Rules for my next conference talk

April 30, 2014

tl;dr Giving my first tech conference talk at RailsConf was awesome and overwhelming and surreal! Yet I felt insecure and disappointed after I gave my talk. I'm submitting it to more conferences--please let me know if you hear of any that could be a good fit! To do better next time, I will try to follow these rules:

Before the conference:
  • Practice without reference to the speaker notes at all.
  • Practice with random inserts of applause sounds close to the end (?)
  • Ask to be scheduled early on in the conference.
  • Ask to be put in a small room (Ben Orenstein's tip).
  • Sign up for all offers of help, like A/V testing time, mentor/conference guide matchmaking.
  • If I would prefer a change in the schedule, speak up as soon as the program is released so that there's some chance of getting that through before the physical programs are printed.
  • Bring more outfit options or try it on beforehand at home for what I will feel confident and put together in (probably structured shirts over all soft knits).
  • Decide on my goal for this talk, for how I will judge "success" this time. ([edited to add] Good reminder on this piece about giving yourself permission to suck at everything you're not currently working on to improve from my co-worker Bryan)

At the conference:
  • DO NOT STAY LONG AT HAPPY HOURS AT BARS.
  • Be back in my room by 9pm the night before my talk.
  • Don't hesitate to tweet at other speakers when it seems like their talks are a good lead-in to mine.*

During the talk:
  • Use the podium, however awkwardly placed, unless I'm absolutely confident in not needing to reference the speaker notes.
  • Remember to take a picture from the stage!

After the talk:
  • Once I'm calmed down a bit, if I get to talk to people who attended my talk, make sure to ask for specific feedback--especially on any new things** that I tried but am not entirely sure about for effectiveness.

I was so excited for and thrilled when my talk proposal for RailsConf was accepted! I poured hours and hours into preparing for it and practicing and successfully ignored my stress gagging in the half hour beforehand. I'd estimate it at about 85-90% of what my total all-out maximum effort for preparing would be, which isn't bad at all. But then when it actually came and went...I actually felt pretty shitty for a good 24 hours afterwards, despite all the social media-ing I did of positive responses to the talk.

It's taken me a few days to unpack those Feelings a bit. What I've settled on it is that public speaking is kind of like a performance art, like performing a piece at a music recital or competing in an athletic match. You put all this time and effort into preparing for the Big Day, and then sometimes, your actual performance just...falls a bit short of what you expected for yourself, what you know you are capable of accomplishing.***

There were things that were outside of my control. I randomly woke up at 6am on the day-of, after only 4 hours of sleep. There was another talk going on at the same time as mine that was also on the topic of onboarding for junior developers, which maybe thinned out my potential audience a bit and made me feel nervous that the room looked kind of empty when I started. The bright light on the elevated stage made it really hard to see out to whether people were reacting to what I was saying at all. The stage setup was a little strange, where the podium was on the far side from where the screen was, so that I, following the lead of previous presenters I'd seen in the same room, chose to move my laptop closer on a lower table, which made it harder to surreptitiously glance at my speaker notes.

(thanks Joanne**** for grabbing this photo!)

The one thing that really did a number on my confidence is that I didn't get any ripples of laughter from the audience on my funny slides--even the ones that pretty reliably got a chuckle from my practice audiences, like the owl one. This was maybe a combination of the room not being that full (and generally kind of cold, temperature-wise) and me just not having a full on grasp on comedic timing, which my co-worker and fellow RailsConf speaker Jason C told me is something that comes with more experience. This had also happened a few times in my practices, where the audience seemed incredibly stony-faced throughout the talk itself but then people came up afterwards and were very enthusiastic and encouraging. I probably just need to learn to take this less personally and not use it as a measure of how well a talk went.

Anyway, as a result of all the above, I tripped up a few times in what I was saying, and as such things go, each stumble made me feel more and more insecure.

I'm a little afraid of when the videos of the talks will come out. On the one hand, it may very well confirm the picture in my head of how the talk I went, but on the other, it probably is the only piece of data I would actually believe that the talk went better than I personally thought*****. Hearing from people who were there that they learned something from it helps a ton, but there's a bit of a silent evidence problem to relying on that (i.e. I don't hear from people who were lukewarm but polite enough not to go out of their way to tell me).

