Why we won't give you a success rate
Search “salary negotiation tool” and you will meet the same furniture: 87% of users got a raise, our users earn 12% more, a dial that fills up as you type.
We don’t publish anything like that. Not because we are modest, and not because we think you are squeamish about numbers. Because that number cannot exist for your negotiation, and any product that shows you one is showing you an average of other people’s situations wearing your name.
What a success rate would have to mean
Take the sentence honestly: “83% of users who asked for more, got more.” For that to tell you anything about your Monday, you would need your case to be exchangeable with those users’. It is not. The things that decide your outcome are the ones that make your case yours:
- whether the band ceiling is a real ceiling or a first offer;
- whether the person across the table can approve the number, or has to ask someone who can;
- whether an exception path exists at this company at all;
- whether your alternative is real, and whether they know it.
A percentage collapses all of that into one digit. It is not a summary of your situation — it is a summary of other situations, with the parts that differ from yours quietly averaged away.
What we tell you instead
We tell you what to say, why, and what each reply would mean. Concretely, a report from this engine contains:
- A diagnosis, including what is still unknown. If the bonus conditions are unclear, that is the first thing you need to resolve — and we say so before you pay, not after.
- The next sentence. Not “negotiate confidently”. The actual wording, and what it is doing.
- Branches. If they say the band is fixed → this. If they say they need approval → that. A negotiation is not one move; it is a short tree of them.
- The reason codes behind each branch. Every action in the model carries the constraint that produced it, so you can disagree with us on the evidence rather than on vibes.
- When to stop. Accepting, pausing, and not pushing further are normal, supported outcomes. A tool that always tells you to push harder is not on your side.
Why this is better for you, not just nobler
A made-up percentage is a claim about the world. It can be checked, and it will be wrong for most people who read it — that is what an average does. What we give you instead is a claim about your situation, which can be traced back to the inputs you gave us and the constraints those inputs imply.
If you want to know whether to trust an answer, ask it: where did this number come from? We can answer that for every figure in a report — which run produced it, in which region, on which basis, and whether it describes your case or a public projection. A tool that answers with a percentage is telling you it does not know which.
And one more thing, since we are being direct: no one knows your odds. We are not withholding a number we have. There isn’t one.