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Common mistakes in salary negotiation

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Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#261

Post by emodendroket »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #149
emodendroket wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it sounds that way, if we assume that negotiating skill and job performance are tightly correlated. But why should we assume that?

If the two traits are just randomly assorted, then sure, they'll rarely overlap at what is a statistically random rate. But, if we can assume that the "rare talent" is anything other than straight out of college, they will have discovered that they are a rare talent, be aware of it themselves, and barring some sort of crippling neurosis, want to cash in on it. They might not even be skilled at negotiating... they'll…

If it were that simple why would anyone need tips for salary negotiation? Even in pro sports, where the skills are extremely elite, all the performance stats and salaries are public, and the athletes have agents in their corner, the correlation between pay and performance is far from perfect, and negotiation mistakes can lead to players leaving huge sums on the table.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#262

Post by emodendroket »

irrational wrote: post #256
nitwit005 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, Candy Crush is harder to reproduce.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#263

Post by bomewish »

pc86 wrote: post #89
phpisthebest wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they are hoping to snag the person that has extreme wage compression, working a 85K job that is worth 150K, who they can get for 95K...

That's exactly what I said with different numbers.

This kind of strategy seems a bizarre one for a company. "Let's figure out how to systematically pay our employees less than they're really worth." How is that any kind of long-term plan? To really move the needle you'd have to do it a LOT -- but then you've selected on employees who lack knowledge about their own power. Those are going to be systematically different (probably not in a good way?) from employees who are more proactive and entrepreneurial about negotiating. Wouldn't you prefer a whole lot of the latter type? Since they will presumably be better at solving open-ended problems, etc. etc.?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#264

Post by pandaman »

pdonis wrote: post #259
pandaman wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>If you say 210, are you going to absolutely refuse any offer that's less than that?

I, for one, tell the number, which if was given to me during negotiation would result in acceptance on my part.

> You've already hypothesized that the manager's actual range is 200-250

And I have not hypothesized the range, in my example I speculate why people believe they would have been offered more than they asked for if they did not ask first, this is the hypothesis, not the actual range.

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

It's trivial to raise it if you suddenly decided you can get more, just say you have another offer for $X+10K, but you like the company so much you are willing forfeit 10K. More so if you can actually secure such an offer. This is why negotiating down from already satisfactory for both sides comp is a bad strategy for the HM.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#265

Post by xyzelement »

ABCLAW wrote: post #221
JohnFen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc. Interviewing is the only real way to learn "the market" Interviewing may be the best way to gather market information, but does that make it surprising that people hate doing it? There are very few activities I hate more than taking part in a job interview (on either side of the desk). That it's use…

>but does that make it surprising that people hate doing it? When an activity validates you, it's tough to imagine other people having the opposite experience with it. Imagine every time you went to a round of interviews you were offered riches and status. It would be tough to understand why others just didn't muster up the gumption to go downtown and get what they're worth.

I am the person y'all replying to. This is a good prompt for my mental model on interviewing.

I assume that the answer in any interview process I go into will be "no" 90%+ of the time. That's not some defeated pessimism, it's just reality that the process is hairy (how many people do you go on dates with before you get married?) and every single instance can fail for reasons that have to do with you (how you did that day, fit for the role) or not (hired internally, headcount went away, etc.)

While obviously it's frustrating to fail a round / not get an offer, there's less sting to it when you manage your expectations as above, and then add to it that the frequency of at-bats + the learning process can lead to a better outcome despite - and in fact - because of - the rejections.

So yes, there's a big mental/attitude component that helps you engage with this productively and see the process as something you're doing for yourself - and thus even the fails are part of the plan - versus stepping into some sort of meat grinder.

And to be fair to your comment about "offered riches and status" - I would not put it that way and the 90%+ fail rate is very real. That said, I definitely feel positive about work and have been lucky with opportunities and there's no question that extensive experience interviewing - and learning from the fails - has been key to that.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#266

Post by bomewish »

HellDunkel wrote: post #9
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 recently found out that i did not know the maximum. Only multiple offers and taking some risks allowed me to find out and it was well beyond what i had assumed.

How did you elicit that maximum?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#267

Post by lisper »

The approach I've taken throughout my career when asked about my salary expectations is to say: it depends on the details. There are some jobs I would do for free as a volunteer or purely for equity (e.g. advising a startup or teaching kids to program), and there are some jobs I would do only if I were making a ridiculous amount of money (e.g. being a mid-level project manager at a large company), and a lot of possibilities in between. So I can't tell you what my compensation expectations are because they depend too much on the details of the job.

It has the added benefit of being the truth.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#268

Post by bomewish »

viking123 wrote: post #84
SkyPuncher wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found this advice to be far too prevalent and largely unrealistic. Nearly everything about the interview process is out of your control. Getting multiple, competing offers to line up is extremely hard. It’s basically like saying “you win a race by being the fastest”. No duh! How you be the fastest is the hardest part.

Yeah it is so difficult to align these. I had two interview loops going and the other company was my clear favorite but the loop took like 2 months while the other was two weeks. So what I ended up doing is that I took the first job and now in a month or so I am going to quit and move to the other. It sucks but I literally had no other way because I cannot predict the result of the other interview and I cannot ask th…

Wow, that doesn't seem right.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#269

Post by xyzelement »

saagarjha wrote: post #232
j1elo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can always tell job X "I'd love to work with you but it's hard to accept a lower offer, can you match?" It's of course very dependant on each country and the jobs market, but in my experience the issue would be even getting to have multiple offers in a short enough period of time. To the point that it happening could be called a coincidence, more than anything. Unless you are fiercely hunting for a job (aka. do…

The article says to not do it but I’ve had pretty good results with “I’m on a short timeline due to competing offers” to speed things up.

Ditto. Almost every recruiter will ask you at the onset if you are interviewing with other places. They ask so they have a lever to speed up your process if necessary - eg "hey hiring manager, this dude's resume looks great and I had a good convo with him, but he's already had one round with AWS. We better line up our side of things ASAP"

As I mentioned in another comment, I try to be forthcoming with companies especially in cases where the transparency doesn't hurt me and helps everyone. So if the following is the case, I would say something like "Yup, I am in a pretty active search right now, I am talking to a handful of other companies. I am definitely interested in going through the process with you as well, so if you want I will keep you abreast of how my other conversations are going throughout this process" - I've found that this both creates credibility/good vibes and the company is often able to keep pace with the process and offer timing.

Elsewhere in this thread someone was asking how you can possibly get to a place where you have multiple offers around the same timeline - it's something like this.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#270

Post by dekhn »

charlie0 wrote: post #251
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.

Distinguished comes after principal, but I can't say I did anything distinguished in my career. It was just a salary band/title.
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