# Did this college fail to negotiate in good faith or did this applicant deserve what she got? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 18, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031 "2014-03-18T22:10:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![butterfiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b3f665/32.png) [@butterfiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butterfiles)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/361 "2014-03-21T22:36:05Z")
Aha, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/362 "2014-03-21T23:10:38Z")
Can you please discuss for 8 more pages whether or not using the abbreviation TT was an affront to the English language? ---
**Author:** ![F.Pu-du-he-pa-as](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c89c15/32.png) [@F.Pu-du-he-pa-as](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.Pu-du-he-pa-as)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/363 "2014-03-21T23:20:46Z")
Only 8? These _are_ academics, after all! ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/364 "2014-03-21T23:53:04Z")
Is it possible the college was looking for a teacher who could start in 2014 to handle 4 classes? ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/365 "2014-03-22T00:04:11Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > Is it possible the college was looking for a teacher who could start in 2014 to handle 4 classes? Gosh, you know, you just might be on to something there! ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/366 "2014-03-22T00:39:45Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Can you please discuss for 8 more pages whether or not using the abbreviation TT was an affront to the English language? I’m sure it was. And I can actually live with that! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/367 "2014-03-22T02:19:03Z")
I want to get something clarified here to make sure I’m not misunderstanding the context. I’m in real estate sales, I’m not an academic, but it is my understanding that college level tenure track, professorial positions in Philosophy (teaching or research) are among the rarest beasts you will ever see offered in the modern academic environment, and that there is a super abundance of qualified applicants for any of these positions. In this scenario a newly minted PhD would have almost zero leverage in negotiating anything with respect to a tenure track position being proffered. In certain circumstances in negotiating anything there are times you just take the deal and say “thank you”. This would seem to be one of those circumstances. Is my understanding of the relative power positions of the college and the applicant in this scenario correct or not? ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/368 "2014-03-22T02:38:54Z")
> [@astro](#): > > I want to get something clarified here to make sure I’m not misunderstanding the context. I’m in real estate sales, I’m not an academic, but it is my understanding that college level tenure track, professorial positions in Philosophy (teaching or research) are among the rarest beasts you will ever see offered in the modern academic environment, and that there is a super abundance of qualified applicants for any of these positions. In this scenario a newly minted PhD would have almost zero leverage in negotiating anything with respect to a tenure track position being proffered. > > In certain circumstances in negotiating anything there are times you just take the deal and say “thank you”. This would seem to be one of those circumstances. > > Is my understanding of the relative power positions of the college and the applicant in this scenario correct or not? That is my understanding. Which is why I am simply flabbergasted at the way she handled this. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/369 "2014-03-22T03:14:15Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Is my understanding of the relative power positions of the college and the applicant in this scenario correct or not? There is more to the story. It is the case that every job has a large number of qualified applicants. But that does not mean that each of the applicants is necessarily interchangeable with one another. Search committees are not _just_ looking for a body to fill a spot. Hiring is done by committee, so it may not be the case that a set of equally qualified candidates would all receive the same support from that committee. Alternative candidates may not have the right specializations, they may be qualified but are unable to fill a particular niche, and most importantly, the search committee may not like then enough to want to hire them fir _life_. Committees get so many applicants that they can afford to be very selective. Any one of a number of intangibles might turn a member of the committee off enough that he might rather try searching again in the following year than making a substandard hire. It is true that there are lots of qualified candidates for every position, but the fact that a department makes an offer at all also sends a pretty strong signal that a particular candidate is wanted. If they want you, they may really want you. Of course no department has any incentive to disclose this to a junior person who probably doesn’t know how much she is worth. In retrospect I realize that there may be cultural differences here. **Melchior** is apparently from the UK, which has succeeded in dismantling its higher education system and its professoriate with even greater speed and vigor than the United States, _mirabile dictu_. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/370 "2014-03-22T03:38:54Z")
