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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)

#91

Post by TinyBig »

jghn wrote: post #48
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…

At my company I get headcount based on level, not raw dollars. Once I +1 a candidate at a level, it moves to HR and they are the ones doing the negotiation. At that point I become an advocate for them to get more compensation. It behooves me to have HR not play hardball and to max out their comp at the level I've specified as that makes it more likely the candidate signs. Once in a while HR will ask me "Are you sure?…

Does this create a perverse incentive to not encourage promotions because it will mean a lower headcount going forward?

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

#93

Post by TA1337 »

One thing that happened to me a few years ago that pretty surprised me, went something like this: I applied to 2 FAANGs, got offers from both.

The recruiter from the first company to give me an offer, told me it is pretty much non negotiable, "we have a little wiggle room but don't expect much, it's an amazing offer". It was higher than my then salary, but not by a huge margin.

Then company B got back to me with a significantly higher offer both in terms of RSUs (x2) and base salary.

Well, turned out the non negotiable offer was very negotiable after all, and company A quickly upped their offer above company B's. At this stage it just became a back and forth bidding war, that ended after a couple of weeks with two almost identical offers, 50% higher than the initial TC.

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

#94

Post by visarga »

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.

Yes, plumbing together things because we don't want to reinvent the wheel every time, but on the next level of abstraction you're all on your own. What approach do you take, how do you represent your data, what kind of user interface, how do you negotiate the project scope - that's on you and your experience. Not to mention that there's always a corner of the project that needs a clever new approach or algorithm and you can do amazing things there.

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

#96

Post by NhanH »

TinyBig wrote: post #91
jghn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my company I get headcount based on level, not raw dollars. Once I +1 a candidate at a level, it moves to HR and they are the ones doing the negotiation. At that point I become an advocate for them to get more compensation. It behooves me to have HR not play hardball and to max out their comp at the level I've specified as that makes it more likely the candidate signs. Once in a while HR will ask me "Are you sure?…

Does this create a perverse incentive to not encourage promotions because it will mean a lower headcount going forward?

Depending on the company, but yes if the company is not growing, the incentive would be to discourage promotion. At that point, if it is a good company, they would know it and will prioritize a different kind of employees.

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

#97

Post by prerok »

hammock wrote: post #89
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…

If what you describe is the case, and HR doesn't have veto power on your offers, why not hire at the top of the range, and take a kickback from the person you hired? (hypothetical) Don't downvote me for suggesting this, I'm trying to expose a weakness. I suspect more likely scenario is what @jghn shares, wherein HR is the one with the offer power, to avoid the hazard I suggested.

Because doing this is illegal.

Also, would you actually want to work at a company where people are bleeding the company for their own benefit? I cannot even imagine the toxicity. Even hearing the offer I would be so gone.

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

#98

Post by ryandrake »

pavlov wrote: post #81
Infinitesimus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close to it. Anecdotally, most are between low $100k to $400k depending on level, luck and tenure. However stacking RSU appreciation and refreshers can skew those numbers a lot. The $500k plus is L6+ or Netflix-like companies

I find it a bit strange that people count stock appreciation when reporting total compensation. It’s not very helpful for someone looking to compare salaries. Those RSUs and refreshers are always granted based on a dollar amount that gets divided by current stock price, and that’s the value that the company recognizes in its accounting. Stock price increases are nice, but they distort the picture of how the company i…

Plus, that stock compensation vests typically over 4 years then goes away. A few companies do “refresh” grants to partially make up for this, but you’ll never get up to the amount you got in your first 4 years. It’s not uncommon to take a 25-50% TC cut going into year 5 (ask me how I know).

When people come into HN salary threads and say things like “software engineers make $500k” what they really mean is: “Some outlier high level software engineers at a handful of FAANG companies in the Bay Area can potentially top out at $500k total compensation in year 4 if they are in a fast rising stock market, and if they are master negotiators.”

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

#99

Post by cycomanic »

shuckles wrote: post #54
legerdemain wrote: post #43

> Virtually any amount of money available to you personally is > mouse droppings to your prospective employer. > They will not feel offended if you ask for it. Two comments. (a) I interviewed with Wealthfront last year. They offered $160K, which was lower cash comp than any of my other offers. I tried to open the door to negotiation. The recruiter and the dev lead then got on the phone with me to awkwardly explain th…

In the case of Wealthfront, it may be a cultural matter as their CEO specifically believes that negotiating your offer is a negative indicator: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130708151000-56725-offer-co...

Well on CEO level that might be true (I realise that's not what he talking about though). It seems pay of top level exec positions follows very different patterns than normal folks. It's used for signalling status. I know of at least one instance where the head of the board said to increase the salary offer to a CEO candidate because "we want to be the company in the country who offers the highest CEO salary".

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

#100

Post by joshuamorton »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #75
bruckie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why haven't all the big company pay scales leaked yet?

A few reasons (I say this as someone who generally speaking knows my company's pay scale because of well organized compensation transparency):

1. People aren't encouraged to share this information, there's no obvious place to do it.

2. The value of doing so is minimal

3. People are bad at it. It's difficult enough getting people to share the information correctly when you work at the company and can give them screenshots of what numbers to copy. Without that it's even harder. (Granted much of this is only hard if you're doing multiple roles and currencies)

4. The numbers that the companies share often aren't the entire scale. For example, as far as I know [disclaimers: not a lawyer, this is from indirect experience], if Google hires you as a new grad L3, you aren't given the L3 scale. You're given one number. They don't negotiate on this number. Because while you're hired into an L3 position, you're being hired as a new grad, which is a different pipeline with different comp and rules. I expect other companies are somewhat similar.

5. Salary is one, and only a small, part of compensation, and the law only requires you to share salary. Salary is also usually the most difficult part of the package to negotiate.

6. A lot of the information is public, if you know where to look (levels.fyi, /r/cscareerquestions salary surveys, etc.

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