People have been very kind and supportive, which I am very grateful for. I still can't let go of a wish to sort of...get a 2nd chance, a do-over, at least on the video recording, so that it'd be free of um's and verbal trip-ups. So I am going forth and trying to find more conferences to submit this same talk to! Apparently that's a thing you can do? Which is great, because I want a better ROI out of all the time I put into it for sure. Please let me know if you hear of any CFPs that this talk could be a good fit for.

For good measure, here are some things I'm confident that I did well on:
  • Started pretty early in preparing my talk, wrote up a rough draft within about a week of finding out it had been accepted.
  • Worked out a very clear structure for the talk.
  • Slides were clear, simple, but visually engaging with photos. Props to my co-worker Brent who gave me some great advice on adjusting the typography to be more beautiful.
  • I'm particularly proud of the breadcrumb template design I came up with to help people keep track of where the talk was at.
  • Getting a massage in the Exhibit Hall and then only doing my makeup right before the talk were both good calls. [edited to add] oh also I got my eyebrows done and colored streaks in my hair touched up the week before, which mostly just helped me feel more ready to face a camera.
  • Getting some friends to sit in the front row helped with reducing the intimidation factor for sure, even if they'd all already seen the talk multiple times.
  • I answered the questions that came in at the end much better than I thought I would! I was nervous about this, because you can't really practice this part, but it wasn't so bad.
  • I slept in the next morning and skipped the keynote in favor on catching up on Twitter--I heard it was pretty funny, but Thursday was the best day by far of the conference of me, had a fabulous time, and that self-care was probably key to that.

Overall, I am very glad I did it! I will continue submitting and giving talks, and keep getting better at this. Sandi Metz is basically my role model here, her talk was so good, just really accessible and useful and well-done all around--once the videos from the conference are up, I'll put together a blog post of the talks I recommend watching.

To everyone that helped me, and everyone that attended: Thank you.



*Farrah Bostic's closing keynote on Tuesday, which talked a lot about her personal journey in learning to code a few years ago, was such a great lead-in to my talk! I should've reached out to her, but it felt like it would be a little too...sucking up, or nakedly ambitious, or something. Missed opportunity.

**Like the stretch break that's a bit awkwardly placed--maybe I need more charisma to pull it off? This talk had a 2/3-1/3 structure but I put the break at the halfway point instead. On the other hand, I definitely went to a good number of other talks where I personally could've used a stretch break in the middle so...this needs more testing and practice.

***This is probably the arena where my Tiger Mom and American influences on my childhood most coincide, by which I mean that it sort of feels like cheating to me, to say that you shouldn't care what other people think, but then only apply that when it's convenient. In other words, I may be my own harshest critic, but at the same time, I think my own standards are the ones I should live up to, given that I know from past performance that they aren't impossible to achieve for me, or particularly rare, which would be less than ~15% likelihood. I'm not sure I believe in going easy on yourself in general (well, as long as you aren't wallowing in beating yourself up to the point where you never pursue anything as a result), but I strive for kindness at least, and dusting myself up and continue to try anyway.

****Joanne and I were good friends back in middle school and then I went to a different high school and did not stay in touch with most people from that era. So we haven't seen each other in over 10 years! Running into and catching up with her at RailsConf was definitely a top highlight of the conference for me.

*****[edited to add] This seems like a super useful reference for when that video does come out: Instead of wincing: 10 things to look for on that video of your speech (thanks to Cate for bringing this post to Denise's attention)
If you're lucky enough to be recorded when you speak--whether you do the recording or someone else does--you've got a golden opportunity to learn things you might never otherwise know about how you speak.

How to Be a Better Junior Developer

April 25, 2014

This post was originally published in the New Relic blog on 4/23/14. It is the blog post version of my talk for RailsConf 2014 in Chicago, the slides for which are embedded at the end of this post.



Over the last couple of years, New Relic has hired multiple graduates of various coding bootcamps and “non-traditional” backgrounds, including me! After I earned my Bachelor’s degree, I was actually all set to attend medical school, when I got a job at Google in technical support. Some four years later, I took a sabbatical to attend Hackbright Academy, a 10-week (now 12-week) program teaching women how to code. Before the end of the very first week, I knew I had finally found a career direction I actually wanted to actively pursue.

