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Salary Negotiation

kalzumeus.com

381–390 of 419 posts

Re: Salary Negotiation

#381

What a gross, unpleasant world this article describes.

"How to trick everyone in to over-paying and over-compensating you, which you can then use to become even more over-paid and over-compensated as you hop jobs"

I guess "How to break the cycle of greed" probably wouldn't go over too well with them or their target audience.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#382

Hi everyone! That's me you hear talking to Patrick ;) If you have any questions about the episode or salary negotiation in general, ask away! As you can probably tell, I love talking about this stuff!

Hey Josh, i have one question - how do the rules about disclosing salary change when you're talking to an external recruiter (from an agency)? I don't quite understand who's "side" they are on - on one hand, it seems reasonable to tell them the real range i'm looking for upfront so they can narrow the search, on the other hand they might reveal that to the employer..

Not Josh, but I would say they're on their own side. They get paid when you accept, so the want both the company to raise it's rates and you to lower yours.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. We are in a highly competitive market, and have a number of interesting projects going on to disrupt that market that won't pay off immediately. If we don't manage our costs reasonably well we won't stay in business. Money is like rocket fuel. If you're accumulating it for its own sake, rather than to get somewhere, I'd say you're doing it wrong - but that's just my opinion...

If you are not paying top of market wages, one or more of the following has to be true: 1. You don't believe top developers are intrinsically 'worth' the amount that FB/Goog/Amzn/ and many other SV companies pay, that it's not a net win for the company to have top talent. 2. You think that you don't need top developers, that really you're just going to be fine recruiting a bunch of B players, and it's some other 'thi…

Where does it say GrantTree pays significantly less than market rate?

Re: Salary Negotiation

#384
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly never understood the notion of not naming a number first (that is if you know what you're worth). Take the number you want to make, add 15%, and they'll likely negotiate down to the actual number you want. It's really not that hard. Take this as an example: Say you currently make $80k and you want a 10% bump. So you're looking for $88k. Take that number and add 15%. Your ask is now around $100k. They may s…

Your example numbers show how you lastly underestimate what tech jobs pay, and you are inviting an employer to low ball and you won't even know

No, that would be a decent salary for early to mid career tech workers outside the bay area.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#385

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…

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?

I would not recommend the raise strategy unless you have a very impersonal relationship with your manager OR you're 100% willing and able to walk (e.g. offer is in front of you and can be signed that day).

Managers are human beings too and don't like being put at gunpoint by their employees. It's very much the nuclear option IMO.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#386

Earlier 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.

Buy recruiters at your current company a beer. If you keep in contact, especially once they've left, you can get all sorts of information.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly never understood the notion of not naming a number first (that is if you know what you're worth). Take the number you want to make, add 15%, and they'll likely negotiate down to the actual number you want. It's really not that hard. Take this as an example: Say you currently make $80k and you want a 10% bump. So you're looking for $88k. Take that number and add 15%. Your ask is now around $100k. They may s…

The rationale (which I don't agree with) is "what if their range is a lot higher than your guess? Then you're losing out!"

That's what things like Glassdoor are for

Re: Salary Negotiation

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would not recommend the raise strategy unless you have a very impersonal relationship with your manager OR you're 100% willing and able to walk (e.g. offer is in front of you and can be signed that day). Managers are human beings too and don't like being put at gunpoint by their employees. It's very much the nuclear option IMO.

If I had good relationship with my manager, he would have offered a raise without me having to ask for it.

What is your leverage if you don't have competing offer?

Re: Salary Negotiation

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Why do you think that would be "profiteering as your main motivator" to have as a general principle that as you scale your work you also scale your salary? I'm not sure how that follows. It also seems to be the general principle in all the companies I'm aware of that support part time work, but perhaps there's something I'm missing. I'm all ears.

>Why do you think that would be "profiteering as your main motivator" to have as a general principle that as you scale your work you also scale your salary? I'm not sure how that follows. I'm in 100% agreement with you. So you do pay less to those who work 4 days a week. That's fine and it makes sense. Just confirming. Then I don't even need to ask: you're also saying that for every hour over 8 hours staff is paid ov…

No, we don't pay overtime. There hasn't been a recent decision about that, so it's more a historical artefact at this point, but my rationale for not paying overtime (apart from the fact that it's uncommon to get overtime pay as a full time employee in the UK) is that I don't think overtime should be encouraged in any way. For the same reason we don't allow people to sell their (30 days) yearly paid holiday allowance back to the company - the days are there to take them, not to trade them for a bit of extra pay.

If I'm understanding your argument right, I think you're saying that because we try to evaluate how much people should be paid in a rational way that includes some assumptions around time being correlated to amount of work, that means we are "profiteering". I'm not sure that's worth dignifying with an answer, but here goes:

GrantTree is a business. We need to make a profit in order to continue to exist, to grow, to be an exciting place to work, to have the resources to invest in our people, to be able to develop new products, and so on. We also need to compete against other businesses in the same market, some of whom are quite aggressive. If we get the balance between people's contributions and their compensations wrong, we'll be uncompetitive and won't survive. It's that simple and has nothing to do with profiteering.

Re: Salary Negotiation

#390
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…

It's terrible advice as most companies are not likely in the range one is seeking and therefore are just a colossal waste of time. Seriously this article tells me to do three phone screens and one or two in person interviews before finding out the company is so far short of what I'm seeking that I won't take the job regardless of any other factors. Sometimes I wonder about people who write such advice and question whether they have actually gone through the job finding process while working another job, or worse, while watching one's emergency fund dwindle while unemployed. My experience suggests otherwise.
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