HR Employees Share Stories Of The Most Memorable Salary Negotiations They’ve Ever Witnessed And They Are Legendary

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Negotiating your salary sounds like an absolute ordeal. Coming out of college, you’re pretty much conditioned to just say ‘yes’ to anyone stupid enough to offer you a job. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can squeeze a couple extra vacation days out of them. I mean, you really don’t have much leverage as a postgrad.

However, there are some people in this world who have mastered the art of the negotiation. They can turn an hourly job into a salaried job with a company car and stock options without breaking a sweat. “Standard vacation time is two weeks? Make it 10, or I walk.”

For those of us who will never have the balls to do something like that, all we can do is voyeuristically gawk at the legends of negotiation through stories passed down from HR rep to HR rep.

From Reddit:

I had a senior engineer who was a HUGE college football fan actually negotiate to add a clause in his contract guaranteeing the Friday before and the Monday after the Iron Bowl as paid days off (not to count against his other allotted vacation time). I was surprised they agreed to it.

This is my kind of guy. Nothing is more important than college football season.

I remember one director getting paid a salary of $100,080 which seemed to be solely so that he could go around saying his salary was over $100k.

It’s like how I negotiated for a $1,000 raise so I could make more than my roommate.

A company I worked for hired a new sales guy who was nutso for coffee.
As part of his contract the company had to buy and install a commercial espresso machine (model and brand of his choosing), grinder and beans dispenser in every break room. He also got a monthly budget for coffee and supplies.

I thought I’d seen all the entitled dot-com activity at that point, so I went out for beer with the HR lady that had been on the other side of the negotiating table and asked her about it.. She laughed..

He could’ve had fifty [thousand dollars] in sign-on and another twenty-five a year. Instead he got ten in coffee makers and two a year in beans.

Sounds like everybody wins in this situation.

I live in the mountains and I knew a guy who had a ‘powder day clause’ in his contract that involved a day off to ski/snowboard if we had over 30cm of new snow overnight. Livin the Dream.

For all you PGPers out in Denver and SLC: this should be in your contract, too.

I have a Fishing Day built into my contract. One day a year, on my own choosing, I get to take off and go fishing. I usually take a Wednesday or Thursday, because the lakes are much less pressured and there’s no traffic to fight to get onto the lake.

Buddy, around here we just call that ‘PTO.’

My brother-in-law negotiated for 12 weeks leave per year where the standard is 4. I incredulously asked him how he did it and he said something like ‘you’ve got to know when to push and when to concede’. Dude is part fucking Jedi I swear.

12 weeks is absurd. I’d almost feel too guilty after week five.

I was doing prelim screening via phone for several candidates. Think of it like a mini phone interview to weed out the obvious weirdos or people who have blatantly padded a résumé and aren’t really qualified. One guy stopped me mid sentence to inform me that in order to continue with the interview(I was just screening at this point), our company would have to pay him $50. I was not impressed, but it did stand out.

The balls on this guy. What a hero.

I own a recruitment firm (executive search) for tech companies.
I placed a guy in the biggest SaaS vendor going around. He’s a senior sales guy.
No candidate should ever do the negotiating, they will usually fuck it up. This guy was a special case and I trusted him. He negotiated such a huge stock package, the only person with a bigger RSU package was the CEO, country manager included.
He even negotiated personal stocks for me as a favour. That was fucking unbelievable

That shows why he is a sales guy you want on the payroll.

New guy asks for a pay rate of 80, employer assumes he means per hour not per annum, guy doubles his paycheck without breaking a sweat.

That’s why you’re never overly specific when negotiating.

Our temp agency needed a new sales manager. Position offered $30,000 w/ uncapped commission. I interviewed this guy, he wanted $50,000 and a truck (We are in Texas.) I told him I would get back with him. You know that feeling, when you meet someone and you know they are the right one for the job? I knew he was worth more than that. I fought tooth and nail to get him on board. But the owner was cheap. This guy interviewed with our closest competitor, where my best friend works and she got the approval to hired him. She spilled the beans over drinks. He gets$55,000, a new truck every 2 years, and get reimbursed every week instead of every month. He is a great sales man. He took 6/10 of our big clients. Every time he did, I asked the owner if we could have afforded him. My friend’s office went from two branches to 7 and I got unemployment.

All a Texan needs is a truck and they are loyal for life.

Had a guy that was applying to be a Director of Finance say that he would only accept that job if we promised not to do a credit check. Then tried to assure us there wouldn’t be a problem with his credit.
Needless to say, we didn’t agree.

Gotta applaud the effort here.

One of the guys who joined our production engineering group successfully negotiated that he would get the Friday before USC-UCLA football game off. He was a die hard Trojan and our engineering manager is also a Trojan so he let the guy take the days off.

This is why you want to work for a college football fan.

A company car. No travel was/is required for work for this guy at all. He gets a new car every 2 years. He’s not had his own vehicle in probably 12 years at this point. They cover maintenance and insurance. He gets a free car.
I texted and asked, he is wrapping up a lease on a Cadillac CTS and he said it looks like he’s getting a new impala come September. I have no idea what he gets paid, but fuck him for not having to worry about a car.

I need to check what kind of bennies these other freelancers are getting.

Corporate Recruiter here. This happen two weeks ago. I was discussing when a applicant could come in and get started with my company. This is when the applicant said “I need to know when you will tell my company that I am leaving.” After getting him to repeat himself it hit me that this guy wanted me to call his company and tell them he is leaving. I quickly pulled my offer.

“What? You expected me to tell them? You’re the one who stole me away.”

I asked for a $120k car. They gave me $150k in stock instead.

I need to work wherever this guy works.

50k salary, two weeks vacation, 30 hour work week

Shit. 30 hour work weeks are ideal.

A friend was being recruited for a contractor position for a 2 year contract. He had a VERY good salaried job, and didn’t really want the new gig, but they kept pushing. He asked for a rate of $1000/day and to everyone’s shock they accepted.

Negotiating when you already have a job sounds like a blast.

Have your own negotiating story? Share it in the comments below. To read more of this eye-opening thread, click here..

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