost as like, okay, yeah, it could be that way. Let's see if what possible ways there are. Like go to first principles. Is it really true that I can only stop here? Who's really saying that? Where is that rule written down, right? And that allows me to think in a way that gets to outcomes that other people might not get to. And I'm not great at a lot of parts of product management in my career. But one thing I was always good at was not accepting status quo or rules. And just like saying, okay, this is our goal. How do we get there? Have we tried all the things to get there? And taking that approach. And that's let me make breakthroughs and successes in parts of my product career. And that also helps in negotiations as well. We helped someone get, you're talking about like the highest comp I've ever seen before. Five to $10 million per year compensation packages for anyone who's been in like these AI labs or not even AI labs, but AI like leadership roles in the big tech companies. At least two times I've done this where the person's like, I told them I would sign before they started working with me. They were skeptical. They didn't work with me. They came to me later. I told them I would sign up this number. So I'm like, all right, okay. We're already kind of like down this rabbit hole a little bit. It's gonna be hard to dig out. And it's a super high number. We're talking about, you said 2 million? 2 million is very low for this person. So they already said this super high number. And it's way above band. Like it's 2x the band for whatever this level is. But then I talked to them. I did the, I always do a career conversation with these candidates. I have a framework to go through it regardless if you're like starting your career or late in your career and you're like a VP at a big company. And we went through this and I was like, do you really want to leave your role for just this amount? Like, is this really what it's worth? And they're like, well, I don't have that. I'm making 30, 40% of that right now. Like I have no backup plan. It's just like, but my company might be doing super well in two to three years. I have so much more scope here. Like I could become a leader at this company. There's all these reasonable things that don't end up on paper and are very hard in a comp committee conversation for that recruiter to go in and fight for you. But I was like, but this is real. This is actually what your BATNA or whatever they call it is, right? Like I don't like all those fancy terms. The point is like your next best option, it's real. You are struggling. So because there's something real there, let's pull in that thread. Let's find the ways to communicate that in a way to the comp committee that they're gonna be able to understand as justification, but you're gonna have to go to the people who understand that career decision. And it's not gonna be the recruiter. It's gonna be the hiring manager. It's gonna be their manager. Maybe even the person above them, the double skip, like we're talking about like very high up people in these companies. Talk to them, have a career conversation with them. And at that point, they're like, okay, we can ask for a very high number, way higher than you thought was possible. And then they came in and they got $1.5 million more than they originally had asked for per year. We're talking about like on a per year basis, not like just upfront. And this happened multiple times. Another time the person was coming from another job and it wasn't again, like a higher number than what they were gonna make here. But they're like, I'm cozy here. I'm top of my class, so to speak, right? Like year after year, I'm doing well. They're not gonna lay me off. They're always gonna try and retain me. I kind of like it. I don't know if I'm going to be as successful in this new environment, which is a huge thing that a lot of top product leaders don't think about a lot. It's one of the biggest things I focus on, especially for people later in their career, for if they're leaving an organization, going to another one, is all the risk factors that can make you unsuccessful in that new job. Especially if you've been here for like five plus years, like you have a lot of slack, you have a lot of know-how and you don't know that that's gonna translate on day one to the other organization. And so we thought through all that stuff, all those risk profiles, and then their willingness to leave, their price rather to be able to jump went up and up and up. And so we asked for that crazy high number and we were able to get, we're talking about like from first offer to last number offer almost $2 million differences or two and a half million dollars sometimes upfront. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's almost like, it sounds like you help them almost compute that expected value, right? And like kind of like, and you like almost factoring risk and unknowns and ambiguity. And then like that number has to kind of compensate for that like, you know, variable and in a way. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not gonna, for most people. Oh yes sir, go ahead. No, I was gonna say like the mental model I'm kind of forming of kind of like the thing that you do for people is you almost like take this very, like Mark said earlier, like this very narrow, but kind of like specific thing that they need. Like there's a specific job to be done almost. And then they come to you to like just walk them through how to do that thing. And there's probably a sense of incrementality if I had to guess in their expectation. Like there's a, cause you guys are incentivized to I think get the first year offer to be as large as possible if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, the incentives are aligned and they might be like, oh yeah, like they're gonna help me get an extra whatever percentage. And what I'm hearing is like, because of the way you're incentivized and because you're not in the, like you're not in their shoes, you're able to look at the situation more objectively, more data points and having seen more experiences. You can actually take this like kind of narrow moment and almost like expand it to like uncover more levers in the puzzle. And so they don't even know those levers exist until you bring them up and mention them. And then each lever has, and those levers might actually be the highest, have the highest multiplier, let's say associated with that. So that's kind of what I'm hearing is like someone, but it's very hard for someone to do that on their own when they're in the situation. And then, and it sounds like basically the storytelling and the relationship and the focus on value from the company perspective are some of the biggest pieces. Yeah, and honestly, like the strategy is there that there's, you need to build advocates internally for yourself. You can't just rely on the recruiter. The recruiter is great sometimes, but recruiters are varied and they have various incentives and power dynamics even within their organization that vary in within a quarter. Beginning of quarter with Microsoft AI one quarter, they were like dishing out seven figure stuff. Like, oh yeah, everybody gets it. You get an offer, you get an offer. They're about to give out their quarterly report. Guess what? That quarterly report's not gonna be as good. The MSAI is maybe needs to like start proving all the stuff from all these hires early on in the quarter. And so what happens internally, that recruiter gets told ease up on the, like get a bit harder on your, tougher on your negotiations here. It's not gonna be possible to unlock XYZ thing that we did earlier this quarter, but then you need the hiring manager and the VP. Like there was a hiring manager that told one of the candidates we were talking to, I've been fighting with the VP after we did these role alignment conversations with them and the VP. I've been fighting with the VP internally with the comp committee for about a week now, spending all our political capital here just to make sure that we get you, but it's really hard. So like, don't sign another offer like we're fighting hard for you here. And that's really what happens behind the scenes with them. But like you said, like it's, part of it is let's figure out all the levers that are possible. Part of why people need to come to us, and sometimes negotiations are really straightforward. This is the only offer you have there. You're like, I don't have a competing offer, but like I just needed to get this offer up to a certain amount. Maybe that's what I made before or whatever. Let's just maximize whatever we can get from it. And so we know that getting the hiring manager on board