171–180 of 195 posts
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Maybe instead of: > [Me]: I’d like $Y You could try: > [Me]: That matches my base salary at the moment but my current employer gives me healthcare and a car allowance so I would be out of pocket if I moved from my current job. In addition I currently am eligible for a 10% bonus. Would you consider an additional $5k/yr to cover some of this? I would love to move… although I can’t justify a pay cut, but think this is a…
[Company]: We don't care. Your offer is for $X. Are you interested or not?
Of course people can say no to things, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask when there is a good probability that they would say yes (particularly if you ask for the right amount in the right way) and very little downside.
The most important part of negotiation: Having an offer in the first place. Unfortunately, I and a dozen other software devs (all of whom I know personally, and all of whom are amazing) are not getting any interviews, much less offers. None of us have ever experienced a drought like this before, either. So... ??? Thankfully, we're all still currently employed.
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 have commented on this before but if someone is applying for Senior or above, seeing them live code a random algo with weird requirements seems less valuable to me than actually discussing architecture, previous projects and personality.
Even talking through a small project (with 0 code involved) would tell me so much about someone than what I've experienced in the last year or so while looking for a job.
So, in my opinion companies are what became weird. I don't know but even the smallest startup seems to feel they need to have their hiring pipeline be like Google or something.
10-15 years ago, I would just meet a manager and someone in the engineering team, have 1 hour chat with them and instantly know whether I'm hired or not. Now it's 4 interviews from the CEO to the HR and their grandmas.
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>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.
So in other words, the offer is non-negotiable? In that case you could still work for that company, but would your company offer a higher salary with any other negotiating strategy?
This kind of requires companies winning above and beyond anybody else. Those are rare.
Every where else, its work as usual and people as usual. Nobody is important. People join and leave all the time. They could care less about whatever other offers you have.
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I think fully remote expectation in non-metro areas can be a big hurdle. I know many startups here in SF who are looking to hire good candidates. But they want in-office presence at least a few days a week. Someone summed it up nicely for me - remote work gives you speed. Colocation (typically office) gives you velocity. A startup needs velocity.
With modern teleconferencing tools, it doesn't matter. If you feel that in-person time is important, then do what we did at my current company: They hired me. I know everyone at the local state university, from professors to students. We hired from that pool. Everyone is still remote, but our local group gets together once a week for lunch. For $100-$150 a week (yes, it really is that cheap in this area), the company…
Speak for yourself? I personally find Zoom to be extremely lacking. No eye contact, no body language, people having problems with wifi or other device issues, no serendipitous chats around hallways or watercoolers etc all affect the quality of communication.
As I said, founders and CEOs are already voting with their choices. Most of the big companies have already embraced RTO. A majority of the new startups I am seeing insist on at least few days in office. There are a few which are fully remote but they seem to be a minority.
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It’s hard to extrapolate to the whole market, but I can provide my personal experience. I was laid off, and my unemployment benefits have stopped, so finding a job is a bit more desperate for me than it has been in the past. Now I’m dealing with algorithms technical interviews, but they don’t mesh well with my style of problem solving at all. I like to quietly think on a problem by myself first. If it’s an exceptiona…
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 is not uncommon to have either verbatim or lightly modified leetcode problems as technical challenges for interviews. I think Facebook now makes it standard you need to be able to solve 2 leetcode medium questions in a 45 minute interview.
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A good example of non-negotiable, while traveling overseas, for one particular company, I was just randomly doing an expense report - and noticed there was a "medical" line-item in my expense report, that I figured I would use for cough-drops that I had purchased. Finance of course went ballistic, because the policy against expensing anything with that line item was absolutely forbidden (which begs the question as to…
That medical line is not in air quotes. Not "medical", but medical, generally for emergency out-of-pocket expenses associated with urgent medical treatment occurring as a result of the business trip, immediate care due to travel-related or trip-related incidents. Not for pre-existing health, and not for cough-drops.
(The thing is - when doing expense reports - it usually was pretty random which line-item you grabbed for some things - there were two or three categories that might make sense. Not so with that medical line item).
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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.
If you've done a fair amount of leetcode problems you can recognize them and feel their levels. Then afterwards you can search and confirm your expectations. It is not uncommon to have either verbatim or lightly modified leetcode problems as technical challenges for interviews. I think Facebook now makes it standard you need to be able to solve 2 leetcode medium questions in a 45 minute interview.
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…
Maybe HN should mandate comments in these threads to be prefixed with:
"[USA resident that never struggled to find a job]"
How do you think? I think it will help not skew the discussions so severely in the direction of privileged SV engineers.
Truth is, most of the programmers out there face terrible HRs and the deal is binary -- you either accept all of it (with very rare exceptions with super small wiggle rooms) or just go look for a job elsewhere.