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Salary Negotiation

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Re: Salary Negotiation

#11

Post by jerf »

vox_mollis wrote: post #9

One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers, by default, maintain a very high correlation with nonassertiveness and dearth of social skills. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. For most of us, these factors are baked into our essence from childhood, and are virtually impossible to break. In the absence of concrete interaction examples or a corpus of negotiation scripts to analyze, none of his…

"One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers..."

It seems far more likely to me that Patrick has made it such a focus for him to share this advice is that he is intensely aware of it, rather than what you said.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#12

Post by brianwawok »

swombat wrote: post #10
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead, we run a pay evaluation process internally, including feedback about the value of the role and the person from all the people who interviewed the candidate. We publish all that feedback, as well as the suggestion/reasoning of our pay trustees (a group of people who use that feedback to try to place the candidate on our pay scale) None of those factors are why someone is worth $X salary. You say I'm worth $X.…

No one is worth any intrinsic amount. The amount is relative to the work they do, the industry they're in, the state of the economy, how many other people can do that job, how many have actually applied, etc. Any salary formula is entirely arbitrary. We have a pay scale simply because it is a useful tool for conversation, not because it represents any sort of intrinsic property of the person being placed on the pay s…

> Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation.

Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you a business trying to make as much money for the investors as possible? If the latter is true, why wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ?

(This is not Rhetorical, I actually know nothing about your business. But I do see this argument a lot from companies that are 100% for profit and do nothing to better the world)

Re: Salary Negotiation

#13

Post by havetocharge »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #8
swombat wrote: post #5

We're really trying to nail a good way to deal with salary negotiations when onboarding people, at GrantTree - one that gets out of this "gotcha" approach to salary. So far the best we've figured out is to be the first ones to name a number, and be super-transparent about how we arrived at that number. The reasoning is that "in a salary negotiation the first person to quote a number loses", so since we (as the employ…

Instead, we run a pay evaluation process internally, including feedback about the value of the role and the person from all the people who interviewed the candidate. We publish all that feedback, as well as the suggestion/reasoning of our pay trustees (a group of people who use that feedback to try to place the candidate on our pay scale) None of those factors are why someone is worth $X salary. You say I'm worth $X.…

This isn't correct.

When I say you're worth $X, I mean: "you're worth $X to me".

If you get a job offer elsewhere for $Y, you're still worth $X to me.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#14

Post by JoshDoody »

vox_mollis wrote: post #9

One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers, by default, maintain a very high correlation with nonassertiveness and dearth of social skills. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. For most of us, these factors are baked into our essence from childhood, and are virtually impossible to break. In the absence of concrete interaction examples or a corpus of negotiation scripts to analyze, none of his…

I completely understand what you're saying: This is exactly why I wrote my book and courses, and why I offer 1-on-1 coaching. And I focus very heavily on providing real tactics, templates, worksheets, scripts, and examples to make the process as transparent as possible.

For example, we talk about "The Dreaded Salary Question". Here's an article I wrote that discusses this question in detail along with what to expect and exactly how to respond: https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/the-dreaded-salary-que...

And we go into more detail in this episode.

To put a finer point on it: A lot of the reason I created Fearless Salary Negotiation is specifically to address the factors you mentioned. It's why a lot of my examples in the book involve software developers and related topics.

If I can clarify or elaborate on anything that was vague in the episode, please let me know so I can give more detailed information!

Thanks for your comment!

EDIT: I am on the fence about this, but I think it's extremely pertinent here. I mentioned I coach people and this is a big reason why. If you're a software engineer and you're tentative about negotiating, I can help you. https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/coach

Re: Salary Negotiation

#15

Post by swombat »

brianwawok wrote: post #12
swombat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is worth any intrinsic amount. The amount is relative to the work they do, the industry they're in, the state of the economy, how many other people can do that job, how many have actually applied, etc. Any salary formula is entirely arbitrary. We have a pay scale simply because it is a useful tool for conversation, not because it represents any sort of intrinsic property of the person being placed on the pay s…

> Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you a business trying to make as much money for the investors as possible? If the latter is true, why wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? (This is not Rhetorical, I actually know nothing about your business. B…

Neither. We're a purposeful, for-profit, founder-owned[1] company. Just because we are for-profit doesn't mean profit is our only motivation. It's a false dichotomy to suggest that because you want to make money that must be your only driver.

