Screaming in the Cloud - The Importance of Positivity in Negotiations with Josh Doody

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Josh Doody, Owner of Fearless Salary Negotiation, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how important tonality and communication is, both in salary negotiations and everyday life. ...Josh describes how important it is to have a positive padding to your communications in order to make the person on the other end of the negotiation feel like a collaborator rather than a combatant. Corey and Josh also describe scenarios where tonality made a huge difference in the outcome, and Josh gives some examples of where and when to be mindful of how you’re coming across in modern communication methods. Josh also reveals how negotiating with companies multiple times allows him to understand their recruiters more than a person who is encountering their negotiation process for the first time.About JoshJosh is a salary negotiation coach who works with senior software engineers and engineering managers to negotiate job offers with big tech companies. He also wrote Fearless Salary Negotiation: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Paid What You're Worth, and recently launched Salary Negotiation Mastery to help folks who aren't able to work with Josh 1-on-1.Links Referenced:Fearless Salary Negotiation website: https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.comFearless Salary Negotiation: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Salary-Negotiation-step-step/dp/0692568689/Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshdoodyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdoody/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud. Human scale teams use Tailscale to build trusted networks. Tailscale Funnel is a great way to share a local service with your team for collaboration,
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Starting point is 00:01:16 slash tailscale scream. Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined by recurring guest and friend Josh Doody, who, among oh so many things, is the owner of FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com and basically does exactly what it says on the tin. Josh, great to talk to you again. Hey, Corey. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it and I'm glad to be here. So you are, for those who have not heard me evangelize what you do, which is fine. No one listens to all of the backlog of episodes and whatnot. You are a salary negotiation coach, and you emphasize working with high earners who are negotiating new job offers, which is
Starting point is 00:01:57 basically awesome. How did you stumble into this? Yeah, that's a good question. Really, it started as what I would say is a series of interesting career choices that I made. Where I started as an engineer, I was pretty quickly bored in engineering and I switched to, I wanted to be customer-facing and do stuff that had impact on the business. So I did that and ended up working for a software company that made HR software that happened to do, among other things, compensation planning. And so I kind of started learning how it worked behind the scenes. And then over time, I started wising up
Starting point is 00:02:27 and negotiating my own job offers and noticed that, wow, that kind of worked pretty well. And I decided to write a book about it, 100% just because I like to write stuff. I've been writing for 20 years on the internet. And I decided, why not just write a book about this? Five or six people will buy it. My mom will love it.
Starting point is 00:02:44 I'll get it out there and it'll feel really good. And then people started reading the book and asking me if they could hire me to do the methodology in the book for them. And I said, sure. When people try to give you money, say yes. Yeah. Okay. You know, whatever, you know, my first person that ever hired me asked me what my rate was and I didn't have a rate because I'd never considered doing that before, but she was a freelance writer. And I said, well, whatever your rate is, that's my rate. So that was my first rate that I charged someone. And yeah, from there, it took off. As more people started hiring me, a number of friends were chirping in my ear that, hey, this seems like a really valuable thing that you're doing.
Starting point is 00:03:17 And people are coming out of the woodwork to ask you to do it for them. Maybe you should do that thing instead of the other things you're doing and trying to sell copies of the book and stuff like that. Why don't you just be a salary negotiation coach? That was, I don't know, like seven years ago now, and here I am. I don't know if I ever told you this, but back when we met in the fall of 2016, I was trying to figure out what windmill I was going to tilt at before I stumbled upon the idea of AWS billing as being one of them. I thought that writing a book and being a sort of a coach of sorts on how to do job interviews with an emphasis, of course, in salary negotiation would be a great topic for me because I'd done it an awful lot. This is a
Starting point is 00:03:54 byproduct of getting fired all the time because of my mouth. And then I started talking to you and my reaction was, oh, Josh is way better at this than I am. No, I'm going to go find something else instead. And now the world is what it is. And honestly, at this point, all the cloud providers really wish you hadn't been there at that point in time, because then they wouldn't have to deal with the nonsense that I present to them now. But I always had a high opinion of what you do, just because it is in such a sweet spot, where if I were to shut this place down and get a quote-unquote real job somewhere, I would hire you. And it's not that I intellectually don't know how to negotiate.