behind the scenes is going to help us unlock whatever we need to unlock with the recruiter. At least it's gonna give the recruiter more comfort. If it's within the band that they can approve, even without an exception, it gives them more comfort in doing that because they're like, okay, it's a critical role now. The hiring manager is fighting for them. Okay, this candidate probably should get the higher offer. But we do all those things. But what they care about then for us being there is just so they don't make mistakes. And they have the peace of mind that they're like, not gonna freak out at the last minute. Like I said, I freaked out on that call. Like I almost lost $2 million. Remember your training, you know? It's like that. I forget what movie that's from, but like remember your training. Yeah, I actually, sorry to interrupt you, but like Mark, I don't know if there's somewhere you wanted to go, but I actually, Colin said one thing about being a rule breaker, which I wanted, I have a specific follow up to that. But if you wanna piggyback on anything that we just said. Yeah, maybe. I wanna play devil's advocate one thing and just I'm curious how you'd react. Colin if like, so given that you guys are incentivized, let's say to end up with the highest and help the candidate end up with highest comp for the first year possible. I wonder if any pushback that you get is like, wait, like, you know, I might end up with like a super high offer. And then like all of a sudden my expectations are gonna be super high. And I just like kind of screwed myself because now like, you know, like I'm gonna be like basically walking in thin ice because I pushed so hard. And I'm gonna be like basically on a microscope since day one. Is that something that like comes up often? Because that's like something else that I remember like my psychology from negotiating that was like, oh shit, like now like I really have to like. Like they're paying me so much money. I'm gonna get found out for like not being this rockstar that they do. No, I've heard this too. I had this actually, you mentioned, I think you had spoken with Akash who I had written that product leadership job search, the hidden market job market post with. We talked about this as well in an old podcast. And he had said from his perspective, he's like, when I'm hiring people in his small job, I'll hire someone. I'm like, that person is making twice as much as the other person. Like I'm gonna have my eye on them. I might give more slack to the other person than I do for the one making more. So to some degree there is that, but I have not seen when it, cause people come back to us when they lose their jobs and we help them negotiate their next role. So I know when people don't make it, let's say at their companies, right? And typically when they don't make it, it's not because they had too much, like they had negotiated a high top of band comp or anything like that. In fact, the people I see a more correlation if they're able to negotiate a really high comp, those people actually tend to do super well in their jobs. Their only frustration is like sometimes those companies will cap how much raise they get year over year because they're trying to like keep them within the band and they're already outside the band. But yeah, I don't usually see a correlation there. There are some exceptions to that. So Akash was talking about his own experience as a small business. If you go to a smaller startup, that's not maybe it's like a vertical SaaS business, not one of these like hyper growth companies, they care, they have a philosophy of like cost reduction and things like that. And you get paid way more than other people. They're gonna be looking at line items in a different way than a tech company is like Google or Meta or even like a high growth startup has a high ambitions because those companies care less about like, oh, you're a line item that costs a little 10% or maybe let's say in this case, like even two X more than the next person. They're like, you're either gonna be great in the job and we're gonna keep you or not. We don't want to let you go and go to the competitor. And so for the top roles, I don't find it's a big issue. But the only time that I've ever had talked someone down from something, it's usually from a level. So if you can get paid the same, but get a lower level, sometimes I encourage people, especially if they're coming from startup world and they're going to big tech for the first time and they don't know how to do all the politics and stuff. The higher level you are in big tech, especially in leadership, if you're come in as a director, there's one thing Meta for some reason last year at the near Q2 around Q2, Q3 last year, I think it was, they were like, we're not hiring any director of PM externally. Like we had lots of failures, lots of people got fired. So we're just gonna stop doing it. And so many people I knew for the previous like 12 months had gone for L7, L7, L7, they could not crack director, even if they were qualified for it. And I told them, wait, just don't take those offers, just like stay where you are and wait. And then, but I kind of agreed with them on principle that like, it's very hard for people to come in who have heard from startups and don't know the Fang kind of way of doing things or the Mag7 kind of way of doing things and be successful right away. So if you can come in at, I usually encourage people to go for the highest level they can get, except when it's like, hey, they're giving you just because they want to pay you a lot. They're giving you a, let's say a D2 or a senior director level. And you should kind of come at director or I wouldn't say come in L7 because there's a huge, it's really hard to get to L8 from L7. So you can get L8, but once you hit L8, like I would just say, come in at L8 if you're gonna come in as a leader at a Fang Conversion. But that's a rare case, like that's a small subset of people we work with who have that kind of thing. And executives and startups as well, I'll encourage people to fight for a higher title if it helps them do their job better. So for example, senior, if you're a principal PM or if you're a director PM, big difference in getting things done if you're a director PM. Like you guys probably have seen this, it shouldn't be this way, but people on other teams, customers, like your own team, they're gonna go above your head if you're an IC. They're gonna say like, okay, like what executive should I talk to to get things done as opposed to like, let me listen to the director who's in front of me or the senior director or VP depending on which level you're at. By the way, is that- Sometimes title matters. Are you still seeing that to be true as much? Because like, I think there's this narrative that I am seeing too, like, I've seen a lot of directors or VPs that join a startup or a small company as a principal, or even like, you see like execs that go to open AI or Anthropic and all of a sudden they're like, I'm just a member of the product staff, right? Like, is that, yeah, do you see that still being the case and people are just not like upfront about it or not as honest? Yeah. This kind of started with Stripe and some of the fintech companies that copied Stripe and then now the AI companies are doing this, the Flatter org. You have to evaluate whether that company lives that. Open AI and Anthropic live that. They don't care, like you don't even know who you're working with, what their title, like you don't know what their level is and it doesn't matter actually. But then there's like a hundred copycats below that and even the copycats are like just below that. Like, I don't know that that's really the case of Perplexity. Like, Perplexity wants to do that, but I see some, I see the hierarchy in LinkedIn, like I see how it is there. If you go to Perplexity, I would be like, fight a little bit more probably for title than if you go to open AI, I don't care. Like, get paid what you want to get paid as long as your role is gonna be set up for success, go do it. You're gonna work 14 hours a day anyway. I wanted to make sure we talk about open AI and Anthropic because there's something unique about those two. So, in the pre-recording we talked about how there's like, those are two examples of companies that are trying to create this perception of like a no negotiation policy. So, a rule follower, well, no negotiation, I can't negotiate, right? Yeah. You being a rule breaker in the best possible way and obviously also being incentivized to find the levers that people might not be thinking about. Sounds like you've had some success with Anthropic without divulging any confidential. What do you