Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Common mistakes in salary negotiation

interviewing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 467 posts

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#41

Post by user_7832 »

Slightly meta (relating to the website) and not this specific article, I got a popup toast saying

> Secret Zebra just left feedback for their FAANG interviewer: I really enjoyed the interview, you did really well in giving me the right level of assistance to keep under the time constraints. It was also pretty useful that you had prepared some extra code for testing.

Apart from such toasts being unusual, I doubted that a review would be "just" left by someone. Googling the text brought me to https://interviewing.io/mocks/Reverse-Nodes-in-k-Group, which as per archive.org was at least as old as 2 June 2023[1]. Not terribly old, but feels scummy to be honest.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230602224912/https://int

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#42

Post by jawns »

> Preparation and leverage means doing the work to make sure that you have multiple offers, that all your offers come in at the same time, and that you don’t tip your hand too early. Laying this foundation is 80% of the work. You’ll need to slow some companies down, speed some companies up, and hold off questions from recruiters until you’re ready to negotiate, and not before.

Laying this foundation is largely unachievable for people who are not full-time job seeking.

Even when you're doing nothing but applying and have a decently impressive combination of skills and experience, it can be quite difficult in certain environments to get a single offer, let alone multiple offers, let alone multiple offers coming in at the same time.

But if you're currently holding down a full-time job and are looking to make a move into a new role, the odds of everything lining up perfectly like this are going to be so low as to be unrealistic even for very talented people.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#43

Post by [deleted] »

user_7832 wrote: post #41

Slightly meta (relating to the website) and not this specific article, I got a popup toast saying > Secret Zebra just left feedback for their FAANG interviewer: I really enjoyed the interview, you did really well in giving me the right level of assistance to keep under the time constraints. It was also pretty useful that you had prepared some extra code for testing. Apart from such toasts being unusual, I doubted tha…

[deleted]

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#44

Post by lolinder »

treprinum wrote: post #30
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

How 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.

They will tell you what you want to hear and still low-ball you at the very end to try the sunk cost fallacy on you.

You'll still be glad you asked up front, because that kind of BS tells you something about the company. Sure you wasted your time in the interviews, but you now know not to push back on their initial offer because you don't want to work for a company that'd pull that on you.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#45

Post by pc86 »

gabereiser wrote: post #19
RandallBrown wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article just avoids that problem. > very few companies pay so much below market that it would be a nonstarter I don't really agree with that statement as my experiences have been different.

Because the marker is relative. What’s crap pay to you is a golden opportunity to others. Experience is relative as well. They may not have the experience and the company doesn’t care about that, only to fill the seat. Don’t take it personally.

Whether I am thrilled to take a $60k TC job or my absolute minimum is $400k that doesn't change the market in that 60k is insultingly low and 400k is well above the median (cue all the folks who think FAANG is the market chiming in about $450k TC juniors).

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#46

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

deprecative wrote: post #20
cratermoon wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

Neither do I, but within the scope that I have bills that need to be paid and thus need to work, there are organizations where that work is enjoyable, others where it's acceptable and even more where it would be unpleasant.

I want to not dread going to work, so I only entertain offers from outfits where the job and its environment appear enjoyable. "Acceptable" is below the bar I set unless I somehow end up desperate for money.

The attitude in my case wasn't cultivated. It stems from the fact that I like what I do and I'm very good at it.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#47

Post by CoastalCoder »

clusterhacks wrote: post #40
itsoktocry wrote: post #13

Not 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.

I'm a little sympathetic to the hiring company. Unless you really know the other negotiating party, it can be hard to guess when they're posturing.

(OTOH, maybe it's a mistake to low-ball a candidate by such a large percentage, regardless. It sounds like a recipe for a discontent employee.)

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#48

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

uptie wrote: post #32
deprecative wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, friendsh…

Did you study at the Haber Institute?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#49

Post by t0mas88 »

TimPC wrote: post #31

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 genera…

In my experience hiring, we know the benchmark numbers for the roles. Because we have current employees in those roles and we want to understand whether we're paying them fairly. Not out of some kind of deep kindness, but because otherwise they'll at some point get a better offer and leave.

But it differs across the company where we aim to be. For some roles we aim for 50th percentile, while for other areas we deliberately pay 90th percentile and adjust current employee salaries yearly (after performance review) to match that. Because those areas are important to our strategy/roadmap.

May sound unfair to those that aren't in those areas. But this is business, we're spending our money where the returns are highest for this company. If a role isn't a 90th percentile role for us, it might be somewhere else, and we are willing to accept higher turnover on the 50th percentile roles to make money available to get the people we really need on those other roles.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#50

Post by pc86 »

ntac wrote: post #5
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

How 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.

I ask the recruiter what the salary range is. If they refuse to say, I tell them to get back to me when they know what the range is. I'm not going to waste my time if they want to play games like being secretive about the pay.

I have never had issues with this approach. Yeah you'll get a few people who think they're being cute about wanting to schedule a call or whatever, but when it comes down to it "I don't move forward without knowing the budgeted range for a position" gets me a number probably 19 out of 20 times, almost always the first time too.
Post reply on HN