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Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

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Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#31

Post by z3t4 »

minimaxir wrote: post #19
z3t4 wrote: post #17

Make sure you start high then request a 5% raise Every year! If you wait five years and request 25% it's Never gonna happen! If possible, try to get 2.5% every six month.

> Make sure you start high then request a 5% raise Every year! If you wait five years and request 25% it's Never gonna happen! If possible, try to get 2.5% every six month. It's worth noting that due to compounding, these are not mathematically the same. In 5 years: 5%/year: 27% raise from base 2.5%/6mo: 28% raise from base

Thanks! I was hopping someone would interpret that. Also, your boss probably hates these talks just like you do, and want to get you out of the room as fast as possible. So go low and often.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#32

Post by beachstartup »

as a business owner/operator involved in everything from sales to hiring to vendor purchasing, here's the most important thing:

if you can't walk away from a negotiation, it's not really a negotiation. if you feel, at any point, compelled to stay even though your interests are not being met in a reasonable matter, you're going to get screwed - and it's your fault, not the other person's.

in a true negotiation both parties are attempting to find an optimum solution that solves for 2 sets of 'peer to peer' requirements. it's supposed to be a cooperative endeavor. if at any point it turns contentious, you back out immediately. the opportunity was never there. it was just an illusion. this is the hard thing for people to grasp.

unfortunately, for most people these are things you learn by doing. "not all that glitters is gold".

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#33

Post by meddlepal »

cornellwright wrote: post #26
Swizec wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I like to say "Just pay me more, I can take care of my own perks. Promise." Sure, free food is great and all. But we're not kindergarteners are we? I'm an adult and I like to take care of my own food (and such). Free beer and pizza is for helping your friend move. Or for giving a talk at a *camp event. It's not for producing hundreds of thousands if not millions in value for your employer.

As an employer that provides free food, I think there's more to it than that in that both sides receive more value. We don't provide free food in order to pay our employees less. We provide free food because we see a lot of value in everyone eating together and employees get a lot of value in just not having to think about lunch or spend the time to go out and eat somewhere. I think most people get more value you out…

You provide free food because you get more working time out of your employees. Any other benefit your pushing is quite honestly, bullshit. They're sitting together? Great; odds are they're talking about their job and that's only beneficial to the employer.

The other problem with free food is that it starts to feel like an obligation to consume it. I like eating out about once a week otherwise I brown-bag it most of the week with yogurt, fruit and some peanut butter crackers. If you make free food a perk (1) I don't feel like i'm maximizing my benefits (2) people start to think i'm not a team player because I don't want to eat pizza/burritos/chinese/indian/ five days a week.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#34

Post by watty »

bsdpython wrote: post #30
watty wrote: post #25

I'm about to ask for a raise for the first time but I'm not entirely sure how to handle it. I've been with this company for 7 years and only received 2-3% increases the past 3 years. I interviewed at a competitor and they offered me a 20% increase, which I turned down. During negotiations should I simply ask for them to match? I don't want them to think I'm actively looking for a new job but want to get paid my worth…

Why did you turn down the offer? You are in a MUCH stronger position to ask for a raise with another offer in hand.

Well they requested a quick response and it was a bad time for me to negotiate with my employer. They made it pretty clear that I could contact them if I ever needed a job.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#35

Post by curiously »

A tech employer in Vancouver once told me that if an engineer tries to negotiate for a higher salary that is a signal that they care only about money and that they wouldn't be good hire, regardless of their experience and skillset. This is one of the "big" tech companies in Vancouver, BC. Never mind the hundreds of small sweatshops here.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#36

Post by zyxley »

I'm very happy to be with a company that has a standard policy of yearly 10-15% pay increases. We tend to do unexciting and sometimes just plain weird contract work for other companies, so my company has to pay us what we're worth to keep us around.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#38

Post by cornellwright »

meddlepal wrote: post #33
cornellwright wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employer that provides free food, I think there's more to it than that in that both sides receive more value. We don't provide free food in order to pay our employees less. We provide free food because we see a lot of value in everyone eating together and employees get a lot of value in just not having to think about lunch or spend the time to go out and eat somewhere. I think most people get more value you out…

You provide free food because you get more working time out of your employees. Any other benefit your pushing is quite honestly, bullshit. They're sitting together? Great; odds are they're talking about their job and that's only beneficial to the employer. The other problem with free food is that it starts to feel like an obligation to consume it. I like eating out about once a week otherwise I brown-bag it most of t…

I fully embrace that we get more value out of providing free food than it costs us. That plus the fact that almost everyone seems to like it is enough of a reason to do it.

Is sitting together and talking about your job ONLY beneficial to the employer? I feel like better communication and more discussion hopefully leading to doing a better job is also beneficial to the employee. Working on a more successful team probably leads to higher satisfaction and better long term career prospects. Even when I've worked in places that didn't provide food, all or almost all of the team still usually ate together, just because we liked what we were doing and enjoyed one another's company.

My point is employees aren't losing anything by taking or not taking the perk. We wouldn't pay someone more not to eat the food. Aside from all the weird bad team dynamics that would cause it would also be a net-loss to the company. When people work from home, we also don't pay them any more, despite that we order less food and they have to buy/cook their own.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#39

Post by NinjaTime »

watty wrote: post #25

I'm about to ask for a raise for the first time but I'm not entirely sure how to handle it. I've been with this company for 7 years and only received 2-3% increases the past 3 years. I interviewed at a competitor and they offered me a 20% increase, which I turned down. During negotiations should I simply ask for them to match? I don't want them to think I'm actively looking for a new job but want to get paid my worth…

Leave! Then you will see how much you were worth.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#40

Post by No1 »

The main tenet of this blog post is that you should argue for your compensation based on the amount of value you add to the company.

That's nice in theory, but the techies' dilemma is that it's often difficult or impossible to put a hard number on the value they have added.

How many customers were retained because you decreased response times by 100ms? How many customers were gained because of that slick UI you created? How many discounts were not handed out because of downtime that wasn't suffered because of your cautious error handling and exemplary testing? How much money was saved because of that documentation you made that helped the new hire ramp up faster?

Even when you can put a hard number on work you've done, like decreasing hosting costs by $15k per month, isn't that why you're paid so handsomely already? How are you going to do that again next year? (Why haven't you done it already?) Wasn't it a group effort?

The reality is, you're basically going to get paid based upon what your employer has deemed everyone else in your position is earning, plus or minus some % based upon experience level, your reputation, and how badly the company needs the position filled. If you don't like that, time to go into management or sales.

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