🛠️ Career Strategy

Dodging the Default Underpay Machine

Most companies will ask you the salary question (i.e. “What’s your current salary”) early and use all sorts of tricks to get you to respond. They might say, “I need a number to advance the hiring process” or “My ATS requires me to fill in this field” or “We want to figure out whether we can meet your salary requirements.”

Blogger and entrepreneur Patrick McKenzie says that all of these phrases should cause you to think one thing, “You’re lying to me to attempt to get me to compromise my negotiating position.” 

And salary negotiation coach Josh Doody urges people to “kick the can down the road as you continue to provide more information to the company that you’re talking to in terms of demonstrating competency and ability to them and the value that you’ll bring. Obviously, the longer you have to do that before they make their offer, the better.”

So, how do you dodge these default underpay questions? 

I Will Teach You to Be Rich author Ramit Sethi has a script for it: “We can discuss salary later. I’m sure we can find a number that works. But for now I just wanna see if it’s a good fit between you and me.” Why does this work? It changes the frame of the conversation to show that you’re evaluating the company just as much as they are evaluating you. The best people have options; they are not desperate for one particular gig. So act that way even if it’s not true.

If they keep pushing on this, Josh Doody suggests using the line, “It sounds like you’re trying to qualify me for a range, and if that’s the case, then I’m happy to let you know if your range is in the ballpark.” Get them to say the number first.

And if you absolutely must say a number, anchor them with a realistic highball (i.e. asking around the top of the salary range for the role). In fact, the American Management Association says that opening with a highball offer is the most common negotiation tactic.

Try these for your next promotion or job offer and let me know how it goes!

⚡️ Execution Insight

Business Valuation in 5 Minutes

You might dream of owning a company and getting out from under The Man’s bootheel. Turns out, it’s relatively doable! About 18 months ago, my wife and I bought a group travel business.

As part of that acquisition process, we had to figure out what the company was worth. To do so, I built a simple model. Here’s how it works:

1. Fill in the blue values (you can inquire about businesses for sale on BizBuySell, Flippa, Acquire.com, SMB.co, and other similar sites)

2. Play with the toggles section. I like to imagine -10% revenue growth; if you can survive that for 5 years, the business will probably be a good deal.

3. Then toggle the price to find the maximum you’d be comfortable paying.

4. If you’re confused about any terms in there, Google it or ask AI to explain.

Who knew private equity was that simple? You can grab the template for free here.

🧠 Curiosity Corner

Grok’s Lewd Behavior on X

On X (fka Twitter), a recent trend has been blowing up my feed: people asking Grok AI to modify user’s posted photos into scantily clad bikini pics. In some cases, these are OnlyFans creators using the trend as a lead magnet so they can monetize the horny users of X.

In other cases, it’s more sinister: people “undressing” others without consent via Grok deepfakes. This isn’t new, but X has made it widespread. This is the tradeoff between helpfulness and safety that I previously wrote about, where Grok alternatively wants to keep users safe by not modifying their photos but also wants to help other users achieve their goal of modifying photos; generally AI comes down more on the side of helpful than safe. At this point, it’s gotten so bad that the government of India has insisted that X take action within 72 hours to stop the practice.

A few months ago, I wrote about the dangers of deepfake technology and how it could instigate wars. When I wrote, I felt the danger was far off. Now, it’s clear that some form of deepfake danger is already here, leading to misogyny and harassment.

Right now, there is no way to “opt out” of AI. Even if you don’t use any AI tools, others can still use your content to train or get outputs out of AI. This is another flavor of the issue at the heart of the music / publishing industry lawsuits against AI companies for IP infringement. Even if the law sides with creators, I’m not sure whether or how AI firms will actually enforce the rule.

Have you encountered this trend? Let me know what you think.

💼 Job Board

Jobs I’d Apply To

Here are the 3 most interesting remote job openings I’ve seen this week:

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That’s it for this week.

-Rahul from The DesAI Digest

P.S. Reply back to this email with a business challenge you’re facing! I’d love to help.

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