The hard part about these tips is they will lead you to waste a lot of time. Most companies have no real perspective on if they are in the 60th percentile by comp or the 95th percentile by comp for a role. Some companies will also slot you at different levels based on a number of factors including different levels meaning different things at different companies. If you're trying to get your first FAANG job and generally haven't worked in other high comp roles the advice certainly applies, in that you're likely to underestimate what's possible and shoot yourself in the foot early. If you're already at near top of market compensation you might get a better offer in the end but you're also going to go through 25 entire interview processes you don't have time for because neither side wants to establish compensation.
Common mistakes in salary negotiation
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Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in the company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them that their offer is "a good starting point for discussion" and then make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation, bonuses, or…
This may seem like I'm being dismissive but I don't want to work anywhere. I work because I have bills that need to be paid. I don't derive enjoyment from making other people wealthy. I legitimately cannot think of such a state as enjoying work nor enjoying working at any given company in particular. Do you, and if so how did you cultivate that? If you don't mind answering.
Consider, thoroughly, the hypothetical lottery jackpot. What is it you would choose to do, pursue, aim for, if money were no object and you had nothing except your inner volition to drive you. Would you spend your days reading, exploring philosophy and knowledge? Or would you travel and see the world you've yet to traverse? Maybe you're an individual striving toward community and you want to focus on family, friendship, charity. Maybe a bit of everything?
Design, intentionally, the dream you would live if you could. My friend often responds cynically, saying if he is asked about his dream job he would be a space explorer like some Marvel movie. I hear him as flippant and he's clear he thinks it's a dumb idealistic pontificating exercise. . I go toward the path of okay, what would it take to BE that thing or pursue it...
If you can visualize and reason your way to how something might happen, you can reverse engineer it. You can think of it like chess. Position yourself with strength, understand openings midgame and endgame, but know there are many, many, undiscovered lines left in many positions. Now expand from 64,64 squares and so many moves to the infinite variability in Life. You have levers and positions you can exploit and transpose.
Circumstances will always have a hand as will pure luck, fate, or Higher Power, but... you have immense power to craft your reality and I mean this in no woo terms. You change your thoughts, your words, your actions and most crucially, your influence and environment.
Good luck, oneironaut.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Precisely. The article misses a third bullet point: 3) Many recruiters will say yes to everything and anything to get you into the interview seat And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.
> And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips. If they are remote jobs, you just accept them all, buy as many computers as the offers you accepted and multitask for n x the pay.
r/overemployed is leaking
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#34“The key is to get multiple 400k offers in the same week”
Wow why didn’t I think of that!
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#35Not talking about your salary history is a decent tip. But negotiation isn't rocket science: you need to be thoughtful and honest to yourself and come up with an aspirational number (what you want, best case) and a floor (which you will not go below). Any number in between should be acceptable to you, by definition. I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away.
> I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away. The problem is that you almost certainly don't have enough information to predetermine a floor, because that almost certainly depends on what other options will be available to you in the near future. I mean, sure, technically your floor could be literally just the lowest amount that you could survive on, but most pe…
The floor should be the number that you don't feel bad about accepting. That indeed includes your perception of alternatives. If your floor is higher than what you're going to get, you'll miss a few jobs and then learn that your expectations should be lower. That makes the new floor acceptable.
There isn't really a shortcut, because if you feel like you've accepted an offer below your minimum and never applied for other jobs you'll feel like that forever. Which isn't a good foundation for the next years working in the role.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#36Every time this advice comes up I groan because it's so specific to a single type of individual and a single sector-economy convergence. If you're not a top engineer applying to companies with massive salary caps, or especially if you're not a typical dev/PM role this advice is generally crap and will waste your time.
My advice for people who don't fall into the above:
1) Spend time to actually figure out what you are realistically worth in a new role. Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, H1B comp reports, ask your friends, there are tons of resources to do this.
2) Set a "reach" salary based on #1 and ask for that up front. 20% above your target salary is a good starting point. This accomplishes two things: a) it immediately weeds out all the spam recruiters and low-balling companies without wasting hours of your time on interviews; and b) it puts you in the right place to negotiate with the companies that are serious rather than trying to play chicken the entire time.
3) Set a floor below which you walk away and stick to it. The floor is going to be different for different companies. If there's a company you really want to work for because they're doing interesting things and you like the people there, your floor should be lower than at a generic job you're just considering as a ladder rung.
Will this advice potentially get you less than the absolute max you could make? Sure. But if that's your only goal then you should hire a personal recruiter working for you.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#37How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront? I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
This exactly. Had way too many companies waste my time before revealing a 20-30% increase from my current comp was too much.
If I understand things correctly, current comp shouldn't be part of the equation or talks as far as your recruiter and company that you're interviewing with are concerned. The position will have a comp range. That is not related to what you may be currently earning.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#38Salary negotiation is all about information asymmetry; typically the company holds all the cards and the candidate none. Not sure any article could help with that in any way.
This is only partially true. Sure the company has a lot of cards but they are playing a different game. They are Hikaru playing 12 blitz chess games at once, and potential employees are offering something, else they're not negotiating they're just working out the terms of their slavery.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#39FWIW I did all of those things this article says not to do and ended up making close to 200% of my previous total compensation (which I'm happy with).
Some recruiters didn't ask me for my compensation figures upfront. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Snap, LinkedIn, and some startup recruiters never asked me for my compensation numbers up front. The only ones that did, were to make sure neither of us were wasting each others' times. Usually that meant that I didn't continue to interview with them.
Most if not all recruiters asked me where I was in the interview process and which companies I was interviewing at. I mentioned every company I was interviewing with and where I was in the process with them. I probably got lucky here as I had around 50% onsite to offer rate so I was never left in a spot where I had no leverage.
My best offers were the ones where VPs called me to try to close the process, and I negotiated directly with them instead of the recruiter.
Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation
#40Not talking about your salary history is a decent tip. But negotiation isn't rocket science: you need to be thoughtful and honest to yourself and come up with an aspirational number (what you want, best case) and a floor (which you will not go below). Any number in between should be acceptable to you, by definition. I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away.
I gave an honest floor salary to a company prior to interviewing. Their offer was 20% less than my floor. I think they thought it was my "best case" number despite very clear communication that it was my minimum to consider leaving my current role.
I walked away vaguely annoyed with the hiring company.