[HN Gopher] Common mistakes in salary negotiation
___________________________________________________________________
Common mistakes in salary negotiation
Author : eamonnm
Score : 219 points
Date : 2023-08-23 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (interviewing.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (interviewing.io)
| TimPC wrote:
| The hard part about these tips is they will lead you to waste a
| lot of time. Most companies have no real perspective on if they
| are in the 60th percentile by comp or the 95th percentile by comp
| for a role. Some companies will also slot you at different levels
| based on a number of factors including different levels meaning
| different things at different companies. If you're trying to get
| your first FAANG job and generally haven't worked in other high
| comp roles the advice certainly applies, in that you're likely to
| underestimate what's possible and shoot yourself in the foot
| early. If you're already at near top of market compensation you
| might get a better offer in the end but you're also going to go
| through 25 entire interview processes you don't have time for
| because neither side wants to establish compensation.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| In my experience hiring, we know the benchmark numbers for the
| roles. Because we have current employees in those roles and we
| want to understand whether we're paying them fairly. Not out of
| some kind of deep kindness, but because otherwise they'll at
| some point get a better offer and leave.
|
| But it differs across the company where we aim to be. For some
| roles we aim for 50th percentile, while for other areas we
| deliberately pay 90th percentile and adjust current employee
| salaries yearly (after performance review) to match that.
| Because those areas are important to our strategy/roadmap.
|
| May sound unfair to those that aren't in those areas. But this
| is business, we're spending our money where the returns are
| highest for this company. If a role isn't a 90th percentile
| role for us, it might be somewhere else, and we are willing to
| accept higher turnover on the 50th percentile roles to make
| money available to get the people we really need on those other
| roles.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I am curious. Given you have identified an underpaid employee
| and want to make sure to keep her/him. Do you actively
| approach the employee and set the salary straight or do you
| just watch closely and say yes to the next pay raise?
| ArtemZ wrote:
| What is salary negotiation if I can't even make to a technical
| interview? I would agree to any salary
| klausa wrote:
| HN's own 'patio11 has also a very good post about negotiating:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
| hydroid7 wrote:
| The most important advice is: let them talk first. There are two
| cases: 1) You'll get more than you expected. Good for you. 2)
| You'll get an offer for less than your expectation. You'll see
| how much your work is worth for the company. Maybe it's time to
| submit your CV elsewhere.
| imheretolearn wrote:
| Most companies have a range for each level within their org.
| Candidates whose expectations are above the range are
| automatically filtered out. Ones within the range have no
| problems going forward with the interview/offer. The ones who
| suffer because of non-disclosure of the range are the ones whose
| expectation is below the range. People talk. If such a candidate
| joins your org, they will soon find out they're being underpaid
| and will leave as soon as they find a better offer. It looks like
| disclosing the range is benefecial for both parties. Things are
| improving with laws mandating a range disclosure with the job
| application and websites like levels.fyi making things more
| transparent. There shouldn't be a need to "neogiate" your salary
| above/below this range.
| spaceywilly wrote:
| "The key is to get multiple 400k offers in the same week"
|
| Wow why didn't I think of that!
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| [smacks head]
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| There's a FAANG company on 1 Hacker Way. There's one on 1
| Infinite Loop, Apple. There's on on Sand Hill Road, Ampitheatre
| Parkway actually, that's Google. Netflix, 100 Winchester
| Circle, that's a good one. You know, I think they're all in the
| same place, the FAANG District.
|
| Seriously though, I can only imagine how much I'd be laughed
| out of the room if I was some little shit 22 year old trying to
| negotiate a salary at a gigantic company, where exactly 0
| people I am talking to have any agency whatsoever, only 1 year
| after 150,000 people in the tech industry were laid off, the
| memories of dozens of my classmates getting their offers
| rescinded fresh in my mind. And then for what, to live alone in
| Sunnyvale for 13 months?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/10rko7k/mo...
| legohead wrote:
| I am expecting raises to come soon and I am trying to think
| through how to ask for a higher raise. Any input would be
| appreciated.
|
| My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market
| research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should be
| paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap: "We
| can't give you more because it's not industry standard" etc.
| Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this list, my
| raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of years.
|
| The other thing is our growth has slowed. We had a few years of
| over 20% growth, but we rely on the ad market, and it hit us hard
| with the Apple/Google changes. But, we still have positive
| growth, just not the 20% the CEO desires.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market
| research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should
| be paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap:
| "We can't give you more because it's not industry standard"
| etc. Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this
| list, my raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of
| years.
|
| I worked for a company that did that too. "Our hands are tied,
| _the book_ says you can make within this salary range, and
| [surprise, surprise] you 're already making the top of that
| range!" Book or no book, this is a tactic I've seen from all 4
| out of the last 4 companies I've worked. Every manager will say
| this. Oh, yea I swear, I'd love to give you a 5% raise, but
| you're at the top of your range already!
| dudul wrote:
| The usual recommendation is to go get another offer at the
| salary you want and use that to make your case.
|
| Now, I use to think that the "spiteful boss" was a myth, ie the
| boss that is going to be all pissy because they feel
| blackmailed and give you a hard time. I actually did encounter
| it for the first time in 2 decades a few years ago. I was VP of
| eng at the time and one of my reports used this technique to
| show that we were clearly lowballing him (which I knew, but
| budget was controlled by the CFO). The CTO got _mad_ with a big
| M, saying that he didn 't want to be blackmailed or held
| hostage of whatever. Threw a big tantrum and we basically lost
| an engineer.
|
| As I said, it was the one occurrence in my 20 years in the
| industry so it's not very common. Most managers understand that
| it's business, you're showing them the data and they don't want
| to lose someone who's doing a good job.
| roland35 wrote:
| In my experience the only negotiation tactic that really matters
| is having an alternative offer.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Every time this advice comes up I groan because it's so specific
| to a single type of individual and a single sector-economy
| convergence. If you're not a top engineer applying to companies
| with massive salary caps, or especially if you're not a typical
| dev/PM role this advice is generally crap and will waste your
| time.
|
| My advice for people who don't fall into the above:
|
| 1) Spend time to actually figure out what you are realistically
| worth in a new role. Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, H1B comp reports, ask
| your friends, there are tons of resources to do this.
|
| 2) Set a "reach" salary based on #1 and ask for that up front.
| 20% above your target salary is a good starting point. This
| accomplishes two things: a) it immediately weeds out all the spam
| recruiters and low-balling companies without wasting hours of
| your time on interviews; and b) it puts you in the right place to
| negotiate with the companies that are serious rather than trying
| to play chicken the entire time.
|
| 3) Set a floor below which you walk away and stick to it. The
| floor is going to be different for different companies. If
| there's a company you really want to work for because they're
| doing interesting things and you like the people there, your
| floor should be lower than at a generic job you're just
| considering as a ladder rung.
|
| Will this advice potentially get you less than the absolute max
| you could make? Sure. But if that's your only goal then you
| should hire a personal recruiter working _for you_.
| jgilias wrote:
| I have a very simple rule of thumb that has worked exceptionally
| well for me. I never reveal salary expectations.
|
| I learned this lesson many moons ago after not getting a job I
| really looked forward to because my honest expectations were too
| high, and later ending up in a situation where I got paid 70% of
| what a friend earned for exactly the same role because I low
| balled myself.
|
| After those experiences I just say that if they're willing to
| make an offer, we'll go from there. If it's a company who can't
| work with this approach, I don't want to work there anyway.
| Supermancho wrote:
| I feel like these "tips" are from some kind of weird subculture
| I've never been part of. I've used 3rd party recruiters for
| almost 20 years and negotiation is always pretty transparent. I
| want X (which is more than I am currently making) and the
| recruiter finds a good fit. Sometimes the role is well above what
| I asked for.
|
| Unless it's a boutique startup, I'm going to get into the role
| and find out right-quick what the salary bands are anyway, so the
| gaming seems silly. If it is some startup, I already provided the
| benefits I was looking for (and tradeoff for salary I would
| accept), so it doesn't seem to matter much.
| Scoring6931 wrote:
| It is very FAANG oriented (and US oriented at the same time).
| jamdamu wrote:
| FWIW I did all of those things this article says not to do and
| ended up making close to 200% of my previous total compensation
| (which I'm happy with).
|
| Some recruiters didn't ask me for my compensation figures
| upfront. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Snap, LinkedIn, and some
| startup recruiters never asked me for my compensation numbers up
| front. The only ones that did, were to make sure neither of us
| were wasting each others' times. Usually that meant that I didn't
| continue to interview with them.
|
| Most if not all recruiters asked me where I was in the interview
| process and which companies I was interviewing at. I mentioned
| every company I was interviewing with and where I was in the
| process with them. I probably got lucky here as I had around 50%
| onsite to offer rate so I was never left in a spot where I had no
| leverage.
|
| My best offers were the ones where VPs called me to try to close
| the process, and I negotiated directly with them instead of the
| recruiter.
| diarrhea wrote:
| You must be a 100x engineer.
| umvi wrote:
| > FWIW I did all of those things this article says not to do
| and ended up making close to 200% of my previous total
| compensation (which I'm happy with).
|
| The article mentions this:
|
| > Let's say that you currently work at a startup and make $150k
| in cash with some amount of equity. You go to levels.fyi or a
| similar site and look up Facebook's salary bands for the role
| you're targeting. Let's say those bands for total comp are
| $250k-$350k. Hell, that's way more cash than you're making now,
| so you decide to share that range, thinking that if those are
| their bands already, it does no harm. That's reasonable, except
| that let's say Google ends up making you an offer, and it's
| $400k (we've seen this scenario happen to a bunch of our
| users). Now you have to walk back what you said, in which case
| your recruiter will invariably ask why. And now you have to
| reveal, before you're ready, that you have a Google offer,
| which means you'll probably end up revealing that it's for
| $400k. Now you've set an artificial ceiling for your Facebook
| counteroffer to be $400k as well, when in reality that ceiling
| may have been closer to $450k or even $500k.
|
| The article is about optimizing for maximum comp, and your
| strategy is "sub optimal" because who knows if you could have
| gotten 250%+ of your previous comp had you negotiated better?
| awiejrtaaiwejr wrote:
| "These are the two things you must avoid. Both involve how you
| talk to recruiters at the start of your job search, way before
| there's an offer: - Revealing information too early in the game -
| Negotiating before you're ready"
|
| Yup. At some point I heard the guidance "don't be the first
| person to name a number". For my current role, I would have asked
| for 20-30% less than what the company offered. Say "I'm not sure
| what typical ranges are in this sector", or "it depends on equity
| and perks, of course".
