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Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

articulateventures.com

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Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#61

Post by toyg »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #55
crusso wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company. I couldn't disagree more. Loyalty is its own benefit that's worth compensating people for. I value people who come into a group and do more than just contribute a bunch of code. I value people who contribute to the culture and the framework of the ongoing enterprise. Furthermore, I want newcomers to se…

It sounds like we actually agree in practice and I've just heard the word "loyalty" used differently from the way you've heard it used. Apologies if I used the wrong definition, and let me try to clarify my point: I completely agree that contributing to culture and the business is valuable. What annoys me is how much a lot of companies value seniority over anything else. The attitude of "Well, X is older and has been…

People are lazy. Calculating seniority is easy and "objective", not controversial; in fact, it's so linear you could even write a program to automate it (I bet somebody did just that). Evaluating performance or actual returns to the business, that's hard; the metrics are often very subjective, and people will start arguing. Rule #6582 of the Safe Manager: Don't Give People Excuses To Argue. So seniority it is.

This was unfortunately exacerbated by Trade Unions, which needed something "objective" to force owners to pay up and keep members happy, so they built their demands on this sort of easy metrics: seniority, hours of work, etc.

I'm sure if you could find a generic way to calculate productivity in an uncontroversial way, managers and unions would jump on it, but in most cases there ain't, so seniority it is.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#62

Post by Karunamon »

praptak wrote: post #22

This is in line with what one of my previous bosses taught me about negotiations: negotiation is about truly understanding the interests of the other side. In this case even those they are not aware of. He also used to put crap clauses into contract drafts (if he knew they'd be passed through lawyers), so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract. A true exam…

>..so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract

There's actually a programming version of this referenced on an old StackOverflow question - a "Duck", i.e. a feature submitted so management will take issue with it and not something else more important.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jar... - see entry #5

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#63

Post by newman314 »

alexhjones wrote: post #31

This made me sad :-( I was dissapointed with my recent pay rise (+3%, 18months after the last rise). Maybe I didn't negotiate well but I was open and honest. I don't care if I'm paid more than my peers, or that there's no more money in the pot, it's still a shitty deal with no sweeteners. I guess that is what you get for being someone else's employee.

I don't know where you are but it helps to document your accomplishments ahead of time and socialize that. I'm not talking about being an obnoxious self-promoter but making sure people acknowledge your (actual) contributions.

I find that many wait for their managers to automatically do the right thing and then get disappointed. I've always advocated being more proactive about this.

Let's say I want a raise and a promotion this year. I outline it in my goals, and as the year progresses have meetings with my manager to make sure I'm doing everything possible to reach that goal as well as documenting things along the way. When it comes time for review, one of two things will happen: either you have communicated clearly what you want and you get most of it, or you get screwed either by your manager or his/her manager. If that's the case, you then need to decide if something went wrong, or if it was not in good faith. If so, it's time to leave.

Also, protip: find out when budgets are being set, that's the time to push/remind for more money/whatever. Usually by the time reviews come around, things are pretty much set in stone.

Don't be sad. Keep kicking ass and follow what I've written. I'm willing to say that you will likely have a more positive experience next go-around.

PS. This only works if you do actually work hard and get shit done. If you like goofing off and just want more $$, it will NOT work.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#65

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #42
e40 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll play devil's advocate here: making special deals on benefits other than salary is a land mine. Everyone is used to the fact that people are paid differently, but people are used to uniform benefits (all you out there: please don't call out your exception to the rule... it really is generally a rule). It's likely to have a negative effect or morale, whereas giving you more salary won't. (Yes, people find out thes…

This is the main reason I am a contractor -- I take a LOT of time off. For my clients, it is normal for contractors to have gaps in availability. For my on-site colleagues, they know that the vacation is unpaid.

