Never accept a counter-offer • Hacker News Board

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#201

Post by sitkack » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 3:44 AM UTC

fecak wrote: post #94

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 believe it. Especially when it's a young recruiter, not used to people changing their minds, and really needing the money. Once you've been recruiting for a while you realize that you don't celebrate a placement until they show up for work (not to mention there is usually a guarantee period of say 90 days).

The recruiters that are the most pissed, are the ones that have already spent the money. They should relax, no they have a good person and sell them to someone else for even more money in 18 months. Coercion is not a good quality in a person.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#202

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 3:49 AM UTC

signa11 wrote: post #195

cookiecaper wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was unethical. In fact, finding out there is a salary disparity between peers is probably one of the most common ways that large salary raises occur. For that reason, and also because that disparity may result in legal liability if the peers have differing demographic profiles, some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee.

> ... some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee. after this, i was wondering if there is a way to get the average salary of a group without revealing / knowing actual numbers ? edit-001: ok, one thing that i can think of: 1. take a big number, and add your salary to it. this becomes the 'token' for the next guy. 2. he adds his salary to the number. etc. etc. once yo…

[deleted]

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#203

Post by ec109685 » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:04 AM UTC

verbify wrote: post #56

shaneos wrote: post #28

I completely agree. I went through this at my first job 13 years ago. I was hugely underpaid. I'd gotten the highest rating and highest raise each year for two years, but still made barely more than new grads coming in as the job market had improved. I did a job search, found 10 jobs I was overqualified for that were offering 60% more money, and took the list to my manager as part of my argument for a raise. For six…

> They could clearly have done this at any time in the past six months, when I was pressing my manager on it every single week. They had no incentive to. I was recently in the same situation - doubled my salary after years at another place. Until you bring proof positive that you could bring in more elsewhere there's no reason for them, there's no reason for them to take your word for it that the market would pay you…

> They had no incentive to.

The incentive was that they didn't want to lose the employee. Clearly it was not enough of an incentive in this situation, but there was an incentive.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#204

Post by bzbarsky » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

signa11 wrote: post #195

cookiecaper wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was unethical. In fact, finding out there is a salary disparity between peers is probably one of the most common ways that large salary raises occur. For that reason, and also because that disparity may result in legal liability if the peers have differing demographic profiles, some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee.

> ... some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee. after this, i was wondering if there is a way to get the average salary of a group without revealing / knowing actual numbers ? edit-001: ok, one thing that i can think of: 1. take a big number, and add your salary to it. this becomes the 'token' for the next guy. 2. he adds his salary to the number. etc. etc. once yo…

What threat model are you defending against?

Because the people at positions N and N+2 in your scheme can collude to determine the salary of the person at position N+1 without even having to reveal their own salaries in the process...

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#205

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #190

cookiecaper wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is great political risk in requesting a raise. Many employers would take offense and consider it an insult, and for some reason, after you've gone to that substantial political risk, a lot of employers seem to think that their employees should be content with raises of 2-5%. If you do get a raise, the counteroffer issue is still valid; your employer is given cause to question your loyalty and may be more suspic…

> Many employers would take offense and consider it an insult, If they do, flee. Business is business and if people are getting offended about business, something is wrong.

Easy to say, but not how it works in the real world. If you walk in to your boss's office and accuse him of underpaying you, he's going to feel hurt. That's the natural reaction. Telling him "business is business" is not likely to improve his feelings.

Business would be better named "pampering giant babies", because that's what it is. Despite the mythology that we're programmed with, most of the work of being in charge is managing peoples' feelings so that they stay favorable to you. There is a ton of room for mistakes as long as everyone likes you, and very little if nobody does. Thus, the whole of business training can be summarized with "be as popular and well-liked as possible". They try to dress it up fancy and act like they do something better than that, but they don't.

The most important thing in anyone's career is what their boss and their boss's bosses think of them. Only slightly less important is what their peers think of them. Work performance is essentially a non-factor in career advancement, so it actually is really important to manage this kind of thing carefully.

Asking directly for a raise is confrontational and inelegant. Subtly demonstrating that you deserve a raise and making your boss believe it was his idea is how you actually get one without alienating anyone. That's a lot of work, so most people just jump to another employer instead.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#206

Post by wtracy » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:37 AM UTC

DominikR wrote: post #123

donretag wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you work remotely, locally or travel? I have considered consulting, but the local market outside of the Bay Area would be limiting.

I do not want to give away too much personal information but I mostly work remotely. (I meet with my clients once every 2 months or so) The only exceptions are heavily regulated corporations like banks that require everyone to work from within their office for security reasons. (to prevent information leaks)

A question for any consultants who work 100% remotely: how do you compete with workers in countries with extremely low costs of living?

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#207

Post by byoung2 » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:42 AM UTC

morsch wrote: post #48

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…

[H]ow I would never work in this town again I can see where the arguments about trust etc are coming from (not that I necessarily agree), but that one I don't get at all.

She said that neither she nor anyone else at her recruiting firm would work with me ever again, which lasted about a year before they started emailing me job listings again. Be prepared if you accept a counteroffer after working with a recruiter, they will definitely hold it against you (that fee is 20% of your first year salary or more), plus it makes them look bad to the company they're working for.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#208

Post by tomsthumb » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

nbb wrote: post #62

niccaluim wrote: post #24

Counter offers are a little silly. People in our industry are already making far above the median, which makes it extremely unlikely that money is the motivation behind resignation. More often it's a bad manager—there's a saying that people don't quit jobs; they quit bosses—uninteresting work, change in direction, or some other environmental factor. If you're going to make someone a counter-offer you should also be s…

> People in our industry are already making far above the median Well, half of them are.

He means the median income for the US. An easy, easy majority of developers and sysadmins are making more than the US median income.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#209

Post by fsloth » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #68

archildress wrote: post #13

This couldn't have come at a better time, as I just navigated this last week. I kind of disagree with most of what the author is saying. Here's why. The author posits that you've begun looking for a new job for a reason. There are things that you dislike about your job. That's logical, and it's the number one reason that I went on a search of my own. The problem is that there's always some level of information asymme…

> And when I notified my current employer that I was leaving, they reminded me of how valued I was with the package that they put together. Yea, you were so valued that they DIDN'T offer it to you until you threatened to leave. That doesn't sound like an employer that values you, it sounds like an employer who got away with a great bargain while it lasted.

Often great packages need some political leverage to pull through. I'm sure many good managers would like to offer their subordinates top salaries but company policies/budgets do not allow it. Only when a top performer is about to leave the equation changes from "increasing costs" to "limiting costs" - it's very expensive to recruit and retrain replacements for top talent. Yes, it sucks. But I totally understand the dynamics driving this.

The unfortunate conclusion is that to maximize earnings employees should test their market rate in the job market periodically.

Re: Never accept a counter-offer

#210

Post by wtracy » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:03 AM UTC

nbb wrote: post #62

niccaluim wrote: post #24

Counter offers are a little silly. People in our industry are already making far above the median, which makes it extremely unlikely that money is the motivation behind resignation. More often it's a bad manager—there's a saying that people don't quit jobs; they quit bosses—uninteresting work, change in direction, or some other environmental factor. If you're going to make someone a counter-offer you should also be s…

> People in our industry are already making far above the median Well, half of them are.

The median income in the US (in 2014) was $29k. The median salary for a software engineer is supposedly $95k. That's more than triple the overall median.

Sources: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...