Starting point is 00:04:29 I mean, half my consulting now is negotiating large AWS contracts on behalf of AWS customers with AWS. A lot of these things tend to apply and go very hand-in-glove. But there's something to be said for having someone who sees this all the time in a consistent, ongoing basis, who is able to be dispassionate. Because when you're coaching someone, it's not you in the same boat. For you, it's okay, you want to have a happy customer, obviously. But for your client, it's suddenly, wow, this is the next stage of my career. This matters. The stakes are infinitely higher for them
Starting point is 00:05:05 than they are for you. And that means you have the luxury of taking a step back and recognizing a bad deal when you see one. There is such value to that that I can't imagine not engaging you or someone like you the next time that I were to go about changing jobs.
Starting point is 00:05:20 Although these days, it's probably an acquisition or I finally succumb to a cease and desist. I don't really know that I'm employable anymore. Yeah. I mean, you said a lot of really interesting things there. I think a common theme to work with me, there's a short application that people fill out. And very frequently in the application, there are a couple of open-ended questions about, how can I help you? What's your number one concern? That kind of stuff. And frequently, they'll say, yeah, I've negotiated before and I actually did okay,
Starting point is 00:05:47 but I want to work with a professional this time is the gist of it for, I think, reasons that you mentioned. And one of them is there's just a difference between negotiating for yourself and feeling all of that pressure and having somebody who can just objectively look at it and say, no, I think you should ask for this instead. Or no, I don't think that you should give that information to the recruiter. And the person, instead of feeling personal, subjective pressure, can just say, well, the objective person that I hired and paid money to help me with this says, don't do that or do this instead. And it's easier for me to just trust what they're doing as a professional and let me be a professional at the other things that I'm
Starting point is 00:06:21 a professional at. And so, yeah, I think that's a lot of, you know, for some people it's, I have no idea how to negotiate. I don't want to screw this up. Please help me, Josh. And for some people it's, yeah, I've done this before. I did okay, but I want you here to help me do this. And that includes people who come back and work with me two or three times. They know the methodology. They've been through it literally with me. And I'm very open about what we're doing and why I'm collaborative with my clients. We're talking about the decisions we make. I will bounce things off of them. I'll say, here's what I think we should do. What does your intuition tell you about that? How do you feel about it? Because it's important to me
Starting point is 00:06:51 because they're in the game and I need to know what they think. And they'll come back to me and we'll do it again. They already know the playbook. And I think that's because it's easier to just have somebody who's a professional there to objectively tell you, you're not asking for enough. Or did you think about asking for this instead? do you really care about that thing stuff like that there is so much value to that just because it's a what's normal in this because i'm sure you've seen before where i probably you i should turn this into more of a question but i already know the answer because i've seen it just from people randomly sending me things out on the internet of there are times where companies say or ask for things that are just absolute clown shoes. It's, I would barely consider professional for that.
Starting point is 00:07:32 It always feels like there's value in being able to talk to someone who sees this all the time, who can say, hold on, that is absolutely not normal. That is not a reasonable question. That is not an expectation that any sensible person is going to have. Because the failure mode otherwise is you think it's you. Yeah. Part of my value prop is, you know, I know how to negotiate with companies. I know I'm not afraid of them. I've negotiated with Fortune 5 companies, come out way ahead, just as you do frequently. And I know the playbook that they're running.
Starting point is 00:08:03 But part of it also is, you know, I have a compendium of recruiter responses. I know the playbook that they're running. But part of it also is, I have a compendium of recruiter responses. I know what they say. I know what their words mean. And so I can say things like, oh, here's what they actually mean when they ask you for that. Or I can say, that's weird. Which if I've done 20 negotiations with this company, and all of a sudden a recruiter says something that's weird, that makes my ears perk up and makes me wonder why. And so I can dig in on my side and try and figure out what's going on, see if we tripped some wire that I didn't see or something like that. So that's part of the value too, is just all the reps that I've had.
