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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)

#181

Post by etothepii »

ant6n wrote: post #165
PascLeRasc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not a couple of years, but a valid point. I've always told myself I'm focussed on my compensation integrated over 10 years. This can allow for some trade off between money today and money tomorrow.

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

#182

Post by etothepii »

pnutjam wrote: post #180
srtjstjsj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have even better news for you, peerwyse.com. See the salaries of your LinkedIn connections, and build peer groups of people with the same skills or job title as you.

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

#183

Post by ndonnellan »

user5994461 wrote: post #159
TehShrike wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BATNA is king. If you have a great alternative, you're not being difficult, you're just being honest. My second-most-linked negotiation post, after the OP, is https://haseebq.com/how-not-to-bomb-your-offer-negotiation/

I have troubles taking your article seriously. These whole paragraphs of text, nobody would say that over the phone (wouldn't even write that in an email). I can't imagine the person on the other side NOT dropping you when you're being this incredibly difficult. I certainly would have. Maybe you're in the valley and they're really struggling to get candidates?

I was reading this comment on my phone and had to jump on my computer to say: you should absolutely take this article/Haseeb seriously, yes people say these exact things over the phone.

I was looking for a new job in the recent past along with a family member (both software eng. roles), and spent a good chunk of time doing research - reading articles like this - and practicing (eventually via companies early in my "pipeline"), and while I didn't use these lines verbatim, the conversation was actually a lot closer to that than you think.

And we both received NON-TRIVIAL adjustments to non-negotiable offers. And we were both very surprised it worked.

It may seem stilted or awkward, but I think that's the point. Recruiters and experienced managers have their own script that is more-or-less designed to make you feel awkward; make you feel like you're getting a great deal and asking for more is greedy. If you get more comfortable with being awkward, while still remaining professional and having clear expectations (vs. saying "not good enough, want more"), and you have a good alternative, you can use these strategies.

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

#184

Post by etothepii »

joshuamorton wrote: post #100
srtjstjsj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 screens…

We are encouraging people to share this information by guessing the salaries of your LinkedIn connections at PeerWyse.com, we then aggregate the guesses into ranges of individuals you know so you can compare yourself usefully to actual people you know something about.

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

#185

Post by williamdclt »

tasuki wrote: post #131
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…

> 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%.

It's never that simple, really. Is the extra person just "an extra pair of hand" or are they filling a spot that nobody is currently successful at?

I'm in a 4 person team currently, give me an additional project manager and productivity will soar as devs can focus on technical aspects, rather than being inefficient at PMing for a mediocre output (at least that's my expectation, you never know in advance I suppose)

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

#186

Post by quadrifoliate »

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...

It makes his job a lot easier if he can increase say “we need 10 people” and pay them cookie cutter salaries.

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

#187

Post by jghn »

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?

For us no, that’s tracked in a separate bin from net new hires

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

#188

Post by sokoloff »

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.

You’re in charge of scheduling your job search and have influence over when that search wraps up. It probably wasn’t random that they interviewed at two FAANG companies in the same job search.

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

#189

Post by quicklime »

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…

Yeah that’s true. So I should clarify that I do care about my department’s budget, but the sum of money we’re talking about here is like $5-10k, or about 2.5-5% of someone’s loaded cost. I’d much rather secure a good candidate than squabble over that. If they’re asking for an extra $50k, then it’s a different scenario.

I hear people justify not negotiating by saying things like “I’m worried what they’ll think of me” or “I don’t want to create trouble”. This is what people think I care about, but don’t.

And as others have said, absolutely this is different for small companies where they’ll feel it more personally.

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

#190

Post by scarface74 »

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.

You don’t always need “good engineers”. Sometimes you just need yet another software as a service CRUD developer.
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