38: The Ultimate User Flow to Bigger Pay with Hang 🤙 Xu

Don’t let a lowball salary offer haunt you for years to come

“What are your salary expectations?”

We freeze. Our stomach churns. Our heartbeat rises. Our palms get sweaty.

Most designers, and let’s be honest, most people in general, are terrible at salary negotiation.

Why would we be? We don’t tend to do this very often. We don’t get a lot of practice. And when we do end up going through the process it’s years apart.

The question about salary usually catches us off guard, even though we know it’s coming.

The fact is that negotiating your next salary is critical. It can affect more than just our regular cash flow. Accepting a low offer can have lasting implications that linger for a very long time.

It can affect our future earnings. It can set low expectations going forward. It can affect our retirement accounts and how soon we can retire.

This week, Hang Xu joins the show to talk about salary negotiations. He offers some solid advice on how to approach the dreaded conversation about compensation and sheds some light on how to get the most out of your next role.

Topics:
• 12:31 – Power comes along with strategy and vice versa
• 20:06 – A lowball offer will follow you for years
• 21:01 – The layers of salary negotiation hell
• 26:51 – What are companies thinking?
• 29:15 – BATNA
• 31:49 – Keep the emotions out of negotiating
• 33:54 – Understand the context
• 35:53 – Salary negotiations are just like most other forms of negotiations
• 37:14 – Tactics for salary negotiating
• 40:15 – Beware when anchoring harms you
• 41:54 – Where do we go to do research
• 48:32 – How do career shifters leverage professional experience to earn more
• 56:36 – What does it take to walk away?
• 61:13 – Use networking as negotiation intel
• 63:08 – Treat your job hunt as a UX project

Helpful Links:
• Connect with Hang on LinkedIn
• Collective Supply

Hang 🤙 Xu
Product Designer Turned Talent Agent @ Collective Supply

About Hang 🤙

Hang Xu is the founder and lead recruiter for Collective Supply, a talent-centric design recruiting agency based in NYC. Before that, Hang was a senior Staff UX Designer at Boston Dynamics and designed the user interface, and workflow for their first warehouse robot. His experience in both doing hands-on design work and recruiting for design roles gives him a unique perspective on the state of UX and design hiring in the US. You can read his writing on design strategy, activism in tech, and salary negotiation techniques on his LinkedIn. Aside from his work in UX design, Hang has a keen interest in film photography and enjoys tinkering with instant film cameras. And if you’ve ever wondered if there’s a fully manual Instax/Polaroid rangefinder camera, he’d love to chat.

Connect with Hang 🤙 on LinkedIn

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