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Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

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Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#201

Post by logfromblammo »

phamilton wrote: post #188
logfromblammo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting a basket in the break room, filled with menus from nearby take-out restaurants, is even easier. I have worked at a lot of different companies, and an ad-hoc, employee-organized lunch run is very common. The person who commits to handling the cash and picking up the food decides on the restaurant, orders are placed by a deadline, and people eat it when it arrives. If a manager or admin staffer names the restau…

I think your suggestion works well at a smaller company (<50 employees), but as the company starts moving to multiple floors/buildings and departments become a bit more isolated then the organic lunches tend to be intra-department vs inter-department. We have lunch brought in once a week. On the days we don't have lunch it is very much as you describe within each department, but on the day the company provides lunch…

That sounds like some form of confirmation bias. You may not be aware of the usefulness of conversations that happen under circumstances not favorable to you observing their content.

The company-supplied lunches lead to useful conversations in a place where you are able to judge their utility.

When people from your office go out and do not invite you, you are unable to know who is talking to whom, or what they are talking about. And you should not know, because that would make you a spying creep.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#202

Post by logfromblammo »

feedjoelpie wrote: post #197
jrjarrett wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as a recruiter, why not just state the salary range for the position, if that's fixed? Then if the amount of money I want from you as a potential employee isn't an option, I won't waste both of our times in applying.

Because it's not fixed. We don't usually hire for a particular, specific level of talent/experience except in rare cases when we need to fill out a specific growth area. We just bring in people who seem interesting and then see if we can fit them somewhere. Also, we're honestly pretty new at this. Our company's a little over two years old, and only in the past year have we gone from poaching people we already know an…

A) If how much money you want from us isn't even an option, we don't waste your time.

Because it's not fixed. We don't usually hire for a particular, specific level of talent/experience except in rare cases...

You may not realize it, but those two statements are contradictory.

Asking price and value are correlated values. If you have a hard limit on what you can pay, you have a soft limit on the quality of your candidates. And by putting a low-pass filter on the interview process, you are clipping off higher levels of talent/experience.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#203

Post by lifeisstillgood »

jasonwocky wrote: post #163
gaius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you are talking about risk adjusted return there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28investment%29

Sure, I just thought that the parent was only presenting one side of the math.

Mostly I was - and I suspect that is fair too.

Let's imagine we are Board of BigCo. Our CEO just took home fifty mil for what is at best a lacklustre performance.

We could fire his ass, but who do we replace him with? We could get pretty much anyone here on HN to do the job, for just one tenth of the cost. But if we hire say that lifeisstillgood, the inevitable PR disasters will wipe more than fifty mil off our stock / revenue.

But if we hire (insert your name here), a clearly brilliant HN member, they will discover that being CEO of a major company means very little power or influence - these things are like oil tankers and do not turn for anything. So getting an even better CEO than our guy will not manage to bring in much upside.

So unless there is a massive upheaval in the market meaning plenty of opportunity, then replacing a CEO is always a bad idea - the downside is huge, the upside is minimal.

Maybe that's risk adjusted returns - but I prefer cynicism.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#204

Post by seekingcharlie »

UK-AL wrote: post #148
hnriot wrote: post #106

interesting to read all these from the engineer's perspective. from the manager's side of the table things are quite different. If an employee comes to me and asks for a raise then I begin the process to replace them. We give reasonable raises, we pay fair market value and an engineer might make a little more elsewhere but they'll be giving back their RSUs and the opportunity to work on really cool stuff. If, however…

Several bad assumptions here. If they're getting better offers elsewhere, its not market rate. Whats to say other companies aren't doing cool stuff? All companies say this.

"If they're getting better offers elsewhere, its not market rate."

Exactly.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#205

Post by pmoriarty »

hnriot wrote: post #106

interesting to read all these from the engineer's perspective. from the manager's side of the table things are quite different. If an employee comes to me and asks for a raise then I begin the process to replace them. We give reasonable raises, we pay fair market value and an engineer might make a little more elsewhere but they'll be giving back their RSUs and the opportunity to work on really cool stuff. If, however…

I commend you for your honesty. If more employers were this honest up front, the workforce would be a much better place.

Since we happen to be in a sellers market for IT talent, I suspect you would not have very many takers if your prospective employees knew up front that this was your attitude towards them, and they'd be valued so little that asking for what they thought they were worth would mean they would get fired.

