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Talking About Money

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Re: Talking About Money

#31

Post by toomuchtodo »

patio11 wrote: post #11
brador wrote: post #3

If consulting is making $30k/week/job then why keep running the personal businesses? Why not take the consulting and branch it out, and drop everything else as a distraction?

Because I enjoyed running the software business more than I enjoyed running the consultancy. Partly that is for difficult-to-explain personal reasons (I feel the sense of satisfaction with operating a software company that some people feel when painting things). Partly it is because of reasons which are endemic to consultancies, even successful consultancies. Feel free to ask if you're curious. I also have a quirky r…

For a tech celebrity, you're very "down to earth". I don't know a better compliment I could give.

Re: Talking About Money

#32

Post by mbesto »

patio11 wrote: post #11
brador wrote: post #3

If consulting is making $30k/week/job then why keep running the personal businesses? Why not take the consulting and branch it out, and drop everything else as a distraction?

Because I enjoyed running the software business more than I enjoyed running the consultancy. Partly that is for difficult-to-explain personal reasons (I feel the sense of satisfaction with operating a software company that some people feel when painting things). Partly it is because of reasons which are endemic to consultancies, even successful consultancies. Feel free to ask if you're curious. I also have a quirky r…

I'll take a stab at the "why not build a consultancy business"...

It's not scalable in any shape or form. Despite having aspirational goals early on, every consulting company falls into the trap of becoming a body-shop. It happens every. single. time. You begin to feel less satisfaction about your services and proposals to clients because you emphasize "our talent speaks for itself" and it's polarized by your clients desire to simply want to pay X for Y and don't care how, what, or who delivers it. Being a one-man shop means that right from the beginning your client's expectations are set on you being the right man for the job and they'll get Y because they're going to pay you X. At scale (I'm looking at you IBM, Accenture, etc) you end up fighting with cost center budgets, and spend more time trying to squeeze quality and scope within a set budget, or risk overspending budgets and end up looking like a bad services partner. Building a consultancy sounds awesome at first, looks awesome at first, and then it slowly burns you down.

Re: Talking About Money

#33

Post by L_Rahman »

saryant wrote: post #15
L_Rahman wrote: post #2

As a recent graduate about to go into his first ever salary negotiation, I'm really grateful for the perspective this provides. My dad was a taxi driver (now drives for Uber) and my mother a stay-at-home mom. I was raised with the notion of earning enough to support myself. Anything beyond that is something I'm expected to figure out myself. Posts such as these are very helpful. A question though: 1. If I've had conv…

Re 2), you should make sure your salary is at market-level and more or less ignore equity. Chances are you'll be let go or the company will collapse before it's worth anything. If you have a reasonable salary, equity is just a cherry on top, but if an employer tries to get you to trade cash today for a startup lottery ticket, say no. This is especially important early in your career given the time value of money. An…

Excellent point and I will heed your advice.

I'm well aware that:

a. Startup equity is a lottery b. As an early employee and the accompanying biases, I'm especially ill equipped to judge it's value.

With that in mind, I'm negotiating salary first. Equity with a vesting schedule is something I would treat purely as an incentive for continuing to stay with the company and not as a replacement for salary.

Re: Talking About Money

#34

Post by IkmoIkmo »

marktangotango wrote: post #9

>> Most important takeaway about salary negotiation, by the way: disclosing a previous salary is almost always against your interests because it pegs your new salary to that plus 5% rather than your value to the new firm minus a discount, which is a brutal mistake I had a phone screen with an HR drone once (Cerner Inc. to be exact \waves) part way thru she asked me my current salary. I declined to provide that inform…

Crazy. I'd definitely send a quick note to someone higher up if you can get a hold of him/her. I know, not worth the time, a hassle etc. But a typical CEO worth his salt will crush something silly like that in no-time, if you really want to hire good people this is the type of person you want to fire.

I mean, hell, asking the question is one thing. I can live with that. But turning that into some kind of litmus test where declining to share private information completely 100% immediately disqualifies you, that's insane.

Anyway, never experienced it. Question for you all, are there any negatives to bluffing?

i.e. say you said your previous salary was $110k while it was really $90k, will HR say 'you're overqualified' or something to that extent if they were hoping to pay you say $90k and had a max of $100k in mind?

