This excerpt is from a YouTube conversation between Ramit Sethi and Susan Su arguing that negotiating salary is almost always worth the time. Susan gives a personal example: by spending roughly four hours preparing she obtained about $8,000 plus additional equity (framed as effectively $2,000 per hour). Ramit cites a case study in his book where a friend received a 28% base-salary raise, described as more than $1,000 per hour when prorated; he emphasizes compounding effects over a career and that small upfront preparation leads to much larger lifetime earnings.
Questions this video answers
About $8,000 (plus additional equity).
Approximately $2,000 per hour (based on ~4 hours of preparation).
28% raise in base salary.
More than $1,000 per hour (based on time spent getting the job).
Chapters
Well, and also one thing I hear is people saying, oh, it's not worth it. It's not. And this is just an excuse for laziness. It's not worth the time it would take me to practice or to research for my negotiation or to do any of that sort of like background work. Well, I would ask you this. How much do you get paid at your current job? Do you get paid $20 an hour, $30 an hour? Let's prorate it, let's figure it out. Most people who are watching this probably get paid between 20 and 40 dollars.
An hour, which is 40 to 80 thousand dollars a year.
Yeah. So that's great. Now what if I told you that you could spend four hours doing practice and research and you would, instead of getting paid 20 to $40 an hour, you would get paid $2,000 an hour. Now, when I was getting ready for my negotiation, I was making about in the $20 something dollar an hour range, not a ton of money. I took four hours out of my day, talked to Ramit, did my research, practiced a lot. And I earned myself because of that practice, I earned myself $8,000 and you know, huge, whole lot more of equity. So, you know, that's, that's worth its own, its own value. Now that is basically like somebody paid me $2,000 an hour to practice negotiation.
Here's from the book in chapter nine, it's a case study I did how my friend got a 28% raise by doing her homework. And the first line is first the big picture. I got 28% raise in base salary, which comes out to more than $1,000 an hour based on how much time I spent getting the job. Now there's two points here, and you just made the first, which is amazing. It is, it obviously is worth the time because the potential benefits are so huge. Even if you make just an extra thousand dollars or $2,000, that's a lot of money. The second thing is that you have to compound it over the time of your career. So don't forget you are going to get a raise based on that new salary. That's a big deal. And every time you go to get job, your salary will go up. If you do your negotiations right, you know, you're fortunate if you stay at your salary and you're like, oh, it's not. I'm Eeyore, it's not worth the time. Well, okay, that's fine. But it's going to be much more difficult for you to move up that curve. Whereas people who are top Performers are always going further and further because they're always adding more and more value. And that's why you see people making, you know, in their 30s, they're making a lot of money because they were really smart in their 20s.
And, you know, it's really not hard. You do your research. It's kind of interesting. It's going to help you get to know your company better. Anyway, you do some practicing and we'll talk about this a little bit later, but that negotiations practice will come in handy in many, many different situations in life, not just this particular salary. Talk with your. With your recruiter. Yes, it's really not hard and it's definitely worth the money. And the bottom line is, don't be lazy or we'll kill you.
Yeah. If your SRI will. Yeah, we will kill you. I think. I think we should make that a new tagline. Like right now, it's I will teach you rich. No, it's not a scam by a New York Times bestseller. Whatever we should say, I will teach you the rich. I will kill you. If you're, er. I don't mind. I'll switch it today. I'll do it.
