Get the product design salary you deserve—part 2

How to demonstrate your value and reach a mutually beneficial agreement

In part 1 we covered the basics of negotiation. We looked at how offers are structured and what to expect when it comes to compensation. Now we’ll get into the nitty gritty of negotiation tactics.

Start with your vision

Start with the end in mind. Before entering a negotiation, think through the factors that are important to you now. You don’t have to have a 5-year vision, nobody does. But having a solid plan for your next year, what you want to learn and the type of work you want to be doing will help you meaningfully make trade offs. We talked about this during the beginning of your job search, now’s a good time to revisit.

A good negotiation should feel like a productive collaboration between two teammates. Photo by mentatdgt

Not a zero sum pie

When we think of negotiation it’s not unusual to think of this as a zero-sum game. One player takes most and another is left with less. But that’s a losing proposition. You should reframe a negotiation as a conversation to come up with a win-win situation for both parties. This will not only lead to a good short-term outcome for you but also long-term goodwill down the road when your next assessment comes.

Stay enthusiastic about the role throughout the negotiation process as you’re building rapport with the recruiter. Thank them for the concessions as you’re approaching the offer together. Mention that you appreciate their willingness to listen and be flexible. Graciousness goes a long way—don’t miss an opportunity to make the other party feel fabulous. You’ve already built trust throughout the interview process, use the negotiation as a way to further reinforce your goodwill.

In turn, be willing to listen. Empathy is a designer’s master skill. If you can truly understand their issues, and the true issues behind those, you can come up with a creative way to solve the compensation problem while putting them at ease and getting closer towards your end goal.

Understand your design level

Your total comp is determined by a company’s leveling framework. The more senior you are, the more experience you have, the more money you’ll get. At higher senior levels your compensation will be predominantly based on your performance and will be closer tied to your equity.

Leveling will differ by company and one company’s L5 is another company’s L64 (but seriously why Microsoft?). If we were to boil down a leveling framework, we can think about design expertise as such:

Junior — starting out in design, able to take direction but not yet proficient Mid — good grasp on fundamentals but inconsistent in craft, developing collaboration skills Senior — defines and reframe problems, gets to the heart of the matter, reliably comes up wits strong solutions without supervision Staff — created new frameworks, comes up with ideas that solve multiple problems at once, leads senior designers Director — created new brands, defined industry trends, leads the company with other c-level counterparts and unlocks unique strengths in their design managers

When you have an offer in hand be sure to ask how design talent is evaluated at the company. What are the expectations for the role and what bands exist?

Lastly, more and more resources are coming out every day to help designers understand their career paths. Take a look at these resources for leveling:

Design levels by Marissa Louie — overview of individual contributor and management level

Intercom’s individual contributor design levels and design manager levels. Both are descriptive and point to specific tasks to help you grow, e.g. “Review About Face to understand IxD”

progression.fyi — a collection of open source company ladders.

So what can you do to set yourself up for negotiation success? Let’s dive in.

Do your homework

We already talked about researching salary in the last article so I won’t elaborate on it too much here. Suffice it to say — do your research, learn what other companies pay for the band you’ve applied for. Beyond the numbers, peel back the layers. Is there additional know-how you can get on the compensation conversation? Is the company uncompromising on baseline salary but flexible with stock options? Blind is a good resource to look into this info.

You won’t have all perfect info at the end of the day but closing some gaps of this knowledge will put you in a stronger position during the negotiation.

Demonstrate your unique, valuable strengths

Negotiation starts when you first start applying so look for opportunities to reinforce the unique skills and knowledge that you bring to solve a specific pain (or multiple pains) for the company.

When I was applying through job boards (which is one of the worst ways to apply by the way) I was able to score an interview at a well known tech company due to advanced prototyping that I’ve done previously. It was by demonstrating the work in-person and letting the interviewers use my prototypes on their own that helped land an amazing offer.

