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Salary Negotiation

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Re: Salary Negotiation

#121

Post by LanceH »

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…

Another way to approach this problem is to not anchor salaries based on previous salary. I've worked at a company where we hired obviously talented people with little experience. We hired them on as jr devs, with commensurate salaries, but within a year their salaries had increased to their productivity levels (30-40%).

I've seen too many people with low salaries get "exceptional" raises of 5% when everyone in the company gets 3%. So you have an employee who works his way out of tech support into dev admin but he's the bottom of a very large band. There is no hope for that person to get to salary parity when mountains have to be moved to go from 3% to 5%.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#122

Post by dpweb »

paulddraper wrote: post #103
dpweb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking the salary question of a prospect is un-necessary, and doing it to find opportunities to low ball someone, it's game-playing - it's wrong. The company should know about how much that person is worth. Low balling really isn't necessary to live up to your management responsbilities on the company side of it. On the employee side, best to get out of the question as quick as possible. One thing to say is, I have o…

> The company should know about how much that person is worth. If anything, a person would know even better how much they are "worth". E.g. they know the necessarily short interview wasn't accurate.

Not to that company. I may be worth 150 in the marketplace, but that company pays everyone 120. The company is finding people at 120 and balks at the 150. The employee probably goes somewhere else and that's it.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#123

Post by sethd »

Mendenhall wrote: post #106

It was always pretty simple for me personally, If you don't want to pay me what I want, you are free to hire someone else. I find the most important part is being able to walk away, If you negotiate from a position of weakness or need you are behind already. If I am hiring I know what I can afford to pay, what I think the position is "worth" and what I want out of it and make an offer according. I like ideally to pay…

> I like ideally to pay for work not for hours etc, if you give me what I want I don't care if I am paying you $3000 dollars and you worked a half hour and slept for a week out of town

I would say it almost never works out this way, more likely you end up doing a lot more work than you originally imagined and thus bringing your hourly way down. There's also a strong incentive for the buyer to manipulate this to their advantage.

The exception would be very small and predictable jobs (tasks?) but for everything else my advice would be to always get paid based on hours actually worked.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#124

Post by greggman »

solotronics wrote: post #79
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…

Money is the primary motivation to work. Would you be upset at an employee for working on their own project or for a different company during business hours? If you would not allow this then money is your primary motivation. You are giving money to the employee for ONE reason, you are buying their time to produce something of value for your company. Saying you aren't interested in people who are primarily motivated b…

As someone who once took a 50% pay cut to do do something I wanted to do (work in Japan) and another 25% pay cut many years later to work on a project I really wanted to work on I don't know if I can agree that money is the primary motivation to work. Maybe for you? Maybe even for most people? Although I don't think I know a single person who is working for money. If that's all they wanted they'd be doing jobs that pay more.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#125

Post by 15155 »

rm999 wrote: post #94
codegeek wrote: post #76

Whenever I am negotiating a salary, even if I have to reveal what I make now, I will end that statement with "But based on my experience and value that I bring to the table, I am expecting at least xyz for my new role otherwise it is not worth it for me to quit my current job". This way, you make the whole "current salary" irrelevant. The point is that any good employer will NEVER let go of a candidate who is an exce…

Completely agreed on negotiating without the "current salary" perspective. I've always requested to keep my current salary secret, but I've never met a hiring manager/HR recruiter that's ok with this. I suppose knowing what I make comforts them that their offer isn't completely crazy, but I think it's also evidence of a disturbing bias against the unemployed/underemployed.

> I've never met a hiring manager/HR recruiter that's ok with this

There's a very simple position to take here: "My compensation is a function of the value I will be providing to your company, not the value I provide to my current employer."

Be assertive. At least in the United States, short of a backchannel reference check, a prospective employer has absolutely no way of confirming anything you say - a fact that can be brought to light if this kind of question ever comes up.

At the moment, for good talent, it's a seller's market.

> evidence of a disturbing bias against the unemployed/underemployed

There is a definite bias against un(der)employed. This has been well studied. Furthermore: your BATNA while employed is infinitely better (for most people).

Re: Salary Negotiation

#126

Post by 15155 »

TrickzOnU wrote: post #72
arielweisberg wrote: post #54

My observation is that salary negotiation has little to do with negotiation. The management side of the table is never thinking in terms of economics and has no idea what their BATNA is. I think this comes from HR and leadership which can't quantify what the right balance is for comp vs their BATNA. For engineers this is especially challenging because metrics are hard to come by and correlate with the $$$ going out t…

I've been working for over a decade. There is ONE and ONLY ONE rule i've seen universally followed by HR -- your pay rises with the # of people reporting to you. Regardless of whatever managers say about running a lean shop or budget or whatever -- the more people you hire and manager, the more money you make. If you can do the work in six months, tell them 18 and hire two others. If you can do the work with 4 FTEs,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: Salary Negotiation

#127

Post by eastbayjake »

pm215 wrote: post #116

So something I'd like to get advice on is: what do you do negotiation-wise if actually salary is not the thing you care most about? Suppose you (for health reasons or just because you don't need the extra money and like the reduced stress) want or need to work less than the usual five-day week -- at what point do you bring up the "hey, how about a four-day week" question, when the typical employer is looking for a fi…

It seems like the same principle is in play: demonstrate your value first, then talk about terms after they're sold on you and want to make an offer. I can't imagine any company that would flat-out refuse a talented candidate over a 4-day week request, but I think most would sideline you if it was brought up before you'd demonstrated the value you can add to their business. In fact, I'll bet many companies would view a 10% paycut for a 10% reduction in hours (4 days @ 9 hrs/day) as a no-brainer win to get a talented hire.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#128

Post by iumtuip2001 »

pm215 wrote: post #116

So something I'd like to get advice on is: what do you do negotiation-wise if actually salary is not the thing you care most about? Suppose you (for health reasons or just because you don't need the extra money and like the reduced stress) want or need to work less than the usual five-day week -- at what point do you bring up the "hey, how about a four-day week" question, when the typical employer is looking for a fi…

I think you need to bring a request like that to the table, early in the hiring process. And whether or not they "throw your resume in the bin" will depend on how you frame the question.

- "Are you guys open to the idea of a lower salary, in favor of an extra day off? I'd love to work on my wood working, and spend time with my kids... Time is more valuable than money right now".

v.s.

- "I'll take that salary, and I want an extra day off every week."

Re: Salary Negotiation

#129

Post by lgieron »

swombat wrote: post #35
vonmoltke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That assumption doesn't bear out in practice, in my experience. There are plenty of people who believe that for-profit businesses can also achieve great, positive purposes in the world, and want to be a part of it. Cases in point: Tesla and SpaceX. They aren't charities. They are very purposeful.

> Cases in point: Tesla and SpaceX. They aren't charities. They are very purposeful.

Those are just two companies, ran by the same guy. I think finding even a couple dozen more examples would be very difficult.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#130

Post by gricardo99 »

dionidium wrote: post #45
qznc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "in a salary negotiation the first person to quote a number loses" This assumption is wrong. Read about the anchoring effect. Your process still seems fine though.

If the assumption is that employers tend to quote a higher initial number than prospective employees, then the anchoring effect supports the claim that the first person to quote a number loses.

What's that assumption based on? I would assume the opposite, that the employer negotiates in their self-interests, and tend to quote lower numbers.
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