have to say about, you know, one, this idea of like an explicit no negotiation policy and how it plays into things? And two, like, what have you found as like helpful? Like, is there anything different about the levers that can be used in that kind of negotiation? Yeah, like with any of the rules, like with comp bans, right, we get exceptions, but we don't get exceptions all the time. When we're talking about like traditional big tech, where all these other levers are usually there and there is a negotiation, like they expect you to negotiate, right? We don't always break those rules. So you try to maximize what you can within those rules. So the same thing applies here. Yes, they have OpenAI negotiates more than they used to, but they started this whole, like, we don't negotiate, Anthropic has a similar kind of stance. But I seen people negotiate successfully with both of these companies. Like it does happen. And, but there's a couple of things you can't guarantee that you're gonna be able to break that rule, right? Or I say, you say break the rule. For me, it's like companies have these policies in place as part of a strategy and they're helpful for them. But some, as we know, many strategies and policies, like you have to bend it in certain places to get, to optimize outcomes, right? Sometimes you need to overspend. Like you don't want a comp ban to stop you from getting someone who's gonna, like, unlock something really big for you or for that person going to competitor and then you like crush the advantage, right? And that's why you rely on, that's why the hiring leaders behind the scenes and the executives have the ability to make these exceptions and push for things and why those exception paths exist, even if they are more rare or the recruiters don't know about them as much. They exist because sometimes you have to break the rules and the companies know this, which is why they allow it to happen, right? Otherwise they would just say no to every single person. And so with OpenAI and Anthropic though, most people are going to get into the case where they get their first offer and unless they have literally like another, an Anthropic versus OpenAI situation, in those cases, once they hear the other one's name, they're gonna start moving, being more willing to move. But if you don't have them lined up, right? Like even at anywhere in the process, it doesn't have to be off the stage by the way. Can I ask a quick question there of like, is there any other company that any of those companies hear and they're like, ooh, now like that is a worthy candidate. Like maybe is it, would you put Google in there? Would you put a Meta in there now? Like. There's tiers. So if you're going to OpenAI or Anthropic, the number one, OpenAI Anthropic. Number two under that is usually like, you know, you're talking about super intelligence and Meta or like Google or whatever, depending on, and it's not just like Google, it has to be like the org that is specifically facing, competing either with OpenAI Anthropic or with your specific area. For example, if you're going in, like a couple of my old friends at Patreon now just joined OpenAI to start their like creator thing. Right there, if they were negotiating, if they were to go off and do something similar, Meta, et cetera, then, you know, maybe there would be more of a competition. So they smell like the orgs and like the actual roles and they wanna make sure that you're not gonna be competing with them. But the difference between Google and Meta is that Google and Meta are, especially Google these days, will pay a huge premium to steal people from OpenAI Anthropic and Meta. Meta will do this too, but Google is paying multiple times what the other will pay just to like make it. Multiple friends at Google that are telling me there's this like talent influx right now of Anthropic and OpenAI talent coming into Google over the last few months, which is really interesting. Because like a year ago is like in the complete opposite direction. Yeah. Some of the offers that we're seeing in Google are crazy. Like I'm like for like L6, L7, yeah. I wanna take a moment before we get back to the episode to tell you about Insider Loops. This is a company that Mark and I started because we just believe this should exist. Companies should be offering candidates the best possible preparation for their loops, yet what they give them is vague and often not very actionable. So we took the matter into our own hands. We've put together well-researched and continuously updated guides for PMs and reviewing at companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash and more. If you're getting ready for PM interviews at those companies, go over to insiderloops.com and learn more. Now back to the episode. Yeah, L6, L7, L8, L9, like all of the above, all of them work. You're talking about like two to three times the top of the band sometimes. I've had a lot of recruiters say, well, we just went to, you know, like the CEO. to the CEO to get signed up on these things. And now it's the CEO's EA that's probably signing off. But the point is that these offers have to go that high and they have that pathway established because they're like, if we don't want these good people to go to these people, they're hoarding, like Google does really well. They're good at hoarding talent and then utilizing that talent, they'll find a place to utilize them really well. But anyway, the point is that OpenAI, when people go to Google and they're like, I really want to stay at OpenAI, they're giving me this like offer I can't refuse. OpenAI is not gonna be like, I'm gonna pay you three X what you're making now to save you. So OpenAI, sometimes Google and Meta are just gonna be too high an offer and they'll stop competing. It's like stretching that elastic band too far and it just snaps. And so they won't compete as much with them, but they're more willing to compete with like an Anthropic. Second to that is going to be your other AI lab companies like XAI, like SpaceX or XAI in this case rather, Mistral, that type of thing. Some what perplexity and stuff, but if they're not like a foundational model, it depends on the role then, if it's gonna be an AI kind of lab adjacent kind of company. But those are the types of players that they're gonna care about more. So just going back to kind of like, you were, I think you were kind of laying out something and then Mark asked that clarifying question. So you were saying kind of like, there's that scenario where you have, you know, like OpenAI and Anthropic, you know, like lined up, but assuming that they don't have that, what, yeah, keep going with how you're kind of like thinking through that. Yeah, I was gonna loop back to this because yeah, most people are not gonna have one of those companies lined up, right? So if you don't, that's totally fine. You should get other companies lined up in interview processes and you are gonna do a different strategy, I would say with OpenAI and Anthropic than with other companies, which is you'll want to signal your social proof and what your other opportunities are more before you get the offer. We usually say just like, keep it all, like don't tell them anything. First of all, those things might not work out and then if it's actually a negative signal, if you're like, oh, I'm working with this X company and then you don't have the offer later and they're like, what happened with it? And you're like, oh, it's not there anymore. That's not a great signal for you. But in this case, you want to, right before you're gonna get the offer, make sure that they're gonna give you the best first offer. So there's a couple of things to do. Number one, try and figure out which level they're gonna be assessing you at. There are levels within these companies, despite everyone being a member of technical staff, they have ELF three, four or five. Some people can come in at ELF six if you're like super leader, but usually it caps out at ELF five for like your IC folks, for PM rather. And then you want to make sure that you essentially establish a lot of that upfront stuff. And if you have any anchors for like how much comp you're making in the past, if it's gonna be much higher, I almost never say give numbers first, but make sure for facts that this is going to be way higher than what they're gonna offer you. And there's enough data. And you should definitely talk to people who joined recently in your network at these companies or who just work there to figure out how much they're gonna make. A lot of the intelligence we get for people who are at these top levels and people making these crazy salaries is just because we have to dig in to our friends network of