You attitude would fly much better in a buyers market, where the employer holds all the cards. Then you could demand whatever you like, and the employee would most likely be desperate enough to lick it up.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#206

Post by johnward »

hnriot wrote: post #199
johnward wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If an employee comes to me and asks for a raise then I begin the process to replace them." That makes you sound like a horrible manager.

maybe, but when an employee asks for a raise, or say they are quitting does that make them a horrible employee. so many people think that work is some big philanthropic organization set up to serve their needs.

"when an employee asks for a raise, or say they are quitting does that make them a horrible employee"

No it doesn't.

You seem think employees are there just to serve you for the lowest bid and if an employee is coming to you with a better offer then, you aren't paying them "market rate".

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#207

Post by phamilton »

logfromblammo wrote: post #201
phamilton wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your suggestion works well at a smaller company (<50 employees), but as the company starts moving to multiple floors/buildings and departments become a bit more isolated then the organic lunches tend to be intra-department vs inter-department. We have lunch brought in once a week. On the days we don't have lunch it is very much as you describe within each department, but on the day the company provides lunch…

That sounds like some form of confirmation bias. You may not be aware of the usefulness of conversations that happen under circumstances not favorable to you observing their content. The company-supplied lunches lead to useful conversations in a place where you are able to judge their utility . When people from your office go out and do not invite you, you are unable to know who is talking to whom, or what they are t…

Confirmation bias is fine here, because we are trying to establish whether or not lunch being provided benefits employees. The anecdotal evidence suggests that it is beneficial to >0 employees at >0 companies, therefore the claim that it only benefits the employer is false.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#208

Post by johnward »

jghn wrote: post #200
vproman wrote: post #144

The most important salary negotiation tip: DON'T TELL THEM HOW MUCH YOU ARE CURRENTLY BEING PAID OR GIVE THEM A RANGE. Recruiters always ask this up front and INSIST that they must know. I have NEVER been denied the opportunity to interview for refusing to give a number upfront. If you're applying at a company, it means you've done at least a little research on what they should be expected to pay and you see somewher…

While I don't normally believe in lying during a hiring process, a former boss once told me that the right way to answer the "how much do you make?" question is to say you're currently making what you want them to pay you, figuring that they'll tack a bit more on top of that. I haven't decided if I'm open to lying like that or not, but I liked it.

Being honest usually doesn't get you very far in a job search. It's sad but true. I've found stating that I have a BS when I don't at least gets me passed the auto filters. Then it's usually not as big of a deal once I talk to a person and they see my experience and I mention I don't have a 4 year degree.

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#209

Post by jghn »

johnward wrote: post #208
jghn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't normally believe in lying during a hiring process, a former boss once told me that the right way to answer the "how much do you make?" question is to say you're currently making what you want them to pay you, figuring that they'll tack a bit more on top of that. I haven't decided if I'm open to lying like that or not, but I liked it.

Being honest usually doesn't get you very far in a job search. It's sad but true. I've found stating that I have a BS when I don't at least gets me passed the auto filters. Then it's usually not as big of a deal once I talk to a person and they see my experience and I mention I don't have a 4 year degree.

I've seen people have offers retracted when something they've lied about is discovered, including lying about current salary, sadly.

IMO if someone's having issues getting past autofilters, they're doing it wrong. Personal network, reputation, etc doesn't need to pass through filters

Re: Salary negotiations for techies (2011)

#210

Post by Iftheshoefits »

johnward wrote: post #160
hnriot wrote: post #106

interesting to read all these from the engineer's perspective. from the manager's side of the table things are quite different. If an employee comes to me and asks for a raise then I begin the process to replace them. We give reasonable raises, we pay fair market value and an engineer might make a little more elsewhere but they'll be giving back their RSUs and the opportunity to work on really cool stuff. If, however…

"If an employee comes to me and asks for a raise then I begin the process to replace them." That makes you sound like a horrible manager.

It makes him the kind of low-level or middle-manager that certain companies love. His purpose isn't to support his subordinate employees in their work, it's to make sure the company pays as little as possible for as much work as possible, and to act as the first line of defense against employees who aren't "100% on board".

Clearly he thinks that "asking for a raise" puts an employee in the "not 100% on board" category. That makes him terrible at reasoning, and perhaps poor at empathy, and strongly indicates he's not the kind of person an intelligent developer who desires to be treated like a human being should ever have to work for, but I'm not sure it makes him a bad manager per se. He might manage very well in other respects.

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