Sorry if this was already posted, but here are W’s own follow-up comments. She says the raise was small, the maternity leave had already been verbally assured, that she was excited about teaching, not research, and asked for leave etc to make it easier to ramp up into a teaching-intensive job, and that she’d negotiated like this before, successfully, in both academic and non-academic settings. She also says the moralizing responses are off-base, and I agree. This should be a purely pragmatic question. Character judgments have no place here IMO. > [@](#): > > This is W — I thought I would just offer a few more facts. > > Up front: I agree with those arguing that I made a mistake in negotiating. It was a clear case of a miscommunication between the institution and myself. This is how I thought negotiating worked, how I learned to do it, and, for that matter, how I think it should work: you ask about a number of perks and maybe get some of them. I was expecting to get very few of the perks I asked about, if anything at all, given what would be possible for a small college like Nazareth. I certainly did not expect to get either a junior leave or a year for my postdoc. I just thought there was no harm in asking. > > Since many commenters seem to be interested in the salary increase I asked for. Maybe two things will be helpful. > > 1. I asked for a less then 20% increase in salary. > > 2. When I negotiated for another tenure track offer in philosophy I asked for a more than 20% increase in salary and was offered it. In that case, too, I was not expecting it to be offered. I have also been involved in negotiating in non-academic contexts and (maybe wrongly) got the sense that it works along the “there is no harm in asking”-lines as well. > > Of course my limited negotiating experience by no means provides data about the right or best thing to do in these kinds of situations. > > On maternity leave: > > I had already had discussions with someone at the college about maternity leave, and understood that what I was asking for was already unofficial policy. In other words, I was asking for what they were verbally offering me in writing. > > I would also like to stress that I was very excited about the job and in general about the prospect of teaching at a small college with a high teaching load. If the offer had been upheld, and I would have chosen to not accept the offer, it would certainly not have been because I want a more research intensive job — I don’t. > > The reason for asking about the perks (especially about the course reduction and about limiting the number of preps) was not only to make room for my research but also to ramp up to doing a good job teaching a number of classes that I have not taught before. When I visited I did get the sense that continuing research at a reasonable rate would be expected for tenure. All that said, I think that doing a good job with both their teaching and research expectations is most likely possible without being granted any of the perks I asked about. > > There was plenty of much warmer emailing going on between Nazareth’s philosophy department and myself before I sent the negotiating email you saw on the Smoker. And I had hoped to have sufficiently communicated my excitement. Earlier in the day before I sent the email posted, I sent another email that was meant as a warning that I was now switching to what one might call a “negotiating tone”. I obviously didn’t do a good enough job communicating that, though. > > All this said, I am flabbergasted by all the moralizing in the comments on this thread. Hopefully a few philosophers on the market can learn from my mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/371 "2014-03-22T03:55:54Z")
In that case, I think her mistake may have been “switching to a negotiating tone.” She gave them warning, apparently, but if she was sending friendly, and presumably less formal sounding emails it may have been a bit of a wtf moment when that happened, even with prior warning. I don’t think it’s usually good to “switch tones” when dealing with the same people. Granted I haven’t seen the earlier emails so they may have not had as wildly different tone as she’s making it sounds like. I also feel like she should have done some “as you knows” in the negotiating email. Rather than listing “maternity leave” in the demands, it would have probably been a bit softer and sounded less demanding to say “I’d like the informal offer of potential maternity leave we had previously discussed formalized.” I also would have laid out reasoning for the lower course load. Even if it had been given previously, I think it would have been **much** better to just say in the negotiation email itself “I’d like no more than 3 new course preps per year for the first three years so that I can focus on preparing better for courses I am more unfamiliar with. I believe this to be for both the students’ benefit and my own.” ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/372 "2014-03-22T04:01:15Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Sorry if this was already posted, but here are W’s own follow-up comments. She says the raise was small, the maternity leave had already been verbally assured, that she was excited about teaching, not research, and asked for leave etc to make it easier to ramp up into a teaching-intensive job, and that she’d negotiated like this before, successfully, in both academic and non-academic settings. > > She also says the moralizing responses are off-base, and I agree. This should be a purely pragmatic question. Character judgments have no place here IMO. Except that W’s publicizing of the college’s response is mainly about moralizing… It’s at least in part an attempt to shame them. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/373 "2014-03-22T04:03:11Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > In that case, I think her mistake may have been “switching to a negotiating tone.” She gave them warning, apparently, but if she was sending friendly, and presumably less formal sounding emails it may have been a bit of a wtf moment when that happened, even with prior warning. I don’t think it’s usually good to “switch tones” when dealing with the same people. Granted I haven’t seen the earlier emails so they may have not had as wildly different tone as she’s making it sounds like. > > I also feel like she should have done some “as you knows” in the negotiating email. Rather than listing “maternity leave” in the demands, it would have probably been a bit softer and sounded less demanding to say “I’d like the informal offer of potential maternity leave we had previously discussed formalized.” I also would have laid out reasoning for the lower course load. Even if it had been given previously, I think it would have been **much** better to just say in the negotiation email itself “I’d like no more than 3 new course preps per year for the first three years so that I can focus on preparing better for courses I am more unfamiliar with. I believe this to be for both the students’ benefit and my own.” Missed edit: not that maternity leave sounds demanding. I frankly find it kind of wtf that it’s not a given. I just feel the entire email could have done with a little more explanation and a little less terseness. Less of a “I’d like these things” and more of a “I’d like these things **and here’s why**.” She did that for the salary, I’m not sure why she stopped after that point. Granted I am in no way a master negotiator and do, in fact, have problems with overexplaining myself into a hole. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/374 "2014-03-22T04:05:03Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Except that W’s publicizing of the college’s response is mainly about moralizing… It’s at least in part an attempt to shame them. That doesn’t seem obvious to me. She emailed the story to a blogger whose blog is focused on the ins and outs of the Philosophy job market. The message, the overt one anyway, wasn’t “look at these jerks” but “watch out, this may happen to you.” ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/375 "2014-03-22T04:16:05Z")
Then there would have been no need to name the college. ---
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/376 "2014-03-22T05:59:24Z")
Flippant. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, the University did it. I think it’s really that simple. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/377 "2014-03-22T08:24:51Z")
Maternity leave is not a given. In a previous position, I was told informally that the policy was 12 weeks of maternity leave at full pay. I was pretty pleased, as I was expecting at the time. There were several expecting ladies in the office, and we were all so happy with our organizations generous policy. Several months later, when I let my work know I was expecting, I learned that only employees with a year of seniority were eligible for maternity leave, the year and a half of full-time consulting I had before did not count, and I was left with disability, sick leave, and vacation time. Furthermore, FMLA only kicks in after a year. So while my friends went on their 12 weeks at full pay, I spent nine months without a day of vacation or sick leave, working crazy hours so that I could avoid taking leave for my doctors appointments, and I took a pretty strong financial hit as I had several weeks with no pay, and I returned to the office shortly after giving birth and had to pay more for child care. If I had thought to get it in writing (I was terrified to let them know I was pregnant, so I stupidly avoided the issue), I am sure I could have leveraged the fact that I’d worked for them full time for more than a year to get an exception to the wait period (as they had made other exceptions as well). But I didn’t, and I missed out. Of course, maternity leave is one of those things that is impossible to negotiate, as you get scared that if they think you might get pregnant, they might do something like revoke your offer. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/378 "2014-03-22T08:36:01Z")
I know intellectually that it’s not standard in the US, I’ve heard enough people gripe about it. I just… can’t… fathom… why it’s not. I don’t get it. I really feel that it should be standard to the degree of “there should be a law.” Like, I can’t fathom not offering it from any ethical or practical standpoint. I mean, maybe you’ll get yourself into a hole where 98% of your staff are women and they all get knocked up at once or… something… but barring that ridiculous scenario it’s just dumb. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/379 "2014-03-22T09:35:36Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I know intellectually that it’s not standard in the US, I’ve heard enough people gripe about it. I just… can’t… fathom… why it’s not. I don’t get it. I really feel that it should be standard to the degree of “there should be a law.” Like, I can’t fathom not offering it from any ethical or practical standpoint. I mean, maybe you’ll get yourself into a hole where 98% of your staff are women and they all get knocked up at once or… something… but barring that ridiculous scenario it’s just dumb. To play a bit of a Devil’s Advocate, your proposal would create a perverse incentive. If I am a small business with one female employee, my workforce is 100% female. If she is young and fertile, I might look elsewhere for help if the law requires too much of me with regards to her reproductive choices. And it is a choice, right? At what point does someone else have to subsidize that choice? I know that child rearing is sacrosanct, but what else approaches it? Caring for a sick relative? A troubled adolescent? What else should government mandate that an employer do? I’m not unsympathetic to expectant mothers, because I have been close to one in my life. I’m just worried as to how far your proposal might reach. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2014, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031/380 "2014-03-22T10:54:37Z")
The key to responding too that problem is to give father paid paternity leave of the same duration [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-college-fail-to-negotiate-in-good-faith-or-did-this-applicant-deserve-what-she-got/684031.md?page=20)