Starting point is 00:08:34 Even like you said, I'm sure that you would do a wonderful job negotiating. I've talked to you about negotiating online and off, and I know that you know the game. You know how to do it for your day job, but also for compensation. But I probably have more reps negotiating with those companies than you do. And therefore, my compendium is a little bit deeper. So there might be things that I could recognize that you would not recognize that I could see, right? In a similar way that in your negotiation world, that there are things that I certainly
Starting point is 00:08:59 would not recognize that you would catch on to. And I think that could be a very valuable thing. There could be something a recruiter says where I recognize, aha, that's a technical term or that's a key phrase that we can grab onto. And that is an opportunity to get more. Or what are you making now? It's like, yes, that's the industry accepted one free pass. It's screwing the candidate.
Starting point is 00:09:19 Yeah, let's not do that. Right. And here's how to sidestep it. And here's what happens when they ask for it for the fourth time. And here's what happens when they say the magic words and all that stuff. So yeah, a lot of it is just getting reps. It started with, let me just run my playbook. And then as I run the playbook, I get more data every time I do it. And I get to learn what the edge
Starting point is 00:09:36 cases look like and how to spot weird, funky stuff coming from recruiters and that sort of thing. One aspect of this that has been, I guess, capturing my imagination since you first talked to me about it, and I am certain I'm going to butcher this into something that sounds insulting and demeaning, which sort of cuts against the entire point. Specifically, the idea of a positive language, or as the term I think you used was positively persuasive. What is that? Because it sounds like it's just someone is setting me up like braving raw steak in front of a tiger.
Starting point is 00:10:10 Like, please maul me on this. But there is more to it than that. Yeah, so this is something that, to be honest with you, I have done almost intuitively throughout my career, but certainly as a salary negotiation coach. And what it is, is a tendency to use positive meaning, you know, not negative words. So like, essentially, if you're familiar at all with improv, which I would say probably half of the people listening probably have some idea what I'm talking about. You take improv classes and
Starting point is 00:10:36 they teach you an exercise called yes and. And the reason you do yes and is, you know, Corey says something wacky and I could shut it down because that's not true. You know, my hair isn't red. And then we're done improv-ing. But if Corey says, Josh, your hair is red, even if my hair is not red, and I say, yes, and it's on fire right now, then we have something going, right? And so using those positive words, yes, and is a positive way of responding to that opens up a further dialogue and also makes it easier for you to engage with me in that improvisation. In a way, a negotiation is an improvisation. They're all going to be different.
Starting point is 00:11:08 A business conversation is going to be an improvisation. It's rare that you're going to have a conversation where you could write the script completely before the conversation starts. Often there will be an opportunity to improv, to do something different. And so positively persuasive is essentially my way of thinking about how to use those positive words to accomplish an objective while building rapport with the person that you're talking to and leaving the door open for that kind of positive collaboration and improvisation where you can work together with your co-party, with the person that you're talking to in the negotiation. And so that's super abstract. And a concrete example of this would be, for example, in a counteroffer email. Frequently, people will kind of unsolicited just send me their counteroffer email and say, I'm writing up this email. What do you think? Somebody on my newsletter, my email list or something. And sometimes they're okay. And sometimes it's like they're giving an ultimatum and they're saying, you promised this when we first talked on the phone and you're not giving me that, you offered me this and I want what you offered to start with.
Starting point is 00:12:06 And they're using all these negative words. You promised this and didn't give it to me. That's not what I expected. Whereas in the counter offers that I'm writing, it says, hey, thanks for the offer. Starts right away with something that looks like a throwaway line, a platitude. But really what it is is saying,
Starting point is 00:12:19 hey, we're on the same team here. We're collaborating. Thanks for the offer. I appreciate it. I hope you're having a good week so far. And then as it goes on, it says, here are the reasons that I'm super valuable to your team. I can't wait to join this team and express that value. And then you offered $100,000. I would be more comfortable if we could settle on $115,000. And so that's a counter offer. In some cases, the counter will be more than 15%. That's kind of a middle of the road one.
Starting point is 00:12:45 But the way I say it is I would be more comfortable if. And so there's no sort of in-your-face, there's no ultimatum, there's no fist-pounding on the desk. No, there's no, this is not acceptable. There's no, I won't accept this. It's a very soft approach that generally doesn't put people on edge. It not only doesn't put them on edge, but you're sort of putting your arm around them and saying, hey, I'd be more comfortable if we could do this. And they're like, okay, you know, let me see what I can do for you. So you're not making, you're not turning them into, you know, an enemy combatant, you're turning them into a collaborator.