people who know people and then ask them, right? It's the only, they're not posting on, they're not posting all the time on Levels.fy anymore. And are you saying usually like base or base on equity? Like when you're like saying like upfront, like when you say share the comp. Yeah, sorry, always total compensation. Yeah, almost at this level, like once you start making like 700K plus, it's almost all equity on the upside. Like you will get cash compensation going into the four or 500 range if you're at the like super high levels, but like most of the comp differences in the equity. So we always just talk total compensation. And so the way that they talk about it internally, the people who are making these numbers, they're like, what are you making? Okay, I'm making, I got 5 million a year, 6 million a year, 2 million a year, 1 million a year. That's how they think about it. They don't think about base and comp anymore. They're not technically, they're not like legally allowed to ask how much you make though these days, right? They don't, yeah. Well, they usually ask you what your comp expectations are, which is the legal way to say it. But in this case, I would first figure out like, okay, whatever my alternative is, if it's my current job or what I think I might be able to get if I went to Google, whatever it is that you're, like if you're in process with Google and you're like, I expect Google to give me, for example, a $1.5 million offer or a 700K offer or a 500K offer, whatever it is, make sure that before you say that number to OpenAI Anthropic, that that is way above what they're possibly gonna give you at this level, right? So do your diligence. There are some of those comp numbers available online and they don't tend to go too far outside it for your average candidate. They will go far outside it for, you know, those crazy top five percenters or top one percenters. And we recently, and then establish that at higher, or before they give you the best offer, yeah. Totally, totally. That actually confirms, we recently heard from someone that bought one of our guides. They're actually interviewing with like three different companies we have guides for. And so we have a piece of guidance in one of our guides that's basically about like, hey, you shouldn't share a number like in the recruiter screen. Like it's only gonna hurt you. And this person like submitted feedback out of this like little in-guide feedback mechanism. And they're like, you know, they highlighted that part and they submitted, they sent us a note and they're like, you know, while this is like generally true, just wanna like let you know, I recently was interviewing with this company and I told, and I knew they were kind of pegging me for this level. And what I told the recruiter on that first call is what the 75th percentile of this other company at the next level up was that I was interviewing for. So that's basically my expectation. And that's a publicly known number that I've confirmed. So like that's, you know, they basically quoted that number to this company. And then they got all the way through the interview process with this company and got to the end. And then the offer came in somewhere around here. And they were basically like, guys, like I told you, like in our first conversation, cause there was a different recruiter that they were working with in the later parts of the interview process than the first part, like go back and look at your notes. I told your recruiter from on the first call that this like 75th percentile at the next level is kind of like the number that I'm at. And they came back and they doubled their offer after they just like did that one, that one note. So he was like, it can, it can be helpful to, you know, mention a number in the first call if you do it in a thoughtful way. I would say I would have still advised him not to do it if he went back in time. Cause we, every time when we get those double offer, we, you can do all that, not having said that at the beginning and then bring it up after you get the offer and still get that double. If you reset expectations, when you do this role alignment call, like process, a very common thing we do first is like, do that diligence figure. And then at the end of that conversation, we very often are like, this actually is the higher level role. And we'll, we'll push that. Or, hey, like I get it. You got me at this level, but my other opportunity is going to be this much. I want to work here. Look at all the cool things we're going to do together. I'm super jazzed by like how much impact you're going to have but it's going to have to be at this level. And then they'll up-level you just to get the comp or they'll give you a comp exception and give you a much higher comp. And that all always is usually better to do at the end. So at the beginning of the process, figure out which level, get assessed for the right level if you can. But if you're in the middle of the process, I wouldn't, just because like that person risked just getting not interviewed later, right? They're like, we only have a role, we only have a role that pays this much. Like, hey, we're just not going to advance you. One of the issues too is like, you know, as we know, like from our guides and from me having worked at Facebook, like the level seven loop is a, level seven plus loop is a different loop than the, you know, level whatever, five, six loop. And so we also have, like if you're, you know, going through the level five loop and you do everything right, you could make the case that like you can create the narrative that you're going to be doing a level six job, right? But if you go through the level six loop and crush all your interviews, what we've heard from some people, I don't know if I've seen the anecdote yet, of someone who kind of gets through the full level six loop and then makes a case for why it's actually level seven because there's like extra different interviews to have to go through in a level seven. So we had one person by our Google guide that said, I would have never started the Google level six process because I crushed the Google level six process and tried to negotiate into a level seven. They're like, well, no one can get a level seven and after passing level six. And then he, he's like, I would have never even started the process. I would have just been like, I'm gonna put me through the level seven process and I'll just go through that. So it's like some of these new, these company specific nuances are so important. Yeah, yeah. So I just to wrap up my last point quickly is that, yeah, figure out the, for OpenAI Anthropic, try to position stuff early before so you get the best first offer. If you're an exceptional candidate, et cetera, like you can, I would still try and negotiate the times where the HR has been overruled or not overruled, sorry. I shouldn't say that because HR is not like fighting these people. HR is just doing, withholding the policy that works for them and they think is possible. Go to the hiring manager, go to their skip, do this conversation, try to get them to go to Bad For You and that has worked to overrule and get comp exceptions and get actual negotiation on those offers and get the, even at OpenAI and at Anthropic where they say there's no negotiation, they have moved. And sometimes you can get things outside that. We got people less than three days a week in office at one of these two companies, which is absolutely crazy. We got them, I'm not gonna say how many days a week because that might reveal who they are because it's so rare. But there are other things you can negotiate too. But going back to your point, I have two anecdotes right there at Meta and Google. So we actually got an L6 to L7 up level at Google in the last couple months. Like it did happen. It required more interviews. More interviews, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they had to, so you can get it. It took a lot of effort. But yes, this person would have been better served to just have started at the L7 process at the beginning, right? Then we had an, this was actually in a cohort I was working with before. We had an SVP of product at a unicorn startup. Like someone who shouldn't have been going into L6. But there were actually VPs at public companies who started Google in L6 sometimes. And honestly, they should never have done it. They always regret it later. They fight super hard to try and get L7 and like dumb things like projects get taken over, like your manager gets switched. Like so many things get in the way of promotions. But they just didn't know any better. They thought, oh, that's just what I come in at. So this person was an SVP of product at a