One of my biggest worries, though, was that I would be throwing away my past experience and the skills I had developed in a different domain, to start over entirely in a new field — one where I’d be up against developers who had decades more experience. Fortunately, as I settled into the role, with the help of the many great mentors I got to work with, I came to the following realizations:
  • Being a developer is really about constantly learning.
  • There is a lot to engineering that actually isn’t directly coding.

It became clear that there are many ways to leverage the skills I’d developed in other domains, even as a junior developer with so much to learn. Having gone through that period of uncertainty myself, I wanted to spread the following two messages:
  • Junior devs: There are ways you can contribute to your team while you’re still learning the ropes.
  • Mentors: Tailoring your guidance to junior developer needs will help them feel more confident and productive.

So much to learn

When it comes to the challenge of having so much to learn as a junior developer, the most important thing is not to try to do it all on your own. Here are three approaches you can take:

1. Get people to want to help you
Through building relationships on your own team and across other teams, you expand the network of people you can ask for help when you get stuck. To get the most out of that network, it’s crucial to show that you value other people’s time and get as far as you can on your own. For one, you’ll learn a lot faster if you try it yourself first (Google and StackOverflow are your friends). This also makes your experienced co-workers feel more helpful and confident you’ll put their advice to good use the next time you run into a similar problem.

2. Make it easy for people to help you
It can be really hard to articulate what it is you’re confused about, when you may not even have the vocabulary to describe the topic. Here’s a template that I like to use when asking for help:
“I am trying to ___, so that I can ___.
I’m running into ___.
I’ve looked at ___ and tried ___.”
For example, here’s how I filled this out recently: “I am trying to understand why this banner shows up on this account, so that I can tell the client whether they need to listen to that warning. I’m running into a problem with finding this record. I’ve looked at the model and tried reproducing the issue locally.”

3. Narrow the scope of what you have to learn
Much like tackling a gnarly technical problem, you should also try to limit your scope so it’s not so overwhelming. There are an infinite number of topics you can pursue, but mentors can help prioritize them. (My personal goal: to actually build a Rails app of my own.)


Helping your team

As a junior dev, it’s natural to be asking yourself: how can I contribute to my team when I still need so much help? Something to remember is that in a world where there aren’t enough developers* for all the developer jobs out there, it’s not necessarily a choice between slow (junior) and fast (senior)…it’s a choice between having something built, and not having it at all. Here are some other tactics to keep in mind that will help you give back, above and beyond the code you write:

1. Ask good questions
I like to think of questions as a junior developer’s superpower. Asking good questions, like “are we working on the right thing?”, helps reveal any misunderstandings and assumptions. These would result in many wasted hours if they aren’t uncovered until later in the development cycle, so ask questions early on.

2. Give good feedback
Giving useful feedback to the right person, in the right venue, at the right time, is hard for a lot of people. But all industries have some kind of feedback mechanism, so this is likely something that even junior developers will get a good amount of practice with. You can also help anticipate possible confusion that may come from Sales or Support teams regarding any new releases or product updates.

3. Make your team look good to other teams
Just by being extra responsive, thorough, and empathetic to the other teams that you work with can go a long way. One particularly good opportunity to make your team look good to others is any demos of new features built by your team. You have a chance to demonstrate that your team has been thoughtful about the impact to other teams, like serviceability. I almost always write a script and do a practice run-through beforehand, so that I can ensure a more efficient and less error-prone demo.


How mentors can help junior developers

The above tips are aimed specifically at junior devs, but there are also a lot of things mentors can do to help junior developers feel valued and capable of making concrete contributions. I’m a big fan of having a lot of conversations upfront about things like how a junior dev’s learning style can be matched up with a senior dev’s teaching style. These discussions help make sure everyone’s time is used more efficiently. For example, you might discuss how often a junior dev likes to receive feedback and instructions, and how and when the senior dev prefers to be interrupted if any questions come up.

Also, if as a mentor you want to intentionally let a junior developer struggle a bit in order to learn something, let that person know that this is what you’re doing. This helps dispel feelings of imposter syndrome, where people lose confidence because they have the mistaken belief that this should feel easier, even though it is actually expected to feel difficult.


Conclusion

A junior dev doesn’t show up to their first engineering job as a blank slate. There are many opportunities to hack a junior developer’s existing skillset to help them ramp up faster and feel they’re providing value from day one. I’ll be giving a more in-depth talk today at RailsConf on this same topic, and we’ll update this post to with the recording and slide deck when it eventually goes up.