Starting point is 00:13:13 And now it's you and them working together to try to make you comfortable so that you can join their team. So that's a subtle thing that happens in the counteroffer email and numerous other places. But that's the idea, is that when you can, you're choosing positive language so that your requests will be received better, so you'll build rapport with the person that you're negotiating with, and so that they perceive you to be a collaborator and not an opponent. It sounds hokey, but I've also watched it work. It's weird in that we hear about things like this. We think, oh, that wouldn't work on me at all, except the evidence very clearly shows that it does. There's a reason that some people are considered charismatic, and I think this is a large part of it. I also wonder, I mean, you focus on salary negotiation for high earners, and that historically, at least, has included a fair few number of software developers and
Starting point is 00:14:01 whatnot. And these days, let's be very clear that communicating what you want clearly, concisely, and in an understandable way that something or someone can action is such a lost foreign skill for some of these people that they call the entire field prompt engineering, because just communicate clearly is apparently a microaggression when you ask an engineer to do it without giving it a fancy name. Improved communication really feels like it has been part of a dawning awareness lately that, wait, this is actually important, not just one of those box-checking items that you say so that people don't spit in your food. I think you're 100% right about that. I mean, it's interesting as you think about forms of communication that we have kind of experienced over the past, you know, however many years. But, you know, at first, you know, there was no writing over,
Starting point is 00:14:47 you know, thousands of years ago or whatever. It was just all kind of oral tradition. And then we had writing and it was like long form writing. And then, you know, fast forward to today and it's like you're sending a text with two letters and that means something, right? Or I'm about to head to my friend's house and I text in three letters, OMW, right? It's like extremely terse, direct and to the point. And there is a place for that, I think. I think that efficiency probably has some benefits. I mean, there's not a lot of reason for me to spend six minutes writing a text to tell somebody that I'm heading to their house. But on the other hand, I think that sort of concision, that terse writing can also lose a lot in translation. And as we're using more media that
Starting point is 00:15:23 look like Slack or Discord or these other chat-based ways of communicating, including email, by the way. I mean, email can be a place where you can be as terse or, I guess, as pleonastic as you like, and you get more and more words in there. And so I think it's important to be intentional with those words in contexts where tone and meaning and intent can matter. And a lot of that is in interpersonal communication. And again, it's about how messages are received and what you're conveying. I use a lot of, this is not directly related, I use a lot of emoji and emoticons and stuff like that. And I do that because I'm trying to convey tone in a medium
Starting point is 00:15:58 that doesn't really facilitate it, right? If I'm talking to you, you and I can see each other's faces right now. So you know if I'm being sarcastic or telling a joke or being very serious. And so in emails, I'll put a smiley face. And that's me saying, hey, I'm not laying this on real thick. I'm just letting you know, right? So anyway, there are so many media that are available to us now that make it hard to convey tone. That I think a lot of it is you've got to be intentional with your tone. I have worked with more people over the course of my career that have what I've taken to calling the asshole
Starting point is 00:16:25 in email problem, where I have, I think these people are just these absolute jerks. They are completely onerous to deal with. And I despise dealing with these people, but then I'll sit down with them and they are the nicest people and they are incredibly competent and effective. They just have a challenge where whenever they write an email, it sounds like there's an implicit, listen up here, dickhead, that they're starting the email with. And you know what your problem is, may as well be how they open these things. And it feels like effectively communicating in tone is becoming something of a lost art. I've talked to multiple people now who will wind up using chat jippity to construct the bones of a work email. And then they'll just change a sentence or two in the center that actually is the substantive thing that they want to send. So it winds up handling all the window dressing there. Now I'm wondering what the other side is going to look like when you have someone using chat jippity to paste a work email into it. It's
Starting point is 00:17:21 like, okay, strip out the flattery. What are they actually asking for me here? So you effectively have like an API layer of padding provided by computers where you could just like say the direct thing, but it comes with all of the flowerly accoutrements that has become expected in business correspondence. Yeah, I mean, I love everything that you said there. It's true. I mean, I've worked with people in the past
