Book Review: "Fearless Salary Negotiation: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Paid What You're Worth", by Josh Doody

I picked up this book a few weeks ago, as I'm looking into finding my third permanent job by the end of the year. I thought it'd help with the whole "I'm afraid to negotiate" thing, which has been pretty prevalent throughout my career.

Honestly, this book didn't help me at all. It sucks to say, but I'm just as afraid after reading through this book as I was before reading it. It didn't say anything new, really. I think salary negotiation is just one of those things that's simple, but not easy. If you have multiple offers, negotiate to your heart's content. If you don't, then negotiating will always be on a ledge somewhat.

I'm not sure what exactly I should do in order to ease this fear. Maybe I should read through a book around salary negotiation for software engineers. I don't really have a network, and I'm not really good at building / maintaining one, but I think if I developed a network I'd have a much closer feel for what the market rate for my work is. Or maybe I should continuously interview throughout the year in order to figure out what companies pay, so that I don't have to "surge" (honestly I don't even know how to surge). Or work through more Leetcode problems until I can do them on the back of my hand. Or maybe just work myself into such a frenzy of despair I go into sensory overload and stop caring about everything. I think this last one will probably be the most helpful, it's like a sort of false confidence, and I care more about the confident part than the false part at this point.