unicorn startup. Went into the process, didn't even ask what level it was. We weren't helping them at the time. Then they realized that they were interviewed by like an L4 and they had this bad interview. Like it's because they were talking about strategy, but like they're not a cookie cutter stuff because they're a more senior person. And this person like gave them essentially a bad interview because they didn't know how to deal with this SVP. And they went to the recruiter and they're like, why did this happen? Why was this junior candidate like interviewing me? Like, oh, you're being assessed for L6, like the team matching later kind of interview process. And she was like, okay, that doesn't sound right. What is an L7? And the recruiter's like, oh, asked her a series of questions. She answered the questions. She's like, oh yeah, you actually should be L7. And just rerouted her. She almost like failed the loop. And then eventually went in and got the L7 loop and then did well in that. So yes, definitely figure out what your level is early in the process. If you don't, when you get close to the end of the process, if you're in your like final rounds, you don't wanna do things to tank you. Your job then is to get the offer there. If you write, even right before the offer, if you say this level isn't for me, they're like, well, I don't wanna give an offer that they're not gonna take. So they might pull the offer. So wait until you get the offer, then they're incentivized to close the offer and you do the role alignment call. You'll have much more room to do your push to get an up level. And that's where we see up level succeed more is right after the offer, not right before it. The Trojan horse, sunk cost fallacy. Yeah, I mean, I don't wanna be come off as promotional, but I do think that's why company specific content, material support in this world is so valuable because like every company, it's its own world. And if you don't know those details, you really can do a lot of unforced errors that, I mean, if you're working with someone who's skilled like yourself, it sounds like a lot of the unforced errors can be solved, but just the cost of solving them and the time is just gonna be way, way higher. And which, you already have a difficult life if you're an exec, right? You probably have like kids, family, like grinding. So like, why shoot yourself in the foot? If especially like, if you can pay maybe like from a couple of hundreds to a couple of thousand, right? That's like some of the best money you can spend. Like assuming you're aware of your hourly rate, which I hope those people are, but I'm surprised sometimes that they're not. And maybe one, talking about unforced errors, and when is the best time for someone to engage you? Like when would you say is like, okay, like you should start talking to me right now. Yeah, so if you have the time for this, so like the challenge that everybody has with negotiations is that you spend, you grind, you spend hours and hours prepping for PM interviews and behavioral interviews and all this stuff, because all you can think about is like, let me get the offer. And then you have the offer, and then you have like a day or two to, you're like, oh, you're gonna have an offer call. Well, I better start learning about negotiation. You have no time to learn about it and all that kind of stuff, right? So that's one of the big issues that people have is that they're just like not educated enough and things move so fast. The best time is like right around final interviews. Like if you're gonna go into final interviews or you came out of it and you're pretty sure that you're gonna get an offer. If you're gonna get an offer, I think expect an offer somewhere in the next seven to 14 days. That's the best time to engage with us. Before that, I recommend at least passively like watch my YouTube videos. We have 28 plus hours of like free workshop recordings that we've done free on our website. Like go there, watch whatever's relevant to you. They're all on different topics. We have free guides, et cetera. So like empower yourself, try to make sure you deflect those comp expectation questions. But like when you're approaching the offer, that's the best time. Now, if it moves too fast and you get an offer, half the people we work with successfully come to us after the offer, but you're really putting yourself at a disadvantage. I'd rather like walk through the script, get you through that offer call super well, manage all the timelines, and sometimes even like get you, generate other opportunities very quickly for you. One thing that I've been doing in the last few months, very successfully, and I can't believe I had not done this before with people as proactively. I've done it, but not like as systematically with people, is once you get close to an offer or get an offer, it's huge social proof to be able to generate other opportunities. And you just need to be in process, even if it's early process with somewhere else to build some leverage to then use that in your negotiation. So I was working with someone who had an offer at a Mag7 company, or like was expecting an offer next week at a Mag7 company. I was like, hey, let's, do you have no, you have no other interviews going on? No other processes? And he's like, no, I'm just focusing on this one. I've tried searching for seven months. You heard that a lot, right? Like there's this completely bimodal market right now. They're like the top 1% getting like two, three X what everyone else is getting. And there's all these people who are fantastic PMs and engineers who are on the job market for like six to 12 months. It's absolutely nuts. I have some hypotheses for why it's happening, but it's like, it's how it is. So this person was on the market. He's like, no one was getting back to me. Even people in my network, they were like, hey, yeah, it's great. Thanks for reaching out, right? But nothing's happening. I said, okay, let's map out who are the people who are gonna care about this offer, right? Then don't ask for a job with them. Ask for advice. And this is something I was talking to another friend, Steve at Alife Engineered. He was interviewing me. And he said that this reminds him of this proverb, which is, if you ask for money, you're gonna get advice. If you ask for advice, you're gonna get money. So I just changed that now to, if you ask for a job, you're gonna get advice. And if you ask for advice, you're gonna get a job. So ask those people, send them a message saying, I'm about to get this offer at XYZ in this org. There's something specific that this person can help you with to make this decision. What is your take on this offer, essentially, is the gist of it, the short version. Hey, you've done this before, or hey, you've worked in this world, or this is my first time in big tech, and you came from Starbucks to big tech. What is your take on this specific offer or this company? And he sent five LinkedIn messages on Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning, he had three other Mag7 job opportunities starting with interviews, and two other people who were gonna take calls with him who could have introduced him to people at other orgs in that company or whatever. You immediately have all those processes. And now when you go to do a counter offer, you're like, hey, I have other opportunities at XYZ companies, but I'm most excited here. I expect those to be X amount. If you can get to this amount, I'm willing to close up all those opportunities and sign. So the future prospects is what you use as your leverage. And that can happen in 24 hours now. And so I encourage people to do that. So if you come to us before you get the offer, we can do that, we have more room to do that as well. I'm always thinking, kind of random tangent, Ben, is that in our interview guides, we have salary negotiation at the end of the process, like step number nine. I'm kind of wondering if it should be like step zero almost. And it's almost like, and I know it's counterintuitive, but like the whole, for some reason, what's going on in my brain right now is like, I'm drawing this parallel between interviews and comp to like making money and taxes almost. And like, I think there's like a really interesting analogy. Like, I think a lot of people think, you know, think of taxes in a very defensive way of like, oh shit, like, you know, April 14th or 15th is approaching, I should like do my taxes. But like the people that like get the biggest tax savings, like start like a year before, like before they start making money, right? Of like, how am I going to put my money in the 401k, like HSA, like I'm going to do all these little like donations or