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Common mistakes in salary negotiation

interviewing.io

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Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#51

Post by noitpmeder »

leeny wrote: post #22
photonerd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of businesses post stupid ranges. Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful

Author here. These ranges are typically wide because your compensation depends on your interview performance and perceived seniority/value add to the company. There's no way to tease this out before you interview, except that if you're looking for compensation that's significantly above the top of the band, it might be hard to get. (A little above the top is possible, and sometimes a lot is possible too... that's whe…

I feel like it's not a great look to say "I don't know enough about the role to give you my salary expectations at this point" while also asking "but what is the salary range for this position, given you don't know enough about me".

Any thoughts on how to approach that?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#52

Post by mm263 »

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.

The point is that your aspirational number may be way, way off. Not saying the aspirational number is how I got twice the salary I planned to ask for as a junior while interviewing for my first job years ago.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#53

Post by RhodesianHunter »

throitallaway wrote: post #37
asynchronous wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not the point. The point is that most people wouldn't leave their current role without a bump, so if they'd known that up front they wouldn't have bothered with the interview.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#54

Post by ghaff »

hydroid7 wrote: post #11
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.

You refuse to do any unpaid "interview project" jobs. I'm not doing any "test projects" that are longer than 4h.

"Portfolios" in some form are often necessary. (In my space, writing samples.) If you have those ready to go, easier for everyone! But if you don't have a relevant portfolio, you'll need to either put something together or I'll pass. (I'm not really looking for a specific assignment but just something that's representative of the type of work.)

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#55

Post by sneak »

jawns wrote: post #42

> 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 unachi…

Would you work 80 hour weeks for a month or two to make an additional $5-20k per month indefinitely for the foreseeable future?

I would. It's not like it's impossible, it's just more work.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#57

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

treprinum wrote: post #21

Salary 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.

Software developers are not commodities. Don't think about yourself this way.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#58

Post by sneak »

photonerd wrote: post #14
lotsofpulp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also. Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the ab…

A lot of businesses post stupid ranges. Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful

That's not "completely unhelpful" - if your current job is $99k/yr or $400k/yr it answers your "should I bother spending time interviewing here?" question quite nicely.

The fact that the range is 100k isn't that big of an impediment to utility.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#59

Post by tshaddox »

t0mas88 wrote: post #35
tshaddox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ot…

> 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.

Right, but this process is only acceptable if you believe that you have more than a few options in the near future.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#60

Post by brianwawok »

photonerd wrote: post #14
lotsofpulp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also. Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the ab…

A lot of businesses post stupid ranges. Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful

But like, that is a perfectly valid salary range for a job? Not all companies have a 10k salary band on a given title.
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