*We’re hiring!



Response to my talk at RailsConf, on Storify.

Additional recommended resources:

Salary negotiation: the day of

April 22, 2014

This is my last planned post for my series on salary negotiation, particularly for those coming out of a coding bootcamp like Hackbright Academy. I'm going to just go over a few things to keep in mind right before and during the salary negotiation conversation itself. I'm assuming that the salary negotiation happens over the phone.

First, you should watch Amy Cuddy's TED talk on body language and the "power pose":

...if only so you'll know what people are talking about when they reference it, because it'll probably be brought by someone, at some point :) There's a transcript here, if you don't like to watch videos, though you'll probably need to get at least some visuals to go with it to understand what she's talking about, so here's one: \o/ (that's you with your arms raised above your head in a victorious V, more or less)

I don’t know how much those power pose techniques actually help me directly, but in general, getting in some movement to get my blood pumping a bit and psyching myself up helps. As always, do whatever works for you to cheer you up and get pumped, whether that's a power pose and/or a pep talk to yourself in the bathroom mirror. One thing I might try next time is to do some jumping jacks or something, so that I can tell myself that my raised heartrate is not due to fear, but from that exercise.

On that note, this is also a useful TED talk, on how you can re-interpret your physiological responses to stress to your own benefit (and I swear I'm normally not that TED talk fan type, I much prefer reading articles to watching videos):

Anyway, if none of the above works for you, draft some friends to be on call to help! Your friends are probably a better cheerleader for you than you are for yourself.

Remind yourself of your achievable goals, and how you want to express how positively you feel about this offer, and how it’s a collaborative effort to make this opportunity even better on all sides.

And lastly, bring whatever notes you need to remember all the stuff that you've practiced and prepared. I pretty much always also write up a Post-it note as a reminder to myself to SLOW. DOWN. when I’m talking, so that I sound more confident and competent.

Once you wrap up the negotiation itself, remember to end the conversation on a positive note, expressing your excitement about the company. If they ask you what you're feeling right then about the offer (as code for "can you just tell me or give me a hint on whether you're going to accept?"), you can say something like this:
"I'm really excited about this opportunity! I will just need to take some time to consider all* the factors for my decision. Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss all these details with me, it's all been incredibly helpful."
*This is basically code from you, for "you could always consider sweetening the pot further and letting me know to help me make this decision in your favor."

Needing to take some time to consider a decision really isn't something that can be reasonably argued against--and if you get pressure to accept very quickly, that is a very bad sign. Either this company culture is tending to be abusive, or the most charitable interpretation, you're working with a recruiter that isn't very good. See this essay from Joel Spolsky on the "exploding offer":
Almost any company, when pressed, will give you a chance to compare offers. Don’t worry about burning bridges or pissing anyone off. Trust me on this one: there’s not a single hiring manager in the world who wants to hire you but would get mad just because you’re considering other offers. It actually works the other way. When they realize you’re in demand, they’ll want you more.
Finally, end the conversation by clarifying next steps, like what you or they have agreed to do--they need to get approval from someone else on what you've asked about, they'll send you a revised offer with the new details, you need to get back to them with a final decision by a certain time, etc. This is just to make sure you're all on the same page about what's been agreed to (or not).

I hope you find this series of posts helpful! Please do let me know if it has in fact helped you at any point so I can validate some of my opinions (though you should also let me know if any of this advice is really horrible or seems misguided too, of course). Best of luck!


Update: here's the full series of posts
  1. Salary negotiation after Hackbright
  2. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 1: general perspectives to consider
  3. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 2: what to even ask for
  4. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 3: practicing for the negotiation
  5. Salary negotiation: the day of

Preparing for salary negotiation, part 3: practicing for the negotiation

April 15, 2014

Over the last few years, I've realized that practicing a lot is paradoxically what I need to sound less rehearsed. Not sure where I first read this, but I saw something a few weeks ago that said that when you're under stress of any kind and your emotions are heightened, things that you know really well become easier and things that you don't know well become harder, so that you're pushed in opposite directions due to that stress. That seems true to me for public speaking and salary negotiation both.

It's helpful to actually practice saying these things out loud to someone because with practice, the words will feel less awkward in your mouth. Even if you don't want to practice to another person (though you should, because all your friends will be more encouraging to you than the hiring manager or recruiter, right?), you should still say them out loud, maybe to yourself in the bathroom mirror. This is what I do for practicing talks and it's always eye-opening to watch myself be all fidgety and motivates me to stop that.

