Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations • Hacker News Board

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#31

Post by inglor » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

pbz wrote: post #30

How do you guys estimate your market value? For example, if you go to salary.com there are many levels of software engineering (I, II, III, IV, etc). The description for each is quite vague and the difference between them is very small (or hard to notice) while the pay rate delta can be big.

The simplest advice is this: Interview, A LOT, take some time every week/month and schedule several interviews. After the 10th interview you'll have a very good valuation of your worth.

This is what I believe OP's biggest mistake is - had he interviewed more earlier, he could have gotten to $120K within a year most likely. He _was_ the guy making $75K back then.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#32

Post by tschellenbach » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

This is a great post about realizing growth in a dysfunctional company.

Alternatively you could simply join a company where they value your expertise and progress :) We're hiring in Boulder and Amsterdam: angel.co/stream

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#33

Post by Bahamut » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

I dislike this greatly, and it doesn't seem like a sustainable path - if the market crashes, and his/her skills don't match the compensation level, then it will backfire greatly & catch up to him/her.

I was able to boost my salary to $160k in 2 1/2 years from a starting salary of $50k, but through tireless improvement of my craft (self-studying, experimentation, and contributions to major open source libraries, including taking over leading development on one 10k+ starred project on GitHub), smart job searching, and being unafraid to walk away from offers that are too low. I never lied about competing offers, and about compensation, although I rarely will disclose my compensation in negotiations - if I do disclose it, then I am not afraid of walking away if the offer does not meet my criteria. The plus side is that this shields you more from engineering employment downturns, lets you do good work to genuinely improve the state of engineering, and opens up doors that are not available to most people - I get emailed about some unique opportunities that most don't get to see. And this is not to say that I could not have gotten more - I have turned down $300k+ positions already (took less $ for better work-life balance & more vacation).

One friend of mine mentioned he turned down large offers in favor of 35 (!) vacation days & a solid salary in a low cost of living area.

One does not need to be dishonest to get the salary & benefits combination one wants - one just needs to be steadfast at attempts to deflect you from those aims (i.e. "But you only make xxxxxx amount" or "We cannot afford to pay that").

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#34

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #27

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, in this case, he wasn't lying about his salary history. He was inflating (lying about) a competing offer (that he had no intention of taking). That's a lot harder to disprove...

...a lie, I added $20k to my current salary It's right in the text.

Ah, sorry. For some reason I thought you were talking about his initial job offer. My error.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#35

Post by inglor » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

gue5t wrote: post #5

This article is about salary negotiations, not software-engineering negotiations. I was hoping this would be about negotiating feature sets and timelines, which would actually be relevant to the set of people working on software (rather than being relevant to the set of people trying to make money; of course there is overlap).

The key difference is that software engineering negotiations aren't adversarial and no one wants you to overestimate or underestimate. There are numerous books on estimating software time, I recommend Fred Brook's The Mythical Man Month if you're looking for a classic.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#36

Post by zkhalique » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

(a lie, I added $14k to the original offer)

See... it's hard to be "totally honest" in sales, even of your own time, because of the red queen effect.

This was an integral step in the process of raising your salary. If you volunteer all information honestly, I am pretty sure that most players in the system will not have an obvious path to increasing your salary. Otherwise it would represent an arbitrage opportunity for everyone.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#37

Post by inglor » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #7

Two things: I went back to my original employer and said I had a new job offer for $70k, and I didn't want to negotiate, I just wanted their final, last ditch offer That's an incredibly awesome way to have a huge target painted on your back. A lot of employers get really pissed at this tactic but won't say so to your face. They will gladly give you that new salary for just enough time to get a (cheaper) replacement o…

It's worth mentioning that in some parts of the world (for example Israel) people don't have credit scores and you can't pay a service to find out what their income is.

Of course, lying is still mostly unnecessary, especially if you interview a lot and actually do have offers to back up your claims. Personally I think the hit your reputation would take from lying just isn't worth it.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#38

Post by seiji » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

gue5t wrote: post #5

This article is about salary negotiations, not software-engineering negotiations. I was hoping this would be about negotiating feature sets and timelines, which would actually be relevant to the set of people working on software (rather than being relevant to the set of people trying to make money; of course there is overlap).

It would be nice if we had actual software engineering negotiations instead of endless fighting over tiny architecture details.

But, the first rule of software engineer negotiations is — don't work with cowboy programmers who refuse to listen to others.

Once we've reached a formal "we need software negotiations" stage, it seems we've already lost. We only reached that stage because there's such an adversarial environment that regular discussions were fruitless.

Then it turns into a giant ego battle—the winner becomes whoever has the most political leverage, regardless of technical merit.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#39

Post by seiji » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

inglor wrote: post #35

gue5t wrote: post #5

This article is about salary negotiations, not software-engineering negotiations. I was hoping this would be about negotiating feature sets and timelines, which would actually be relevant to the set of people working on software (rather than being relevant to the set of people trying to make money; of course there is overlap).

The key difference is that software engineering negotiations aren't adversarial and no one wants you to overestimate or underestimate. There are numerous books on estimating software time, I recommend Fred Brook's The Mythical Man Month if you're looking for a classic.

software engineering negotiations aren't adversarial

Put 4 angry software developer men with wildly different opinions on The True Way Forward in a room and see how long it takes for the yelling and physical altercations to start.

Re: Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations

#40

Post by burnallofit » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #7

Two things: I went back to my original employer and said I had a new job offer for $70k, and I didn't want to negotiate, I just wanted their final, last ditch offer That's an incredibly awesome way to have a huge target painted on your back. A lot of employers get really pissed at this tactic but won't say so to your face. They will gladly give you that new salary for just enough time to get a (cheaper) replacement o…

I tried to look myself up, and indeed they don't have my current employer (a small startup). My guess is that only larger employers participate.

More importantly, this raises significant privacy issues. How can a current or former employer make sensitive data like salary information easily and publicly accessible, without permission? That ought to be illegal.

I agree that it's really wrong to lie about one's salary; the best answer is to not disclose that, and probably to point to available information like glassdoor, or just be honest about your expectations.