Starting point is 00:17:41 where they would send me an email or I would email with them frequently. And then when we would talk in person, I realized like, oh, I totally misread what they were saying. Like I misread what they meant to say. I misread what their outcome, their preferred outcome was. And it's because the tone is just lost in email. I don't think it was necessarily due to any sort of deficiency on their side. It was on, they have a way of communicating. I have a way of perceiving communications and they were different. And so the message that I got was different. So I think a lot of what I'm talking about with positively persuasive is how do I communicate in
Starting point is 00:18:08 a way where it is not ambiguous, where it is very clear what I'm saying, what my intent is, what my tone is. And sometimes, like you said, you need to strip out the flattery. I put the flattery in because I want them to know, look, I know that you're a person. You and I are on the same team here. We're working together. So a lot of my emails will open with, hey, I hope you're having a good day. And it's like, do I care if they're having a good day? Yeah, but I don't need to say that out loud. The reason I'm saying it out loud is I want them to the opposite of everything you just described, where I want them to read that email and think, okay, Josh isn't coming at me. Even if he does have critiques of something that I'm doing, or he has a suggestion to improve
Starting point is 00:18:42 something, he's coming at it from the place of, hey, I hope you're having a good day so far, or whatever I say at the beginning of the email. And so that's filler 100%. But it's filler with a purpose that is meant to convey the tone of the email. That is, I'm not coming down on you too hard. I'm trying to convey a message or ask a question and sincerely curious. And can we come together on this to figure out what the solution is or to move forward or to find the next steps or whatever the thing is that we're trying to do? It feels like this is an area that has massive application beyond the obvious negotiation piece of it, which is fundamentally where we sit down and try and convince people to do a thing that we want them to do that is in our interest. But if it's like, okay, well, that's not just negotiation. That is on some level a disturbing number of human interactions that we tend to have. Where do you see this being applied? Is it something that you're looking at just through a lens of communicating effectively
Starting point is 00:19:38 in a salary negotiation, or does it extend beyond that to your worldview? I think it can get pretty broad. I mean, as you were describing that, was thinking kind of as you were talking, like, when else do I use this? And the answer is a lot. But one place that I use this kind of thing a lot is when I'm emailing people who I don't know and trying to get them to either just give me something or to allow me more leeway than they otherwise necessarily have to allow. And so I'll give you an example, which is I recently switched homeowners insurance providers because I live in Florida and homeowners insurance in Florida is a nightmare. And so I changed providers. I thought I had crossed all my T's and dot all my I's, but there was something that fell between the cracks. And that
Starting point is 00:20:18 is that the mortgage holder, the bank that holds my mortgage, hadn't sent the premium check to my new insurance provider. They didn't get that memo. And it was essentially my responsibility, but I kind of goofed. So the bank writes me an email and they say, hey, we see you changed providers, but we don't have an address for them. We can't send them a check. Can you give it to me? And so now there are two parties that I have to kind of keep on my side. One of them is obviously the bank, but also the insurance provider who might be mad at me because I'm 10 days later on this premium or whatever. So my emails to them are places where I use this, where it's like, I'm basically gonna make it
Starting point is 00:20:49 so that the person who could get mad at me and cause me some kind of detriment is going to have to do it through a really thick cloud of Josh is a nice guy who isn't trying to be a jerk to anybody here. He's not trying to pull one over on anybody. There was an honest mistake that was made. He's just trying to make everything right, and he's hoping that I can help him. And they're going to have to look at the way that I communicate with them. And they're
Starting point is 00:21:11 going to have to push through it and say, nope, I'm going to be a jerk. I'm going to follow the letter of the law. I'm going to be as punitive as I can be. That's really hard to do when somebody like me is emailing and say, hey, listen, I know that we were supposed to get a checkout to you last week. I'm working on it right now. I've already got everything to the bank. It's going to be overnighted to you tonight. Is there anything else I could do to make this easy for you on your side? And then they're going to be like, no, just, you know, as soon as we get it, we'll let you know.
