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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)

#131

Post by tasuki »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41
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…

> My job is to fill the headcount that I've got, so as long as it fits within budget, whatever. Exactly, but the budget isn't infinite. Assuming equal talent, I'd much rather hire 5 people at market rate rather than 4 people at 25% over market rate. The net cost is roughly the same, but we can get much more accomplished with 1 more person on the team. Even better, on-call demands are spread out over more people and v…

> but we can get much more accomplished with 1 more person on the team

Are you sure of that? Two people can usually accomplish much more than one person, but how much more do you achieve with 5 people rather than 4?

My guess would be that adding the fifth person to a team increases productivity between 5-15%.

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

#132

Post by chrisbennet »

You need to view this transaction for what it really is: a "value for value exchange". They aren't "giving you a job" they are exchanging (mostly) money for your precious time.

If you have a lot of relevant experience and the interviewer is also very experienced, you might try this:

I once told a client who was trying to negotiate a lower rate "I am not a commodity engineer (1) and judging from your experience, neither are you. There will be some jobs for which we will just not be cost effective." [The we is important.]

(1) commodity engineer: an engineer that can easily out be swapped for another engineer

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

#133

Post by tasuki »

TA1337 wrote: post #93

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 si…

I think companies deserve to be publicly called out on outright lying.

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

#134

Post by nullsense »

TA1337 wrote: post #93

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 si…

50%!???

Crikey.

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

#135

Post by the_gipsy »

grandmczeb wrote: post #40
jiofih wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

The problem seems to be the cliff of those welfare programs, no? I'm sure they don't make much sense.

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

#136

Post by edanm »

lealanko wrote: post #114
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…

You (and the article) are ignoring smaller companies. In those, you often have the salary negotiations with the owner, or a partner. Your salary comes (effectively) out of their own pocket, and recruiting you is quite possibly a significant and risky investment for the entire company. In these sorts of situations, negotiation is much harder on a personal level, since the company is not a faceless entity. The company…

That's kind of true, but you should probably ignore it for purposes of salary negotiation. It's not really that different from a bigger company in most cases- they have a budget in mind, and you can probably negotiate up to the limit of the budget. This will sometimes be a hard limit btw - e.g. if it's a Dev shop, they often know how much they're getting paid for a particular project, and can calculate the maximum salary they can profitably pay.

Smaller companies are often more flexible on other terms though, which is worth knowing. Often they can give you eg work from home options, different configuration of vacation days, etc. This if useful to think any for negotiation purposes.

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

#137

Post by csa »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #116
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…

> Would I really want to miss the opportunity to work for an exciting company over some marginal sum of money? The reply to this seems obvious. Do you really want to miss the opportunity to hire a strong and promising candidate over some marginal sum of money? Hiring is HARD. Hiring good engineers is almost impossible.

If a company has a strong history of success and a positive work culture, good engineers will be knocking their doors down.

Think 37signals.

These places are super rare.

Some comments:

- I’m not sure about the extent to which this is scalable, especially at a VC-funded startup.

- I am not sure if Wealthfront falls into this category.

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

#138

Post by josalhor »

TA1337 wrote: post #93

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 si…

May I ask you how you approached this negotiation?

Did you just send an email to company A with "Hey, company B gives me X. Do you have a better offer?" and go back and forth for two weeks?

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

#139

Post by user5994461 »

rocqua wrote: post #112
namdnay wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mechan…

Would negotiating be harmful to your chances to work there though?

Yes, it's harmful and if you appear a notch too aggressive they will probably dump you. (Reading articles about salary negotiation in the valley is possibly the most harmful thing a French person could do to themselves)

Assume it's French cheap staffing companies (90% of the employment market there), akin to tata or infosys for foreign readers.

There is a very narrow salary band for the position depending on university and age. They won't bulge for one euro. They'll simply keep looking for candidates to find a cheaper one.

They are well aware that their salaries are low. They see their offers refused time and again. They see candidates leaving in droves for better positions/industries as soon as they can. Doesn't matter, it's just business, gotta stick to the salary grid.

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

#140

Post by delinquenz »

lealanko wrote: post #114
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…

You (and the article) are ignoring smaller companies. In those, you often have the salary negotiations with the owner, or a partner. Your salary comes (effectively) out of their own pocket, and recruiting you is quite possibly a significant and risky investment for the entire company. In these sorts of situations, negotiation is much harder on a personal level, since the company is not a faceless entity. The company…

Small companies with smart hiring managers or owners should know that if they pay candidates, especially highly skilled ones, not enough, they will probably jump ship after one or two years which is exactly the period after which employees reach a level of productivity that brings enough value for companies to justify the hiring.
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