Our view of business is that, much like humans, it can achieve and balance multiple objectives. You want to make money: does that mean you want only that to the exclusion of or above other objectives like finding love, raising children, being a good person, etc? I assume not. We want to make money: does that mean we want only that to the exclusion of or above other objectives like having fulfilling work, working in an open organisation, being respectful of others, etc? No.

[1] Though opening up the shares to employees within the next couple of months... it's taken a while to put the right system in place. Options wouldn't work because we have no intention of ever selling the business.

Edit: Given your clarified question, I will also add that what we do is to help other tech businesses to raise government funding so they can develop cool tech. Many of them have raised money from investors - I don't think that necessarily means that their only purpose is money (though it's certainly true of some). See argument above.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#16

Post by ianstormtaylor »

brianwawok wrote: post #12
swombat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is worth any intrinsic amount. The amount is relative to the work they do, the industry they're in, the state of the economy, how many other people can do that job, how many have actually applied, etc. Any salary formula is entirely arbitrary. We have a pay scale simply because it is a useful tool for conversation, not because it represents any sort of intrinsic property of the person being placed on the pay s…

> Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you a business trying to make as much money for the investors as possible? If the latter is true, why wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? (This is not Rhetorical, I actually know nothing about your business. B…

Because getting to the point of being a successful business is a really long road, and going down it with someone whose primary motivation is to make money for themselves is going to make that trip way less fulfilling.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#17

Post by vox_mollis »

jerf wrote: post #11
vox_mollis wrote: post #9

One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers, by default, maintain a very high correlation with nonassertiveness and dearth of social skills. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. For most of us, these factors are baked into our essence from childhood, and are virtually impossible to break. In the absence of concrete interaction examples or a corpus of negotiation scripts to analyze, none of his…

"One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers..." It seems far more likely to me that Patrick has made it such a focus for him to share this advice is that he is intensely aware of it, rather than what you said.

Don't get me wrong, I understand and appreciate his motivation, but I doubt he fully comprehends the psychology he's up against. Apologies if I come across as too un-appreciatively negative toward his efforts.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#18

Post by vonmoltke »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #16
brianwawok wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you a business trying to make as much money for the investors as possible? If the latter is true, why wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? (This is not Rhetorical, I actually know nothing about your business. B…

Because getting to the point of being a successful business is a really long road, and going down it with someone whose primary motivation is to make money for themselves is going to make that trip way less fulfilling.

I assume everyone starting or working for a for-profit business is primarily (though not solely) motivated to make money for themselves. Otherwise, they wouldn't be starting or working at a for-profit business.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#19

Post by sokoloff »

vox_mollis wrote: post #9

One thing Patrick seems to be wholly ignorant of is that engineers, by default, maintain a very high correlation with nonassertiveness and dearth of social skills. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. For most of us, these factors are baked into our essence from childhood, and are virtually impossible to break. In the absence of concrete interaction examples or a corpus of negotiation scripts to analyze, none of his…

Really? While I'm at the point in my career where I don't use the proposed techniques, I think the advice is generally OK-to-good and was anything but vague.

If you identify as non-assertive and aren't interested in compensating for that during negotiations, you're going to get a particular result.

If you identify as non-assertive, but are willing to concretely work against that tendency for an aggregate of fifteen minutes to a max of two hours during negotiations, you're likely to get a much better outcome.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#20

Post by dshep »

Love these, but patio11 needs a better microphone setup, its so echo-y and robotic! Please take this as helpful feedback rather than hurtful criticism.
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