How I Negotiated the Best Deal Out of 5 Offers After Getting Laid Off
At the end of October 2025, my company went through a major round of layoffs, and I was part of it.
Given that Lunar New Year fell especially late this year, not landing a job before then would mean a long stretch of burning through savings. With a young child at home, I wanted to find something as soon as possible.
Over the next 45 days I interviewed around and landed 5 offers. This is a full record of how I compared them, how I negotiated, and how I made my choice. The numbers are real. Company names are anonymized.
The 5 Offers
The offers fell into three categories: full-time, contract dispatch, and full-time remote.
| Type | Industry | Annual Comp | Monthly | Commute | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time | Gaming | 1.326M TWD (~$40,800 USD) / 13 months | 102K | 30 min | Mac, free AI tooling, full benefits |
| Contract dispatch | Life insurance | 1.2 | 100~105K | 75 min | No bonus, self-paid insurance, restricted equipment |
| Contract dispatch | Finance | 1.14M TWD (~$35,100 USD) / 12 months | 95K | 35 min | No bonus, self-paid insurance, BYOD required |
| Contract dispatch | Government | 1.14M TWD (~$35,100 USD) / 12 months | 95K | 40 min | No bonus, self-paid insurance, BYOD required, intranet restrictions |
| Full-time (remote) | Gaming | 780K TWD (~$24,000 USD) / 13 months | 60K | 0 min | Mac, free AI tooling, full benefits |
A note on "dispatch" (駐點): you sign with a staffing agency but physically work at the client company every day. You handle your own insurance, and there's usually no year-end bonus. It's extremely common in Taiwan — think of it as contract staffing in Western markets.
3K Apart in Monthly Pay, 400K Apart in Real Value
At first glance, the full-time offer and the highest-paying dispatch offer both look like they're in the 100K+ range per month. They're not even close once you factor everything in.
Commute. That dispatch job is 75 minutes one way, 2.5 hours round trip daily. Over a year that's 625 hours — roughly 26 working days. The full-time gig is 30 minutes each way, 250 hours a year, about 10 days. The commute gap alone is 375 hours. At the dispatch hourly rate (about 597 TWD), that's 224K TWD (~$6,900 USD) in hidden costs per year.
Hidden losses. No year-end bonus means one less month of pay: -105K. Self-paid insurance runs about -180K/year. Equipment restrictions can't be quantified easily, but in 2025–2026 — an era where developers are already working heavily with Claude Code and Codex — being stuck on a locked-down company-issued Windows machine is a significant productivity hit.
What The Dispatch Would Need to Pay to Match Full-Time
I ran the numbers. Factor in the bonus gap, insurance, commute, and equipment, and that dispatch job would need to pay 130K TWD/month (~$4,000 USD), annualized at 1.56M TWD (~$48,000 USD), just to match the full-time offer.
130K — that's the number I wanted from the dispatch, though I knew full well it was impossible.
Why I Had the Guts to Ask
Because I already had the full-time offer in hand. The remote one too. The worst-case scenario was showing up at the full-time job on day one — not unemployment.
In negotiation terms, that's your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) — basically, your fallback. The stronger your fallback, the bolder you can be. I used to be timid about salary negotiations. This time, with other offers backing me up, it felt completely different.
The entire negotiation strategy was actually developed through back-and-forth conversations with Claude. I fed it all the offer numbers and had it help me calculate commute costs, insurance gaps, and bonus differences — which is how I arrived at the 130K break-even figure. Concepts like BATNA and "rejection pricing" also became clear through that process. I didn't walk in knowing this stuff — it came from iterating with AI until a coherent strategy took shape.
My 130K ask wasn't some wild swing. It was calculated — anything below that number and taking the dispatch would be a net loss financially. Call it a "rejection price" if you want.
The recruiter got back to me in about an hour: "The budget can't accommodate that." No counter-offer, no numbers, just done.
Honestly, not surprising. But the response itself was useful intel: Taiwan's finance sector dispatch ceiling for senior frontend is roughly 105K/month (annual 1.26M TWD, ~$38,800 USD). Beyond that, there's no room to even discuss. This is real market data from late 2025.
How Much Is Fully Remote Worth?
The remote offer was 780K/year. The full-time one with a 30-minute commute was 1.326M/year. The gap: 546K TWD (~$16,800 USD).
Even after subtracting the full-time job's commute costs (about 150K/year), the price of going fully remote is still roughly 400K TWD (~$12,300 USD) per year. But at least now I know the exact price of that freedom tax — at my current negotiating level.
The Outcome
Went with the full-time offer, started mid-December.
Out of the five options, it had the highest effective hourly rate, the most complete benefits, and a commute within acceptable range. The math made the answer clear.
What I'm Taking Away From This
Not daring to ask is the most expensive mistake. I quoted the dispatch 130K and got rejected. So what? I lost nothing, and I confirmed exactly where the market ceiling is. I used to think asking too high would "offend people." Now I think that was just me scaring myself.
You need a fallback to negotiate effectively. When you've got multiple offers in your pocket versus when you only have one option — the confidence in your voice is completely different. The other side can feel it too. BATNA isn't just a textbook term. It genuinely changes negotiation outcomes.
Convert every cost into a number. Commute, insurance, bonuses, equipment — if you don't do the math, the illusion of "similar monthly pay" will cost you.