Starting point is 00:21:33 Whereas if I'm like, you know, mad at them or I'm mad at somebody or I'm being a jerk in email, then they don't really have any reason to not be as punitive as they can be to me. And so that's just it's a little manipulative, I guess. But it's also the way that I see life, right? Like I'm like that with everyone, including people who are on the other side of that equation. I'm going to give them grace when I can. And so it's a way of me saying, hey, can you extend some grace to me? I think you're a human being who's on the other side of this and you have a job to do. And I understand that. And if you could be a little
Starting point is 00:21:58 bit kind to me, that would be great. And it works almost every time. This episode is sponsored in part by Panoptica. Panoptica simplifies container deployment, monitoring, and security, protecting the entire application stack from build to runtime. Scalable across clusters and multi-cloud environments, Panoptica secures containers, serverless APIs, and Kubernetes with a unified view,
Starting point is 00:22:22 reducing operational complexity and promoting collaboration by integrating with commonly unified view, reducing operational complexity and promoting collaboration by integrating with commonly used developer, SRE, and SecOps tools. Panoptica ensures compliance with regulatory mandates and CIS benchmarks for best practice conformity. Privacy teams can monitor API traffic and identify sensitive data while identifying open-source components vulnerable to attacks that require patching. Proactively addressing security issues with Panoptica allows businesses to focus on mitigating critical risks and protecting their interests. Learn more about Panoptica today at panoptica.app. there's value to as well, even in everyday customer service interactions. If I have a bad customer experience
Starting point is 00:23:06 buying something off of Amazon, I know, imagine that. Could that ever happen? Of course not. But in a magical world in which it hypothetically did, I can call up and answer the phone. I'm probably going to be pretty steamed going into that conversation
Starting point is 00:23:20 because this is effort I didn't want to have to deal with. But stop and think about it for a second. Usually when I call Amazon for a variety of things, it's not Andy Jassy who's answering the phone. Those are atypical moments for me. Instead, it is generally some poor customer service shmoo who is basically given zero amount of autonomy to speak of in the course of their job
Starting point is 00:23:42 and surprisingly does not set Amazon's strategic priorities for them. And if I unload on this person, maybe I make myself feel better. I've made someone else's day actively worse. But even if you want to set aside the story of being a good person, which I don't suggest people do, but view it in a purely Machiavellian, self-serving way, you're still going to have a better outcome when you inspire people to like you by making yourself likable. Because when you're a jerk, and I used to work help desk, I remember how this works.
Starting point is 00:24:09 Me too. Suddenly, I will fall back on every policy that I can of, ooh, we're not allowed to sit through a reboot. Bye. As opposed to, eh, but they say not to, but I'm enjoying this and I want to help you out and make sure you get there. So I'll hang out.
Starting point is 00:24:22 Why not? There are ways people can bend the rules in your favor. But if you give them an excuse to fall back on that, they're not going to go out of their way to help you at all. They're going to make you go through every bit of procedural red tape they can possibly come up with. And again, you've made their day worse, and that should not be lost on you.
Starting point is 00:24:40 The outcomes are better for everyone when you're a nice person. As you were talking, it's funny because I remembered maybe the most frustrated I've ever been talking to customer service. This is several years, many years ago, but I had some student loan stuff going on. I don't even remember specifically what it was, but it had to do with who was servicing the loan and I'm trying to pay off a loan and I can't get the right person on the phone. And they say, it's this other place that holds the loan, or you need to call this person. And I'm getting the run around, and I'm not able to do the thing I want to do.
Starting point is 00:25:09 And after, I think I had been hung up on like three times, and I was really steamed. Like you said, I'm legitimately like very frustrated. My voice had been cracking a little bit, which is how I know I'm like really getting heated is my voice will start to crack a little bit. But I said to the person, and I became conscious in that moment of like,
Starting point is 00:25:23 okay, I'm very frustrated. I could say something I regret, and I could really like hurt this person that I'm talking to. As you said, they're just somebody who is a customer service representative for this bank or loan service or whoever they were. So I said something like, listen, you can't hear it in the tone of my voice right now, but I need you to know that I'm extremely frustrated and I'm going to get really upset. And so I'm asking you to help me before I do that, before I escalate. I don't want to talk to your manager, but I'm going to ask you to do that if you don't help me right now. And you should know that I'm super frustrated.
Starting point is 00:25:52 My voice is not betraying that right now, but understand that I am. And they snapped in and they were like, okay, I get it. I get it. You know, right there even is a place where I could have just started shouting at them or whatever. I want to talk to your manager and I'm going to escalate and all this stuff. And instead I was like, well, I'm going to give them one last chance, which is let me just tell them how frustrated I am without using colorful language or mean words. And it worked.