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Not talking about your salary history is a decent tip.
|
| But negotiation isn't rocket science: you need to be thoughtful
| and honest to yourself and come up with an aspirational number
| (what you want, best case) and a floor (which you will not go
| below). Any number in between should be acceptable to you, by
| definition.
|
| I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the
| floor and being willing to walk away.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| I gave an honest floor salary to a company prior to
| interviewing. Their offer was 20% less than my floor. I think
| they thought it was my "best case" number despite very clear
| communication that it was my minimum to consider leaving my
| current role.
|
| I walked away vaguely annoyed with the hiring company.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm a little sympathetic to the hiring company. Unless you
| really know the other negotiating party, it can be hard to
| guess when they're posturing.
|
| (OTOH, maybe it's a mistake to low-ball a candidate by such a
| large percentage, regardless. It sounds like a recipe for a
| discontent employee.)
| thedougd wrote:
| It can be safe to assume the floor is current salary plus
| whatever it would take for me to leave plus a little bit
| extra. I wouldn't offer a floor lower.
|
| So I can see making an offer below or near floor. 20 percent
| is awfully low, but I would have fun and make a counter. If
| they don't move much you then it's clearly time to move on.
| Really depends on what else is on the table.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I gave an honest floor salary to a company prior to
| interviewing.
|
| Never reveal what your honest floor is. That's just for you,
| so you know what is an acceptable negotiation range. Tell
| them what your _expectation_ is, instead.
| deciplex wrote:
| I think part of the (perhaps unconscious) resistance to
| thinking clearly about the floor is that the hiring side (i.e.
| people who do this every day, rather than once every few years)
| have a knack for sussing out what that floor is and ensuring
| that that's what you get and not a penny more.
|
| Maybe there is a kind of madman theory of salary negotiation as
| well, heh: throw out some numbers, don't think about it too
| much, randomly blow up the negotiation for any reason, or for
| no reason, etc.
|
| For my part I just accept that I'll be getting the floor or
| very close to it.
| mm263 wrote:
| The point is that your aspirational number may be way, way off.
| Not saying the aspirational number is how I got twice the
| salary I planned to ask for as a junior while interviewing for
| my first job years ago.
| vsareto wrote:
| There's no consistent and transparent pricing for individual
| skills on a resume, so you can't sum them up, adjusted by
| years of experience, and reach a rational number. Job titles
| can be similarly vague. Plus there's no premium for having a
| useful bundle of skills as a single hire (companies charge us
| for convenience and bundling all the time though!)
|
| This seems hard, but plenty of analytical brain power could
| be applied towards this. But there's also no will for
| companies to reach pricing frequency and fidelity like a
| stock market or retail because the inefficiency is in their
| favor and I suspect the real numbers that would come out of
| that would be much higher.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yes. Ask a company what they would rather have on a public
| github: their source code or their payroll file. I bet
| they'd say source code!
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the
| floor and being willing to walk away.
|
| The problem is that you almost certainly don't have enough
| information to predetermine a floor, because that almost
| certainly depends on what other options will be available to
| you in the near future. I mean, sure, technically your floor
| could be literally just the lowest amount that you could
| survive on, but most people anticipate that the options
| available to them allow them to go higher than that.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The floor should be the number that you don't feel bad about
| accepting. That indeed includes your perception of
| alternatives. If your floor is higher than what you're going
| to get, you'll miss a few jobs and then learn that your
| expectations should be lower. That makes the new floor
| acceptable.
|
| There isn't really a shortcut, because if you feel like
| you've accepted an offer below your minimum and never applied
| for other jobs you'll feel like that forever. Which isn't a
| good foundation for the next years working in the role.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > If your floor is higher than what you're going to get,
| you'll miss a few jobs and then learn that your
| expectations should be lower. That makes the new floor
| acceptable.
|
| Right, but this process is only acceptable if you believe
| that you have _more than a few_ options in the near future.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Yes but this whole article is about people that have many
| many options and considering 400k offers.
|
| If you don't expect much options, just accept one and
| continue looking for the next one?
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> But negotiation isn't rocket science
|
| Its more like a poker game. The more information you know, the
| more advantageous your position will be.
|
| When recruiters ask me a range, I typically go 20%-30% above
| what I'm currently making as the starting point and about 10%
| below what I'm actually making as the floor. I also always tell
| the recruiter I'm open to negotiating.
|
| This usually gets a reaction from the recruiter. They either
| tell me I'm asking too much and will give me the actual range
| the company is looking for or they say, "Oh that's perfect, its
| right in the range the company is looking for."
|
| That information on its own will tell you whether its worth it
| to continue or not in 99% of the situations.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Slightly meta (relating to the website) and not this specific
| article, I got a popup toast saying
|
| > _Secret Zebra just left feedback for their FAANG interviewer: I
| really enjoyed the interview, you did really well in giving me
| the right level of assistance to keep under the time constraints.
| It was also pretty useful that you had prepared some extra code
| for testing._
|
| Apart from such toasts being unusual, I doubted that a review
| would be "just" left by someone. Googling the text brought me to
| https://interviewing.io/mocks/Reverse-Nodes-in-k-Group, which as
| per archive.org was at least as old as 2 June 2023[1]. Not
| terribly old, but feels scummy to be honest.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230602224912/https://int
| [deleted]
| leeny wrote:
| We're actually testing those popups right now. Cycling through
| a few preexisting ones to see if engagement moves at all, and
| then we'll make them realtime.
| ferbivore wrote:
| How is making your website more annoying supposed to "engage"
| anyone?
| jawns wrote:
| > Preparation and leverage means doing the work to make sure that
| you have multiple offers, that all your offers come in at the
| same time, and that you don't tip your hand too early. Laying
| this foundation is 80% of the work. You'll need to slow some
| companies down, speed some companies up, and hold off questions
| from recruiters until you're ready to negotiate, and not before.
|
| Laying this foundation is largely unachievable for people who are
| not full-time job seeking.
|
| Even when you're doing nothing but applying and have a decently
| impressive combination of skills and experience, it can be quite
| difficult in certain environments to get a single offer, let
| alone multiple offers, let alone multiple offers coming in at the
| same time.
|
| But if you're currently holding down a full-time job and are
| looking to make a move into a new role, the odds of everything
| lining up perfectly like this are going to be so low as to be
| unrealistic even for very talented people.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Even when you 're doing nothing but applying and have a
| decently impressive combination of skills and experience, it
| can be quite difficult in certain environments to get a single
| offer, let alone multiple offers, let alone multiple offers
| coming in at the same time._
|
| It's even worse if you lack any impressive skills and
| experience.
|
| Aside from the fact that interviewing itself is really bad for
| my mental health, despite being in the bottom of the
| percentiles on places like levels.fyi, I doubt I'd be able to
| match my currently salary with any job that I could actually
| get hired for. So, looking up this type of information just
| ends up discouraging me even more.
|
| Knowing that finding a job is less about salary and more about
| just being able to get an offer makes most of this advice less
| than helpful.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I did it (3 FAANGs). I also did it once before with my then-
| current employer and two other companies.
|
| You have to stall the urgent folks and push the slow ones.
|
| It did take a lot of burning vacation time.
| sneak wrote:
| Would you work 80 hour weeks for a month or two to make an
| additional $5-20k per month indefinitely for the foreseeable
| future?
|
| I would. It's not like it's impossible, it's just more work.
| jawns wrote:
| This feels like a "mythical man month" fallacy.
|
| Say you're working a standard 9-to-5. Sure, you can submit
| applications during the evenings, but once you get your foot
| in the door, you're constrained by the business hours of the
| place where you're applying.
|
| Most job interviews take place during normal business hours.
| You might be able to take your lunch hour to do a phone
| screen, or you might be able to take off a couple of days of
| PTO for an on-site interview.
|
| But you can't work your normal 9-5 and then expect to do all
| your job interviews from 5-midnight.
| sneak wrote:
| You're right, but I imagine there is wiggle room - both in
| scheduling interviews from 5PM to 7-8PM, as well as trading
| day job business hours needed for interviews for "working
| late" (really making up the time) for stuff that isn't
| meetings or synchronous.
|
| If you're hustling toward a $300-600k/yr gig, I think a lot
| of temporary insanity can be tolerated in furtherance of
| that goal. Remember also that salary increases compound
| over your working career.
