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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)

#171

Post by yowlingcat »

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…

For what it's worth, this is what Amazon's compensation philosophy is with how RSUs are backloaded. It's fine if you can't actually translate the extra talent you get from the more expensive FAANG level engineers into business value as long as you're upfront about it.

But for some tech companies, having 4 engineers at that level is way more useful than 5 engineers 25% less expensive. Your average per IC intellectual horsepower is higher. You often get to solve problems a different way -- to use your example, maybe the on-call burden ends up being lower even being a smaller team because those 4 engineers will find a way to make it so.

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

#172

Post by yowlingcat »

etothepii wrote: post #168
mytailorisrich wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> As we build out our salary comparison startup, peerwyse.com, I intend to openly offer properly shit salaries but great "everything else"

You don't see any irony in offering "shit salaries" trying to build a salary comparison startup? What do you intend to do if and when candidates use your very popular competitor levels.fyi (which, just so you know, they already do)?

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

#173

Post by pnutjam »

onion2k wrote: post #104
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?…

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 d…

I too never ask for a raise and rarely get one. Out of the last 6 companies I worked for, one gave regular raises of 3% and one seemed to alternate between 1% raises and 1% bonuses. I was around 50K and 85K respectively. As you can see, I've received much higher raises moving companies. Now I'm a bit over 100k in the midwest.

Current company brought me in as a contractor at a good rate. Contract house had decent benefits, decent PTO, etc. It was very similar to the companies, just PTO was a bit less.

They eventually wanted to bring me on as a regular employee and offered about a 10% pay cut. WTF? I'm not dumb. I know they are paying a significant overhead to the contract house. I was honestly expecting a small pay bump when I came on as a regular employee.

I asked to stay a contractor and told them if they couldn't do that I guess I would have to take the salary they were offering. I didn't say I wouldn't stick around, but we both knew. They eventually came back with an offer at the same as my current salary, which was still a pay cut after the new benefits cost. Not big, but maybe a hundred bucks every two weeks on my take home.

Now they've converted another contractor to employee, who maybe played more hardball, but I'm pretty sure he's topped my salary even though he's clearly not as experienced and was making a lower salary before.

I'm deciding if I should do anything because there are now 3 senior's and I believe I'm the lowest paid. The other two guys are single white guys, and I'm Hispanic with kids.

I've previously noted the newest guy seems to have some lowkey racial issues with me, which is why I think he bargained so hard on salary. We discussed salary when we were contractors. He's always seemed to measure himself against me in a weird way.

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

#174

Post by yowlingcat »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #126
mytailorisrich wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'd much rather hire 4 above average people than 5 average people. That's assuming that negotiation skill is closely correlated with the skill you're actually hiring for, rather than being correlated with having read an article like this, or some other somewhat orthogonal knowledge.

> That's assuming that negotiation skill is closely correlated with the skill you're actually hiring for

People overestimate negotiation as a "skill." It's not. It's leverage, it's BATNA. Negotiation is having more than one offer and using that to explore the difference between the initial offer space and the maximum offer space between firms based on a basket of offers. The skill is in getting an offer from more than one company in the first place.

And I would wager that if you're hiring professionals, having that kind of ownership and thoroughness is often exactly what you want to hire for, even more than the direct experience.

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

#175

Post by swyx »

I don't have proof but have a sneaking suspicion that there's a certain amount of gaslighting in the negotiation advice genre - all of them read like the sky is the limit if you were just good enough at negotiation, but they mix in anecdata of people who actually got high 5-6 figure improvements, vs the more likely outcome of a don't get me wrong, this is still GREAT, and if all these pieces get you to do is negotiate at all, then that's a win. but I found myself being unhappy not managing to reach a 320k total comp recently (up from initial 210) and I realized my dissatisfaction with an otherwise great comp was due to the misleveled expectations from reading a lot of these pieces (which are better fit for extreme domain experts and independent consultants, than regular SWE employees that have to fit within a salary band)

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

#176

Post by yowlingcat »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39
awinder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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.

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

I think the cynical thing here is not the take but the company you're working at. You use the weasel phrase of "the company doesn't have infinite money to pay candidates" but that just papers over the real elephant in the room: the correlation between what you pay candidates and how much value they generate for the company. If ICs are a cost center, then of course you'll treat them like commodities and try for min-risk rather than max-upside.

And then you'll lose those great junior candidates to companies like those I've worked at where they rocket up from junior -> mid level -> senior -> manager -> director in the time it might take for junior -> mid level at your company. Now if you were that junior candidate, is it a good idea to work at your company or should I assume that your company frankly isn't that compelling and as a savvy candidate I should bet on a better horse and a better jockey?

There's nothing cynical about saying that. But it will look cynical from your perspective.

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

#177

Post by pnutjam »

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.

I'm not very good a social cues and I miss alot, but I've slowly learned that this is often revealing some inherent biases. The managers are ok with paying other white guys, but they are surprised when the meet me in person. I have a white name, but I'm clearly not white. I'm Hispanic, but I'm often told I look Asian, "Filipino", or "Samoan". I think there is some weird internal lens that people are seeing me through.

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

#178

Post by etothepii »

user5994461 wrote: post #146
drpebcak wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were hoping to discourage him from asking for more. It’s always negotiable if the company wants to hire you, they just typically don’t want you to feel that way.

It's only negotiable because he got an offer from the next FAANG. Recruiters are not going to assume that you can enter any FAANG at the highest possible level. It was incredibly lucky from the OP to get 2 offers and at the same time.

It's only negotiable because she said she had an offer from another FAANG. It would be odd to "ask for proof" though it could happen.

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

#179

Post by mytailorisrich »

user5994461 wrote: post #139
rocqua wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 universi…

> Assume it's French cheap staffing companies (90% of the employment market there)

This is caused by overly restrictive and rigid labour law. Companies offload that problem to staffing companies. This is a way to go around restrictions and to increase flexibility in the marketplace, but actually employees (at least very qualified ones like engineers) do not really benefits.

That being said, it is possible to find permanent positions and I never worked for a staffing company ('SS2I' as it used to be called) when I was in France.

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

#180

Post by pnutjam »

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?

Pay scale is great, but at least in the US, benefits cost can be a significant difference. I've seen offers 15% higher completely wiped out by a difference in benefits cost. It makes negotiating very difficult. Often the hiring manager or HR people have no idea what the costs are, because they are single and you are looking at the "family" benefit costs.

I'd love to see some sort of database showing benefit costs at different companies. The information is out there, it's just hidden. It's often a paint to get clear costs during the interview process. God forbid you're negotiating near the end of the year, because the costs change every year.

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