If the two traits are just randomly assorted, then sure, they'll rarely overlap at what is a statistically random rate.
But, if we can assume that the "rare talent" is anything other than straight out of college, they will have discovered that they are a rare talent, be aware of it themselves, and barring some sort of crippling neurosis, want to cash in on it. They might not even be skilled at negotiating... they'll just be aware that they have leverage.
We might even phrase the problem that way... that it's not so important that they have "negotiating skill", as it is that they have "leverage awareness".
There's an old Dilbert comic that said something like "We want to hire engineers who are really good at what they do, but cannot compare two salary numbers and identify which one is larger"
The problem isn't that; it's all the information you don't have such as "how much are they theoretically willing to pay me," "who else would hire me," "how hard can I push before they just pull the offer," "do they have other candidates they liked," and so on. On top of that, lots of people in this career are not smooth talkers and they're risk-averse.
You'd think that, and it's probably even the smart strategy for the employer... But I remember what the guy who wrote homebrew said about his Google interview process.
Once an HR culture develops, anything sane or intelligent probably goes out the window.
Let me just preface that inverting a binary tree.. Maybe they wanted a particular answer and it was an off day.
That said, the author of Homebrew would be the top authority in the field of OSX package management yeah? I mean, Apple hasn't even bothered to create a competitor and yet every tech bro at Google using a MBP is going to need to install and use it..
I also doubt that Kenny was having to do daily scrums and explain why the web ad wootigulizer algorithm hadn't had any progress since Monday. Long since in executive management, is my guess.
If it were that simple why would anyone need tips for salary negotiation? Even in pro sports, where the skills are extremely elite, all the performance stats and salaries are public, and the athletes have agents in their corner, the correlation between pay and performance is far from perfect, and negotiation mistakes can lead to players leaving huge sums on the table.
But, if we can assume that the "rare talent" is anything other than straight out of college, they will have discovered that they are a rare talent, be aware of it themselves, and barring some sort of crippling neurosis, want to cash in on it. They might not even be skilled at negotiating... they'll just be aware that they have leverage.
We might even phrase the problem that way... that it's not so important that they have "negotiating skill", as it is that they have "leverage awareness".