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Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

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Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#101

Post by busterarm »

BeetleB wrote: post #84
busterarm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is standard... That's what people tell themselves to justify their exploitation. I am in the business of providing value. That's what you pay me for and it's commensurate with the amount of value that I can provide. Your recruiting costs also don't get any cheaper just because I'm not in the same location as you. If you're just looking at a calculation of how many asses can you get into seats for as low an amo…

Everything you say is true but provides no actual tactic to get the employer to offer a higher pay. > I am in the business of providing value. That's what you pay me for and it's commensurate with the amount of value that I can provide. "I can get the same value as you provide from someone else in your city/country for cheaper than you ask for." When you go shop for products, will you pay more for a product made in a…

The services are not of equivalent value. And while I'm not saying you can't have a distributed remote team, the approach of outsourcing software labour to cheaper markets has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not work.

Unfortunately, few people in this field have the career longevity and experience to have seen this play out.

Remote work works when you've expanded your talent pool to get _better_ talent. And while it can help you stretch your budget, if you're at the point where you're lowballing the foreign talent that you're already getting at a 50% haircut on a newly-minted local developer, you're fucking doing it wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#103

Post by crazypython »

westoque wrote: post #65

Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. Here's how I evaluate this if I was evaluating you: 1. I already have a salary budget already allocated for this role based on industry average for position and location (but location _could_ be irrelevant depending on skill mostly). 2. I look at your skillset and put you at the bucket for the position where you are at: low-med-high 3. I make my offer based on my evaluation. 4. If you are "wort…

What "tests" do you mention?

How do you evaluate people? Given the following information, how would you determine someone's skillset?

- hobby projects on the same technology stack

- open-source contributions (library with 15,000 monthly downloads)

- hobby projects on a different technology stack

- hobby projects on a different technology stack that made it into production with thousands of users

- previous companies

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#104

Post by seattle_spring »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #98
schoolornot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re a CTO so I imagine you’re hiring mostly directors and VPs and it comes down to whether you like the candidate or not. At a lot of companies you just have to be noticeably better than everyone else because after 5+ employees interviewing 5+ candidates, most managers have had enough with the time the team has sunk into that process. As a candidate, if you can find out how long the role has been open, you can rea…

FYI, CTOs at startups often directly interview and hire technical candidates...

While I don't know about this specific person, more likely on HN "CTO" is just a self-appointed "fake it til you make it" title. The amount of times I've casually poked at a "CTO" profile here only to find them to be a recent bootcamp grad working at a company of 2 with no funding...

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#105

Post by lostcolony »

akomtu wrote: post #100
kqr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, keep in mind that in a negotiation, you always have leverage. Some of the best negotiation advice I ever got was "the very fact that they're still talking to you means you have something they want." That sentence helps both with confidence and understanding the dynamics at play. (The trick to negotiating well, then, is being good at finding an agreement that leaves you both happy while still talking to eac…

Unless the hiring managers is looking for a cheap pushover who would work overtime and be on call 24/7 at no additional cost.

Then as soon as they realize you're not that they'll stop talking to you, and the comment still holds. Perhaps a better phrasing of the phrase might be "...means (they think) you have something they want", but it still applies.

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#106

Post by openandshut »

BeetleB wrote: post #79
llaolleh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never Split the Difference is a great book.

Terrible book that has some gems. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19059590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25309966

I see you recommended a few books and also said that 'a good book on negotiations will differentiate between strategies where the relationship is important and where it isn't'. What is one such book?

I'm new to negotiations, having been avoidant my whole life. I've started with GTY and Chris Voss's masterclass, but I know there's more out there. Someone here on HN mentioned once that 'salience models' are the now the cutting edge of negotiation theory, but I haven't been able to find much useful beginner/intermediate stuff on that.

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#107

Post by [deleted] »

schoolornot wrote: post #77
westoque wrote: post #65

Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. Here's how I evaluate this if I was evaluating you: 1. I already have a salary budget already allocated for this role based on industry average for position and location (but location _could_ be irrelevant depending on skill mostly). 2. I look at your skillset and put you at the bucket for the position where you are at: low-med-high 3. I make my offer based on my evaluation. 4. If you are "wort…

You’re a CTO so I imagine you’re hiring mostly directors and VPs and it comes down to whether you like the candidate or not. At a lot of companies you just have to be noticeably better than everyone else because after 5+ employees interviewing 5+ candidates, most managers have had enough with the time the team has sunk into that process. As a candidate, if you can find out how long the role has been open, you can rea…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#109

Post by llaolleh »

BeetleB wrote: post #79
llaolleh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never Split the Difference is a great book.

Terrible book that has some gems. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19059590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25309966

A lot of these comments are not fond of the author's arrogance... Which seems to be a little nitpicky.

The techniques won't work if you use them verbatim because someone else who has read the book will recognize it.

He simplifies things to a set of rules, but it's up to you to be judicious on when to use them and to do your homework on what the underlying principles are.

Re: Ask HN: Negotiating Salary

#110

Post by mcnamaratw »

westoque wrote: post #65

Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. Here's how I evaluate this if I was evaluating you: 1. I already have a salary budget already allocated for this role based on industry average for position and location (but location _could_ be irrelevant depending on skill mostly). 2. I look at your skillset and put you at the bucket for the position where you are at: low-med-high 3. I make my offer based on my evaluation. 4. If you are "wort…

I'm curious, what industry is offering roughly minimum wage (30k) to programmers in the US?
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