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Talking About Money

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Re: Talking About Money

#41

Post by ljoshua »

Todd wrote: post #18

I always appreciate your transparency and believe that you're helping drive our industry forward. I often search for ideas on how to help within my area of influence. The closest I've found is Stack Exchange's salary matrix, and the related approach at Fog Creek. I think publishing salaries has several benefits. For one thing, it removes the used car salesman approach to hiring. One result, which is more important, i…

At the firm that I work at everything is in the open, even between groups, and it works very well. It is a formula-based compensation given your department (basically consultants and back-office) and stated level. With that, I know or can calculate exactly how much my manager makes, how much an entry level HR employee makes, and how much the CEO makes.

I love it because it removes any problem with politics or shadowy discussions, and I know what I can expect when a promotion comes. The only downside is that it leaves the firm with little leverage when it comes to compensation: I can't simply get a bump without a promotion, nor are there extra bonuses that can be given out either for hiring or retaining. (This has its benefits as well however.)

Re: Talking About Money

#42

Post by brentshields »

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…

Regarding bluffing: I've seen it happen where the company has asked for a pay stub as part of the final paperwork to confirm that the stated current salary was legit. So yeah that could be a downside to bluffing if you want the job.

Re: Talking About Money

#43

Post by tormeh »

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…

It could be for intelligence purposes; they want to know what other firms pay their employees.

Re: Talking About Money

#44

Post by sanderjd »

davidw wrote: post #22
sanderjd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah except sometimes good engineering teams sit behind ugly HR practices, and hiring processes unfortunately expose you to HR far more than the actual job does.

The world is full of people doing good and interesting stuff without having all kinds of lame bureaucracy. I'm more than willing to bear the risk of missing out on something interesting by passing on that kind of company.

I don't think level of HR bureaucracy is very well correlated with anything relating to job satisfaction, and it is easy to over-index on during the hiring process. I don't think your willingness to bear the risk of false negatives is unreasonable at all, but it's worth being aware that you're judging one department based on interactions with a completely different one.

Re: Talking About Money

#45

Post by rev_bird »

ashark wrote: post #12
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've never really gotten over the shock of discovering that anyone asks this, let alone that it's common (especially for larger companies). Add it to the list of things in business that seem to me to be inappropriate/rude/immoral, I suppose.

I originally wasn't really very against these kinds of questions, until someone pointed out that they're basically asking how much a different company values different work you're doing for different ends, to help them determine how desperate you are for doing their totally unrelated work. I got much more resistant after that.

Re: Talking About Money

#46

Post by grecy »

brentshields wrote: post #42
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regarding bluffing: I've seen it happen where the company has asked for a pay stub as part of the final paperwork to confirm that the stated current salary was legit. So yeah that could be a downside to bluffing if you want the job.

Photoshop is a wonderful thing :)

Re: Talking About Money

#47

Post by angersock »

I'm all for transparency, but it is easy to get weird results from the current range of "small startup bootstrapping" to "valley darling throwing money" to "high salary with no equity" to "".

I'd love to have a notion of what the real work rates and long-term rewards our for our industry, but it's so hard.

Also, I note that nobody here is sticking their username next to their salary and equity stakes. :P

Re: Talking About Money

#48

Post by throwaway90000 »

> (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, particularly in the years of your career where natural growth in capabilities/experience/the market/etc causes you to bring vastly more to the table with each new job.)

This is terrible advice. If a prospective employer asks how much you are making, respond with your desired salary at minimum. If they are serious, the negotiation point will be that plus whatever raise you claim to be looking for. If they want paystubs, you seriously don't want to work for them, because no professional should suffer that indignity and they're probably turning away great people as it is. I've only had one company ever ask for paystubs in my career and I got a weird vibe from them early on anyway.

Re: Talking About Money

#49

Post by pipermerriam »

I wrote a small application a while back to allow a team to figure out what their average salary was without exposing individual salaries. Seems relevant.

https://are-we-being-underpaid.herokuapp.com/

It generates unique URLS for each participant and stores almost nothing on the server. Only a party that was actively monitoring web traffic has enough information to divine someone's salary. No tracking of emails, salaries, etc.

Source code here https://github.com/pipermerriam/am-i-underpaid

Re: Talking About Money

#50

Post by mahyarm »

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…

As an immigrant they will need you last few pay checks as part of the visa process. So they will get it sooner or later.

I've just learned to say that I want to find out what you guys think is a fair offer and left it there.

After a certain point salary moves little and stock moves a lot.

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