The difference between their first offer and 15 minutes on the phone with the right attitude and tools is what a lot of people make in a year. On an hourly 1-year contract rate haggle, upping $10/hr is $20,000 in the contract value. I'd call that a valuable phone call and probably the best return on $15.95 anyone ever spent, especially because it was probably just for some cheesy ebook on negotiation.
Is that hype?
I may have to write that cheesy ebook. :)
But I suspect it's equally possible whether you're in a low or high CoL area, I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise. It's unrelated to the issue of whether the company will pay you more in certain locations than others.
Yeah. Anecdotally, many tech companies don't have big location-based pay differences across the US. But they mostly do that by not having offices or at least major offices in places like SV and NYC--and basically don't really try to salary match the big tech companies. I have a feeling that if you looked at most tech employers you'd see a lot more outflow to FAANG than the other way around.
Also, I guess YMMV but I haven’t found this approach to be very effective. Lots of companies will openly admit they just can’t compete with FAANG salaries for instance. The recruiter wants to sign you for the sake of their commission, but they lose people all the time and aren’t going to lose sleep over you walking away. Even if you really are 1 in a million, the recruiter is not incentivized to avoid missing out on those people at all costs. They’re incentivized to bring in a steady stream of pretty good people, and you’re still just one person.
I’m not saying there is no use in negotiating, but you’re basically hyping it up as if there is some magic incantation that will let you convince anyone to pay you whatever you want. I think that does a disservice to anyone looking for salary advice. In my experience, if you can get a 5-20% increase from their first offer that’s about all you can expect. You’re better off applying for higher paying companies from the beginning, and learning skills/playing the politics to get promoted to higher levels (e.g. senior, staff, principal engineer) where the comp you want is in band, rather than trying to turn a mediocre offer into an amazing one due to sheer force of negotiation.