| imheretolearn wrote:
| Works well in theory but not in practice. Your
| peers/managers will soon notice and figure something's up
| especially if each of the interviews has 5-6 rounds(which
| is what you'd usually expect for a position paying
| $300k-$600k)
|
| > Remember also that salary increases compound over your
| working career.
|
| Not true. As demostrated by 2021-2 outrageous offers
| where the market is now correcting itself.
| Scoring6931 wrote:
| While you have no children, maybe
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I've found this advice to be far too prevalent and largely
| unrealistic. Nearly everything about the interview process is
| out of your control. Getting multiple, competing offers to line
| up is extremely hard.
|
| It's basically like saying "you win a race by being the
| fastest". No duh! How you be the fastest is the hardest part.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Is it really? Maybe it depends on your market, but I've been
| able to do it... pretty much every time over the last 12
| years. You apply to a bunch of places over ~2 weeks, then try
| to get the slow ones to speed up and/or the fast ones to slow
| down. If you've got an offer and are waiting to hear back
| from a few other companies, you can usually just say that and
| the first offer will wait a week or two.
| viking123 wrote:
| Yeah it is so difficult to align these. I had two interview
| loops going and the other company was my clear favorite but
| the loop took like 2 months while the other was two weeks. So
| what I ended up doing is that I took the first job and now in
| a month or so I am going to quit and move to the other. It
| sucks but I literally had no other way because I cannot
| predict the result of the other interview and I cannot ask
| the other to wait freaking two months
| knallfrosch wrote:
| It's uncomfortable, but possible. In other domains, you
| might not be able switch from one choice to the other at
| all.
|
| I find that thought calming.
| steno132 wrote:
| If you're interviewing, you've getting lowballed.
|
| Picture a board chairman discussing a CEO position with his or
| her top candidate. The chairman's courting the candidate, they're
| playing golf, they're dining together and he's trying to convince
| him CEO is a job worth taking.
|
| The job's his, and so is any reasonable dollar figure he wants.
|
| Now, if that fails then the chairman may have traditional
| interviews with his second or third choice candidates. But
| they're for sure getting paid nowhere what the first candidate
| would get.
| nunez wrote:
| Unless you did something exceptional, like create a world-
| renowned programming language or are a staple in the biggest
| conferences in your niche, you're interviewing.
|
| But I agree with your general sentiment.
|
| Having a strong network to fall back on when you're looking is
| much better than throwing fish (resumes) into the barrel.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I used to work in trading and I think some of the principles I
| learned there apply directly to salary negotiations.
|
| Two key things I think about all the time are price discovery and
| competition. Price discovery means that in some illiquid markets,
| you don't really know what a thing will trade at unless you try
| to trade it (which itself reveals some information to the
| counterparty but that's not important in the job case)
|
| From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people who
| hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc. Interviewing
| is the only real way to learn "the market" - what offers to you
| would actually look like, and other information as well. Like if
| you always get offers at the low end of a range - or if you
| always fail interviews - is very good signal that you can act on.
|
| Competition - when we traded bonds, we'd always go to multiple
| dealers for quotes. The dealers would know that we always ask at
| least X of their competitors by rule, so they knew that whatever
| number they gave us, we'd compare against others. That prompted
| them to strike the balance between a good deal for them and a
| price we'd actually accept. From that point of view, the best
| negotiating advice is to have multiple offers, because (1) you
| see what the highest one is (2) you can see how close or
| dispersed they are and you can infer something from that (3) they
| give you leverage. EG: let's say you want job X most, but job Y
| gave you $20K more on the offer or whatever. You can always tell
| job X "I'd love to work with you but it's hard to accept a lower
| offer, can you match?" This isn't even a game, you'd be saying
| this sincerely. Or, if your offers are close, you can push the
| highest one a bit because you know they aren't so far out of the
| norm with more confidence.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people
| who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc.
| Interviewing is the only real way to learn "the market" - what
| offers to you would actually look like, and other information
| as well. Like if you always get offers at the low end of a
| range - or if you always fail interviews - is very good signal
| that you can act on.
|
| I don't think anyone disputes the value of the information. It
| is just painful to obtain.
| j1elo wrote:
| > _You can always tell job X "I'd love to work with you but
| it's hard to accept a lower offer, can you match?"_
|
| It's of course very dependant on each country and the jobs
| market, but in my experience the issue would be even getting to
| have multiple offers in a short enough period of time. To the
| point that it happening could be called a coincidence, more
| than anything. Unless you are fiercely hunting for a job (aka.
| doing several interviews per week), I don't see how it would
| happen to get an offer and telling the company "well, wait for
| a couple weeks or a month for my answer" just to see if it
| happens that offers arrive from the other places and one gets
| to compare simultaneously.
|
| Seems more likely that an offer comes, you accept or decline
| it, if declined then other will eventually come some time
| later, and one can compare them and maybe regret having
| declined the former, and so on.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| These seem like old times or a very narrow band of. High
| salaries.
|
| The only general purpose advice here is the price discovery.
| If you want to know, you need offers.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Interviewing on the actual offer/price is not the same as
| interviewing about getting a chance to schedule a conversation
| about ability to qualify for being considered for an interview
| with a person who could evaluate your worthiness to fill in a
| position within known but flexible compensation band which may
| not be directly offered after all...
|
| Of course, not always it is that convoluted, but the "beef" is
| often that much detached from the process.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people
| who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc.
| Interviewing is the only real way to learn "the market"
|
| Interviewing may be the best way to gather market information,
| but does that make it surprising that people hate doing it?
|
| There are very few activities I hate more than taking part in a
| job interview (on either side of the desk). That it's useful
| and necessary doesn't make it any less unpleasant.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing,
|
| Inreviewing is expensive. I think coding tests are a strategy
| to make it more expensive for a candidate.
|
| Even if you are one of the best, getting a single offer can be
| full 2 days work - if you count the time spent searching,
| applying, etc.
| distant_hat wrote:
| That's a sound advice for bonds but jobs are largely not like
| that by design. It is kind of like dating, and asking for a
| price upfront makes it closer to whoredom and companies
| explicitly downgrade you for being in it only for the money. If
| you want to sell a bond and the other person's price is too
| low, you don't sell it and that's that. For interviews, you end
| up spending hours through the interview process and may not
| even know whether you will end up getting a salary quote at the
| end of it. Getting multiple quotes is a great idea, but putting
| it in action is harder than it appears. It may help to go with
| someone like a recruiter who can disintermediate the process.
| I've often thought someone like an agent for software
| professionals could make a great idea. That person's job is to
| get you great gigs and good prices and she makes a percentage
| of your salary so is aligned with getting you the best offers.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Unfortunately, a big problem is getting offers in the first
| place. Very hard to be the last candidate standing, and that's
| by design. Very little practice equals poor performance.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| This is all sickening really and all pointless really.
|
| If the company end up overpaying Person A (which they'll learn by
| hiring Person B,C,D and seeing their performance), they will let
| Person A go.
|
| If the company end up underpaying Person A, which will be obvious
| from levels.fyi, glassdoor and colleagues, Person A will just not
| do a good job and leave.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Oh yeah recruiters.
|
| If they ask how long I have been looking I say 2 weeks: shows I
| am seriously looking so worth investing in but not on the shelf
| too long.
|
| If they ask if I have applied to other companies: yes a couple,
| if at interview stage "yes I have another company I am
| interviewing with". Too many it looks like they wont be able to
| snag. Too few and it looks like you don't have leverage to
| negotiate.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| Why negotiation is necessary even if you think it's a waste of
| time:
|
| you: look, I really like the job. I won't waste time negotiating
| as long as it's fair market price.
|
| recruiter: sure, that's fair. [then proceeds to low-ball you]
| karaterobot wrote:
| Those in-page notification popups are annoying. The desktop web
| seems to have become a wasteland almost as hellish as mobile.
| orblivion wrote:
| Is it also true that the recruiter is not really the "friend" of
| the company either? If they'll work against your marginal
| interests to close the deal, why wouldn't they work against the
| company's marginal interests for the same?
| dessimus wrote:
| Since they are working for a percentage of the amount of salary
| they have negotiated for you, they have a diminishing return to
| spend time pushing too hard. Additionally, if they fight too
| hard, too often, the company is less likely to engage with the
| recruiter in the future, if they feel they are overpaying for
| that recruiter's candidates vs another's.
| avereveard wrote:
| This is mostly wrong advice mutated from trading and that mostly
| doesn't apply for the highly asymmetrical power balance that
| exist in salary negotiation, but which still get repeated ad
| libitum in blogspam sites.
|
| Instead of trading like you're in a bazaar in middle east, focus
| on doing your research. Know your worth, and how to substantiate
| your worth during an interview.
|
| Tell the numbers openly when asked, bodily and proudly, and have
| it confirmed that falls into their budget, and back up your worth
| with an adequate interview.
|
| Can you imagine doing five rounds only to discover your ask would
| have never be met, that's madness, how can people suggest that?
|
| Absolutely unprofessional, wastes everyone time, and put all the
| chances into a single, high stake rounds of wage roulette. And
| who has the most to lose there?
|
| Especially in countries with limited PTO, just tell that number,
| and filter out interviews that would have lead to inadequate
| offers.
|
| Instead of taking the problem with random adhesiveness, just put
| all that effort upfront and go in the meeting with a number that
| is well researched both in terms of matching or beating the
| market and in terms of allowing you to earn your living.