loopholes. It's kind of the same thing with solid negotiation and it's probably two of the biggest stakes, most expensive things. One is from the top line, the other one's from the bottom line type of thing. But like, it's just like, it's really interesting. And it's just like, a lot of people think they don't have that much time to start thinking about it, but you actually might have. Well, yeah, I mean, my reaction. Yeah, I was just going to react. I'd love to hear the devil's advocate, yeah. Well, I think, so I mean, like what Colin said about how there's this like top 1% and then like everyone else, there's like basically people right now in this market that have like a scarcity mindset. And then there's people that have an abundance mindset. And I think it's very hard to get someone who's in a scarcity mindset to think about salary negotiation when they're not sure they'll be able to get an offer. So I think it could come off a little tone deaf in the guide to kind of like emphasize the importance of thinking about salary negotiation advice early if the person reading that advice is like, what the hell are you guys even talking about? Like, I haven't been able to crack a job offer in like 12 months or six to 12 months. Like, so I think like, however, so I agree with you that for the people who get an offer, it is extremely advantageous to be prepared much sooner than they would have thought to prepare. That is 100% true. And at the same time, how you, there's a, I always tell people when getting ready for interviews, like, you know, for example, like don't worry about your full onsite loop before you pass the screening round, you know? Yes. Like nail the screening round and then prepare for the onsite. And don't worry about the screening round if you haven't passed the recruiter screen yet. Like nail the recruiter screen and then you can, you know, get through the, so, you know, yeah. Maybe giving people advice about negotiation per se or like as the P0 in their interview preparation process is maybe something I wouldn't necessarily fully agree with. I get, both of you are right. And it's partly a branding thing and partly like I know how to thread the nail because I've had to advise, like people come to me for career advice because I know about the career and job search stuff too and how to get like, wind up your opportunities. Think about what is in front of them right now because where Mark is coming from is you can make critical mistakes early. So first step of the interview process isn't negotiation. You don't think of it as negotiation, but make sure you're in the right loop for the right level, right? And make sure you don't give away information that could hurt you later, right? That's- This is advice for the recruiter screening round. Recruiter screening round all the way. round. Procure it, screen around it all the way through. But I think where the biggest unforced errors happen when it comes to this are not in the product sense interview. I know I was talking about negotiation and numbers in a product sense interview. So the earliest interview in the process where this comes up is, I mean look, if you're going to do the back channeling thing and talk to a person at the company before you're even in their ATS, before there's any, arguably that's the first touch point. So like you want to be mindful of how you present yourself from a level perspective in the very first conversation with someone at the company. I think we all agree on that. But if you're just kind of like going through the traditional process, the recruiter screen does feel like it's kind of naturally the home for the earliest introduction of compensation related guidance. Yes and no. If you deflect. Push back. And for some, yeah, just because like I see entire interview process as we're at negotiation stage with people, these people, sometimes they're like, Hey, we advise them, don't take this offer. And so now we're helping them through like three other process or they have other processes in different stages. So I see when the recruiters are pushing on things throughout the process, it's very often in the early stage in that first call, but very often it happens like two, three, four times throughout the process. They keep pushing and your guard is kind of down because you're just like, I'm just trying to get through the product sense thing. I'm just trying to get through this like technical round of its AI, right? You're like, okay, your shields are like weekend a little and then they keep kind of like coming in with the, the, the probes. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm talking about people who make $2 million a year and probably are more experienced than like anyone who's using your guides, right? Like these are, they still do get worn down. And so having the toolkit there, like make it as simple as possible for them. I try to make it as simple as possible for them. But even then, like to your point, Ben, I say, don't give your comp expectations. And I have a whole, like a free guide where like, there's like startup specific, what you say, second, third, fourth, what are the common objections they give you that seems super reasonable that you have to get over? Fine. You get over them. If they're like, you can't move forward, your goal is to get to the next step always, right? Like that you said, you have to just get to the next step. So if they get to a point where they're like, I'm just not going to be able to move forward. Like, if you don't give me a comp expectation, you're like, what do you need to put down to get me to the next step? Okay, cool. Let's put that in. There's nothing here I see that's making me not want to move forward is kind of how I like to put it, because it's a little vague, right? Whatever, they might write it down as you agreed to a number, fine, you have to fight that later. That's fine. Your point is then to get to the next step. So you defend, defend, but there's, it's not your primary goal. Your primary goal is get to the freaking offer, right? So I totally agree with both of you, Mark, like, you should know about this early. So you don't get yourself in like, a bigger ditch that you have to dig out of later, which is harder. It's just a psychological. Psychologically, yes, I have now another offer that's like super high. But if I told that recruiter, and the hiring manager early, that this is my number, and now I'm telling them something else, it's just human psychology, they're going to be disappointed because their expectations were here, and now they're down here, right? And so it's something you have to fight that you don't have to, but it's not the most important thing at that point. The most important thing is to get to the offer stage. And especially like, if you're going to startups and stuff, like I see people getting silver medal syndrome, especially for product leadership roles, like VP of product roles, things like that, you were talking about how different things are at different stages, or negotiate like, I would not, we do the same stages and strategy, no matter if it's a start, like series A startup all the way to like the biggest companies in the world. But there are nuances that are very, very specific, I would not push in the same way, I would not talk to the same people, I would not pull the same levers behind the scenes for a startup role versus like a big tech role. I wouldn't even analyze the offer, honestly, in the exact same way for both of those are how you think about leveling. So there are variances between them. But if you go to one of those stages, like you want to make sure that you're getting through the process. And so many people are becoming silver medal syndrome, which means they get to the final rounds, and they just don't get the offer, they always get beat out by somebody else. For them, the most important thing is tackling some other things in both how they interview, but also some of the same strategies I use in negotiation will help you in the interview. Number one, this will help you in both the interview and the negotiation, I talked about the relationship with the hiring manager and the skip manager have in all of the times that I've been able to crush and get like really good offers and good opportunities. I had a side channel text thread, whatever it is, email thread, where I'm in between every process. I'm pretty much already on the job with my hiring manager, like I'm like, hey, we talked about this. Have you thought about this? Let's like, and you start building that relationship as you go and go. And that moment at the end, when people don't get the offer is usually somewhat an emotional decision by the executives. And so if