Starting point is 00:26:13 It was a subtle thing that actually, I think it got their attention more than anything else. They said, oh, this person is really angry. I should actually listen to them. Now, there is a dark side to this as well. And that is human nature. I have done experiments on this over the years, most notably on Twitter, back when that was the central place people went to. And when I would say something nice about an AWS service, it got, in most cases, two likes and maybe a bot would retweet it. Whereas if I say this AWS service is a piece of garbage and I come up with some reason for it, it went around the internet three times and it was misconstrued is me saying the entirety of AWS is terrible. Not usually. No, there are some frustrating elements, but yeah, there's
Starting point is 00:26:57 context. It doesn't fit into a single tweet. The snarky negativity blows up and responds to and resonates with something in human nature that people love spreading that around and engaging with it. Whereas the happy positivity does not work that way on Twitter. I've noticed what seems to be the opposite effect on LinkedIn. Snark doesn't do well over there, but almost saccharine sweet sincerity does. And I don't know what this says about various social media channels or human nature or what. All I know is that I'm confused. I think you're right. I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about clickbait, right?
Starting point is 00:27:34 There's a reason that clickbait is called what it is, and it's because you read it and you get annoyed or frustrated or angry. And I'm going to hate read this article right now, and I'm going to send it to six friends. There is something in human nature. I mean, you know, we talked for decades. I've heard about how the local news is, you know, our news, if it bleeds, it leads in news, right? We're not talking about how great the planet is or how things like this bad thing happened in New Orleans yesterday, and you should be really upset about it or wherever that place
Starting point is 00:28:00 happens to be in that particular day. I do think there is something innate in us that allows us to gravitate towards those kinds of things. And I have no idea what it is. But it is interesting, as you said, that there are places where either that's frowned upon, or there's just a different mode of communication, which tells me that there's something, you know, sort of in the cultural water there that causes people to perceive stuff differently in different kind of social media environments, right? Twitter definitely is a place where things can go pretty negative. And there are other places that are significantly more negative, right? On the internet, if you want to go there, they get really bad. And then there's places that are really positive. And it's
Starting point is 00:28:37 interesting how it's like maybe people self-select into those places. But also, I think there's a big difference if you think about who's using Twitter and why and who's using LinkedIn and why. I think that people correctly perceive on LinkedIn that for the most part, you're probably not going to be somebody that's at the top of a bunch of lists to be hired if your whole thing on LinkedIn is just being negative all the time and doom and gloom and snark and that kind of thing. It'll be entertaining to some people, but you're probably not going to get many job offers based on that because people are going to ask, do I want to work with this person 24 hours a day? And they'll read your post and say no.
Starting point is 00:29:10 Whereas at least a saccharine sweet person, everybody knows those people who are like that in real life. And they can be, I don't know, a little bit much, but also can generally be very good people to work with. And it's not difficult to sort of like manage that. There's a lot that can be done just by having people want to help you. It's not difficult to sort of like manage that. There's a lot that can be done just by having people want to help you.
Starting point is 00:29:29 It's weird. Like I take a look at the, some of the people that I identify publicly as the nicest in tech. Mark Texan is a good example. Kelsey Hightower is sort of the canonical example of all of this. These are just genuinely nice people. Ashley Willis, another good example. There are so many different folks out there who
Starting point is 00:29:46 are just beacons of positivity. And I look at that and it's like, first, that is admirable. Second, holy hell, that is absolutely not me. No one is ever going to say, what's what I love about Corey? He's so uplifting and positive all the time. I do strive to be a better person, inspire us to be better people, but I'm also willing to spare no quarter for corporate tomfoolery either, which apparently means a lot of people think you're a jerk as a result. I'll take it. Yeah, I think it's, you know, everybody, that's the nice thing about humans, right, is we're all different. And there are lots of different types of person. If everybody had the same personality, what a boring place that we would live.
