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Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

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Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#31

Post by rsynnott »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #3

most of my bosses have made me feel petty when asking for an extra $10k/yr i've found that when working for corporations, it's all about the number you ask for up front. after that, it takes quite a bit to get more than the average 3-5% merit pay bump. how FANG companies work with the $500k/yr total comp for average engineers, i have no clue... i think from what i've seen from levels.fyi the most common salaries are…

> how sustainable is programming? $75/hr to basically just write SQL tables and APIs that are advanced CRUD wrappers with light business logic on them? seems ripe for automation.

The end of programming has been breathlessly predicted for at least the last 30 years (particularly with the whole 4GL thing). I'll believe it when I see it.

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#32

Post by ddgcdgdfg »

Ot: I've been wondering... are lower taxes for lower salaries actually a good approach? If you imagine they are fines or punishments we should punish low salaries more.

I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. It converts into productivity more efficiently like that.

(Tax here in NL is 39% with a discount over the first 8k or so)

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#33

Post by rsynnott »

MetallicCloud wrote: post #6
dudul wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think programming is moving away from automation. We're no longer writing code or fancy algorithms. We are plumbers connecting systems and APIs. However, the true value of the engineer in 2020 is that they're the one trying to make sense of idiotic product requirements. They're the ones turning shiny, half assed mockups into real products. That cannot be automated. If the value was only in pissing lines of code the…

I've read similar things about how most programming work is just plumbing together existing code fairly regularly on HN. Is that really what most people do? Is it a web development thing? That's not my experience at all, and it sounds mind numbingly awful.

To some extent this is how most engineering works. If you're building a bridge, you don't usually start off by building the steel mill first.

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#34

Post by bruckie »

cbsks wrote: post #21
jaaron wrote: post #5

Speaking as a hiring manager for 10+ years: If I've done my job right, I've sourced engineers experienced, confident and smart enough to negotiate and ask good questions around compensation. I want to make sure that we have an open conversation so that both sides can move forward to the actual job at hand. Tip: California based firms are required to give you a salary range if you ask for it and they can't ask you for…

> California based firms are required to give you a salary range if you ask for it I didn't know that! Do you know what the actual law says? Are employers required to give the salary range for any open position on request? Or is it more limited than that?

After you've interviewed. Here's the text (from https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...):

"432.3. (a) An employer shall not rely on the salary history information of an applicant for employment as a factor in determining whether to offer employment to an applicant or what salary to offer an applicant.

(b) An employer shall not, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, seek salary history information, including compensation and benefits, about an applicant for employment.

(c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment. For purposes of this section, “pay scale” means a salary or hourly wage range. For purposes of this section “reasonable request” means a request made after an applicant has completed an initial interview with the employer."

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#35

Post by jiofih »

ddgcdgdfg wrote: post #32

Ot: I've been wondering... are lower taxes for lower salaries actually a good approach? If you imagine they are fines or punishments we should punish low salaries more. I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. It converts into productivity more efficiently like that. (Tax here in NL is 39% with a discount over the first 8k or so)

> I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible.

How would that work? The tax bands are progressive, so you will never get less money from a higher salary and tax rate. That would be pretty dumb.

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#37

Post by quicklime »

braythwayt wrote: post #25
quicklime wrote: post #17

> We’ve been talking about your employer as an abstraction, but in the instant case you’re talking to an actual person. Let’s call him Bob. It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but Bob is not super motivated to do so, because Bob is not spending Bob’s money to hire you. Bob is spending Bob’s budget. Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of…

First, I think you and the OP are correct. It’s not Barbara’s money, and Barbara’s career is driven by hiring and developing productive people. If her group is shipping good product, nobody in a growth company is sitting down and asking why a group that ships 30% more product costs 10% more per head. That will come much later in the company’s trajectory. One small exception to this from my n=1 experience is that all…

That’s a good point, and How to do this depends on the exact rules for handing out raises at the company. Where I work it’s better to hire someone at a lower level and promote them later - what I said earlier applies within a single pay grade and not between grades.

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#38

Post by coldtea »

aiqq wrote: post #22
doopy1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think companies under a certain size and it's a different story.

in large companies companies incompetent individuals, such as this sample, occasionally slip through the net. but they get pruned out pretty soon, but no sooner than whoever hired this slacker.

The comment's language is totally unprofessional and the tone is toxic. And that's the second edit - of an even more toxic previous wording.

One would call it Dunning–Kruger, but it's probably merely lack of self-awareness combined with arrogance.

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#39

Post by PragmaticPulp »

awinder wrote: post #30
quicklime wrote: post #17

> We’ve been talking about your employer as an abstraction, but in the instant case you’re talking to an actual person. Let’s call him Bob. It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but Bob is not super motivated to do so, because Bob is not spending Bob’s money to hire you. Bob is spending Bob’s budget. Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of…

The amounts of money never made any sense to me that some hiring managers will die on a hill over. In time I came to the realization that it’s very important for some people to have that “win” / upper hand in the new relationship, as like a tone setting sort of thing.

That's an incredibly cynical take. As a hiring manager, I want to stack my team with the best employees we can convince to join our company. Obviously, throwing more money at the candidate is the easiest way to convince someone to come on board.

However, the company doesn't have infinite money to pay candidates. Compensation comes out of our budgets. The more we pay each person, the fewer people we can hire overall. This is fine if you're really hiring someone with above-average productivity at above-average compensation, but it becomes a problem if you're paying above-average rates for average productivity.

Higher compensation cuts both ways, though. If an average candidate is demanding above-average pay, why would I go through all the work of getting authorization for higher pay just to hire an average candidate? If I'm going through the trouble of getting approval to increase the pay for an open job position, you can bet I'm going to search for higher performing candidates to match that higher compensation.

Usually, when a junior candidate starts requesting senior level compensation, I just give up and hire a senior candidate instead.

Also, higher compensation comes with higher expectations. Businesses have ups and downs and layoffs are a fact of doing business. When budgets shrink and headcount must be reduced, the first people to go are those with relatively high compensation for their productivity/skill level.

But no, it's not simply about having a "win" over the candidate or making power moves during the hiring process. You have to think of hiring as company vs. the entire candidate pool, not just yourself vs. the hiring manager.

Re: Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

#40

Post by grandmczeb »

jiofih wrote: post #35
ddgcdgdfg wrote: post #32

Ot: I've been wondering... are lower taxes for lower salaries actually a good approach? If you imagine they are fines or punishments we should punish low salaries more. I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. It converts into productivity more efficiently like that. (Tax here in NL is 39% with a discount over the first 8k or so)

> I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. How would that work? The tax bands are progressive, so you will never get less money from a higher salary and tax rate. That would be pretty dumb.

If you consider government benefits too, there are "cliffs"[1] at low incomes where an increase in income can result in less take home. But probably not at the salaries a typical developer would get.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/kM6yxab.png

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