Talking About Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Talking About Money

#51

Post by ph0rque » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

hobs wrote: post #40

Nicholas_C wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Just put $250,000 in that blank."

Re: Talking About Money

#52

Post by eli » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #39

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…

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...

IANAL, but I don't see why that would be illegal. There are very few things that it's actually illegal for an employer to ask about. (Though it would obviously be a bad idea to ask a candidate about their status in a protected class, it's not technically illegal to ask.)

That said, this is a bad idea because it would scare off plenty of people who aren't bluffing about their salary (like me). And there are already employers who will terminate you immediately if they discover you lied in your job application.

Re: Talking About Money

#53

Post by Nicholas_C » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

joshrotenberg wrote: post #30

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…

The flipside is that you give them a number and get a good idea if they are going to be able to compete, and if not, you don't waste any more of your time.

Most of the time (in my experience) the recruiters know how much the companies are willing to pay and will tell you a range. Or you can tell them what range you're targeting. There really isn't any real upside to giving your salary away.

Re: Talking About Money

#54

Post by grecy » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:01 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #35

It would be interesting to see networth along with the salary numbers.

Why? to find out if people with a higher salary have a higher networth?

I don't think it would be very useful, because you'd get people on low(er) salaries who are great at saving/investing and have a high networth, and visa versa

Re: Talking About Money

#55

Post by mmcconnell1618 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

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?

Can you offer any insight into how many gigs per year you booked? I know utilization rates for consultants can vary greatly and I'm curious to find our more about the relationship between number of gigs and your increasing rates.

Re: Talking About Money

#56

Post by switch007 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

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.

Imbalance of power fuelled by a recession = more inappropriate/rude/immoral behaviour to take advantage of the situation.

They know they can say "tell us your previous salary, or else". What's worse is that they will ask your references to confirm, and they'll likely happily tell them. If you lied, it won't go down well.

As if there wasn't enough crap to fight against in your career.. ugh.

EDIT: I forgot about employment contracts that prohibit you from disclosing your previous salary. Yes, they exist.

Re: Talking About Money

#57

Post by kamaal » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

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…

Similar experience in other places but I replied "We are a little early in the interview phase to talk about this, lets come back to it later".

This worked until I reached the last phase of the interview, the salary discussion. The HR person simply refused to proceed further without the current salary information, as a matter of fact when I told them they should be paying what I'm worth, he said they can't proceed without it any cost. I wasn't interested in the Job so I didn't care, but they seem to count on the fact that given so many programmers out there they it wouldn't matter to them if they would lose a candidate even that late in the interview phase.

In short if there are many devs out there looking for a job, there will always be some one willing to work for a lesser pay.

Re: Talking About Money

#58

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #32

patio11 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Another way of saying this is that scaling a consulting business involves a peculiar set of challenges which may or may not be animating for people like Patrick. :)

I enjoyed the process of scaling Matasano; I only left because Erin and I were more engaged with the idea of making a dent in recruiting.

Things one does to scale consultancies:

* Refine a recruiting and hiring strategy to make it easier to staff larger number of projects.

* Build ramp-up processes to take new consultants and get them to "billable" status quicker.

* Play with service definitions and rate books, so that clients that need Patrick-level delivery can pay extra to get it, while clients that just need deterministic competent execution of tasks Patrick was good at 5 years ago can pay less to get someone without the name brand.

* Develop systems to cross-train consultants so that more people get an opportunity to (a) watch Patrick deliver a project, (b) deliver a similar project themselves, and (c) help bring other consultants up to speed.

Because revenue is so directly tied to performance and delivery in a consultancy, I think it's a pretty good lab for learning how to effectively manage people.

It's also true that a lot of them just turn into body shops.

Re: Talking About Money

#59

Post by dkrich » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

calcsam wrote: post #23

"Salaries are not just internally transparent at Japanese megacorps but so predictable that any middle-class adult in central Japan can accurately predict my salary history. I mention this partly to say that salary transparency by itself does not guarantee happy outcomes for employees." Yes. Salaries at Buffer might be transparent but also quite low.

Yeah, I actually prefer a lack of transparency. I fully recognize the right of others to discuss salaries openly and support their ability to do so. However, I think aside from benefiting companies, a lack of transparency around salaries benefits those who are good at negotiating, whereas complete transparency helps those who are not good at negotiating.

If for example, you know company X's highest paid software developer makes $110k, and the lowest makes $90k, (and such a narrow banded salary range is probably likely if everyone knows exactly what everyone else earns), you probably aren't going to get them to pay you far north of $110k simply because that would carry the likely result of increasing everyone else's salary since they now know you are making more than they are and they want a salary increase too.

But the lack of transparency should really go both ways, ideally if you want to get the best terms. That is, if you can inflate your previous salary or not disclose it at all while asking for a number significantly above it you are in a much better position than laying bare your entire earnings history.

Re: Talking About Money

#60

Post by davidw » Fri, May 01, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #44

davidw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a company truly cares about getting good people, they'll rein in that kind of thing.