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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)

#101

Post by joshuamorton »

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…

Yes and no. Amazon, for example, takes future growth into account when providing refreshes. They have a target take-home in a calendar year, and if you're above it you don't get a refresh, if you're below it you may.

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

#102

Post by joshuamorton »

ryandrake wrote: post #98
pavlov wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 outl…

> Plus, that stock compensation vests typically over 4 years then goes away. A few companies do “refresh” grants to partially make up for this

This depends on the company. Amazon and Microsoft generally don't, but facebook and Google do. If I hadn't negotiated my initial grant upward, my refresh last year (year 3) would have been the same size, and the one I'll get in a few months will very likely be larger.

I'll still see a drop in comp year 5 due to an interaction between stock growth and my first year's grant being small, but ehhh.

> When people come into HN salary threads and say things like “software engineers make $500k” what they really mean is

Yes and no. Like L6 is certainly not common, but it's also not a particularly outlier level (I can crank of a list of 10 people at that level I work with on a weekly basis), and they're probably all pulling in something close to 500K, and will be forever.

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

#104

Post by onion2k »

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?…

A long time ago I worked for a company where I did the hiring and then HR did the salary negotiation, but I got to give a recommendation. One time I hired someone and they accepted the job, but I found out later that HR had negotiated a salary that was about 15% less than what I'd suggested. It really annoyed me. The guy was worth more.

The worst part was that he left after 8 months because he wanted more money (he didn't ask for a raise; he just found a better paying role) and I had to do all the hiring nonsense again.

HR people might be good for the company bottom line but they're not good at retaining staff.

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

#105

Post by zerr »

jghn wrote: post #82
ydlr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, if a candidate asks what the salary range is for the position, do you tell them?

Yes, but I also explain how our HR dept calculates target compensation within a level and that ultimately the comp decision is out of my hands. I have a good sense for where candidates are in a band and try to set expectations accordingly. If they're pushing for more than HR wants to give, like I said I'm an advocate but the final say isn't mine if they're pushing tooooooo far off the calculated target amount.

The premis of this article is that everyone should push more because it is assumed that the range (upper limit) is low bailed.

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

#106

Post by saagarjha »

diminish wrote: post #103

> At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice. Bookmark it and come back late what's wrong about idevices? i'm reading this one on android.

I just read it on mine. It’s not even that long…

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

#107

Post by ry454 »

castawayonaship wrote: post #23

I loved this article and it's honestly life changing. It takes a bit of time to realize how much you're in the driver seat as a candidate. Especially with competing offers, there's no way you should be accepting an offer with less (unless its a small startup) if you have another offering more. A 5 minute call that can increase net worth by large multipliers is probably worth preparing for. With the help of https://le…

Without leverage these negotiating techniques are empty bluff. I mean, they could help to get a 5k/year pay bump, but they won't get you from 150k to 750k. The really important ingredient is stakes, insider knowledge, network of high rank friends who help you behind the scenes. But once you have that, the negotiating skills will come naturally: even if you aren't as fluent in business-talk like the author, even if what you say sounds clumsy, the fluent and experienced negotiator on the other side of the table will quickly notice that lazy tricks don't work on you, that you see his bluff and most importantly that you actually have other options. In my experience, in many times my firm negotiating position ended up with offer being withdrawn (from reputable, not FANG, but very well known firms).

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

#108

Post by cpach »

GoodJokes wrote: post #92

Imagine a world where you don't have to put on a show to get paid fairly.

Sure, I guess that would be convenient.

I think the field of game theory can help us to explain why salaries and salary negotiations are the way they are.

And who gets to define what is fair? For example, why do programmers get much much higher salaries than nurses or janitors? It might not be fair. But it’s simply supply and demand in action.

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

#109

Post by just-juan-post »

geodel wrote: post #83
MetallicCloud wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Last month one of my friend joined Amazon. At one point this person worked along with engineers who would implement highly optimized systems in C/C++. Now at Amazon his job will be to write little Javascript turdlets to call and parse ten different Amazon services and generate some sort of database table/report to be used by product managers. The way this guy described his work made me (developer of half-assed micro…

> Javascript turdlets

thank you

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

#110

Post by namdnay »

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…

As with all advice of this sort, it really depends on the company culture. My current employer for example has a very hard salary policy (basically a fixed number depending on age and which engineering college you went to, with yearly raises negotiated with unions - a very common occurrence in France unfortunately). Unless you’re interviewing for a position with >100 reports they will never risk upsetting this mechanism (and opening the Pandora’s box of individual salary negotiation) however valuable the individual candidate
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