Increasingly it feels that contracting is the most straight forward way to work for an organisation. They pay X, they get Y. No messing about with broken promises and vague commitments.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#66

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #51
crusso wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you're saying that companies shouldn't give yearly raises except for inflationary increases? Wouldn't that be an implication of not considering time with the company? Rewarding loyalty to the business is not a meaningless gesture, nor should it be an affront to new people. The difficult thing from the employer's perspective is balancing the reward for many different aspects of each employee that makes that employ…

Companies shouldn't reward loyalty, especially when that means punishing performance. Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company. All other things being equal, a 25-year-old who just joined the company and automated 5 people's worth of work is worth several multiples of the 35-year-old analyst who'd been at the company for 10 years and was doing…

Companies shouldn't give out inflationary rises.

Assuming they're happy with you they should pay the market rate - what it would take to replace you in the job you do at the level you do it.

If they do that you shouldn't have to worry bout being under paid, they shouldn't be worried about over paying you and for most roles it's pretty easy to work out.

Plus from a selfish point of view anyone in IT would have done better than inflation over the past decade.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#67

Post by Articulate »

umsm wrote: post #59
krschultz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a semester off to live with some ski bums in Colorado. Them: "Why do you work so hard?" Me: "So I can get rich" (young and stupid response) Them: "Well, what are you going to do when you are rich?" Me: "Ski all the time" Them: "Dude, you don't have to be rich to ski all the time. We freaking clean toilets, but I ski 100+ days a year". That conversation changed my life. I realized that getting rich was a stupid…

Relevant fisherman story: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/09/08/the-fisherman-and-the-...

Loved this- and it is right in line with the skier- I am reminded of a Pearl Jam lyric- "if he only knew now what he knew then."

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#68

Post by vacri »

praptak wrote: post #22

This is in line with what one of my previous bosses taught me about negotiations: negotiation is about truly understanding the interests of the other side. In this case even those they are not aware of. He also used to put crap clauses into contract drafts (if he knew they'd be passed through lawyers), so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract. A true exam…

Classic example working in a service department for a medical equipment maker. We had a service contract with the relevant department in Hospital Foo, but the admin rolled slow there. The department had the funds and wanted to pay us. We wanted to be paid. We trusted the department on their word - so we kept supplying the contract despite not being paid. At the point 10 months overdue in the annual contract, the word came down that the payment was coming, just the new lawyer was looking over it.

The new lawyer was very much a Make Your Mark person, and despite us, the dept, and admin all saying "we're happy, please pay", she had to add a clause saying: "At any point during the contract, we can cancel and get reimbursed the full price of the contract". That is, they could cancel at 11 months 29 days of receiving support (this is actual send-field-techs-out support, not 'here's our pdfs and phone number') and get the entire year back. Of course it was bargaining nonsense, and we negotiated to a prorata clause, but it caused a fuckton of busywork for all involved, useful to zero people except the Make Your Mark lawyer. So much wasted time and money everywhere just for her to feel validated.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#69

Post by jbooth »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #51
crusso wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you're saying that companies shouldn't give yearly raises except for inflationary increases? Wouldn't that be an implication of not considering time with the company? Rewarding loyalty to the business is not a meaningless gesture, nor should it be an affront to new people. The difficult thing from the employer's perspective is balancing the reward for many different aspects of each employee that makes that employ…

Companies shouldn't reward loyalty, especially when that means punishing performance. Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company. All other things being equal, a 25-year-old who just joined the company and automated 5 people's worth of work is worth several multiples of the 35-year-old analyst who'd been at the company for 10 years and was doing…

All things being equal, odds are the 25-yo who just joined the company knows fuck-all compared to the veteran who's been there 10 years.

An exceptional 25yo vs a should-have-been-fired-already 35yo, maybe you'd have a point.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#70

Post by droithomme »

Article assumes a situation where company can not pay market rate because there is "no money". No money means either they are not profitable and not funded enough to succeed, or they are lying to the candidate. Whichever one it is doesn't matter because in either scenario accepting position is a poor move for a talented and capable candidate in an environment when there are many positions available for competent people. These insights terrifically simplify negotiations in this scenario to: "No thanks."
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