Wow, this is really great. These vignettes could make a good, short book that doesn't get into weird diatribes and instead actual experiences with engineering orgs. This is basically what I want to show to senior/staff engineers about how to do this back and forth.

I wanted to pre-order, but the link doesn't let me.

Thank you! That specific use case—helping Senior/Staff engineers visualize the 'back and forth'—is exactly where I think the biggest gap is. It’s hard to learn negotiation from a static blog post.

On the Pre-order: I’m sorry about that! The payment gateway is currently stuck in 'Verification Pending' (bad timing with the HN hug).

I’ve set up a temporary waitlist here: https://forms.gle/UhRNLqbaHQfjiS8V8

If you drop your email there, I’ll ping you as soon as payments are live (and I'll send a discount code as an apology for the friction!)