# Job negotiation for programmers: the basic principles

DevFeed: [Job negotiation for programmers: the basic principles](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/job-negotiation-for-programmers-the-basic-principles-20988.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/11/27/job-negotiation-for-programmers/>)

Author: Itamar Turner-Trauring

Published: 2019-11-27T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Itamar Turner-Trauring](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/itamar-turner-trauring.md>)

Topics: [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Open Source](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/open-source.md>)

Tags: [article](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/article.md>), [career](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/career.md>), [intellectual-property](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/intellectual-property.md>), [job](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/job.md>), [legal](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/legal.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>)

## AI overview

An article about negotiating salary, benefits, and work arrangements when starting a programming job. It presents four principles--viewing employment as a negotiated relationship, gathering knowledge, negotiating from a position of strength, and using appropriate tactics--and illustrates them with a story involving salary and intellectual-property terms affecting open-source work.

## Source excerpt

You need to negotiate at a new job: for your salary, or benefits, or my personal favorite, a shorter workweek. You're not sure what to do, or how to approach it, or what to say when the company says "how much do you want?" or "here's our offer--what do you say?" Here's the thing: that final conversation about salary might be the most nerve-wracking part, but the negotiation process starts much much earlier. Which means you can enter that final conversation having positioned yourself for success--and feeling less stressed about it too. The way you can do that is following certain basic principles, which I'll be covering in this article. I'm going to be focusing on salary negotiation as an example, but the same principles will apply when negotiating for a shorter workweek. In particular, I'll be talking about: An example from early in my career when I negotiated very very badly. The right way to negotiate, based on four principles: Employment is a negotiated relationship. Knowledge is power. Negotiate from a position of strength. Use the right tactics. The wrong way to negotiate Before moving on to the principles of negotiation, let me share a story of how I negotiated badly. During my first real job search I interviewed at a company in New York City that was building a financial trading platform. They were pretty excited about some specific technologies I'd learned while working on Twisted, an open source networking framework. They offered me a job, I accepted, and my job search was over. But then they sent me their intellectual property agreement, and I actually read legal documents; you should read them too. The agreement would have given the company ownership over any open source work I did, including work on Twisted. I wanted to ensure I could keep doing open source development, especially given that was their reason for hiring me in the first place. I asked for an exemption covering Twisted, they wouldn't agree, and so we went back and forth trying to reach an agr