they're like, this person is good, but like on paper, they're not as good as this other person has like a little bit more experience. If they've been essentially working with you, it's again, the loss aversion, but it's just that emotional, like little tweak that's going to make them go, all right, I'm going to fight, I'm going to take the bet on you, and not the other person. And you've been in hiring rooms, I'm sure like you've hired PMs and other people. Sometimes it's not straightforward who you want to hire. And yeah, the emotional thing is a big thing. So build that relationship on the side early. When you get to the negotiation, then it's going to be even easier when you do that alignment call. There was a person, a PM I was talking to that was like, you know, you're talking about not like director level, etc, but very, very high in their career. And they were at Google or Meta, I won't say which one just to not to out them. But this person was working with us. And it's very common for people who are very senior to fight me and not want to do this alignment advocacy building stage after the offer. So the number one thing I know it works, because the reason I know it works is because I saw it early in my career, all the executives did it by accident, they didn't even know they were doing it, but a byproduct of them going into due diligence after they got an offer, it would never counter right away, it was due due diligence, then they would say I'm going to talk to the board member, the CEO, I'm going to talk to the COO, I'm going to go here and there. And those touch points then built credibility with them, and was able to unlock things like higher levels, more scope, more budget, sometimes even better, like, sometimes it would go from a CPO to a CPTO. You know, I saw that in different stages when I was working with people in private companies. But in any case, this person, I knew that this would work, talking to the hiring manager, talking to the hiring executive, the skit manager. But people who are senior in their career, they're like, I already did that during the interview process. I talked about strategy, blah, blah, blah. I had to spend like an hour plus with this person to convince them to have this call. They eventually had the call. Not only did this call help them unlock hundreds of thousands of dollars more per year, and then a million dollars extra in another offer. But they were like, right after the call before any of that happened, were like, I am doing this for every other offer I ever get, I'm always going to have another alignment call with the hiring manager. They loved it because A, it's fantastic due diligence on the call. B, like, you just, after the offer is there, this huge weight comes off. You are still being evaluated to some degree, but you're not like really pitching. And you get into the role and you get clarity on what it is. And it just opens up so much. And a lot of people will come to me after those calls and say, this is not the role I signed up for and will avoid a big mistake. So this is my sneaky way to get people to do due diligence as well. But a lot of people will come after and be like, this is amazing, like, reinforce what I wanted. And the hiring manager will often say in the call, like, oh my gosh, like, tell me what you need from me. I will get it for you. Right? At the end of that call, you can you can ask them for their support and that they're willing. You can also gauge if they're cool at the end of that conversation. They're like, hey, you know what, just like work with recruiting, whatever. We have other candidates. It tells you a little bit more about how much you can fight as well, right, and how aggressive you can be. But anyway, that's important. Definitely like say before the offer call and on the offer call, protect your information. Do your due diligence and enrollment with the team. And that could be also your peers. You shouldn't just do it for negotiation. You should do due diligence to talk to people. Do your counter, try to line up all your opportunities to your counter one, two, three times. We talked in the super call about startup stuff. We didn't have time to get to it today, but there's a lot of things about contract terms I would educate yourself on if you're going to a startup, especially for the first time about protecting your equity and all that kind of stuff. And honestly, just like learn from me. Don't make like emotional mistakes. If you go into a call, at least have some notes for yourself about what you're going to say. And especially on offer calls, just act like your executive assistant. Pretend like you're going to be super friendly. You're going to like ask questions and get intel, but you don't have a stake in the game. I just got to take this back to my boss later to evaluate, right. And you can just say, I'm going to take this and, you know, talk to my family later. And that just saves you a lot of it and emotionally disconnects you from a call. Can I ask, those steps all make a ton of sense. On the alignment meetings, how important is closing the loop after the meeting? Like are you suggesting people to send like a doc, be like, here's what I heard. Here's kind of how I've updated my mental map. Or you think just the act of having that call is like 90% of the battle? There's no one way to do this, but we do this with everybody is we have them prepare a doc before the meeting. So the doc is a set throughout the process, you've learned about the role, right? So based on everything I've heard from you, from the other leaders, from other people, from like the job description, et cetera, this is what I see as the vision for the role. Also from your own hypotheses that you put down, so you can be as certain or not as you want. So some, for some roles that you have no idea what you're going to do, then it's a lot of like either questions or hypotheses. But essentially like, here's a vision for the role, here are the priorities. And then I have them put down some agenda items. Number one is here, the priorities I heard so far in the process were X, Y, and Z. Do I have this right? Am I missing anything? That's the number one most important thing, because sometimes like I had someone go to Uber as a senior PM, they thought they were going to do like, I think they were going to do their ads management system because they had just done that at a similar company before. And then they were like, oh, wait, no, no one told you like we switched which role you're going to be doing something completely different than that. But at the same time, it then gets them to think about their priorities. You get an opportunity to just say, oh, yeah, I've done that before, even if it is different from what I had written here, right? Then things that are like a little bit less on paper usually, which is like, are there any ways of working or culture changes you want to make on the team that you're looking to work on? I do this because I know this is something I explicitly interview for and that other people only implicitly interview for, which is I will hire someone to make a culture change on my team, right? And a lot of hiring managers do this and hiring executives do this. Or I will try to borrow something like this person is coming from a company who's crazy good at X. I want to like inject that into the team, but then no one says that explicitly. And so I usually ask that is like, is there any culture change you want to make on the team, right? Like I heard you say, for example, you want to like move faster or something, or maybe they haven't said that yet. They bring that up, then you're like, oh, okay, I'm my last team, I was able to do this. And then you can start being their right hand person on the ground to make that culture change. The rest of the questions are usually due diligence, like, especially if you're going for like, VP of product roles at a startup, Series C startup or Series B startup or whatever. You'll want to ask about resources, who are the people I have to like actually work with to get things done? Do I have, is this all set up? Do I have a budget for AI for my team, right? Like there's so many things you want to figure out. What are the things that could go wrong? Yeah, that type of diligent stuff. And it's really role specific, you'll get through, you'll work through it, then you want to kind of end on a better note, say like, all right, this is cool. Here's my sometimes I'll put a 90 day plan, 30, 60, 90, or a six, three, six, nine month plan, depending on the scope of the role, together at the bottom, we don't really go through it in detail, you don't present it. It's just there to show like, I've thought through how I'm