|
| You can always tune the ask down if you're not getting enough
| interviews, or up if your getting too many. If you get a job too
| easy, pass and look for a better one, use the job market signal
| about your performances against itself.
|
| Your ask and the demand will put passing interview on a Gaussian
| curve. From there is just a repetition game. Ask too much and
| you'll need infinite time to get a job, but knowing the variance
| you can establish an ask that matches your time horizon.
| dekhn wrote:
| I dunno, I've never really aggressively negotiated at hire time,
| but certainly at my industry jobs, just getting the door was the
| important thing, because my comp grows exponentially once I'm on
| the inside (all Googlers got a 10% raise one year. Just because.)
|
| What does happen is during the first recruiter chat (before
| talking ot the HM), I make sure they are OK with my number (base
| + bonus + stock) in theory. Some jobs I've wanted have ended at
| that point- I asked for $270K base and they won't go above $230K,
| for example. it's a shame but I guess over my career I've done
| well enough, even with many rejections, mostly by just paying
| attention and moving to tyhe right place at the right time.
|
| In my most recent role, the hiring manager had to put me in the
| highest eng level ("distinguished") to meet my salary
| expectation, and it was still a pay cut compared to my previous
| job in FAANG. However, my life quality more than makes up the
| difference. Don't always chase the biggest number.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with
| companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect
| without disclosing some form of salary range upfront?
|
| I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added
| 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also
| keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their
| max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
| ntac wrote:
| I ask the recruiter what the salary range is. If they refuse to
| say, I tell them to get back to me when they know what the
| range is.
|
| I'm not going to waste my time if they want to play games like
| being secretive about the pay.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Since many people here lack the skills to coax this into a
| non-confrontational exchange, you would say:
|
| "I understand that you'll need time research to give a
| meaningful answer, so let's reconnect once you've been able
| to put together a range. Thanks!"
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, this. I always nail this down before spending any real
| time or effort on the opportunity.
| pc86 wrote:
| I have never had issues with this approach. Yeah you'll get a
| few people who think they're being cute about wanting to
| schedule a call or whatever, but when it comes down to it "I
| don't move forward without knowing the budgeted _range_ for a
| position " gets me a number probably 19 out of 20 times,
| almost always the first time too.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| It makes no sense at all for the company or recruiter to
| hide the range for you. Because they would be wasting their
| timing doing all kinds of meetings if your expected number
| is far above that range.
| deckard1 wrote:
| Some companies seem to lie about their top range number
| as well. If you pass the interview and ask you for a
| figure and you come back with their top range number,
| suddenly there are reasons you shouldn't be making that.
| I strongly suspect they have no intention of giving out
| that amount but are instead using it to entice people
| that are willing to accept less than they are worth. It
| plants the idea that one day you will be making that much
| at the company if you accept less for now.
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't think the company with the $120-150k range is
| trying to hide it from the person who wants $200k, I
| think they're trying to hide it from the person who wants
| $110k. If you tell them $200k they just stop talking to
| you. If you tell them $110k they write it down and carry
| along with the process and a little green $110k next to
| your name.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Actually they are hoping to snag the person that has
| extreme wage compression, working a 85K job that is worth
| 150K, who they can get for 95K...
| pc86 wrote:
| That's exactly what I said with different numbers.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It makes _some_ sense to hide it, because they 're not
| just hiding it from you. They're hiding it from all
| candidates, and a policy of telling everyone (or hiding
| from everyone) can have an effect on just what sort of
| candidates they get.
|
| If, in exceptional circumstances, they would pay 30% more
| than everyone else, they might want to hide this. Instead
| of saying "we do 95% to 135% of what everyone else
| offers", they say "we do 95% to 105% of what everyone
| else offers"... and suddenly they get fewer cranks and
| weirdos. But they still have the option of offering that
| 30% more, if they stumble upon some diamond in the rough.
|
| They might want to, even if showing would bring in a few
| more good candidates. Is it disturbing the signal to
| noise ratio so much that it takes far longer and costs
| more to go through the whole process.
|
| Of course, just because it might work this way in theory,
| it doesn't mean that it does in practice, especially
| consistently. So, it could be them chasing bad strategy
| that they can't determine to be bad strategy.
|
| If they have a few more bad assumptions (like "our stated
| range is still good enough to get the decent
| candidates"), then they might be even more inclined to
| hide the range.
|
| They're working through all sorts of bad tradeoffs too,
| just like you.
| wuliwong wrote:
| I do think being proactive like you suggest is a good
| approach. It is pretty easy to couch it in a relaxed way that
| you are attempting to save everyone's time and it makes them
| show their hand first. That way you aren't reducing the
| possibility of making a higher than expected salary and you
| can hopefully short circuit positions with companies that are
| below your desired range or as you said, being secretive or
| weird about it.
| treprinum wrote:
| They will tell you what you want to hear and still low-ball you
| at the very end to try the sunk cost fallacy on you.
| xyzelement wrote:
| The sunk cost goes both ways. The company has likewise spent
| a lot of time and effort interviewing you and if they are
| extending you an offer and you say no, the process starts
| over for them.
|
| Especially if you have a job already, when they want to hire
| you is when you have the maximum leverage.
| lolinder wrote:
| You'll still be glad you asked up front, because that kind of
| BS tells you something about the company. Sure you wasted
| your time in the interviews, but you now know not to push
| back on their initial offer because you don't want to work
| for a company that'd pull that on you.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Precisely. The article misses a third bullet point:
|
| _3) Many recruiters will say yes to everything and anything to
| get you into the interview seat_
|
| And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week,
| you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I had 3 FAANG offers. There are so many ways to screw this
| up. IMHO, the article's advice is spot-on.
| treprinum wrote:
| > And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same
| week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.
|
| If they are remote jobs, you just accept them all, buy as
| many computers as the offers you accepted and multitask for n
| x the pay.
| rmujica wrote:
| r/overemployed is leaking
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I thought the next step was hire N people in india to do
| the work, collect the difference between your salary and
| theirs, and apply for more jobs.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews
|
| Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work with
| so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting
| offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in the
| company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them that
| their offer is "a good starting point for discussion" and then
| make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation, bonuses,
| or whatever you value.
|
| Conversely, if interviewing for unattractive positions that pay
| well is motivated by non-negotiable financial considerations
| (mortgage, kids in college), then by all means, be up front
| about it.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work
| with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a
| starting offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in
| the company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them
| that their offer is "a good starting point for discussion"
| and then make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation,
| bonuses, or whatever you value.
|
| This would only work in a hot market, for a desirable
| candidate. Not everyone has the luxury of interviewing places
| they really want to work at any cost.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > This would only work in a hot market, for a desirable
| candidate. Not everyone has the luxury of interviewing
| places they really want to work at any cost.
|
| Yes, that would be an example of "non-negotiable financial
| considerations". I'm going of the statement of the original
| comment, implying they had the luxury of choosing only
| those positions that meet their compensation criteria.
| photonerd wrote:
| > Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so
| much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer
| 2/3rds of what you want.
|
| So... literally no-where then? Because anywhere that would
| offer 2/3rds is not a company I'd want to work for.
| cratermoon wrote:
| This might come as a shock, but some people aren't
| motivated by money beyond the basic need to afford to live
| in the market the way they want. Some would be willing to
| take that offer if the position included a variety of
| attractive intangibles.
|
| To put it another way, "total compensation package" for
| some people includes things that aren't money but have a
| value roughly equal to some amount of money _for that
| person_.
| deprecative wrote:
| This may seem like I'm being dismissive but I don't want to
| work anywhere. I work because I have bills that need to be
| paid. I don't derive enjoyment from making other people
| wealthy. I legitimately cannot think of such a state as
| enjoying work nor enjoying working at any given company in
| particular.
|
| Do you, and if so how did you cultivate that? If you don't
| mind answering.
| uptie wrote:
| Consider, thoroughly, the hypothetical lottery jackpot.
| What is it you would choose to do, pursue, aim for, if
| money were no object and you had nothing except your inner
| volition to drive you. Would you spend your days reading,
| exploring philosophy and knowledge? Or would you travel and
| see the world you've yet to traverse? Maybe you're an
| individual striving toward community and you want to focus
| on family, friendship, charity. Maybe a bit of everything?
|
| Design, intentionally, the dream you would live if you
| could. My friend often responds cynically, saying if he is
| asked about his dream job he would be a space explorer like
| some Marvel movie. I hear him as flippant and he's clear he
| thinks it's a dumb idealistic pontificating exercise. . I
| go toward the path of okay, what would it take to BE that
| thing or pursue it...
|
| If you can visualize and reason your way to how something
| might happen, you can reverse engineer it. You can think of
| it like chess. Position yourself with strength, understand
| openings midgame and endgame, but know there are many,
| many, undiscovered lines left in many positions. Now expand
| from 64,64 squares and so many moves to the infinite
| variability in Life. You have levers and positions you can
| exploit and transpose.
|
| Circumstances will always have a hand as will pure luck,
| fate, or Higher Power, but... you have immense power to
| craft your reality and I mean this in no woo terms. You
| change your thoughts, your words, your actions and most
| crucially, your influence and environment.
|
| Good luck, oneironaut.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Did you study at the Haber Institute?
| uptie wrote:
| This is a very specific interrogative. What leads you to
| consider it as a possibility?
