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Never accept a counter-offer

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Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#131

Post by FT_intern »

fecak wrote: post #18

Recruiter here, almost 20 years. Do a search for articles warning about counteroffers and you'll find almost all are written by agency recruiters. Why is that? It's because agency recruiters lose probably millions in fees every year when candidates accept a counter. I have personally lost 30K on a single fee due to counteroffer on more than one occasion. It hurts quite a bit - that's a car - which is why if you accep…

Is there any opportunity to negotiate with the recruiter for a cut of the fees/commission as a signing bonus?

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#132

Post by MisterBastahrd »

xenadu02 wrote: post #87
jonaf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make $30,000 USD for placing a person??? I'm in the wrong line of work.

Eh it's like selling houses in San Francisco. You only do a few a year so the high commissions need to sustain you. Plus the market goes up and down and you need to save enough from commission to cover market downturns. All that said really good recruiters are well paid.

... most recruiters who are just decent can place 3-5 candidates a month.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#133

Post by FT_intern »

DominikR wrote: post #72
econner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you quit to freelance?

If you have the experience, contacts and social skills (very underestimated by many professionals in our field) you can make much more as a freelancer/contractor. I'm now self employed for 4 years and I earn 6x as much as I earned in my last job. (though I believe I was underpaid in my last job)

How does freelancing income compare to working as a senior engineer at a big corp ($300k total comp if you include bonuses, benefits and subsidized health insurance)?

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#134

Post by robrenaud »

ryandrake wrote: post #114
fecak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually part of the recruiter's script when trying to overcome a candidate accepting a counteroffer. I think the line I was taught was "you only got a raise because you held a gun to their head". This isn't a line I would use, just telling you what recruiters are trained to say.

It's true though, isn't it? Another thing to consider: "Will you have to hold a gun to their head every year?" Interviewing is a pain, and I wouldn't want to have be doing it continuously in order to keep myself at market rate. Let's say (conservatively) you need to interview at an average of 20 companies to get an offer, and that it takes an average of 4 days to prep, conduct each interview, and follow-up. That's 80…

Maybe it's better to spend several weekends to read algorithms books and practice topcoder, and then you'll need to interview at something like 1.5 companies before you get an offer.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#135

Post by pugworthy »

Some counter offers are easy to reject. A while back I applied to another part of the company for a position that was a promotion, and got offered the position.

My manager, who was notified (inner company), comes to me and says, "Hey, if I could get you the promotion, would you stay? Even though I don't think you deserve it?"

"Mmm... no thanks."

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#136

Post by fecak »

FT_intern wrote: post #131
fecak wrote: post #18

Recruiter here, almost 20 years. Do a search for articles warning about counteroffers and you'll find almost all are written by agency recruiters. Why is that? It's because agency recruiters lose probably millions in fees every year when candidates accept a counter. I have personally lost 30K on a single fee due to counteroffer on more than one occasion. It hurts quite a bit - that's a car - which is why if you accep…

Is there any opportunity to negotiate with the recruiter for a cut of the fees/commission as a signing bonus?

You could always try, but most would probably think this lacks tact. Would you consider asking the car salesman to personally pay for extra car options in order for you to buy the car? Recruiter fees are often very high (too high in my opinion, which is why we have bad recruiter behavior) so if you get a high salary a recruiter might be willing to kick back a small amount. I'm not sure how the hiring company would feel about this though - if the comp package being offered wasn't enough, you might appear like someone who won't be happy with the comp.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#137

Post by WhitneyLand »

donretag wrote: post #104
byoung2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Counteroffers can be great tools to increase your salary, whether you accept or reject them. In my case it was purely about money. I was making $117k and I wanted a raise, but the company only wanted to give options. If it were an early stage Google or Uber, I'd go for it, but not this company. I wanted cash. They played the old "not…

I once was searching for a file locally (Windows) and my search ended up searching the shared drive of my company, which contained a zip file. Inside this zip file were excel spreadsheets containing the salaries of all employees (around 50 IIRC). The instructions from the CEO were to limit raises due to the economic conditions at the time (very true). Apparently the tech manager was not as good fighting for us, since…

This is one of the many benefits to working for a high performing manager. They will have more clout to argue on your behalf for raises and promotions. Not to mention it's easier to grow around higher caliber people.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#138

Post by [deleted] »

FT_intern wrote: post #133
DominikR wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have the experience, contacts and social skills (very underestimated by many professionals in our field) you can make much more as a freelancer/contractor. I'm now self employed for 4 years and I earn 6x as much as I earned in my last job. (though I believe I was underpaid in my last job)

How does freelancing income compare to working as a senior engineer at a big corp ($300k total comp if you include bonuses, benefits and subsidized health insurance)?

[deleted]

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#139

Post by technofiend »

byoung2 wrote: post #36
fecak wrote: post #18

Recruiter here, almost 20 years. Do a search for articles warning about counteroffers and you'll find almost all are written by agency recruiters. Why is that? It's because agency recruiters lose probably millions in fees every year when candidates accept a counter. I have personally lost 30K on a single fee due to counteroffer on more than one occasion. It hurts quite a bit - that's a car - which is why if you accep…

My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Counteroffers can be great tools to increase your salary, whether you accept or reject them. In my case it was purely about money. I was making $117k and I wanted a raise, but the company only wanted to give options. If it were an early stage Google or Uber, I'd go for it, but not this company. I wanted cash. They played the old "not…

I worked at a savings and loan back during the 1988/1989 crisis that took them out and we were no different. Hired as a 'C' programmer I was quickly turned into a Sybase DBA, sys-admin and anything else I could handle. In fact I ended up writing an in-house payroll system so like you I had inside information.

When the sys-admin left I asked for a raise since I was doing his job and my own. They made some excuses about his better education (he was a few hours away from his PhD in music) and the fact the company was under FDIC control.

I found a new job at a local oil company but contracting: my new salary was more than double what the bank laid. My bosses exact words when I quit were "Oh, shit" because he knew all along he'd been screwing me and he was never going to get a programmer/DBA/UNIX sys-admin for $27k/yr.

He asked if he could make a counter offer it was with great satisfaction I was able to reply "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#140

Post by technofiend »

byoung2 wrote: post #36
fecak wrote: post #18

Recruiter here, almost 20 years. Do a search for articles warning about counteroffers and you'll find almost all are written by agency recruiters. Why is that? It's because agency recruiters lose probably millions in fees every year when candidates accept a counter. I have personally lost 30K on a single fee due to counteroffer on more than one occasion. It hurts quite a bit - that's a car - which is why if you accep…

My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Counteroffers can be great tools to increase your salary, whether you accept or reject them. In my case it was purely about money. I was making $117k and I wanted a raise, but the company only wanted to give options. If it were an early stage Google or Uber, I'd go for it, but not this company. I wanted cash. They played the old "not…

I worked at a savings and loan back during the 1988/1989 crisis that took them out and we were no different. Hired as a 'C' programmer I was quickly turned into a Sybase DBA, sys-admin and anything else I could handle. In fact I ended up writing an in-house payroll system so like you I had inside information.

When the sys-admin left I asked for a raise since I was doing his job and my own. They made some excuses about his better education (he was a few hours away from his PhD in music) and the fact the company was under FDIC control.

I found a new job at a local oil company but contracting: my new salary was more than double what the bank paid. My boss's exact words when I quit were "Oh, shit" because he knew all along he'd been screwing me and he was never going to get a programmer/DBA/UNIX sys-admin for $27k/yr.

He asked if he could make a counter offer it was with great satisfaction I was able to reply "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"

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