The interviewer followed me, and asked in the stairwell what it would take to get me hired. I said that I had multiple opportunities in the Boston area north of $80k, but wanted to stay local. He countered with "I'll get you $35k, and review your compensation in 3 months". I kept walking.
In the parking lot, we reached an agreement. IMO, it was the first time someone had walked out on him, and he got flustered. I worked in a busy sales job when I was in college, so I was used to dealing with his style. Once they start following you, you've won the negotiation.
Basically, his strategy for any purchase was to dramatically low-ball and act very important. It worked enough that he was very proud of it -- he would extract huge concessions from unwary vendors.
I am not trying to offend you, and am only commenting because I believe stories like these hurt less experienced people who are trying to learn how to handle salary negotiations.
I personally do not believe this actually happened. Nobody will ever follow you out of an interview to beg you to take a job, or casually double a salary offer in a stairwell.
There is no "hard ball" negotiating like this where you walk out and somehow bring a company to its knees. It's just never that dramatic.
IF you receive a concrete job offer then you accept, decline, or counter. You should know the pay range by the time a company puts an actual offer on paper.
The guy went from an offer that was low-ball to an offer that was basically market-rate at that time.
With a big company, there's no way this would have happened. But this was company that was somewhere between "startup" and "mid size" business. They hadn't really adopted normal corporate processes.
There was no paper offer. I reported to work on a saturday (to get oriented by my predecessor, who had left the company already). My paperwork was on my chair, and I turned it into the VP's secretary on Monday.
In the parking lot, we reached an agreement. IMO, it was the first time someone had walked out on him, and he got flustered. I worked in a busy sales job when I was in college, so I was used to dealing with his style. Once they start following you, you've won the negotiation.
Basically, his strategy for any purchase was to dramatically low-ball and act very important. It worked enough that he was very proud of it -- he would extract huge concessions from unwary vendors.