| cratermoon wrote:
| I'll grant you, "enjoying work" is rarely, if ever, a
| thing. The choice might come down to "less bad", but
| there's still a range of work situations. By "companies
| you'd like to work with" I mean companies shipping products
| or services that resonate with you, using tech your
| interested in, and development processes you don't hate. I
| don't like working in fintech, for example, so that's a
| place I wouldn't interview unless I was in need of money.
| Others might really love the idea of working as staff at
| academic institutions, and be will to accept less money in
| exchange for other things.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Neither do I, but within the scope that I have bills that
| need to be paid and thus need to work, there are
| organizations where that work is enjoyable, others where
| it's acceptable and even more where it would be unpleasant.
|
| I want to not dread going to work, so I only entertain
| offers from outfits where the job and its environment
| appear enjoyable. "Acceptable" is below the bar I set
| unless I somehow end up desperate for money.
|
| The attitude in my case wasn't cultivated. It stems from
| the fact that I like what I do and I'm very good at it.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I recently found out that i did not know the maximum. Only
| multiple offers and taking some risks allowed me to find out
| and it was well beyond what i had assumed.
| xyzelement wrote:
| You're spot on, and I don't know why people complain about
| "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is
| both a valuable skill and a good information discovery
| process - as you mentioned.
|
| If you are doing a lot of interviews and not getting jobs -
| then you need more practice doing them. If you're getting so
| many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more
| demanding positions.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| The thing is, as an employee you tend to look for a new job
| only if you start to feel unhappy. This puts you in a
| slightly needy position and does set the tone. I used to be
| self employed and learned to enjoy the negotiations. It is
| kind of crazy to have this binary situation of beeing
| either employee or contractor but i dont have a solution
| either.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least
| a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in
| CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to
| comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them
| will have to advertise pay range also.
|
| Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can
| assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive
| with pay in the above regions.
| photonerd wrote:
| A lot of businesses post stupid ranges.
|
| Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that's
| completely unhelpful
| sneak wrote:
| That's not "completely unhelpful" - if your current job is
| $99k/yr or $400k/yr it answers your "should I bother
| spending time interviewing here?" question quite nicely.
|
| The fact that the range is 100k isn't that big of an
| impediment to utility.
| brianwawok wrote:
| But like, that is a perfectly valid salary range for a job?
| Not all companies have a 10k salary band on a given title.
| roland35 wrote:
| It can be a valid range - I've seen plenty of postings
| (internal at least) where the the seniority is flexible.
| Also a flexible location could also lead to a big range
| depending if you are based in NYC versus Iowa...
| leeny wrote:
| Author here. These ranges are typically wide because your
| compensation depends on your interview performance and
| perceived seniority/value add to the company.
|
| There's no way to tease this out before you interview,
| except that if you're looking for compensation that's
| significantly above the top of the band, it might be hard
| to get. (A little above the top is possible, and sometimes
| a lot is possible too... that's where the negotiation comes
| in.)
| noitpmeder wrote:
| I feel like it's not a great look to say "I don't know
| enough about the role to give you my salary expectations
| at this point" while also asking "but what is the salary
| range for this position, given you don't know enough
| about me".
|
| Any thoughts on how to approach that?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Their range is independent of you so just dont worry
| about it.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // Any thoughts on how to approach that?
|
| This may sound quaint but I find that being forthcoming
| and asking the question you have works.
|
| During the latest job search, I would just ask for a
| range and say myself that "obviously where I fall in the
| range depends on my candidacy, I won't hold you to it."
|
| If they tell you the range is something like $120K to
| $150K, it tells you what kind of seniority they are
| looking for - whether they know it or not - and how much
| they value people of that profile. If they tell you it's
| like $150K to $750K - then you know they are really wide
| open to range of experience and impact. Someone may say
| that a $600K wide range is meaningless but I don't think
| it is. If you're more junior you can count on being
| towards the left but still know they can afford to give
| you a bit more if they like you, and if you're very
| senior you can recognize that they have room for someone
| like you and have an appetite to pay. You'd be totally
| self-unaware to go into the process hoping for $750 and
| then landing at $150 but that's more on you.
|
| So I am fine asking for a broad range - it's way more
| meaningful than no range.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| It's better to have reasonably large salary ranges than no
| range at all.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is very helpful, the bottom of the range tells you
| almost everything you need to know. I don't care if the top
| is $1B per year if I am willing to accept $200k in order to
| decide which jobs to apply.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think that's true when you're on the more junior side
| of things. When you're more senior, you're more
| interested in the ceiling. the $200k may not be enough
| but if you know it goes up to say $500k - you can
| consider interviewing.
| hydroid7 wrote:
| You refuse to do any unpaid "interview project" jobs. I'm not
| doing any "test projects" that are longer than 4h.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Been there, done that, never again.
| deprecative wrote:
| If they want my labor they can pay for it as far as I'm
| concerned. We all know it won't have anything to do with day
| to day responsibilities anyway.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Portfolios" in some form are often necessary. (In my space,
| writing samples.) If you have those ready to go, easier for
| everyone! But if you don't have a relevant portfolio, you'll
| need to either put something together or I'll pass. (I'm not
| really looking for a specific assignment but just something
| that's representative of the type of work.)
| deckard1 wrote:
| why would a software dev have a portfolio? The comparison
| to design or writing doesn't make sense. A graphic designer
| can point to logos or marketing material that is publicly
| available. I'm not going to put proprietary code on a
| portfolio nor am I going to spend multiple years building
| some open source project when I already have a full time
| job.
|
| Software engineering must be the only profession where
| employment history means nothing. And yet... interviewers
| always want salary history to knock you down. If you don't
| care about the work I did in the past, then why do you care
| about how much I was given for that work?
| throwmeout123 wrote:
| Software IS writing. Software IS literature. You might
| disagree right now but that's what it is.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > why would a software dev have a portfolio?
|
| For the same reason artists do -- to show a potential
| employer what you're capable of and what your style is.
| Look at it from the employer's point of view -- they have
| very little to go on when judging ability. If you can
| provide examples of your work, then you're reducing their
| uncertainty and giving yourself an edge for the position.
|
| > I'm not going to put proprietary code on a portfolio
| nor am I going to spend multiple years building some open
| source project when I already have a full time job.
|
| You don't have to do either of those things. Your
| portfolio doesn't have to include large, complex
| projects. A collection of smaller ones will do nicely.
| Or, even easier, is what I do: I just bring in the code
| for the most recent hobby project that I've completed.
|
| > interviewers always want salary history to knock you
| down
|
| You don't need to provide that history. At least, I never
| do. When I'm asked, I respond with what my salary
| expectation is, not what my salary history is.
| asynchronous wrote:
| This exactly. Had way too many companies waste my time before
| revealing a 20-30% increase from my current comp was too much.
| throitallaway wrote:
| If I understand things correctly, current comp shouldn't be
| part of the equation or talks as far as your recruiter and
| company that you're interviewing with are concerned. The
| position will have a comp range. That is not related to what
| you may be currently earning.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| That's not the point. The point is that most people
| wouldn't leave their current role without a bump, so if
| they'd known that up front they wouldn't have bothered with
| the interview.
| azemetre wrote:
| If it's a well known company, I've found sites like levels [1]
| to be very informative and accurate. Otherwise I always just
| ask in the initial calls, no reason to beat around the bush. If
| you know what you want, you can ask what the salary range is
| and decide if it's worth it from there.
|
| [1] https://levels.fyi/
| JohnFen wrote:
| I ask in the initial calls even when I already know what the
| answer is. Sometimes, there's a discrepancy between the two
| that can be a clue that you should look more closely to see
| if the company is a straight-shooter or not.
| kqr wrote:
| I've had some success by saying a ridiculously high number, and
| then quickly adding that "This is what it would take for me to
| accept an offer on the spot. As I learn more about the role and
| team and how well this would fit me, I expect that number to go
| down significantly."
|
| Once they've responded to that I ask something along the lines
| of "By the way, what's the budgeted range for this role?" or
| "are you forbidden from sharing the range for this role" or
| something along those lines.
|
| For some reason, recruiters seem more willing to share the
| range after I've anchored high - perhaps because they get
| insecure about whether they've misjudged my qualifications.
| [deleted]
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| for big companies a lot of salary/comp data is out there. I
| didn't discuss comp at all for the last 4 companies I
| interviewed at, since I knew they'd all beat my current comp by
| quite a lot.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| One way or another, you DO disclose some expectations in that
| scenario.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| The article just avoids that problem.
|
| > very few companies pay so much below market that it would be
| a nonstarter
|
| I don't really agree with that statement as my experiences have
| been different.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Because the marker is relative. What's crap pay to you is a
| golden opportunity to others. Experience is relative as well.
| They may not have the experience and the company doesn't care
| about that, only to fill the seat. Don't take it personally.
| pc86 wrote:
| Whether I am thrilled to take a $60k TC job or my absolute
| minimum is $400k that doesn't change the market in that 60k
| is insultingly low and 400k is well above the median (cue
| all the folks who think FAANG is the market chiming in
| about $450k TC juniors).
| jrockway wrote:
| Wait, which FAANG hires junior engineers for $450k?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Perhaps people who joined shortly before a stock rally. I
| was pulling ~$270k TC at 2 YoE, but it was really ~$175k
| TC at the time I actually joined the company. Equity is
| so variable, that's why it's better to compare TC at time
| of offer. Of course, when I negotiate I always cite the
| highest stock value in the last several months.