going to approach this, and this is informing my questions I'm asking you now to align. Sometimes they'll review it, sometimes they won't. And then you say, okay, great, this looks like the impact I kind of want to have, based on what you said, or like, thanks for clarifying all this. And then you either make one of two asks, you say, hey, this kind of sounds like it's going to be an SVP role, or this should be an L nine role, and not an L eight role, or L five, L six role, nine L five role. How do you think about the roles? Do you hear them talking through it? Well, based on what you said, it actually sounds like it's going to be L six. I'm going to work with HR on the details, but if you can go to bat for me, and figure out what's possible, then, you know, I'd love to sign. And then if you don't have that, if it's just a typical, like, you're just going to ask for their advocacy, at the end of the call, you just say, this sounds great, it's the kind of impact I want, I'm going to work with recruiting on the details, this is for big tech companies, if you're not talking to a founder, because a founder you might negotiate with directly. But I'm going to work with recruiting on the details. But if you can go, if you can go to bat for me behind the scenes, or I hope I can count on your support or advocacy. And you can gauge right there, whether they're going to actually do that. And very often, they'll say, like, this is great. Awesome. We'd love to have you like, tell me what you need from me. And you go do your counter with the recruiter, they'll probably talk to them behind the scenes. Sometimes we nudge them again, to talk to them behind the scenes, because they don't. We had to go through this very, very long, exceptional process with Apple, for instance, for a high level product manager recently, where they want to go to Apple, even though their other opportunities were like way higher comp. But they wanted to go to Apple and Apple doesn't always pay the most, right out of all the like top top companies. And so we had to go, we tried several times with the recruiter, the recruiter is like, there's no way like we can't do anything about the level about the comp, anything, this is just what it is. Apple's a pretty tough negotiator, similar to Amazon. But then we went to the skip manager after talking to the hiring manager. And they're like, well, there is actually a process you can go through, you have to you have to interview with three more VPs. And then you can get a doubling of your equity. And it's like very set process, but very few people know about it, I guess. Anyway, they did that they got double equity, and they ended up joining Apple. But that entire process, like wouldn't have happened if they hadn't done these conversations in depth, and taken that seriously. So I highly recommend doing that process. If you're like, I don't want to do all that work, whatever, just meet with the freaking hiring manager that's better than that's like 50% of the way there and 50% is better than nothing. Just freaking meet with the hiring manager. We talked about the psychological stuff that that does just like, eye to eye, talk to them and say like, hey, what this what's going to be the role ask some questions about clarifying. And even that's going to be valuable for you is going to help you in the negotiation. Yeah, I feel like the first time I heard that I was like, Oh, holy shit. I just saw the matrix. Like I was like, once you see that and you hear that, it's like there's there's no other way to do and see it and do it other way. But maybe yeah, now wrapping it up. And two final questions for you, Colin. One is how can people learn more about you, about you and what you do? And then also, how can our listeners be helpful to you? Yeah, first go to feelvalued.co. There's a few things you can get there. Number one, lots of free workshops, if you have the time to do that. If you're just focusing on job interviews, or like you have an offer coming up soon, just book a free call with us. We do a consult, we'll help you, we'll actually talk through strategies and options before we end up talking about our service. So you'll have free time with our folks there. It's either myself, or anyone who's an ex FANG recruiter or an ex executive recruiter. We're a small boutique group. So it's a very white glove service, but you'll learn more about that, you'll there's no pressure on the call. And then from here, say insider loops in when you say, who sent you here, and you'll get $500 off the initial investment, we do a small initial investment, and then most of it is tied to whatever outcome we're able to get you. So if you get a great first offer, and we get you an even better one, depending on what that delta is that we help you with, that's what your final investment will be based on. So we win when you win, the upfront is mostly so we can do the things like make sure you don't take an offer that you shouldn't take, or, you know, take as long as you need. If you don't end up wanting that offer or getting that offer, and you end up negotiating for another like two, three, four, five months, we're happy to help you with all those negotiations and are willing to get the time. So you're we're always aligned in our incentives. But yeah, we have lots of free stuff there. You can also go to my YouTube channel, but I recommend going to feelvalued.co and learning more about it. We'll have all those links in the episode notes. So first of all, I want to say thank you so much for everything you're doing for your clients and for being a great partner to us, and for dropping so much valuable, free information out there for people. I think you're doing like such a huge service for the community and for people in a pretty crazy challenging market. So just thank you for doing what you do. And in the spirit of that, of the gratitude, we'll finish with our very special gratitude corner. So this is just like a nice way that we like ending our episodes and making some space for you to give a shout out to one or multiple people who you feel played a very important role in, you know, kind of like getting you to where you are and just a chance to to say thanks. Oh, that's a great one. I would say my very first manager when I came to Silicon Valley, who's now I think he's at Google as a director in AI, but he he was a fantastic combination of someone who is both very passionate at the job, very warm with people and cared about people a lot and very politically savvy had come from Google before. And that kind of combination really, I think if I had started with a more rigid or more, you know, less worldly kind of hiring manager, I might have not realized all the things that are possible, both in what I can do on the job in my career, but also how I can do that in a good way that also is helpful to all the people, you know, I work with alongside or who work for me and with me. So that person I definitely I'm grateful for. The second person is definitely my wife, because my wife, when I met my wife, I was very much a grind, grind, grind, like 24-7 kind of worker in tech. And my wife had been that, but then had been kind of transformed into understanding the balance that's needed for a longer, she has a longer career in PM than I do. And she kind of brought me to that balance and figuring out how I can have the best of both worlds. And the more I see all these people who have these top jobs, etc., I see some of that balance that they get. And a lot of those are also from their relationships. So, you know, very thankful to having a partner who's both supportive and helps me find, you know, a long term piece in my, in my life and my career. Awesome. Well, I wish you had two hours, like, but I think that's a good sign. That means that part two will be on the books. And yeah, as Ben said, super grateful for your partnership, and for just being so generous with your time. I feel like every time I talk to you, I learn so much. I wish I had met you 15 years ago, but I'm glad we know each other now. I wish I had met me 15 years ago, and we know what I know now, don't we all want to do that? Mark and Ben, you guys are doing such like fantastic and unique things for the community that like, we're in the same kind of mission where there's so much behind the curtain that people don't know. And we're all out to kind of just like democratize that information, get it out to as many people as we can, and help them with their careers. And we can do so many things with our careers, but we love helping people and that I appreciate with both of you and been big fans and followers of you for a while. I appreciate that. All right, I think that's a wrap. Thanks Colin. Thanks.