I like to think about the different paths the conversation can go, with both best and worst case scenarios, just to map it out a bit in my head. You can plan out and group out the different things you want to ask for based on your read of how the conversation is going.

For example, if there’s utter shock when you state what you want for your salary, you could use phrasing like,
Can you tell me more about the average range for __[role]__ at your company is?
It’s better to ask for a range rather than the exact average, I think, so you can get a sense of the deviations from the average. Also, you’re setting yourself up for this:


Alice being awesome aside, I thought the best piece of advice from Lean In was that because of the penalty women can face more than men when they’re seen as “selfish”, you should try to phrase your requests in how you’re asking on behalf of the team, or how you want to set an example for the rest of the women to follow, like
We talked a lot at Hackbright about how a pay gap is introduced when women don’t ask to negotiate their salary, and so we all promised we would ask.
This isn’t to give them an easy out by saying how your goal is just to ask, so don’t say “we would at least ask,” but just phrase it so you can minimize any burden you might take on yourself for having asked.

Remind yourself that it's ok to take pauses and just let the awkward silence sit. It is not in fact your job to fill it in order to reduce the tension!! It's really hard to resist this urge if you're a woman, we've been socialized for a very, very long time to always be keeping an eye out for other people's comfort--which isn't a bad thing, we should socialize boys to do this more too, I think, but it's not always your job to do that.

Practice slowing down--this is the one that I always, always have to remind myself. Literally I will write "SLOW DOWN" on a Post-It note and stick it right at eye level or at the top of my notes. You may also want to consider using the deeper end of your voice range and keeping an eye on any tendencies you might have for upspeech, where your tone goes up at the end of sentences and makes it sounds like everything you're saying is a question and therefore sounds uncertain. This can vary a bit depending on what your voice is like normally, though, so just in general, do whatever you need to in order to sound like yourself but the serious and confident version.

Lastly, if you’ve gotten actual, real feedback in the past to be more assertive, use it! Like, “hey, I know one piece of feedback you had for me in the past was to speak up." So that again, even if you don’t get what you asked for, you can deflect aspersions on your selflessness and also show that you listen to feedback that you get.

Next up, the final post I have planned for things to do right before and during the negotiation itself.


Update: here's the full series of posts
  1. Salary negotiation after Hackbright
  2. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 1: general perspectives to consider
  3. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 2: what to even ask for
  4. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 3: practicing for the negotiation
  5. Salary negotiation: the day of

Preparing for salary negotiation, part 2: what to even ask for

April 8, 2014

To negotiate, of course you have to figure out what you want to actually negotiate for. For me, it helps to basically have a ranked list of what you want, so you can start off with the most important items to you and work your way down.

Generally at the top of your list will be your base salary. How to figure out what number you want to ask for:
  • There are lots of places to do research on what you can expect, in your location, like glassdoor and such.
  • If you have mentors you trust and feel comfortable with, you can also just share the direct details with them to get their take on it and they can advise you based on their own experience. I did this with my Hackbright mentor Sebastian and it was really great for having a neutral third party who’s interested in my welfare.
  • If you don’t know what number to ask for at all, a base rule of thumb that seems reasonable to me is to ask for 10-15% over whatever the number they gave you is.
  • I’ve also read somewhere that it’s better to ask for a number that’s not a completely round number, because then people will be primed to round down to the next round number. So for example, if your target is the high 80ks, it might be more effective to ask for 92k so that people naturally round down to 90k, vs. asking for 90k and having that be mentally rounded down to 85k. I don’t know how true this is in practice, but it makes an intuitive sense to me.
In terms of phrasing your salary request, you can use phrasing like:
My frame of reference is the Hackbright community, where the average starting salary as a junior software engineer for graduates in the Bay Area is __$$__. 
It’s a nice non-confrontational way to state your expectations by placing the responsibility for where they came from elsewhere, so you don’t run the trap of being seen as specifically and individually “aggressive” which is a particular concern for women trying to negotiate their salaries (see this post on why it's perfectly rational--though still something I would like to see changed--for women to feel hesitant about "just asking").

