Either she had a competing offer, or the company she is interviewing for has weak processes. A company yielding "a significant raise from fairly light negotiating" is very worrying IMO.
Think about it: what does that tell you about the next newcomer that will come after you?
(Less process is normal at smaller orgs, so that's also something to consider)
What do you care?
Or she had no competing offers but said she had competing offers ;)
You can strengthen your case extremely well by simply telling the best version of the truth
While Julia discusses interviews in this post, it is equally relevant to engaging in discussion with recruiters or hiring managers: https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/02/03/sounding-confident-in-interv...
Since any large tech co knows what Facebook offers look like, if you have an unusually good offer they might not believe you without proof and they certainly won't be able to expand the pay band without approval from someone. The easiest way to make that case is showing the actual offer.
This is one of those things where: if you never get them to tell you "no that's too much" you probably aren't asking for enough
Sure maybe offer is a bit too far, idk. Definitely no way for them to check though. And in all other ways the game is rigged because employer usually has more information than you.
If someone wants to work at a startup, Google isn't really going to compete for your offer
But if you're going to big tech cos you can get them to compete with each other.
Know your audience: say, I'm really excited about the potential of working with you, however I have a few other interviews with comparable public tech companies
I'm not ready to make a decision because I want to see that process through, although there exists a number you could tell me that would get me to stop looking immediately.
This will probably give you a worse number than you'll get if you actually get the additional offers, but if you don't have them it's a truthful way to indicate they're not quite hitting the mark
1) after reading the original post immediately linked it to a friend who had an outstanding offer. She got a significant raise from fairly light negotiating
2) personally, I don't think of myself as a particularly aggressive negotiator. However, I have been able to truthfully discuss compensation using the tactics described with recruiters to get leveling and comp where I've wanted it to be for my last couple of jobs. Yes, I always had multiple offers. That's part of negotiating.
More generally, though, I think spending 30+ minutes (reading the piece and more) thinking about negotiating has helped me build a better mental model for what to bring to the table.