| gabereiser wrote:
| $60k is a lot of money in other parts of the world
| pc86 wrote:
| Yeah, in different markets.
| ditonal wrote:
| Yeah given the author's expertise in job markets I'm shocked
| she wrote this as well.
|
| I don't think there's a single other profession with as much
| compensation variability as software engineer. I've heard it
| described as bimodal or trimodal, but I'm not even sure that
| captures it.
|
| There was a YC company on the hacker news homepage recently
| looking for senior AI engineer for 60k. Even by international
| standards that's absurdly cheap , but this is a YC backed
| company, I don't think their head is in the sand (though I do
| suspect YC coaches founders to play moneyball with hiring as
| YC companies as a whole seem to pay far below average).
|
| There's many companies that consider 150-200k as "standard".
|
| And there's still many companies paying 400-600k for senior
| engineers. I thought in the "tech recession" with the
| interest rates up this wouldn't be available for a while but
| an acquaintance who got laid off from Twitter did the "grind
| interview prep and interview a dozen companies
| simultaneously" strategy just this summer in 2023 and got
| multiple competing 500k+ offers (all liquid) for staff SWE
| including from some companies I didn't realize paid that much
| like HubSpot.
|
| Despite many great offers he also encountered many companies
| that tried to lowball by claiming "salaries are going down
| for engineers" but that turned out to be wishful thinking
| and/or a bluff on the company's part given his final result.
|
| So basically there is no "market rate" for senior engineers
| but to the extent there is one a huge percentage look to
| massively go under it. I don't blame them as it's part of the
| game but just be aware many companies say things like "we
| want the best and are willing to pay for it" but then lowball
| and try to bluff engineers into thinking "the market" is much
| lower than reality. Which they do because many many engineers
| fall for it.
| xyzelement wrote:
| A lot of companies don't know what they want and how much
| that costs. The "senior engineer" at my FIL's 60-person
| company makes less than an inbound "junior" at a FAANG.
|
| Obviously a silly example, but the caliber of folks is
| totally different. If I am a job searcher, I want to know the
| employer understands and is willing to pay for my caliber
| because otherwise our ideas of what the role is and what it
| should pay could be vastly off.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| My understanding is that the game is usually about the money
| saved between the offer and the target salary band.
|
| Companies have their review schedules and the new hires would
| be boarded before the reviews. This would allow to hire at
| low ball and then give a "raise", effectively leveling it.
|
| Not only aiming at below market figure saves company the
| money, this also serves as a retention tool.
|
| So, it does pay to know an approx of the target comp band AND
| your own "happy" target. The hard part is to formulate it as
| a package.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| It's an interesting article but I hope it would not just dismiss
| wasting time:
|
| > The main question recruiters ask up front about money is: "What
| are your compensation expectations?" They claim that it's because
| they want to make sure that you're not so far off in your
| expectations that interviewing with that company would be a waste
| of time. This is a nonsense reason -- very few companies pay so
| much below market that it would be a nonstarter
|
| I down want to earn "market" or "average". I want to earn what
| makes sense for me, regardless of how much above (or below,
| although that would be weird) market it may be. Or I want my
| conditions to be specific enough that the whole thing is worth it
| (benefits in terms of remote, medical, etc).
|
| I also don't want to waste time interviewing a lot if there's no
| minimum bar that's close to my goal. I can always say no, and the
| part of aligning interviews so that you get offers at the same
| time makes a lot of sense, although it can be hard, since it's
| easy to overload yourself with interviews.
|
| Every second wasted preparing for interviews is somewhat wasted,
| regardless of the experience you gain from it, so you want to
| minimize it. One of the biggest keys is probably leaving at your
| own pace so that you feel perfectly comfortable saying no. "No"
| gets you renegotiations pretty fast because you've made the sale.
| You just don't want to keep making the sale many times
| fruitlessly.
|
| There's also a lot of "right time and right place" going on with
| interviews, so being open to change and knowing what you really
| want is important.
|
| There's a point where you also know your value enough that you
| don't have to play so many games or stress that much. It works
| quite well and gives one job satisfaction.
| treprinum wrote:
| Salary negotiation is all about information asymmetry; typically
| the company holds all the cards and the candidate none. Not sure
| any article could help with that in any way.
| uptie wrote:
| This is only partially true. Sure the company has a lot of
| cards but they are playing a different game. They are Hikaru
| playing 12 blitz chess games at once, and potential employees
| are offering something, else they're not negotiating they're
| just working out the terms of their slavery.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| > Salary negotiation is all about information asymmetry
|
| Which is exactly why the whole article tells you to not reveal
| any information and to get as much as possible. You agree with
| the article..
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Not exactly. Some candidates outright lie about competing
| offers or existing compensation. Less unscrupulous tactics are
| to give TC figures based on the peak of the stock price
| performance, which isn't _technically_ a lie - you just forgot
| to cite the most up-to-date price.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Software developers are not commodities. Don't think about
| yourself this way.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Someone asked me what my salary requirements were.
|
| I asked, "what's the budget?"
|
| They gave me their budget and I did it with a few thousand off.
| Worked well and I was surprised.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| the best part is the "exactly what to say" at the end:
|
| "At this point, I don't feel equipped to throw out a number
| because I'd like to find out more about the opportunity first -
| right now, I simply don't have the data to be able to say
| something concrete. If you end up making me an offer, I would be
| more than happy to iterate on it if needed and figure out
| something that works. I promise not to accept other offers until
| I have a chance to discuss them with you."
|
| i love it. I would have to have that right in front of me and
| read it word for word. And if I get pushed to reveal a number I
| would need to just pause and slowly repeat it again word for word
| like a robot.
| stopnamingnuts wrote:
| > I would have to have that right in front of me and read it
| word for word. And if I get pushed to reveal a number I would
| need to just pause and slowly repeat it again word for word
| like a robot.
|
| LOL. I'd probably read it like a bank heist hostage. Ideally,
| while blinking rapidly and visibly sweating on the Zoom
| meeting.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I don't think how you say it is as critical as understanding
| the concept. When I am interviewing, I am usually talking to a
| few companies at the same time, so my answer is usually "While
| I don't want to throw out a number, just wanted to be
| transparent that I am talking to a few companies and
| have/expect to have another couple of offers before I make a
| decision. Obviously how those offers come in will be a factor
| in my expectations and I would of course let you know if we
| need to work on the numbers. So right now I would just be very
| happy to see your starting number and go from there"
|
| maybe less words than that, so it's literally the mental model
| in my head. Repeating something like a robot is probably better
| than blurting out the number but having a real game plan and
| treating the recruiter as a partner is probably better.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| yeah but I was raised to be a good kid and do what the
| teacher or adult authority figures tell me to do. Even though
| I'm an adult now, when a fast talking recruiter demands to
| know some numbers I have a hard time not just folding and
| giving in! I would need to print out those words and paste
| them on the wall and like practice 10 times with a friend
| playing the role of sneaky recruiter.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I would need to print out those words and paste them on
| the wall and like practice 10 times with a friend playing
| the role of sneaky recruiter.
|
| This is actually a really fantastic idea. You should
| absolutely do this.
| fwungy wrote:
| When I sense I'm being informationally interviewed by a recruiter
| or discussing a job I realize I'm not interested in I offer up
| high salary expectations to push up the overall pay expectations
| for filling the position.
|
| I kind of figure the market knows what my skill set is valued at
| and gambling for an outsized payout isn't likely to work unless
| you're interviewing at the top tier. When discussing a job I am
| interested in taking I push my tier to the upper end but leave
| room for discussion.
| nunez wrote:
| > My general policy with third-party recruiters is to not tell
| them ANYTHING and to always deal directly with the companies they
| introduce you, once you establish a point of contact there. You
| should assume that anything you tell your recruiter is going to
| get back to every company you're working with. Why? Because their
| primary objective is to place your butt in the seat of one of the
| companies they're working with, and they will do whatever they
| need to do to make the deal happen. Often, those things will run
| counter to your interests.
|
| While the OP has a ton of experience, I disagree with this advice
| unless you're just starting out and don't know what you're worth
| yet.
|
| I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're looking
| for up front.
|
| If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you
| start any interviews.
|
| If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at
| the highest comp package they can. If the number isn't realistic,
| they'll tell you. Last thing they want is to waste your time
| interviewing for a position you'll reject because of the package.
|
| (There are plenty of recruiters that only care about placement
| volume and nothing else. Inbound emails from recruiters that
| clearly look like a copy and paste job are probably one of these.
| Good recruiters don't leave money on the table like that.)
|
| I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current
| salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp
| but want to ensure you maintain what you're making).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your
| current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating
| on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making).
|
| I wonder how much of this information the companies already
| have access to. Like, they probably use ADP or Paychex as their
| payroll service, and I would be surprised if they can ask the
| payroll company or just look up what you currently make.
|
| The last time I interviewed (at a FAANG), they didn't do any
| kind of negotiation dance about pay. They didn't ask me what I
| make or what I wanted. After the interviewing, they said
| "Here's your offer, it is non-negotiable." and lo and behold it
| was about 0.2% or so above what I was currently making. Like a
| difference of under $500 for the yearly figure. Uncanny how
| they came so close! I tried negotiating but they were indeed
| unwilling to negotiate on anything.
| vkou wrote:
| I was also told my FAANG offer was non-negotiable.