After general salary, the next item you can ask for is probably a signing or relocation bonus if applicable. If you were told that they can’t increase your salary because there isn’t room in the budget, you can phrase this request as:
Is there room in the budget for an increase in the signing bonus, as this is a one-time investment for the company?
The idea being that it's harder for people to deny that money in a budget can’t be shifted around for a one-time item.

In the workshop she ran for our Hackbright class, Poornima strongly stressed not justifying why you’re asking for what you are, but the urge to do so is really strong and hard to overcome. So, you could use wording like:
Because [company] is not a partner company, I would like a higher signing bonus to help pay back my Hackbright tuition. (when this is applicable, of course) 
I think it sounds better to talk about it in the third person as opposed to saying “because your company is not a partner company…” so it seems more just a dispassionate statement of fact vs. coming across as an accusation or criticism.

Other items to consider negotiating on:
  • start date (this was personally my own most important item, due to some travel I had already planned and needing time to get my life together to move)
  • vacation days, other benefits
  • timing of your performance review or a firm agreement on the next time your pay will be re-evaluated
I like this last one one because it’s a way out where no one has to lose face if the conversation is going in a direction where it seems like they’re unwilling to yield anything at all to you. You can kick it off with something like:
Can you tell me a bit more about the performance review process?
After they answer that question, you can say:
Ok, would you be open to setting up my performance review to be [some period of time that’s earlier than usual] so we can make sure to check in and I can get feedback on how I can better help the team?
It’s an easy thing for them to agree to, it shows how you’re committed to doing a good job above all, and it makes starting your next attempt as negotiating that much easier to bring up once you're in the role.

Next up, another post about the secret ingredient to preparing for the negotiation: practicing!


Update: here's the full series of posts
  1. Salary negotiation after Hackbright
  2. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 1: general perspectives to consider
  3. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 2: what to even ask for
  4. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 3: practicing for the negotiation
  5. Salary negotiation: the day of

Preparing for salary negotiation, part 1: general perspectives to consider

April 1, 2014

First off, the below is mostly assuming that you’re going to have a conversation over the phone about the proposed salary and such in your offer letter. If the idea of doing this over the phone really, really frightens you, though, there is no shame in conducting it in another format that’s less intimidating to you, like email. You should do whatever you feel will set you up the best for succeeding in getting what you ask for, while noting that it tends to be easier to adapt to the atmosphere over the phone than through a "cold" medium like email, where it's easier for people to assume the worst.

And now, some thoughts on how to think about the whole negotiation process:

If this is your first salary negotiation, I think it helps to somewhat set a goal that feels really achievable. For me, it was just to go through with trying to negotiate it my salary at all. I felt like I was going to puke all day beforehand, I was so nervous--but hey, I didn’t die! So next time has to be better than that!

One perspective that made the salary negotiation process feel a lot more palatable to me is to NOT think of it an adversarial situation but instead, to think about it as both you and who you’re negotiating with have a shared goal of working together to make this offer even better for both you and the company. You don’t at all have to lie or pretend like you’re not interested, if those are tactics that make you feel uncomfortable (they do for me, for sure). Instead, you can make the conversation sound really positive and express how excited you are about the opportunity, they're excited, and an attitude of “let's work together to make it even better!” The official offer is not a binding contract, it’s just a starting point for your conversation.

I also prefer to think of this as NOT a reflection or judgement on your value as a person! I’m not a fan of advice that’s centered on “asking for what you’re worth” because that’s tied to your own, potentially wrong (in either too positive or too negative) assessment of what you’re “worth.” Instead, it should be all about the value you bring to the company and how hard it would be for them to find someone to replace you. This is also just a much more business-savvy way to go about the negotiation, where you’re not asking for more just because you’re a special snowflake, but because you’re a special snowflake that they are investing in and will get an excellent return on in value you provide.

If you are still nervous about the whole prospect of negotiating your salary in light of the story of the philosophy professor whose offer was rescinded after negotiating over email, this blog post on How Not to Negotiate Your Next Job is a good read. I particularly like #4 and #6 on her list of guidelines.

Next up, I’ll get into some details on how to figure out what exactly what you want to ask for, which is probably going to end up being the longest post in this series.


Update: here's the full series of posts
  1. Salary negotiation after Hackbright
  2. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 1: general perspectives to consider
  3. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 2: what to even ask for
  4. Preparing for salary negotiation, part 3: practicing for the negotiation
  5. Salary negotiation: the day of