My husband just finished negotiating his starting salary. It's about 10% higher than what they normally hire people for, and $5,000 more than the first offer. From my feeling of it, we negotiated right up to their ceiling for the position.
YAY!!!!!!
This is a huge win because:
1) He basically has no specific experience, because he's been building skills as a grad student. For the last 8 years, he's only done research for a university and hasn't had a single internship in industry. Yes, he's highly skilled, but it's not directly in the field.
2) He's fairly introverted and technical. I was in sales, so I coached him, but great job Hubs!
3) It took 30 seconds of talking to HR.
He gets paid a bonus at the end of the year as a percentage of salary, so this is AWESOME!
So running the math, if we save this extra $5,000 in a 401k every year and make 6%, it will be worth $419,008 in 30 years. And this is not even counting the bonus bit.