Same offer, same start date — why my colleague left with £6,000 more than me

Personal account · Published September 2026 · 7 min read

The offer letter arrived on a Tuesday: £34,000, standard benefits, start date in six weeks. I read it twice, felt genuinely relieved, and replied the same afternoon to accept. It was a supply-chain analyst role at a mid-sized distribution company outside Manchester — my first proper contract since moving to the UK, and by far the most stable thing I'd been offered in two years of short-term work and recruitment agencies.

A colleague from the same hiring round — same job title, same team, same starting offer of £34,000 — took five days longer to reply. When we finally caught up over coffee six weeks into the job, he mentioned his salary in passing. £40,000. Same letter. Same start date. A £6,000 gap that, as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with either of our CVs.

What he actually did between the offer and the contract

It wasn't dramatic. He didn't threaten to walk, and he didn't have some rival offer waiting in his back pocket — not at first. He replied to HR asking for a short call, said the number was lower than he'd expected based on his research into similar roles in the area, and named a figure roughly £6,000 above the original offer. The recruiter came back two days later with £40,000. That was, in full, the negotiation.

I didn't do any of that — not because I didn't think about it, but because it genuinely didn't occur to me that the number in the letter was a starting point rather than a final one. (Personal observation, one workplace. Individual results vary, and this isn't a claim about any specific employer or industry.)

"Accepting the first number wasn't caution. It was the one conversation nobody had ever actually shown me how to have."

The comment that made it click

A few months later I mentioned the coffee conversation to a former manager who'd become something of a mentor. His reaction stuck with me: "You do realise you're allowed to just... ask? Nobody sends their actual final number first." He wasn't being unkind — he genuinely hadn't considered that this wasn't obvious to everyone. It was obvious to him. It wasn't to me.

The skill most newcomers underestimate

Here's what I got wrong for two years: I treated the offer letter as a decision someone else had already made, rather than the opening line of a conversation I was entitled to take part in. In the UK job market specifically, a counter to an initial offer is close to standard practice — recruiters build room for it into the number they send first. Not countering doesn't read as gracious. Most of the time, it just reads as accepting whatever's offered, no more, no less.

None of this is really about confidence, and it's certainly not about being "pushy." It's a structured exchange of information: what the role is worth in that market, what you specifically bring to it, and what the other side can actually move on. That's learnable in the same way any structured conversation is learnable — practice, not personality.

What I know now that I didn't back then

An offer letter isn't a verdict on what you're worth — it's a starting position from a company that, like most companies, leaves itself room to move. I used to think asking for more, this early into living somewhere new, was a way of testing my luck. What changed is realising that a reasonable, well-researched counter is simply expected — and staying quiet doesn't make you look grateful, it just leaves money on the table that was already budgeted for someone to ask about.

The good news: it's a specific, learnable skill, not a personality trait some people are born with. I learned most of the structure from the course I recommend further down — if you'd like to look into it yourself, the details are below.

A note on advertising: this article includes a recommendation for a third-party course, for which I may receive a commission. My personal experience is genuine, but results can vary from person to person. Nothing here is professional, legal, financial or employment advice. Individual results vary.

Arjun Mehta
Blogger · Counterpoint · Manchester