Kunal Bhatia

Salary negotiation scripts that worked for me and 11 juniors (copy paste allowed)

Over the last two years I have helped 11 juniors negotiate their offers, plus my own. Results from my spreadsheet: average increase over the first offer was 14% , range 0% to 31%. Two people got nothing extra. Nobody got their offer pulled for asking. That last line is the one I want freshers to read twice. Here are the exact scripts. Change the numbers, keep the shape. Script 1: "What is your current and expected…

India's 90-day notice period: buyout, early release, and what HR won't tell you

Every second DM I get is about notice periods. "Bhai new company 30 days mein join karne bol rahi hai, mera 90 days hai, kya karun?" So here is everything in one place. I am not a lawyer. This is what actually happens in practice. Why 90 days Most service companies and many large product companies in India have 60 to 90 days in the appointment letter. Startups are often 30 to 60. Read your own letter tonight, not…

Offer rescinded 6 days before joining. After I had already served my notice.

This happened three years ago and I still have the email saved in a folder called "never again". I was at a service company. Got an offer from a mid-size SaaS product company, 75% hike, my first product role. I negotiated my 90-day notice down to 60 with a partial buyout, served it, did the handover, had the farewell cake, collected the "all the best" emails. Six days before my joining date, at 7:40 pm, an email:…

The take-home that took me a week and got ghosted

Yesterday I created this topic. Today I am writing the story that is the reason it exists. It is 1 am and I am still a little angry about it, two years later. Series B fintech. Recruiter call went well. Then the take-home arrived: "should take 4 to 6 hours". The brief: A payments reconciliation service with a REST API Unit and integration tests Dockerfile and docker-compose A README with design decisions "Bonus: a…