<story><title>Agent on Demand – Job Offer Negotiation as a Service</title><url>https://www.10xmanagement.com/agent-on-demand/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rb212nyc</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m one of the 10x founders.  Just wanted to comments here...I won&amp;#x27;t answer every question but this one felt important to answer.  My thoughts are as follows...&lt;p&gt;There are mitigating factors as it relates to what we are offering and the concerns you raise -- and one misunderstanding.&lt;p&gt;The misunderstanding first...we are not selling anyone to anything.  We have no involvement in finding you the job, we are not recruiters, we are not headhunters.  So we have no alignment with anyone other than YOU.&lt;p&gt;The first mitigating factor is that we offer two different negotiation options.  One is us leading the process and speaking directly to your prosepctive employer, the other is us advising you behind the scenes and you talk directly to your prospective employer.  In both cases, we are working hand in hand with you so nothing that is being conveyed is something you&amp;#x27;re not endorsing.  Our goal IS to get to a yes, but ONLY a yes that you feel good about.  If you don&amp;#x27;t feel good about it, then the negotiation ends and we move on.&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that we&amp;#x27;re offering to provide this service during our beta phase as a pay what you feel it&amp;#x27;s worth to you.  You could choose to pay us nothing...we need to EARN whatever amount you choose to pay us.  So we are 100% incentivized to be both ethical and effective during this process.  Because if we&amp;#x27;re not, you&amp;#x27;re not going to recommend us to others and you&amp;#x27;re not going to pay us.  And honestly, this business will be built and has been built almost exclusively on recommendations and word of mouth so that&amp;#x27;s a MAJOR incentive to us.&lt;p&gt;I do agree with you about one thing though, negotiating is NOT about fighting.  It&amp;#x27;s about presenting reasonable and substantiated reasons why certain points should be adjusted.  It&amp;#x27;s about knowing the myriad of areas TO negotiate.  It&amp;#x27;s about understanding the standards and practices across different verticals.  And most importantly it&amp;#x27;s about truly understanding what YOU want out of a deal.  Fighting has NO place in this process.&lt;p&gt;As a concluding comment, agenting is a VERY old profession and widely used in many other verticals.  There is a very good reason for this, put simply, most people are not the best at advocating for themselves.  But if that doesn&amp;#x27;t describe you, if you possess all the knowledge required to get you the best deal possible, that&amp;#x27;s great.  No need for our help.  Otherwise, let us prove to you why there is a difference.  If you don&amp;#x27;t like it, don&amp;#x27;t pay us.</text></item><item><author>mtgex</author><text>This suffers from the same issue with using a real estate agent to buy &amp;#x2F; sell a house.&lt;p&gt;Agents are not financially incentivized to get you the best offer.  They are financially incentivized for you to accept any offer, period.&lt;p&gt;The extra commission on negotiating a higher offer does not justify the time and energy.  Additionally, it increases the chances that either party will terminate the negotiation outright.&lt;p&gt;Agents are not working for you, they are working on closing a deal and in fact the agent and the company they&amp;#x27;re selling you to have the exact same incentives.  Get you in as quickly and as cheaply as possible.&lt;p&gt;Negotiation is more about soft skills, charisma, information obfuscation, and outright lying than it is about fighting to get what you &amp;quot;deserve.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whiddershins</author><text>Great response the only thing I’d like to point out is that agenting is the most common and effective when someone needs repeat representation.&lt;p&gt;A musician or actor is constantly signing new deals and the agent needs (in theory) to balance any immediate incentive to close the deal versus long term income from retaining their best talent.&lt;p&gt;A salaried job negotiation is more similar to a real estate deal in that it tends represent a very large portion of the client’s financial world and happen much less frequently.&lt;p&gt;The divergence of incentives becomes harder to manage in that case, because each individual deal ends up being such a smaller part of the agent’s income than the client’s.&lt;p&gt;That’s a known problematic dynamic across many “verticals” that your answer only partly addresses.</text></comment>
<story><title>Agent on Demand – Job Offer Negotiation as a Service</title><url>https://www.10xmanagement.com/agent-on-demand/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rb212nyc</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m one of the 10x founders.  Just wanted to comments here...I won&amp;#x27;t answer every question but this one felt important to answer.  My thoughts are as follows...&lt;p&gt;There are mitigating factors as it relates to what we are offering and the concerns you raise -- and one misunderstanding.&lt;p&gt;The misunderstanding first...we are not selling anyone to anything.  We have no involvement in finding you the job, we are not recruiters, we are not headhunters.  So we have no alignment with anyone other than YOU.&lt;p&gt;The first mitigating factor is that we offer two different negotiation options.  One is us leading the process and speaking directly to your prosepctive employer, the other is us advising you behind the scenes and you talk directly to your prospective employer.  In both cases, we are working hand in hand with you so nothing that is being conveyed is something you&amp;#x27;re not endorsing.  Our goal IS to get to a yes, but ONLY a yes that you feel good about.  If you don&amp;#x27;t feel good about it, then the negotiation ends and we move on.&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that we&amp;#x27;re offering to provide this service during our beta phase as a pay what you feel it&amp;#x27;s worth to you.  You could choose to pay us nothing...we need to EARN whatever amount you choose to pay us.  So we are 100% incentivized to be both ethical and effective during this process.  Because if we&amp;#x27;re not, you&amp;#x27;re not going to recommend us to others and you&amp;#x27;re not going to pay us.  And honestly, this business will be built and has been built almost exclusively on recommendations and word of mouth so that&amp;#x27;s a MAJOR incentive to us.&lt;p&gt;I do agree with you about one thing though, negotiating is NOT about fighting.  It&amp;#x27;s about presenting reasonable and substantiated reasons why certain points should be adjusted.  It&amp;#x27;s about knowing the myriad of areas TO negotiate.  It&amp;#x27;s about understanding the standards and practices across different verticals.  And most importantly it&amp;#x27;s about truly understanding what YOU want out of a deal.  Fighting has NO place in this process.&lt;p&gt;As a concluding comment, agenting is a VERY old profession and widely used in many other verticals.  There is a very good reason for this, put simply, most people are not the best at advocating for themselves.  But if that doesn&amp;#x27;t describe you, if you possess all the knowledge required to get you the best deal possible, that&amp;#x27;s great.  No need for our help.  Otherwise, let us prove to you why there is a difference.  If you don&amp;#x27;t like it, don&amp;#x27;t pay us.</text></item><item><author>mtgex</author><text>This suffers from the same issue with using a real estate agent to buy &amp;#x2F; sell a house.&lt;p&gt;Agents are not financially incentivized to get you the best offer.  They are financially incentivized for you to accept any offer, period.&lt;p&gt;The extra commission on negotiating a higher offer does not justify the time and energy.  Additionally, it increases the chances that either party will terminate the negotiation outright.&lt;p&gt;Agents are not working for you, they are working on closing a deal and in fact the agent and the company they&amp;#x27;re selling you to have the exact same incentives.  Get you in as quickly and as cheaply as possible.&lt;p&gt;Negotiation is more about soft skills, charisma, information obfuscation, and outright lying than it is about fighting to get what you &amp;quot;deserve.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yanslookup</author><text>&amp;gt; One is us leading the process and speaking directly to your prosepctive employer,&lt;p&gt;This is exactly what I want and would pay for. However, I wonder how this works in practice. I work for a fairly well known software company and am involved in the hiring process and I can say with about 90% certainty that negotiations would cease as soon as a candidate presented representation. And my gut is telling me that is the norm in the software industry.&lt;p&gt;Can you speak to this concern? Have you run in to this or has this come up at all for past clients?</text></comment>