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Common mistakes in salary negotiation

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Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#251

Post by charlie0 »

dekhn wrote: post #204

I dunno, I've never really aggressively negotiated at hire time, but certainly at my industry jobs, just getting the door was the important thing, because my comp grows exponentially once I'm on the inside (all Googlers got a 10% raise one year. Just because.) What does happen is during the first recruiter chat (before talking ot the HM), I make sure they are OK with my number (base + bonus + stock) in theory. Some j…

No offense, but what do you do that is "distinguished"? I thought that title was only for like the top .01% of engineers who have done insane stuff no other mortal can pull off.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#252

Post by saagarjha »

JohnFen wrote: post #163
s0rce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine almost always goes like this: Recruiter: How much are looking for? Me: Could you please provide a range for the role? Recruiter: no, please let us know what you want Me: relatively high but not crazy number Recruiter: No, that's too high Me (in my head): why did you ask me then Me: Ok, please let me know what is reasonable Recruiter: some number that may or may not be acceptable Me: asks for a bit more if number…

Personally, I just wouldn't work with a recruiter who did that. That sort of behavior is a red flag to me.

What would you do instead? Ask for another recruiter?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#253

Post by yieldcrv »

saagarjha wrote: post #247
yieldcrv wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s nice but not holistic enough people are overly assuming ingrained bias from a shadowy cabal of hiring managers and not looking at different gendered funnels, attrition, and personal contribution to the outcomes all within the same roles HIRED’s recruitment report, for example, found very gendered compensations asks to begin with similarly, people discount the risk many men take to skew it. for everyone worried…

Nobody was talking about gender here until you used it as an excuse to reiterate talking points about how pay disparity is actually explained by women not asking for enough money or how men actually have it hard.

the person I replied to was in an environment about gender

> “they were especially trying to make sure women were making as much as men”

when the incentive models are unequal the behaviors of the market participants will be unequal

you’ll get workplace equality and wage normalization overnight with that patch to the culture, instead of focusing solely on trying to patch the workplace

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#254

Post by saagarjha »

pandaman wrote: post #246
saagarjha wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn’t he offer you 225 or 230 if he thought you were an important hire?

Because if you were an important hire you'd be impressed more when the comp was eventually pushed all the way to 250 from 200 than to 250 from 230. There is no advantage in offering you 225 or 230 at all.

If I was an important hire I probably have a handful of 230s in my hand already. It’s easy for me to not bother with a company who may or may not push from 200 to 250.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#255

Post by pandaman »

saagarjha wrote: post #254
pandaman wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you were an important hire you'd be impressed more when the comp was eventually pushed all the way to 250 from 200 than to 250 from 230. There is no advantage in offering you 225 or 230 at all.

If I was an important hire I probably have a handful of 230s in my hand already. It’s easy for me to not bother with a company who may or may not push from 200 to 250.

If you had a handful of 230s you would not negotiate? That's quite rare, most companies optimize hiring for the most probable case, not for the outliers.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#256

Post by irrational »

nitwit005 wrote: post #217
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think that, and it's probably even the smart strategy for the employer... But I remember what the guy who wrote homebrew said about his Google interview process. Once an HR culture develops, anything sane or intelligent probably goes out the window.

Writing a popular app is hardly the same as being the top authority in a field. I guarantee when Google hires someone like Ken Thompson, they do not get the normal Google hiring experience.

A popular app? I hardly think homebrew is on the same level as candy crush.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#257

Post by MobileVet »

bruce511 wrote: post #223
dudul wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. It is actually a real scandal that realtors make a share of the sale as opposed to a flat fee. The paperwork and all is the same regardless of if it's a condo or a mansion.

Paperwork is the same, but other work is not. The time, and marketing, costs of a property tend to go up with price. If I'm buying a 12 bedroom mansion, I'm going to expect a lot more photos, better staging, and so on in the marketing compared to a 1 bed apartment. Equally small, cheap, properties are likely to sell faster (bigger buying pool) than more expensive ones. That $20m mansion is going to take a lot more vi…

It is very dependent on the market. Right now in many parts of the US, the market is still flaming hot. Minimal effort is required.

It sure isn’t worth 6% of the sale price, especially considering that the sale price is literally double what it was 2 years ago.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#258

Post by raygelogic »

something about this doesn't quite sit right when I consider my experience with negotiating for roles at startups. I agree with the approach for big tech, but it sets a weird tone for working closely with a team if you just spent a week stressing them out and shaking them down. I've done that negotiation for myself, tried to hire people who did it to me, and I've watched others go through it. it always leaves a funny smell with the team, because at the startups I've been involved with it's kind of rare to play hardball.

just my experience. I am more on the mission-driven end of the why-do-you-work spectrum, it's not just the money for me. and I've gotten bitten in the ass by the sharks who sit on the board and hand down layoffs, I know it's how the world works. just speaking about the small teams where you are negotiating with the overworked hiting manager.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#259

Post by pdonis »

pandaman wrote: post #249
pdonis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You argument is essentially hanging on the assertion that the first number an employer would offer is also the maximum number it could offer. Not at all. You should expect to negotiate once they have made an offer. But your negotiating position will be better if you don't give a number first. > in reality the hiring manager had the range like 200-250 and you asked for 210. Why would he bother to try to push you dow…

>Because you've now anchored the negotiation at 210 as the max, and he's going to try to get you for less because this is business. Why though? The manager has a budget, you are within the budget, getting into negotiation when the condition is already satisfied can, at most, win 10K per year and lose the whole placement, which will cost much more in the additional search. >But if he offers 200 and you have not given…

> Why though?

If you say 210, are you going to absolutely refuse any offer that's less than that? If you would, then you picked a bad number: you should have said 220. Or 230. Or 250. You've already hypothesized that the manager's actual range is 200-250; given that hypothesis, you should be targeting at least the top of that range, not the bottom 20%, if you're going to give a number at all. And if your objection to that is that you don't know the manager's range, yes, that's the point! That's why you shouldn't be risking anchoring the conversation in the wrong place.

If you wouldn't refuse an offer less than 210, then the manager is not going to lose the placement by negotiating with you for less. Yes, 210 is "within budget", but that doesn't mean negotiating for less has no benefit. That's still budget he could now use for something else.

In my experience any number you give is not going to be interpreted as your absolute minimum. It's going to be interpreted as the first step in a negotiation--one in which you should have waited for the company to take the first step, but you didn't and the company will feel no compunction in taking advantage of that.

But in any case, even if you get 210, you have, as I said, foreclosed any chance of getting more. See below.

> You also might get less.

But you're not going to get more, and that's what you should be thinking about.

You've already said the manager's actual range is 200-250. If you say 210, then, as noted above, you're restricting yourself to just the bottom 20% of that range no matter what.

If you give no number and the manager offers 200, when his range is 200-250, that probably means he views you as a baseline hire and you wouldn't have gotten 210 anyway if you'd given that number first. In any case you're no worse off not giving a number; the key point is that the manager views you as a baseline hire.

If you give no number and you're a good enough hire that the manager would give you at least 210, he'll probably offer 210. And then you can negotiate from there.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#260

Post by bomewish »

vkou wrote: post #211
ryandrake wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making). I wonder how much of this information the companies already have access to. Like, they probably use ADP or Paychex as their payroll service, and I wouldn't be surprised if they can ask the payroll company or just look up what you current…

I was also told my FAANG offer was non-negotiable. After declining it, for reasons of pay and location, I got a call back 5 minutes later, with a better location, and ~12% more money on the table. (Junior position in 2012)

Is it just me or does that seem really scummy on the part of the company??
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