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Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

fearlesssalarynegotiation.com

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Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#81

Post by reaperducer »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #15
SoftTalker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think salary + performance bonus is generally a good way to go. I've only had one job that did that. The base salary wasn't remarkable but there was a bonus that had a component that was calculated based on the overall performance of the company that year, and a component that recognized individual performance. So everyone got a bonus, but high performers got more. You used to see bonus compensation in most financi…

A former employer did 40% bonuses. It made for a nice holiday surprise even when they decided "the company didn't meet expectations" and gave everyone half bonus. Eventually they decided to "align with market expectations" and coincidentally started hemorrhaging staff.

Eventually they decided to "align with market expectations" and coincidentally started hemorrhaging staff.

At my fist full-time job out of college (non-tech), the company gave everyone an extra paycheck as a Christmas bonus.

The next year, everyone got half a paycheck as a Christmas bonus.

The next year, everyone got a spiral-sliced ham as a Christmas bonus.

Before the following Christmas came around, the majority of people had gone to the competition across town.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#82

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

chamomeal wrote: post #47
goldeneye13_ wrote: post #36

I always recommend this article: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ I think this topic is super important and I’m really glad I didn’t follow advice of saying your “expected salary or expected +20%”. Here my anecdotal SWE salary history: Worked at a startup for a bunch of years making 90k by the end Got offered a place at FAANG. Recruiter pushed me a little bit on expected salary but I didn’t gi…

That is absolutely bonkers. The range of developer salaries is so huge. Congrats on moving far above 90k!! What kind of work experience would you say was most valuable in climbing that ladder? Open source stuff? Anything you could show off?

I think the main thing his experience showed is that if you want to make a lot of money, you need to position yourself to move into industries that can pay a lot. For software engineers that means 3 major options:

1. The US tech giants (the "FAANGs"). These companies are so insanely profitable and they can afford to pay a lot, though they all have become more cost conscious in the past couple years.

2. Finance. Again, they've got a lot of money, and especially for trading firms it's usually more straightforward to assign value to individual developers than in other areas.

3. Currently there is a big desire for AI talent, so if that's your industry one of the big startups (OpenAI, Anthropic) or one of the smaller well-funded ones should be able to pay you well.

So I would say this person didn't so much "climb the ladder" as opposed to position themselves well to get hired at other companies that would pay them a lot more. And I think this person did it in perfect order, i.e. it's been said a lot on HN how "the startup deal" (i.e lower salary but more equity) is hardly ever worth it for IC software developers these days if you can also get a FAANG job, but it can be a great stepping stone to getting experience that leads to a better paying job at companies that can afford to do so.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#84

Post by lolinder »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #76
lolinder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably we're talking about remote roles here, in which case this is nonsense. A Zurich developer is not worth more in a remote role than a developer in Warsaw. The only reason large cities have inflated salaries is because that's what you have to pay someone for them to live within range of your fancy office. If it's a remote role anyway, the companies that aren't out to exploit you will pay the same salary band…

Companies aren't moving to Warsaw to find the best talent in the world. That talent is mostly already in the super expensive tech hubs where the top software companies have flourished for decades and cross-pollinated creating a supply of experienced talent in the area. It's much more easy to find an experienced tech lead even remotely, around London or SF, than say in some village in Bulgaria or Poland because no F50…

I don't know that it ever was true that "the best talent in the world" is concentrated in the super expensive tech hubs, but it's absolutely not true any more post-COVID. It's largely a myth that's understandably popular among Bay Area types.

What you do find a lot of in tech hubs is the type of people who move to tech hubs. This often means that in a certain type of company you get better "culture fit" by using a geographic filter (thus avoiding illegally filtering by protected characteristics), and you definitely get a higher percentage of people who are willing to structure their life around their career. And when you get enough of those people in a room together, they're certainly the types that will happily persuade each other that they represent "the best talent in the world."

Software is a potent leveler—all you need is a computer and you're on equal footing with the rest of the world—and I find that the best programmers are the ones who learned to do it for fun and only later made a career out of it. Those people are equally distributed across much of the world at this point, and if anything there are fewer of them (as a percentage of job applicants) in the tech hubs because the tech hubs attract those who chose software for the money.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#85

Post by FirmwareBurner »

reaperducer wrote: post #78
voytec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interacting with companies seeking cheap labor in Poland - like Intel. Despite their quite active recruiters, all conversations with whom end up at "company policy doesn't allow me to discuss salary range". I've set up a small business with EU tax id over a decade ago and I'm issuing invoices to European countries (EU and Schengen) and North America. It's a trade-off of giving up European employment safety, p…

"company policy doesn't allow me to discuss salary range". Walk. Any company that puts policy over people isn't a good company.

So, the majority of companies?