|
| After declining it, for reasons of pay and location, I got a
| call back 5 minutes later, with a better location, and ~12%
| more money on the table.
|
| (Junior position in 2012)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so.
| BEFORE you start any interviews._
|
| Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of
| your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are
| shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you
| have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise
| might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given
| in the article.
|
| I get what you're saying about knowing what you're worth, but
| that in itself doesn't give you very much help in knowing what
| potential offers might come your way. Unless you have detailed
| inside information about all of your potential employers (hint:
| if you do, you should already be leveraging that information to
| get a job offer without having to go through all the drudgery
| of interviewing like everyone else), you _can 't possibly know_
| how the number you give compares to what they could potentially
| offer you. So you shouldn't give a number at all.
|
| In fact, the more you know what you are worth, the _less_
| inclined you should be to give a number instead of just waiting
| for an actual offer. What knowing what you are worth should do
| is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking
| recruiters who have conflicts of interest), _which potential
| employers are worth your time to even look at in the first
| place_. Don 't even bother talking to companies that you know
| can't compensate you enough. But you don't need to, and
| shouldn't, tell recruiters what your threshold is for "enough".
| Just tell them company X doesn't look like it would be a good
| fit. Nuff sed.
|
| _> If recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at
| the highest comp package they can._
|
| They want to place you at the highest comp package they can _as
| long as it doesn 't risk not placing you at all_. They never
| want to walk away altogether. But you might. So your interests
| and theirs are not quite aligned.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It might be different in the US but in Australia the way it
| works is:
|
| 60% of jobs will tell you a salary range either on the ad or
| via the recruiter.
|
| The rest wont play the "you tell me first" game and just pass
| on you.
|
| Since more offers is more leverage it might be better to play
| their game individually to have a better overall position
| (more offers)
| [deleted]
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 60% of jobs will tell you a salary range either on the
| ad or via the recruiter._
|
| This is common in the US as well and makes your filtering
| job easier when it happens.
|
| _> The rest wont play the "you tell me first" game and
| just pass on you._
|
| Are those employers you would want to work for? My
| heuristic is, probably not. In which case it costs you
| nothing to pass on them as well. But see further comment
| below.
|
| _> more offers is more leverage_
|
| Not necessarily. They're only leverage if you are actually
| interested in them. Otherwise they're not an actual
| alternative.
|
| If there is an employer you really want to work for who
| literally won't give you an offer unless you tell them a
| number first, then you're in a buyer's market. But for
| anyone who has good tech skills it is rarely a buyer's
| market; you are a scarce resource and should value yourself
| accordingly.
| pempem wrote:
| Leverage is not defined as something you're interested
| in. That would be more like a BATNA.
|
| Leverage is what someone else _believes_ you 're
| interested in.
|
| In the US many jobs post a salary range, which can be not
| accurate or updated and apply to several levels of roles,
| "based on your experience" which puts you back at the
| negotiation table.
|
| I've always found it odd american culture does not always
| embrace negotiating despite many of our core actions
| being based on it. Jobs, home purchases, following
| "rules" and "policies" are in many cases left to the
| personal discretion of the enforcer. Yet we dont teach
| people how to effectively negotiate. In the midwest
| especially the cultural coding is to view it as
| distasteful. The disservice is usually to the person with
| the lease leverage and the least information aka the
| little guy.
| avereveard wrote:
| > Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any
| of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you
| are shortchanging yourself by giving that number
|
| Then do better research before going into the meeting instead
| of playing games after multiple interviews rounds.
|
| Also companies don't have a lot of incentive to pay too much
| under market rate anyway, especially for higher end jobs
| where they provide some training, or churn from people
| getting pushed constantly for a dollar more will kill their
| business.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> do better research before going into the meeting_
|
| Research in the sense of information you can find without
| having detailed inside information about the company will
| tell you general salary ranges, which, as I said, will tell
| you whether it's worth your while to be talking to this
| company at all. But it won't give you a solid enough number
| that it's worth risking shooting yourself in the foot by
| giving it.
|
| _> companies don 't have a lot of incentive to pay too
| much under market rate anyway_
|
| This means you are likely to get an offer that's at least
| market rate (so, as above, you know whether it's worth your
| while to talk to this company at all). It doesn't mean you
| should tell them first what _you_ think "market rate" is,
| instead of them telling you what they are willing to pay in
| the form of an offer.
| grecy wrote:
| > _If you want $200,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you
| start any interviews._
|
| This article isn't about getting an amount that makes you
| happy, it's about getting as much as possible.
|
| If you say $200,000, you've taken $300,000 off the table, which
| may have been on the table before you opened your mouth.
|
| For many people, leaving money on the table is bad, and they
| want to get as much as possible.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| > I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're
| looking for up front.
|
| That assumes you know what you want and know what's
| reasonable/fair for the job and area.
|
| Most people don't know. Even if they've worked a similar job in
| the area, doesn't mean they know what the current going rate
| is. Once when applying for a job I asked for what was basically
| my current salary plus $20,000. The hiring manager said
| something to the lines of "Oh, we can do better than that" and
| ended up hiring me at my ask plus ANOTHER $40,000. I had way
| undervalued myself and wasn't up to the moment on the latest in
| pay rates.
|
| Needless to say I was lucky and that person was an excellent
| manager. But most people will not be so lucky and most managers
| are not that amazing.
| nunez wrote:
| There is another side to this advice.
|
| If you don't know what market is, you can do one of three
| things:
|
| 1. Check out levels.fyi (overindexed on FAANG; not reliable),
|
| 2. Ask for a number that "sounds" high to you, and let the
| recruiter negotiate down (risky; recruiters might laugh you
| out the room if you go too high), or
|
| 3. Ask a recruiter, and then add a premium on top of whatever
| they tell you!
|
| Recruiters will be an excellent source of what a realistic
| market is for your skills in your area. However, as this
| article articulates, many people don't negotiate, so it's
| fair to assume that the market rate they give you is low.
| pdonis wrote:
| You left out:
|
| 4. Don't give a number at all. If you are interested in
| Company X, and you've gone far enough in the process to
| know they are interested in you, tell the recruiter that
| you would be interested in seeing a competitive offer from
| Company X, or something along those lines. At the end of
| the day, the best negotiating leverage you have is that if
| Company X actually does want to hire you, at some point
| they _have_ to commit to an offer. You don 't. You can
| always walk away and go talk to someone else.
| pjot wrote:
| > Don't give a number at all
|
| Can you give an example of how this plays out in real
| conversation? Answering "I'm not telling you" or similar
| to the recruiters question "what's your expected
| compensation" seems like bogus advice
| pdonis wrote:
| The article gives explicit examples of what to say in
| this exact situation.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If pressed, I'd just say: "I would immediately say yes to
| the job for $1 million/year."
|
| Who cares if they laugh? Why negotiate against yourself
| and hand them your actual min value on a silver platter?
| They're not going to tell you their max value.
|
| EDIT: Oops, looks like another commenter already spelled
| out this strategy[1]
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37241739
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| Yep. Based on my experience with recruiters both as an employee
| and employer, following this advice is almost certainly just
| going to do you a disservice.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Forcing the company to name a number first works well when the
| person has absolutely no idea what market rate is.
|
| However, the idea that it's the _optimal_ strategy in every
| situation has been blown out of proportion online. When you
| force a company to name their price first, they will start with
| usually a number lower than their target compensation because
| most candidates will then want to negotiate up. Of all the
| salary negotiations I've done in the past decade, I can't
| remember anyone who asked us to make a price first and then
| didn't counter with a token $5K or $10K (or more depending on
| position) counter request. So the easy bet is to take your mid-
| range comp target, subtract $5K, and then most candidates will
| end up at your target after they "negotiate". It's basically a
| script that everyone who reads internet advice follows, and
| once you see it play out you can start to predict it.
|
| If you want to get the upper end of what companies are willing
| to pay, you often have to start by naming your price and
| letting them negotiate down. This is scary to people who don't
| have a lot of data or who are afraid of being told "no". It can
| also result in outright discontinuation of the interview
| process if the company doesn't want to pay a lot, but that's
| not really a big loss if your goal was high compensation
| anyway.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Don't forget that you have multiple axes to negotiate on: I
| would happily take a 25% pay cut if it came with a couple
| months worth of PTO. Then, when they're unwilling to budge on
| the PTO, you can leverage that back into getting the salary
| number moving again.
|
| I find that kind of haggling to work best as a synchronous,
| ideally face-to-face, communication. In that setting, it's
| very unlikely that you can't manage to smooth over any too
| ambitious of an ask and arrive at some sort of agreeable
| number.
| paxys wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| - Recruiters are not on your side
|
| - Never be the first to volunteer a salary number (or anything
| else)
|
| Pretty obvious advice, but worth repeating I guess.
| irrational wrote:
| I work for a Fortune 100 company. Years ago they wanted to make
| sure that everyone in the same job was making the same amount of
| money (they were especially trying to make sure women were making
| as much as men). So they had an outside consulting group look at
| everyone's salaries and adjusted them as needed to make sure they
| were all the same within $1. I ended up getting a $15k bump. They
| review it again every year to make sure nobody makes more or less
| than anyone else in the same job. The end result is there are no
| salary bands and no negotiation. The salary is what it is. You
| can't even get $5 more dollars. They did this years ago and so
| far it hasn't seemed to negatively affect us.
| victor9000 wrote:
| It sounds like a great way to miss out on talent that can
| command a salary higher than the average, while simultaneously
| attracting talent for whom this is a good deal.
| [deleted]
| thedougd wrote:
| Whenever an employer talks about industry median pay, I ask
| if they want industry median work, or industry median talent
| and remind them that half of all will perform better.
| mateo411 wrote:
| Not if everybody in the entire industry is paid the same.
| :)
| JohnFen wrote:
| There are lots of people who aren't choosing jobs based
| solely on which one pays the most. I have absolutely taken
| positions that paid much less than I can command elsewhere
| because the companies in question offered me nonmonetary
| benefits that were worth more to me than money.
| pcurve wrote:
| Not having a band is surprising at Fortune 100. I'm guessing
| the talent retention is still done through bonus and LTI.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Sure, it sounds that way, if we assume that negotiating skill
| and job performance are tightly correlated. But why should we
| assume that?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| 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".
| nitwit005 wrote:
| If you literally wrote the book on the subject, or
| something similar, they'll probably just create a job
| role for you.
|
| But that said, not every company is trying to hire the
| best people. As you note, they're expensive.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| 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.
