Hi Reader,

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This week on our Gentle Power podcast (Youtube | Spotify | Apple), we sat down with Mariane Bekker, founder of the 80K-member founder community, Founders Bay. She is also the former Head of Engineering at Mindbody and an engineering leader with 15 years of experience building and growing technical teams through six exits.

This conversation was especially illuminating because Mariane gave us a peek into what happens on the other side of the negotiation table: how hiring managers and teams set compensation budgets, what drives them to approve higher offers, what negotiation tactics by candidates impress or backfire, and how hiring decisions are actually made behind the scenes.

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What actually moves an offer (from the hiring manager’s POV)

Mariane highlighted what really moves the needle on comp once the offer negotiations begin. In our conversation, she made clear that three factors matter most when hiring managers fight for a candidate:

• Clear motivation: When candidates show genuine enthusiasm for the team, culture, or growth path independent of total comp, they become easier to defend in internal hiring conversations.
• Credibility and integrity: The professional world is much smaller than people realize (especially as you progress in your career), and hiring managers and recruiters can easily pick up on signals whether a candidate is being truthful about their past experience, what other offers and opportunities they have in play, etc. They will very frequently back-channel references with your mutual connections.
• Evidence of growth potential: When a candidate consistently shows competence to deliver on even higher scope than what the role calls for, managers can push to the top of the pay band or beyond (yes, you can get paid more than the top of the band; it happens all the time).

If you are job searching, approach each discussion with these levers in mind. Always express enthusiasm for the role, never lie or misrepresent anything during the interview and negotiation process, and demonstrate that you’re capable of performing at a higher level.

You can still increase your compensation meaningfully even without having another offer and without taking a lower title in exchange. The below tips and many others we offer to our clients (our secret sauce) can get you very far:

• Don’t share your number/range, details of other offers, etc
• Negotiate only after receiving the written offer letter
• Don’t over-communicate, which can lead to inadvertent sharing that chips away at your leverage
• Don’t agree verbally to whatever numbers they share with you throughout the process; instead, tactfully deflect
• ​See our past newsletter issue here where we dive deeper into many of these negotiation must-knows

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If you’re a hiring manager, consider doing this

At Mindbody, Mariane owned both the hiring plan and the budget for her organization, and used her position to drive equitable outcomes across the firm. She built an engineering team with 55% women, promoted every woman they hired, and installed guardrails so offers were fair even when candidates undersold themselves.

Long before she had that authority, Mariane learned how to set her own bar from the other side. As a student, she printed 50 copies of her resume and knocked on office doors in downtown San Francisco until someone agreed to interview her, and that internship led to an offer. When they asked what role she wanted after graduation, she shot her shot and asked directly for an “engineering manager” title. They did not grant it immediately, but her ask set expectations, and in her next role she earned a title that was notably senior to that of her peers.

As her career advanced, Mariane noticed that most women did not anchor in this way. Many accepted titles and salaries that left them stuck for years. The pattern repeated across companies because hiring processes disproportionately rewarded people who set the highest anchor.

When she was later given control over hiring and budgets at Mindbody, she used her power to redesign the system from the inside:

• She removed loaded words like “rock star” or “hacker” from job descriptions.
• She turned “minimum” requirements into “nice to haves” so that more qualified women applied (studies show that women tend to apply for roles only when they feel they meet most or all of the requirements, while men will regularly apply for roles even when they meet only some of the requirements).
• She staffed interview panels with real representation so candidates could see themselves reflected on the team.

If you are responsible for hiring, borrow from Mariane’s playbook: achieving fairness in an often unfair hiring market requires intentional design.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation here: Youtube | Spotify | Apple​

To learn more about Mariane’s work at Founders Bay, check out her website here.

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Warmly,

Gerta & Alex
​Co-founders, YourNegotiations.com

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P.S. Are you job searching or have upcoming negotiations?

Book a free call with us, where we’ll learn more about your situation, offer some free tips, and explore if we’re a good fit to work together: https://calendly.com/alexhapki/call​

P.P.S. Know someone who could use our help?

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See all the details of our referral program on our website here.