Starting point is 00:30:24 And that's true for more or less any human characteristic if we were all the same and vanilla i think it would be pretty boring so i think that having really positive people out there is great and having some people who are snarky is great and having people who have you know an ability to just point out absurdity is great if everyone is pointing out absurdity all the time then we're not left with too much so i do think it's good that those people are out there and they're very positive. And I think that, you know, even for myself, like I try to be positive and helpful, like, like you were talking about customer service. I'm like overly nice to customer service people. I tip more than I should most of the time. And a lot of that is
Starting point is 00:30:57 just, you know, that's a human, they have needs and feelings, and this is a way for me to be kind to them. And I know most people don't think that way, but I do. And I like that. And I think that some people don't think that way. And I think that's totally fine too. I think the variety is the spice of life. And I think that makes it interesting and useful. I also think that being intentional with those different modes, having them all available to you and exercising them in different environments can be like a level up, right? It can be a superpower. You can either be a person with a personality who exercises that same personality all the time, or you can choose to exercise sort of different personalities or different ways of communicating or different
Starting point is 00:31:31 levels of positivity or negativity in different environments. And I think that makes it even more interesting where you're able to essentially be a chameleon and find the right mode of communication for the environment or the situation that you're in, which can enhance that situation for you or for other people that are around you. I have to ask, do you find that this is something you do all the time? Or is it, do you put on your negotiating phrasing the same way that I do what my children accuse me of putting on podcast voice? All the time, definitely not. I am aware of it as a way of communicating that's available to me. And I do consciously use it a way of communicating that's available to me. And I do consciously use it a lot of the time.
Starting point is 00:32:09 But if I'm just sitting around with my buddies on Wednesday night watching the game, probably not. And a lot of that is because part of this is, it's a default to positive because you don't know sort of who's on the other end of the line. Whereas if you're communicating with somebody that you've communicated with for hundreds of hours, you don't need all that stuff.
Starting point is 00:32:28 You don't need all the tonal indicators and the padding and all that stuff because you know that person. So a lot of what I'm describing, even like in a salary negotiation, I'm basically working from the default of, I don't know the counterparty. I don't know the recruiter. And therefore, we're going to default to positive. And that's going to essentially make things smoother. It's going to remove friction because there are things that I don't know. Whereas if I'm communicating with somebody I know really well for 20 years, we don't need all that stuff. That's where the shorthand can come in handy. It can be really useful because we already know all of the background there. One place that I'm very conscious of this is every now and then, somebody with a personal
Starting point is 00:33:04 friend or somebody that I know well will have like a difficult conversation where they'll say, hey, you know, this is something that happened to me recently. Can you help me out? Or this is a difficult thing that I'm going through. And that's a place where I am very conscious of this. And it comes in different ways. One of them is using positive words. But one of them is also just like exercising extreme sympathy or empathy if it's appropriate, which is, again, it's a conscious decision to say, this isn't a time to point out, you know, for example, errors or like this person just needs someone that they want to talk to. And I'm going to listen to them carefully. I'm going
Starting point is 00:33:34 to try to give them reassurance that, you know, the situation will be resolved eventually and that kind of thing. But it's not a time for, you know, critique or, you know, negative words or pointing out flaws and that kind of thing. And so I think that's also kind of a conscious place that I will exercise it. But to answer your question, no, I don't do this all the time. I would say, without having ever thought about this before,
Starting point is 00:33:54 the less familiar I am with the person or the situation, the more I will default to this. And the more familiar I am with the person or the situation, the less I will default to it. And I will just use more plain kind of direct language because that familiarity is there. And it assumes a lot that isn't there when I don't know the person well. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me about this. Where can people go to learn more?
Starting point is 00:34:19 Maybe follow me on Twitter, Josh Doody on Twitter. It's a harder problem these days than it once was. Yeah, I really pause there. I It's a harder problem these days than it once was. Yeah, I really paused there. I am pretty active on LinkedIn these days. And fearlesssalarynegotiation.com isn't explicitly about positive language or being positively persuasive, but you'll see even just reading the articles
Starting point is 00:34:36 that I write there, that underlying most of what I write is this sort of implicit understanding that positivity is the way to make progress and to get closer to what your goals are. So Josh Doody on Twitter, Josh Doody on LinkedIn, of course, and then fearlesssalarynegotiation.com. And we will, of course, put links to all of this in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:34:58 Thanks for having me on, Corey. This is a lot of fun. I always like talking to you. I do too. Josh Doody, owner of Fearless Salary Negotiation. I'm cloud economist, Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. Whereas if you hated this podcast,
Starting point is 00:35:17 please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment that rants itself sick, but also only uses positive language. If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need the Duck Bill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duck Bill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

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