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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)

#161

Post by skrebbel »

delinquenz wrote: post #140
lealanko wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In all the places I've worked, every engineer knew there was another place where they'd likely earn significantly more. Yet, they didn't jump ship. These were not high turnaround places.

Either my experience is exceptional, or your implication that money is the only thing that matters about a job is wrong.

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

#162

Post by christophilus »

skrebbel wrote: post #161
delinquenz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In all the places I've worked, every engineer knew there was another place where they'd likely earn significantly more. Yet, they didn't jump ship. These were not high turnaround places. Either my experience is exceptional, or your implication that money is the only thing that matters about a job is wrong.

Yeah. I left a good salary behind and went 1/2 time for a super small company this year. Great decision. Money isn’t everything.

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

#163

Post by Infinitesimus »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #56
awinder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are talking about vastly different things on re-reading your post. I’m keying in, along with the parent, on offers being negotiated at figures like less than 5% on base salary (sometimes far less. talking 5-10k range)

> I’m keying in, along with the parent, on offers being negotiated at figures like less than 5% on base salary (sometimes far less. talking 5-10k range) Right, but remember that you're not pivoting around the initial offer number. The hiring manager is pivoting around their budgeted range for the position. If they already offered 20% more than expected to hire someone and that person comes back requesting an addition…

And thus the cycle keeps going. As long as people suspect the hiring manager will offer a lower offer vs whatever market rate is, we will be in this mess of hardball negotiations (and you will lose everytime if you're competing against Netflix and any company intent on paying fair market value ).

Why not just offer the top range and be clear with the candidate that it's the top? If the candidate has a competing offer for more, it means you're paying below market rate and you should address that problem as a business.

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

#164

Post by throwaway2245 »

juped wrote: post #36

Not useful advice. I need a way to signal how little money I'm willing to take to make me more attractive to bottom-feeding companies, because I unfortunately need to eat.

Intentionally signalling that you are worth less is also a signal that you are a risky or bad hire (for example: that no competitor is interested in you), unless you are looking for a minimum wage job.

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

#165

Post by ant6n »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #72
shuckles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't know about the first negotiation anecdote, but I can kinda see what Andy means here. I don't think pay is the primary thing I get out of a job, they'll all basically pay enough to live really well. Feeling good about what I do at work, learning new skills for the sake of learning, having a positive environment are all far more important to me. I've met a lot of people in school and at work who are just there…

Its also depressing to pick a job not based on pay, and see how friends with similar skills who do optimize for pay make a million extra over the span of a couple years.

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

#166

Post by tome »

throwarayes wrote: post #61

I spent several years underpaid at a lifestyle company as a specialist. I didn't want the golden handcuffs, I didn't want the pressure. I've learned this was a big mistake If you're paid at market value for your particular set of skills, your employer is making a commitment to use them. When they underpay you, you won't get to do the awesome thing that you do as much. So by being paid more there's incentive for the e…

What's a "lifestyle company"? Is it this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business

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

#167

Post by christophilus »

user5994461 wrote: post #155
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which city, country are you from? I am from minor city in Europe, with no FAANG presence, but I found another company with similar engineering first principles. Nobody cares about education and promotions are fully merit based. NVM you are from France, right? You really don't have any such companies?

I've worked in multiple places, I am in London now. Jobs prospects are extremely variable by location. (It's near zero for most of Europe that could be qualified as deep countryside). You're extremely lucky to have found a good opportunity in a good company. I will guess back that you live in a major metro area. France has very little tech industry for many reasons that would be too long to cover. Even the largest na…

I used to work for a well known software company. We had employees from all over the globe. Many were in rural towns from Eastern Europe to Switzerland to random towns in the US. Those companies are rare, but they’re out there (and this one was / is a great place to work). I hope that COVID has made this concept more acceptable to more companies.

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

#168

Post by etothepii »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #124
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'd much rather hire 4 above average people than 5 average people. Having more people adds its own cost and there is a Pareto law in people's contributions. Edit: Basically, IMHO, in terms of assembling the best team to deliver the best results it's better to keep things as small as possible. But in terms of internal company politics it's better to grow the team as much as possible.

I'm very skeptical you can tell from an interview who's good. As we build out our salary comparison startup, peerwyse.com, I intend to openly offer properly shit salaries but great "everything else": some level of budgetary autonomy, a family first mentality, option to work three or four days a week for (50% or 75% of pay) and 25% of accumulated total comp on the day you leave us (whether by redundancy, better job or start up). I think this will attract the people I want and reduce the toxic culture of key man dependency which cripples long term growth.

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

#169

Post by yowlingcat »

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…

> Your salary comes (effectively) out of their own pocket, and recruiting you is quite possibly a significant and risky investment for the entire company.

So what? It's just like any other expenditure for the company. And it doesn't change the reality the owner is thinking about -- value of hiring you must be higher than cost of wages paid on a regular basis for it to work out. And probably high enough that they'd even bother trying to recruit anyways.

In a way, it's sometimes even easier to have negotiations in the owner because it's so much easier to up-sell them on added value you can provide because you are talking to the person who'd be willing to buy even more of just that. There's no one-size-fits-all HR determined range to deal with.

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

#170

Post by markvdb »

nullsense wrote: post #90
pavlov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He passed? I’m genuinely sorry to learn this. His work was a welcome reminder of unexplored possibilities.

Yeah, I believe he did die. From what I understand he was mentally ill and lead a fairly troubled life. Watching his walkthrough of TempleOS is pretty fascinating. And for those who didn't get the reference: https://youtu.be/o48KzPa42_o

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis
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