So think of negotiation broadly. It’s not something that happens just at the end — a strong start can make a huge difference towards your final comp and leveling. But let’s say you already are at the end. In that case — it doesn’t hurt to reiterate the unique value that you bring.

High compensation = your unique design skills that you’re strong at + their pain point

Inevitably you will get push back around cost (“that’s all we can afford right now”) but reframing the discussion as that of investment for the company will help you steer the conversation in the right direction.

Use multiple offers to your advantage

If you’re in a lucky position to have multiple offers, be sure to compare and contrast. Talk with the recruiter about matching your highest offer’s salary. At this point you have some advantage here as a company would hate to lose a qualified company to a competitor. Beyond salary you can negotiate equity or maybe sweeten the deal with a one time signing bonus.

Understand that interviewing candidates is a long process. They’ve just gone through rounds of writing the job description, reviewing candidates, going through phone screens, getting designers to spend their time interviewing you and other candidates. Finally they narrowed it to one offer — yours. This whole process usually takes money and time and time is the most painful factor. They’d rather not go through a month and a half of work again.

Accelerate the interviewing process

Sometimes you’ll end up in a position where you’re still interviewing at one company but you already got an offer at another. If that’s the case be sure to let the company who’s still interviewing you that you’re already at the offer stage. This adds a bit of (valid) pressure on them to accelerate the interviewing process. Ideally, let the other company know the you’re late in the interviewing cycle with someone else. This will help you line up all your offer letters at the end.

What if there are no offers?

Lastly, you might not have any offers outstanding or anything to match against. You may even be out of a job so anything will look good right now. Alternatively you might get an offer from a place where you’d love to work and the starting salary is already high. What do you do? Two things—conditionally agree or restructure your offer based on things critical to you.

Conditionally agree

The first step in negotiation is understanding the needs of your client. Since you’ll be working closely with a recruiter and they have a quota to fill, you can assure them that you’re serious about the offer by saying you’ll accept it right away if they can get you X. X can be anything that’s important to you and is not just restricted to salary.

Saying no can feel like placing an ultimatum. As we’ve talked about earlier, a negotiation is like a conversation (but with high stakes). If you’re getting close to what you hope you’re getting, you can say no in a non-confrontational way — “thank you for showing flexibility on salary, this seems appropriate. Could we talk about other things that factor into compensation?”

Again, this will reinforce the image of your flexibility and allows you and the other party to examine compensation in a safe way.

What do you do when they just say no? Photo by@mwabonje

When your dream job just won’t budge on comp

You’ve played your cards right, done your homework, and negotiated with multiple offers but still the company won’t budge. Hey, at least you’ve tried and you’re still ahead than most folks who don’t even ask. There are a couple of things that you can do:

Rebalancing salary vs equity

If you’re negotiating with a startup, the company simply may not have the money to give you a higher salary as everyone is already taking a pay cut. This is an opportunity to potentially either ask for an increase in equity if you think your compensation package isn’t in line or to better understand how subsequent rounds of raising money will affect your compensation.

Finally, as a method of last resort you can also scale down salary in favor of equity or go the reverse route and ask for more cash with a lower equity stake. In doing so you should understand how this will impact your future performance reviews. Are you only going to be compensated with raises in extra cash or can extra equity come into play as well?

Focusing on growth

Regardless of where you are you in your career, optimize for growth. Given the choice between a job that pays slightly more compared to one that helps you grow more — go for the latter. It’s easier to negotiate for a raise or a higher salary when you have the skills and the results to back it up.

So how can you negotiate for growth? Bring up the fact that you’re excited to learn and contribute on key projects. This could be access to key individuals (e.g. getting mentored) or specific projects or teams that can be high impact. These things may cost little to nothing for the company while giving you long-term potential for your career.

Negotiate with a friend

Sometimes having read all of this you might trip up and not get the right words out during a crucial moment in negotiation. Do a mock interview with a friend. Dedicate a little time here, when the stakes are low. With practice the negotiation feel closer to a natural conversation allowing you to think and respond quickly with empathy and enthusiasm.