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Common mistakes in salary negotiation

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Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#431

Post by WalterBright »

UncleMeat wrote: post #407
xyzelement wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// I make around 600k ... Still, I capture only a fraction of the value I generate for my employer. There seems to be a two way street here. Presumably if you could make 600K or more by yourself, you'd be doing that rather than working for your employer. Your employer, likely way before you got there, created an environment where you could come in and earn this much. If they and companies of that profile didn't exist…

The other people working for my employer created that environment. The shareholders who own pieces of it didn't do that.

The shareholders literally provided the cash to get the company started and sustained until it was profitable.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#432

Post by WalterBright »

csaha wrote: post #325
WalterBright wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to see how making $400k offers is exploiting the worker, rather than the worker exploiting the company.

The first time I applied to work for a high frequency trading group in a hedge fund, my boss asked me what my desired comp would be? I replied 400k, to which he immediately responded saying that's extremely reasonable... So clearly, I f*** myself over in the negotiation. No company in our capitalist society pays any worker at any level. What the worker thinks they are worth- they pay the worker the absolute bare mini…

When you sell your house, do you sell it for as much as you can? When you buy a house, do you make the minimum offer you hope the seller will accept?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#433

Post by WalterBright »

satvikpendem wrote: post #352
WalterBright wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to see how making $400k offers is exploiting the worker, rather than the worker exploiting the company.

They're talking about exploitation in the Marxist sense, that excess profit belongs to the workers. Of course, I don't believe in the Labor Theory of Value, as supply and demand is a much more useful model of the world, but that's what they mean by exploitation, not what it's seen as colloquially.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#434

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #430
UncleMeat wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make around 600k. My employer has enough cash in the bank to give every single full time employee a bonus of more than half a million dollars. Net income per quarter is something like 100k per full time employee. Yes, I am incredibly fortunate. Yes, I make a very very large amount of money compared to a typical american worker. Still, I capture only a fraction of the value I generate for my employer.

You and those employees can quit and start their own business and you can capture 100% of that value for yourselves. If you don't want to do that, doesn't that admit the company is providing that value, not you? For example, I know a top salesman at Microsoft. He'd call up a customer, drop in, get ushered right in to see the CEO, and close another sale. One day, he decided to capture that value he was provided by wor…

Microsoft has produced a lot of people who made gobs of cash at Microsoft, and left to form startups for the easy money. Only to get a very rude shock about how hard it is to make money with a company.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#435

Post by para_parolu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #428
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse: "Best year ever! Profits are up XX%! Investors are happy! Sorry, there's no money for raises. Also, we're laying some of you off." That's exactly what Activision-Blizzard did in 2019. They announced record profits, and in the same week announced the layoff of 800 workers. https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/12/18222096/blizzard-layoffs-...

It may seem odd at first impressiom, but profits are about the past, layoffs are about the future, so its also not nonsensical.

That seems like improper management to me.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#436

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

lelanthran wrote: post #339
nunez wrote: post #147

> My general policy with third-party recruiters is to not tell them ANYTHING and to always deal directly with the companies they introduce you, once you establish a point of contact there. You should assume that anything you tell your recruiter is going to get back to every company you’re working with. Why? Because their primary objective is to place your butt in the seat of one of the companies they’re working with,…

> If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. I'm pretty certain the article covered this exact point; even GOOD recruiters aren't going to jeopardize a deal with $1500k commission for an extra $150. We see the same thing with real estate agents, or sales anywhere a commission is paid - the sales person would rather have 10% less commission from a closed deal th…

> even GOOD recruiters aren't going to jeopardize a deal with $1500k commission for an extra $150.

$1500k is quite the commission. ;-)

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#437

Post by dragonwriter »

para_parolu wrote: post #435
dragonwriter wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may seem odd at first impressiom, but profits are about the past, layoffs are about the future, so its also not nonsensical.

That seems like improper management to me.

Improper management is report past results as results and making forward decisions based on forward prospects? Or…what, exactly?

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#438

Post by slikrick »

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.

> actually

they were really trying. this site is so strange.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#439

Post by analog31 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #324
bruce511 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't believe the realtor is worth 6%, then by all means skip past them. There are plenty of fixed-fee sites that guide you through the process, provide legal form docs, and so on. Clearly not everyone needs, or wants, a realtor. But presumably there are enough who do to keep them in business. There are enough who don't to keep the "do it yourself" market in business as well. Choice is good. What is good for y…

Realtors in the USA can charge 6% because they're part of a cartel. In other countries where I've lived (UK and China) real estate agents typically charge between 1% and 3%.

Indeed, "realtor" is a brand name.

Re: Common mistakes in salary negotiation

#440

Post by robbintt »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #272
xyzelement wrote: post #111

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…

"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…

I have asked up front if people attach timelines to their offers or use exploding offers and just decline to interview. Those offers are, in my experience, always less competitive.
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