Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 195 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#151

Post by jghn »

pixelbash wrote: post #133
jghn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I know what will make me leave my current job, it's not worth my time to "get the interview" if they won't give me that amount. Also, as a hiring manager, the one way people found themselves with me saying "That's great, go screw" was when it was clear they were playing us comp-wise by lowballing us to get their foot in the door & then raising the bar once the offer came. That's deceptive, and a character flaw I d…

> when it was clear they were playing us comp-wise by lowballing us to get their foot in the door & then raising the bar once the offer came. Isn’t this just the mirror of a relatively common business practise? At least among smaller companies (maybe non US)

As a candidate, if I detect that happening I also nope out as soon as possible.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#152

Post by ponector »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #59
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any thoughts on root cause from your perspective? I've been on the other side of the table recently, and I agree it feels like a buyer's market. But it still took a while to find good candidates, and a lot of candidates showed up to interviews weirdly unprepared on even the basics. If it's a drought for you, then I'd have to add: It seems like an especially weird drought, as well. Supply and demand seem to be doing o…

I'm not sure on the root cause. Like I said, there's several people that I know who are all experiencing the same things. I have 20 years experience and a phd. Others in my friend group have no degree whatsoever, but have a decade of experience. Several years ago, we were all offered multiple jobs at a time. Now, we are not even getting requests for interviews. EDIT: adding that, because we all live in a non-metropol…

That is the key. By looking for a remote role you are competing with large pool of workers.

Are you ready to accept a new role as a contractor with 100k USD annual salary and no benefits? How about 60k? Many skilled developers will accept such offer for remote role.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#153

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #51
chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. Unless you have some kind of very unique skill or you have other offers and the company really, really wants you, how exactly are you supposed to negotiate? Every comp negotiation I've ever had with a company has gone kind of like this: [Company]: Here's your offer for $X. [Me]: I'd like $Y. [Company]: Your offer is for $X. [Me]: Well,…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#154

Post by mikenereson »

ryandrake wrote: post #51
chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. Unless you have some kind of very unique skill or you have other offers and the company really, really wants you, how exactly are you supposed to negotiate? Every comp negotiation I've ever had with a company has gone kind of like this: [Company]: Here's your offer for $X. [Me]: I'd like $Y. [Company]: Your offer is for $X. [Me]: Well,…

> We have 35 other candidates in the hiring pipeline

Sounds like low skill, or entry-level work. or nah?

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#155

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

derefr wrote: post #109
RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people negotiate net? Nobody negotiates net. It's not even practical. Your tax situation will depend of the other revenues you might receive on top of your wages and the deductions you are eligible to and your employer doesn't have to know about that.

Nobody negotiates net, but companies will keep in mind an employee's lowest possible tax bracket given their gross (and therefore their highest possible net ) when determining the cost:benefit of offering marginal "material compensation" increases (vs other components of total compensation) — both during initial negotiation, and when trying to design later incentives. Which is to say, if you're making USD$100k/yr wor…

Sorry but that’s unsubstantiated non sense.

To begin with, non monetary benefits have to be declared in most European countries and impact your tax rates and are taxed the same way than giving you more money so your whole dodgy reasoning immediately falls apart.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#156

Post by pesfandiar »

Suppafly wrote: post #140
medvezhenok wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magic incantation is competing offer . If they know you have alternatives, they are much more likely to negotiate. In fact the modern version of this guide is try to get several offers and negotiate them against each other (not you versus the company). Might be more difficult in the current market.

>The magic incantation is competing offer. Depends on the company. If you were applying where I work and tried to use a competing offer to get a better offer, they'd just suggest you go with the other offer.

Depends on what an employer is looking for: A relatively better pool of candidates or those who don't know how to ask for things.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#157

Post by lazide »

hhdhdbdb wrote: post #141
lazide wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is every negotiation I’ve ever seen, frankly. What else would you expect? Friendly tends to be called ‘charity’

Friendly would be win win. We'll pay you so you dont worry about money, and we win because you are great. Batna (looks better as a word) is there but in the distance.