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| Above a certain threshold of talent, there is no need to
| negotiate at all.
| [deleted]
| CodeBrad wrote:
| You get what you pay for.
|
| If there is a one off person who can command a higher salary,
| its unlikely they alone will make a huge difference to the
| company anyway.
|
| If there are a lot of people who could command a higher
| salary in that role, the pay is too low.
|
| Overall it seems like a pretty good system. You could argue
| that the current system favors people who are good at
| negotiating, and not necessarily more skilled workers.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| that's nice but not holistic enough
|
| people are overly assuming ingrained bias from a shadowy cabal
| of hiring managers and not looking at different gendered
| funnels, attrition, and personal contribution to the outcomes
| all within the same roles
|
| HIRED's recruitment report, for example, found very gendered
| compensations asks to begin with
|
| similarly, people discount the risk many men take to skew it.
| for everyone worried about coming across as "too bitchy" there
| are a bunch of men that came across as "too cocky" and got
| fired or rejected and kept trying until they were hired at a
| company who needs someone to "to make the tough decisions" like
| tough to swallow decisions
|
| the observation discounts how many people are overly focused on
| moving up in one company, versus not being married to any
| particular company at all, and how gendered even that is, when
| the latter has a 30% pay bump compared to eking out 5%
| discretionary promotions within the same company
|
| also discounted is how many men would _also_ leave the
| workforce if there was a reliable option of being subsidized
| for house work and unpaid emotional labor, you'll get workplace
| equality and wage normalization overnight with that patch to
| the culture, instead of focusing solely on trying to patch the
| workplace and acting confused when the same outcome persists
|
| the incentives for men are work or homelessness, unsheltered,
| outside. there are no classified ads with discounted or free
| rent "for men only", or working for the self accolade of
| proving you didn't do the easy option. these things are all
| connected to workplace outcomes
| khazhoux wrote:
| But people will still argue over leveling, no?
| culopatin wrote:
| Now I need one to get a raise during a hiring freeze.
| Nemi wrote:
| So this is the exact same problem with Realtors. They will say
| that they have a fiducial responsibility to represent you and
| that they will try to get you the best price (either the most or
| least, depending on whether they are on the selling or buying
| side, respectfully). And they will do that, to some limited
| extent. But really their incentive is to _close the deal_. And
| that means telling you that this is the best price the counter
| party is willing to extend if they secretly think you will still
| do the deal.
| analog31 wrote:
| My rule is that nobody is working for the buyer or seller.
| Everybody is working for the sale.
| dudul wrote:
| Very much this. It is actually a real scandal that realtors
| make a _share_ of the sale as opposed to a flat fee. The
| paperwork and all is the same regardless of if it 's a condo
| or a mansion.
| jgeada wrote:
| According to Freaknomics, realtors get about 3% higher average
| closing prices on their own properties than when they're
| representing you as a customer. That is the delta when it is
| their money on the line vs yours.
| sn9 wrote:
| I keep seeing these salary negotiation posts, but aren't the
| recruiters and people hiring also reading them?
| hiddencost wrote:
| It's mostly a waste of time, trying to negotiate with the big
| tech companies.
|
| I tried this with one, and they offered me a larger signing
| bonus.
|
| What I didn't realize was that they just ended up deducting that
| from my year end bonus.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I got 2/3 FAANGs to double their total comp. One was 2.8x. It
| is indeed a worthy exercise.
| fardo wrote:
| Even if it was net neutral on hard compensation, guaranteed
| money now beats potential money later. Seems like a net win for
| negotiation.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Salary negotiation tips always assume a lot about your situation.
| Use your head. If you get paid shit then dont be the first to say
| a number. If you are above the posted range then dont decline to
| talk about salary before the offer stage and be disappointed when
| you cant negotiate above the posted range.
| codegeek wrote:
| You can have this conversation:
|
| You: Ok recruiter, is there a budget/range set aside for this
| position ?
|
| Recruiter: Yes it is $x-$y
|
| You: Ok I can work with that. My expectation is ideally $x+ z% <=
| $y OR "Sorry that won't work for me. Bye"
|
| Scenario 2:
|
| Recruiter: Hey, what are your salary requirements ?
|
| You: Ok recruiter, is there a budget/range set aside for this
| position ?
|
| Recruiter: <crickets> Or goes "No but I am interested in learning
| what is your requirement ideally" ?
|
| You: $Market-Rate + %YOUR_IDEAL_INCREMENT
|
| Scenario 3:
|
| Recruiter: What is your current salary ?
|
| You: Recruiter, I can disclose that but that wouldn't matter as I
| am interested in hearing if there is a fixed budget for this role
| already ?
|
| Recruiter: <crickets>
|
| You: If you don't know the budget, regardless of what I make now,
| I wouldn't make a move unless I am making $MARKET_RATE +
| %INCREMENT
|
| The point is that don't worry about being underpaid by asking
| first necessarily. You can ask for a number that works for YOU.
| Even if it was less than what they would have paid, why should
| you care if you are happy. Yes, do your research and know your
| market obviously.
| s0rce wrote:
| Mine almost always goes like this:
|
| Recruiter: How much are looking for?
|
| Me: Could you please provide a range for the role?
|
| Recruiter: no, please let us know what you want
|
| Me: relatively high but not crazy number
|
| Recruiter: No, that's too high
|
| Me (in my head): why did you ask me then
|
| Me: Ok, please let me know what is reasonable
|
| Recruiter: some number that may or may not be acceptable
|
| Me: asks for a bit more if number was close to acceptable
| JohnFen wrote:
| Personally, I just wouldn't work with a recruiter who did
| that. That sort of behavior is a red flag to me.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That negotiation sounds like the estimation process at some
| companies I have worked for.
| waisbrot wrote:
| IME you could have gotten the higher number if you'd avoided
| saying it.
|
| Because you surrendered a number almost immediately, they
| have decided that you're inexperienced and so deserve less
| money.
|
| I think a better strategy is to not answer: "OK, I think it's
| fine if you don't want to talk about salary right now. I'm
| sure you pay competitively. Let's focus on whether I'm a good
| fit with the team first."
|
| After the engineering team has told the recruiter that they
| want to move forward with hiring you, you have more leverage
| to negotiate.
|
| If you're finding that your opening bid is always rejected,
| it's probably because you don't know what's a good number to
| name. (Lots of people sneer at this but I don't think this is
| some failing on your part--companies pay tons of money for
| this kind of salary data which is how they know it.) In this
| case, you should just do anything you can to avoid naming a
| number first.
| s0rce wrote:
| Sorry, I guess my brief summary wasn't clear, I basically
| do what you say and avoid the discussion as long as
| possible. You are 100% correct you are in a much better
| position when the technical folks want you vs some random
| recruiter.
| waisbrot wrote:
| Sure. Some candidates are extremely experienced in negotiation
| and know exactly how much they are worth. Those people should
| absolutely name numbers from the start to avoid having their
| time wasted. But those people also know who they are and know
| that they don't need to read advice about negotiation.
|
| Most candidates have no idea what they're worth. Here's what I
| imagine is happening behind the scenes in your scenarios,
| assuming a normal candidate:
|
| Scenario 1: Recruiter: Great news. The candidate was happy with
| the offer and I didn't even need to ask for permission to offer
| higher comp. It's always extra time and work when I have to ask
| for $x+$y+$z.
|
| Scenario 2: Recruiter: Ha ha. This candidate has no idea what
| the market rate is. They must only be interviewing at crap
| companies. We'll offer the bottom of the pay band and they'll
| be overjoyed because it's 10% higher than they were asking for.
|
| Scenario 3: Exactly the same as scenario 2, except there was a
| brief moment when the recruiter wondered if the candidate knew
| how much they could get.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| > Even if it was less than what they would have paid, why
| should you care if you are happy
|
| This is a weird argument. It seems like you're saying "these
| scenarios are fine even if they lose you money." I would argue
| that "you should care" because most people would, all things
| being equal, like more money. The point of a job offer
| negotiation is to optimize a few different variables, of which
| "money" is generally a (or the) primary one.
|
| If saying a number first (as you do in all 3 of these
| scenarios) reduces the ultimate amount of money get (it
| generally does), you should not do that.
| tekkk wrote:
| Wonder how the current job market situation affects these tricks.
| Some of those salaries seem pretty crazy to me but then again,
| how else are you going to pay for that ridiculously expensive
| house and college tuition.
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