341–350 of 467 posts
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I haven’t pursued it seriously so I don’t know how much you can hurry things along, but most of the interview processes I’ve seen are weeks long. Google even warns you up front that it’ll probably take on the order of months. So it’s kind of tricky to get them to all line up like that.
It all depends. I have done first phone call -> offer in 2 weeks at FAANG.
I used to work in trading and I think some of the principles I learned there apply directly to salary negotiations. Two key things I think about all the time are price discovery and competition. Price discovery means that in some illiquid markets, you don't really know what a thing will trade at unless you try to trade it (which itself reveals some information to the counterparty but that's not important in the job c…
I think exactly zero of those principles apply (assuming you are talking about stock exchange trades).
All these types of "technical analysis" on price-discovery during negotiations is fairly pointless.
There's only one rule that works when personally doing a trade with someone:(whether you're negotiating salary, buying a property or selling car) be likeable!
The more the other party likes you, the more flexible they are going to be on their price-points.
So, sure, the hiring manager has a band (say $100k to $140k). What you want is for him to make an offer at the top of his band ... or even higher - if you interview well they may decide on a more senior role for you.
This is why, even if your minimum is above his maximum, be likeable!
Even if you have already decided you don't want that job, be likeable!
Even if you don't want to work for that particular company, be likeable!
Even if you already have an offer in hand that is way above anything anyone else can offer you, be likeable!
What likeable means depends on context.
When selling a car, being upfront and having all the paperwork up to date, and all the services done on time and recorded as such, a clearance certificate to prove "not stolen", etc ... makes you likeable.
When negotiating a salary, gush about how nice their offices are, how their mission statement resonates with you, how wonderful the interviewers have been up to that point.[1] Make a list of things you admire about the company/its products/its vision ahead of time so that you can truthfully tell them all wonderful things about themselves.
Practice telling people horrible things in nice ways (called constructive criticism?). Practice, Practice, Practice! They will give you stupid challenges, maybe even broken code. How you respond must make them like you even more for the role.
You must come across as a collaborator and leverager, not as a coding genius. Coding geniuses are a dime a dozen. Competent coders who can act as a force multiplier for their team, their manager or their company are rare gems who get offered much more than genius coders.
Everywhere I've been at, or done work for, for over 25 years, has been filled with people who would rather work with pleasant people who are basically competent (or even slightly below average) than work with unpleasant people, no matter how good they are technically.
Look at highly paid surgeons: the ones making the most money are the ones filling every single one of their slots. They know - bedside manners matter.
[1] I spent a full day interview for a senior-ish (L5? L6? Dunno now) position at AWS. It was hard work, with challenges coming at me the whole day, coding, design, etc ... and yet I thanked every single interviewer for their time, and told them how much I appreciate them making the effort to interview me. I was warm, pleasant and friendly the whole day, not just civil, in spite of the constant set of new problems thrown my way.
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It's hard to see how making $400k offers is exploiting the worker, rather than the worker exploiting the company.
Exploitation is not about whether each party is making a lot of money, it is whether one party makes a disproportionate amount of money over the value the other party produces.
Exploitation is labor is never usually headlined in the context of $400k/year salary. Technically, you're right. But we can take this to the limit, instead of $400k, let's say $4M/year for a job that's worth $5M/year? Are they "exploited". Yes, but not by the common use of the term.
Perhaps the reason for GP's take was that it robs away the colloquial definition of exploiration in an entirely different context where it's the least meaningful, i.e. exploitation of Bangladeshi child laborers vs. a programmer earning $400k year salary.
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>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…
The assumption that other people's experiences are like yours is a key cognitive bias. A 90% fail rate means 10 offers after a hundred applications - that's an incredibly solid success rate. Now imagine some people have orders of magnitude more difficulty because their name is strange, or because their social class shows through in their dress or mannerisms.
If I can offer a comparison, most people on this forum have it made. It's like asking a group of models how difficult online dating is and having someone say "I can't fathom anyone having trouble keeping their weekends full of new people to date... It's just so easy!"
Also, I note that you seem to assume I'm talking about my own experiences; I'm not. I am a very well established professional in a lucrative field.
There is only one rule when talking about job, or essentially anything in life, if you wan to win. And that is - always be ready to walk out. This mostly means able, not just willing. Never put yourself in a position where you are cornered and have no way out. This is where "fuck you money" comes in, usually. If you know you will have food on the table, roof above your head and a bed to sleep in, your perspective wil…
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"the best negotiating advice is to have multiple offers" This is borderline "get in the job cannon and blast off to jobland" territory. Also - it can be terrifically difficult to line up multiple simultaneous offers because companies would rather explode their offer than generally let people get a better leverage. I know multiple companies who do this on purpose for this explicit reason. Is it inefficient from a mark…
Never accept an exploding offer. If they won’t give you more time, then let them see you’re prepared to let it lapse. It’s a ploy to create urgency when there is none, as is never in your interest as a candidate. I’d be very surprised if a single offer actually expired, it’s expensive to lose qualified candidates for the hiring company.
My background is consulting and earlier-stage startups in the UK which may mean we’re in a different environment to what you’re used to, but the teams are often lean, and sometimes strained by the time we’re out to hire.
Sourcing and screening often starts a few weeks/months before but generally we move quite quickly through technical to offer stages - I think its healthy and fair for both parties to keep expect these final stages around 1-2 weeks.
Interviewing takes quite a bit of time and energy from the tech team and can impact team health, delivery, and ultimately bottom line - where our salaries come from.
If we’re in the fortunate position to have a final candidate (or two - three), theres going to be an exploding offer because we need to get back to work, and we need to let other candidates know to move on.
As a candidate its very fair to line up your interviews with a few companies and tell them you would like to make a decision by a particular date. If they cant accommodate you or extend an offer with a deadline prior to that, its on them. In my last job hunt no company turned down this request and two adjusted their processes to accommodate it.
Also, I usually have a job, and then nay apply to another when something interesting comes up. Isn't that more common than the situation of interviewing with four companies at the same time while not having a current job that's also part of the comparison?
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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 a…
so we established that the revenue of the company belongs to the employees that worked for it, but the company has to skimm at least the operating costs before payout as otherwise it would make a loss.
but most companies have an obligation to make profit, so there is no other way than to pay the employees less than what they're worth (because increasing revenue would also increase the value of employees accordingly)
please tell me where i'm wrong
> What to do when you're working at Apple and a Microsoft recruiter calls > Get competing offers from Meta and Netflix at the same time > This shouldn't be a problem, as you have networked in the past and your in-company friend can pull some strings to make any recruiting requirement optional
I'm not sure these assumed readers need all that much career advice?