Win/win also has some teeth under it somewhere, or they’d just give you everything yes? In your scenario, why not give you a billion dollars vs a million vs 100k?

BATNA (and I am every familiar with the term, as I’ve had to do a significant amount of negotiation) is the ‘plan B’ if there is no acceptable ‘good’ agreement.

If someone has no acceptable BATNA, their negotiation is essentially ‘please don’t beat me up too bad’, not ‘let’s see if we can agree on something that works for both of us’. No BATNA means you aren’t effectively negotiating, just begging to not be abused too badly.

Sometimes an employer doesn’t have a BATNA option, but that is rare. Usually it’s the employee which doesn’t have a plan B.

A BATNA when doing negotiations over salary, for instance, might be taking another offer with an otherwise less desirable company. Or continuing a job search for more time. Or becoming a sugar baby for an older woman somewhere, etc. or filing for bankruptcy.

Knowing what your own (and what the other sides) plan B is, is important to actually have a successful negotiation, because when your offer starts to look less desirable than their plan B, it isn’t going to go well.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#158

Post by VirusNewbie »

ryandrake wrote: post #51
chomp wrote: post #15

Ok yes this guide is fine, a lot of things are up for negotiation, and I think it’s a lot more widely known these days to negotiate for stuff. But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. They know it’s something you’re supposed to do, but they will try and negotiate things that are not negotiable (like making it a hard ask for extra contributions per paycheck for healthcare to mat…

> But man, a lot of the people out there absolutely still do not grok negotiating. Unless you have some kind of very unique skill or you have other offers and the company really, really wants you, how exactly are you supposed to negotiate? Every comp negotiation I've ever had with a company has gone kind of like this: [Company]: Here's your offer for $X. [Me]: I'd like $Y. [Company]: Your offer is for $X. [Me]: Well,…

>Unless you have some kind of very unique skill or you have other offers and the company really, really wants you, how exactly are you supposed to negotiate?

You can play hardball or softball. Hardball works when you have competing offers, and risks your offer being pulled.

Alternatively, you can just ask nicely. I've had luck saying something akin to "hey I'm super excited to join BigCo. I'm just curious, is there any way to move up the comp at all? Just checking, I don't know what the bands are, but if you can come up some, that'd be great. Either way, let me know I don't want to hold anything up, I'm excited to start".

Guess what? Sometimes the hiring manager has the power to come up 5,10,15k if you just ask. I've had luck and other times I've been told "nope" but i've never had anyone be upset.

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#159

Post by cutemonster »

sotix wrote: post #130
cutemonster wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "a LeetCode hard", is that because the problem is literally on the LeetCode website, among the hard ones? Or is it similar to LeetCode problems, although not actually on their website? Does everyone remember all question titles by heart and that's why they say it was Leetcode questions, or is it more figuratively speaking :-) I hope you'll find a place with an interview process that works for you.

It was a difficult problem, and I was genuinely interested in the solution. So I searched online after the interview and found that leetcode called it a hard problem.

Wow, so that problem was from the LeetCode website itself?

Was it with different parameters or different phrasing, ... Or everything was the same?

If same but different, I wonder how (un)likely it is that they came up with that problem themselves, independently, without knowing about the LeetCode version. (What would you think?)

(Nice that you found it anyway)

Re: Ask HN: Is patio11's salary negotiation guide relevant in today's market?

#160

Post by cutemonster »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #124
cutemonster wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both firmware and UX, makes me wonder, what did you study? (Something closer to hardware and theory than to design and UX if I were to guess?)

A few decades ago everyone learned C/C+ in school. Then might take an interest in gui programming, later read a book on what makes good ui. Over a decade or three, quite doable.

Yes but not firmware and circuits! :-)

Unless they studied sth like electrical engineering?

Post reply on HN