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#86

Post by reaperducer »

FireBeyond wrote: post #21
phil21 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying about this these days seems rather risky to me. Some employers may not care, but some will. The Worknumber product from ADP (and it's equiv from Paychex) covers a vast range of white collar employees. Perhaps most. Your new employer has a very good chance of seeing precisely what your current salary is down to the paycheck level going back years to even verify raises and title changes. Replying with what you re…

You can opt out of The Work Number. It's a bit of a convoluted process, but not byzantine - I did it a few months ago, involves filling out a form by hand and scanning it or mailing it, but I did get written confirmation that I'd been opted out.

Note that this may make major purchases more complex in the future.

You may not remember to opt back in to the "service" a certain number of months before you buy a car, for example. Then you're stuck either paying a higher interest rate because the lender sees you as riskier without a trusted method of verifying income, or you have to do a bunch of paperwork with the seller or finance company may or may not be willing to deal with.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#87

Post by hinkley »

One of the places I applied to had a required field with salary expectation. I almost backed out of the whole process.

I don’t think it was an accident that it was the very last field in the submission process. I forgot to write down which one it was in my notes. So that’s less data I’ll have if they call me back.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#88

Post by aster0id »

lethologica wrote: post #75

This whole game is so stupid to me. It really feels like the employer is trying to screw over the potential employee before they’ve even joined. My default answer to these questions is now “what’s your budget?” And if they return with a non answer, or try and push me to give a number without giving one themselves, I walk. I can’t think of anywhere else where the seller (in this case the employer “selling” a position)…

It's a dumb game, sure. But I'd say it arises from opposing incentives, not necessarily from a real desire on the company's part to screw you over.

How important is feeling "not screwed over" at the beginning of an employment important for you? Does it trump a great work environment and interesting things to work on? How sure are you that your subjective feelings during negotiations match how the employer actually is objectively?

It would seem intuitively obvious that there must be correlations between being screwed over in the beginning and then having a bad experience later on during the actual job as well. But I'm personally wary of blindly following intuitions in matters that relate to money.

Being able to just "walk away" from decidedly some of the highest paying jobs in the world (irrespective of the feeling of being low balled) is a privilege too.

Anyway, in my own personal experience, I was screwed over during the offer phase of a previous job, and the job was not great either - terrible wlb and politics, but I did learn a lot and became very efficient at my work. As a bonus I stopped caring about my work outside of being necessary for paying my bills, while still maintaining decently high quality output.

I had the opposite experience with my latest job - the recruiter was professional and empathetic, and I had a great offer experience. The job itself is great as well.

So yeah, maybe there are correlations, but I'm still just one data point and so I'm not keen to generalize yet.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#89

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

lethologica wrote: post #75

This whole game is so stupid to me. It really feels like the employer is trying to screw over the potential employee before they’ve even joined. My default answer to these questions is now “what’s your budget?” And if they return with a non answer, or try and push me to give a number without giving one themselves, I walk. I can’t think of anywhere else where the seller (in this case the employer “selling” a position)…

> It really feels like the employer is trying to screw over the potential employee before they’ve even joined.

I mean, on the flip side, the employee wants to get as much salary as possible. You say this is a "dumb game" that we've developed, but nearly all negotiations work this way, and a lot of it is fundamentally dependent on leverage: how much does the company really want to hire the person, and how much does the person need the job.

I will say, having hired a lot of software engineers in my time, that I never see it as a bad thing if a potential employee gives a very high number. Similarly, I think it's totally reasonable for an employee to ask "what's the salary range for this position" and to expect an honest answer. But I have seen employees "negotiate themselves out of a job" because they've read too many "principles of negotiating" books and somehow act like we're negotiating over the end to the Ukraine War. Basically, if folks are going to be a total pain in the ass before the job has even started, I'm pretty sure I don't want to work with you (and every single time I've "overridden my gut" and thought "well, maybe this person won't be so bad, after all they're great technically", I e come to regret it). As you point out, the employee is obviously free to walk as well - in my opinion, it's probably better for everyone if things reach a "hmm, someone is going to be unhappy with this decision" moment that folks walk away.

Re: Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

#90

Post by em-bee »

goldeneye13_ wrote: post #67
johnnyanmac wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong. Defintiely could be. But not in this economy. I'll take what I can get. But in general, it really is a matter of knowing your worth and what they could pay. IF you have a certain noteriety in a community of a domain and you get an offer, understand how much leverage you have vs. yet another front end web dev. Let alone…

Notice I’m not suggesting that people go for “hard” negotiation. You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early. Worst case you will get offer that’s too low. But best case you get offered above what you expected.

at least one third if not half of the job applications i have come across have a required form field for expected compensation. initially i just wrote 0 or something obviously bogus, but i got concerned that this was used as a filter. so now i am not sure what to do. for european companies it is probably ok to just write something as they are unlikely to have a much higher range anyways. it really helps though if they actually post their range.
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