I have always been honest with what I'm being compensated. In six years I've nearly doubled my salary.
Salary Negotiation
371–380 of 419 posts
Re: Salary Negotiation
#372One 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…
Out of the three sections that TFA is broken down into, two of them deal exclusively with how (and why) to improve your negotiation skills, and the third one is roughly 50 percent dedicated to the topic. If dedicating 83 percent of your essay to how and why to overcome "nonassertiveness and a dearth of social skills" isn't enough, exactly how much would be enough?
I personally found his advice extremely actionable, and I'm keenly aware that I struggle more with being assertive in negotiations than probably everyone I've ever worked with.
I'm very sorry if this comes off as insulting, but I have only ever known two developers who really needed much more basic advice than what Patrick is offering here, and I believe that both of them are mentally ill. (One has Asperger's Syndrome, and the other, I strongly suspect, has severe clinical depression which is going undiagnosed and untreated.)
Now, if you are in this situation yourself, it is absolutely worth your time to seek treatment, or at least research and practice using coping mechanisms that apply to the issues that you struggle with most. Seriously, just memorizing a few new sets of behaviors and then "executing the program" in appropriate situations can profoundly improve your quality of life, in ways that go far beyond getting a fatter paycheck.
If you want to discuss any of this with me further, feel free to contact me at afishionado@gmail.com.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 usuall…
Do recruiters ever provide this information to candidates for a fee? If I was in the market for a job it would be great to pay an experienced recruiter to objectively judge my skills and say how much I should ask.
Why would they charge? They get a placement fee based on a percentage of the starting salary. It's in their interest that the candidate gets the best deal possible.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've struggled with this a lot. I used to believe in making it a negotiation. The more I've seen, I've switched to paying for the position. Unless hard negotiation is part of the job description, it shouldn't be rewarded. I've also found that rewarding hard negotiators pushes companies down the path of paying men more than women for the same job. If you can't stay in business without underpaying a lot of people, your…
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…
> When companies like Apple, Google, and other Silicon Valley companies agree [..], and threaten to replace tech workers in the US with less-expensive H1B visas [..]
When did these Silicon Valley companies threaten to hire less-expensive H1B visas? Do you have any citation on this? Are the H1Bs working for these companies paid less than non-H1Bs? Looking at the publicly available salary data for these companies - AmaGoogFaceSoft kind - seem to pay their H1Bs very well.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 usuall…
Do you have any other good sources? As a marketing guy who wears a lot of hats, it is hard to identify consistent titles that represent what I bring to the table, and PayScale didn't seem to be great, and Glassdoor was hit or miss (in large part due to geographic data despite living in the Bay Area where they should have lots of data). There is serious information asymmetry between recruiters/employers vs employees,…
Glassdoor is okay for the UK at least, I use it to check the Software Developer and Solutions Architecture average wages nearby to were I live. The amount of data seems to be getting worse lately though, wonder if certain companies are asking for data to be removed.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially helpfull for engineers, the salaries and titles of H1B visa holders is public
This is actually a dangerous source to draw conclusions from. Even ignoring the qualitative bias of H1-B workers having less leverage than an average worker with easy mobility which likely causes relative wage depression in that data set, the key issue is that a significant chunk of a high salary software engineer is in equity and it rarely shows up in the labor certificate application. So H1-B data is mostly base sa…
Both good points. All of the data mentioned has its role. The key with H1B data is that the biases are better known. With self reported datasets, who knows what the poster's motivation is? Especially with companies that don't have many data points!
The risk to an employee is asking for too little and H1B data can help put of floor on that number.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the open follow-up response. Re-reading, I realise my previous response was a bit unnecessarily snarky. Sorry for that. > I find it difficult to work with people who are compensated less than me. I want my coworkers to be better than me. I much prefer that attitude to the opposite :-) Though surely even better is to work with great people whom you're learning from in a variety of ways, whether or not they…
What about a simple policy of revisiting the salary discussion on a regular (annual?) basis. As long as it's transparent and universal (not just for people who ask for a raise ), it seems like it'd be in line with your philosophy.
We do that already.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#378Earlier 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…
The best thing you could do is to have two offers. In that case the companies bid for you on the perceived value you will provide them. And you turn the table. Btw - anecdotal evidence points that is a way to get a raise too - company Y is offering X,Z and C. Can you top it so I can stay here?
Re: Salary Negotiation
#379I hate salary negotiations. I'm just not good at them. Especially when I'm forced to do it on the phone.
Right now I'm earning a good chunk less than my coworkers with same or lower working experience and it's slightly annoying. On the other side I know of a really good coworker that earns even less than me.
I'm a strong supporter of open salaries. Don't give people who can negotiate better more but implement a system that applies to everyone the same. Take seniority into account, work experience, a base and calculate the salary of every engineer based on that. Fair and open.
Re: Salary Negotiation
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do recruiters ever provide this information to candidates for a fee? If I was in the market for a job it would be great to pay an experienced recruiter to objectively judge my skills and say how much I should ask.
Why would they charge? They get a placement fee based on a percentage of the starting salary. It's in their interest that the candidate gets the best deal possible.
They get their fee if you are placed. This puts them in a conflict of interest situation where if they can convince you that you are worth less than your true price you will be easier to place. Also the cheaper you are the less work they will have to do to get you placed in a new position.
You really only want advice from someone you are paying and who cannot benefit from under pricing you.