As in, can you recover from that and say 'oh but $100k is fine, too', or would that also send a signal of weakness where they won't hire you because you seem desperate (taking a $10k cut from their perspective, when you actually get a $10k raise)? Ugh the mindgames! haha. Would love to hear your experiences on this issue.

Re: Talking About Money

#37

Post by Nicholas_C »

marktangotango wrote: post #9

>> Most important takeaway about salary negotiation, by the way: disclosing a previous salary is almost always against your interests because it pegs your new salary to that plus 5% rather than your value to the new firm minus a discount, which is a brutal mistake I had a phone screen with an HR drone once (Cerner Inc. to be exact \waves) part way thru she asked me my current salary. I declined to provide that inform…

I had a similar experience with a recruiter. I asked why and she couldn't come up with a compelling answer, she just said "That's just how it is, we need your salary." She escalated it to her manager and he pulled the same. I eventually complied but not without telling them I didn't ever receive a good reason and it makes zero sense and I couldn't see how it would do anything but hurt me.

Funny enough I ended up getting an offer way above my current salary, and a bit more than what I said I wanted.

Is anyone here a recruiter and can shed some light as to why the hell these people are so adamant about getting my salary??? I'm wondering if part of the deal for them is if they don't give my current salary to HR they won't get paid. That seems really stupid but they were acting like they would let me walk if I didn't tell them my salary.

Re: Talking About Money

#38

Post by yitchelle »

saryant wrote: post #15
L_Rahman wrote: post #2

As a recent graduate about to go into his first ever salary negotiation, I'm really grateful for the perspective this provides. My dad was a taxi driver (now drives for Uber) and my mother a stay-at-home mom. I was raised with the notion of earning enough to support myself. Anything beyond that is something I'm expected to figure out myself. Posts such as these are very helpful. A question though: 1. If I've had conv…

Re 2), you should make sure your salary is at market-level and more or less ignore equity. Chances are you'll be let go or the company will collapse before it's worth anything. If you have a reasonable salary, equity is just a cherry on top, but if an employer tries to get you to trade cash today for a startup lottery ticket, say no. This is especially important early in your career given the time value of money. An…

> That's an almost-certain payoff against a roll of the dice on a sliver of ever-diluted equity.

This is excellent advice. Cold hard cash is much, much better than a bet of the startup you are working for will take off.

Re: Talking About Money

#39

Post by marktangotango »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #34
marktangotango wrote: post #9

>> Most important takeaway about salary negotiation, by the way: disclosing a previous salary is almost always against your interests because it pegs your new salary to that plus 5% rather than your value to the new firm minus a discount, which is a brutal mistake I had a phone screen with an HR drone once (Cerner Inc. to be exact \waves) part way thru she asked me my current salary. I declined to provide that inform…

Crazy. I'd definitely send a quick note to someone higher up if you can get a hold of him/her. I know, not worth the time, a hassle etc. But a typical CEO worth his salt will crush something silly like that in no-time, if you really want to hire good people this is the type of person you want to fire. I mean, hell, asking the question is one thing. I can live with that. But turning that into some kind of litmus test…

Yes, one might think so, but this was the CEO in question[1]. Edit, and so far as bluffing, could an employer legally ask for W2's to verify?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-m...

Re: Talking About Money

#40

Post by hobs »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #37
marktangotango wrote: post #9

>> Most important takeaway about salary negotiation, by the way: disclosing a previous salary is almost always against your interests because it pegs your new salary to that plus 5% rather than your value to the new firm minus a discount, which is a brutal mistake I had a phone screen with an HR drone once (Cerner Inc. to be exact \waves) part way thru she asked me my current salary. I declined to provide that inform…

I had a similar experience with a recruiter. I asked why and she couldn't come up with a compelling answer, she just said "That's just how it is, we need your salary." She escalated it to her manager and he pulled the same. I eventually complied but not without telling them I didn't ever receive a good reason and it makes zero sense and I couldn't see how it would do anything but hurt me. Funny enough I ended up gett…

Probably because it is a required field in whatever software or process they are using, and they are incompetent.
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