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Salary Negotiation

kalzumeus.com

291–300 of 419 posts

Re: Salary Negotiation

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to name some numbers? Ideally with context. I'd like to know how high is high in SV. Especially for junior positions.

I'd say if you're in SV, have a pretty good background, interview at top-paying public firms like Google/Facebook, get good scores, and negotiate very well, you can expect around - new grad: ~175k - 4 years: ~300k - 6 years: ~350k Note that I'm including equity, expected cash bonuses, 401k matching, and sign-on bonuses (which I normally divide by 4, since 4 years seems like a typical period to stay at these companies…

the 4/6 year ones are way too high unless you're going for some sort of specific role they need. like if you specialize in robotics or machine learning

Re: Salary Negotiation

#292
Anyone an idea what I can reasonable expect as a student in Germany?

I am working for a company in the Metal industry as a software Developer. I am working very independently.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should be anchoring to a number that is high but realistic, and negotiating from a position of strength. I very much agree with you and my other comments in this thread are very much advocating for this position. I'd just like to add an important caveat by saying anecdotally in multiple occasions I've seen friends (notably people who are just moving in to the Valley from elsewhere and/or right out of college) t…

Probably true. I'm actually in LA, and we experience this too. Honestly, the best thing you can do in salary negotiation (and in almost any negotiation, probably) is to gather as much data as you can to inform your position. Similar jobs in similarly-funded companies at similar stages should yield a pretty strong dataset of numbers by which you can construct your own ask. Easier said than done, for sure, but if you c…

What do you by inform your position? Can you give an example of what to look for?

Re: Salary Negotiation

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to this is easy: don't bother with that uncooperative recruiter. Remember, we're talking about trying to jump from one high paying job to a higher paying job here, so why bother with uncooperative recruiters? They need you much worse than you need them.

I agree. Following that recipe, you decide on ending the phone call with a nice, but uncooperative about blurting out a number recruiter who claims they can be competitive. Now the question is this: if you are willing to blow off the whole process anyway on that call, why not at least try giving them a number and give them a chance and see if they would beat it?

Sure, if you want to interview for the position so badly, name some arbitrary high number. But Patrick's original point is that you should never disclose your current salary or the number you're truly willing to settle for, since it sets a premature upper ceiling on what you could end up making.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#295
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok I accept that answer at face value. Now, is the inverse also true? If I take a job with you- can I work 4 day work weeks and stick strictly to the 8 hour workday? Money is not your only motivator so I don't see why this would be a problem for your employees.

We have two people who are on 4-day weeks. It depends on your role(s)... Some are less compatible with part time work.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#296
post #139

I've heard this "don't name a number first" advice so many times, but personally, it never seems to work. My current comp is significantly higher compared to others with my level of experience. So when I refuse to give a number, the recruiter ends up guessing a number that is significantly lower, and making a lowball offer. I've also had many other experiences where after many hours of interviews, I find out that the…

I've had the opposite experience. I've avoided naming the number at least twice where the company then offered something higher than the range I had in mind.

Better, since I didn't start, I was able to still negotiate on top of their initial offer.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably true. I'm actually in LA, and we experience this too. Honestly, the best thing you can do in salary negotiation (and in almost any negotiation, probably) is to gather as much data as you can to inform your position. Similar jobs in similarly-funded companies at similar stages should yield a pretty strong dataset of numbers by which you can construct your own ask. Easier said than done, for sure, but if you c…

What do you by inform your position? Can you give an example of what to look for?

Well, recruiters are in the unique position of getting to talk to tens (or sometimes hundreds) of candidates a week for any given position, and asking them all a bit about salary usually yields a workable model for the market for any given role.

Some recruiters also have access to data from VCs or from other salary reports (there are a number of good institutions that run compensation surveys - access to these usually costs lots of money). Glassdoor is also a good source of data (sometimes) and PayScale is even better.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#298
I think the most important bit about negotiation that I've learned and read is this: if you're not willing to walk away, your attempts to negotiate will fail. If you're not willing to say "sorry we can't come to a middle ground here" and leave the conversation with no regrets, you'll eventually cave in and lose. (This has been my biggest problem wrt salary negotiations. When I get an offer from a company that I like, I'm almost always unwilling to give it up. Having multiple offers on the table is the best alternative to this.)

Re: Salary Negotiation

#299
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without salary negotiation, the company gets to choose the price. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley has shown that it is willing to collude to keep that price down. Therefore, when companies argue that they're banning salary negotiation to "promote equality", you should assume that this equality is merely a gimmick to hide the true purpose: lower wages. If there really is a difference in negotiating ability between women…

Women can get (possibly unintentionally, possibly not) punished for exhibiting negotiation and leadership traits that are valued in men. A friend recently had an offer, ready to sign, but the salary was lower than she wanted. She wrote back asking if there was room to move upward. She had the offer withdrawn .

This is pretty unfortunate. But we don't know if the company would have done the same for a male.
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