Talking About Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Talking About Money

#121

Post by _delirium » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #99

If people knew everyone's salaries there would always be discontent. There will be people making less thinking that are better/more experience/worth more than person B making $X more than them.

I think that relates in part to how big the disparities are. If people are making mostly similar amounts of income, risk of discontent may not be as big an issue. For a large-scale example, Norway makes the annual income of the entire population public information, and yet the country isn't erupting in discontent. Of course other elements of culture (whether national or company culture) are involved as well.

Re: Talking About Money

#122

Post by aantix » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

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…

>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, is that it can help eliminate wage >disparity due to differences of gender or level of negotiating skills.

If you publish salaries, then aren't you just shifting the negotiations to which salary bucket you deserve to belong to? So instead of absolute money, now we're negotiating with fluent tiers based on other employees salaries (John makes 200K and I'm closest to John in terms of ability, so let me convince you how similar I am to John).

It will always comes back to demonstrating your value.As a developer, you're capable of creating logic that can literally scale to bring millions of dollars of value to a company. Stop talking about PHP. Stop talking about Rails. Start talking about the money you make for your company.

Who care about the middle-aged white male programmer who's too introverted to ask for a great compensation? Who cares about the woman who's too timid to assert herself?

They're their worst enemy. And it's not your problem to wait for the rest of the pack to get their negotiation-shit together.

More money on the table for you.

There's so many opportunities for devs right now (take a look at the recruiter emails sitting in your inbox). Learn a little bit of negotiation skill, and you're better than 80% of your peers.

Demand what you deserve. Take your kids on an amazing adventure. Buy the home you've dreamed of. Save some money and only work 6 months out of the year. And don't apologize.

Re: Talking About Money

#123

Post by JoblessWonder » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:00 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...

We regularly get requests for job title/tenure/salary verification forms from former employees. I'm not sure what our status on completing them is though, but there are at least some companies out there that go through the legwork to check up on something after a job offer.

Re: Talking About Money

#124

Post by JoblessWonder » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

alexqgb wrote: post #107

tormeh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. One way to deflect the question is by saying that you're not about to provide any non-public information about an employer to anyone outside that company, and that includes specific details about their pay structure. You can also note that while this may not be the answer the interviewer is looking for, it does represent the kind of discretion that the company is likely to appreciate in the event that you do…

> saying that you're not about to provide any non-public information about an employer to anyone outside that company, and that includes details about their pay structure.

I really like this advice! Thanks for the tip. I'm stuck being [possibly...] underpaid at the moment and struggling with how to address my current salary without tanking future offers.

Re: Talking About Money

#125

Post by MyNameIsMK » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

@Patio11, I met you once on a trip to Tokyo. When/why did you decide to live in Tokyo other than the fact that your wife is Japanese? Any takeaways in terms of culture and operating a SaaS business from that region?

Thanks.

Re: Talking About Money

#126

Post by civilian » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:06 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #77

civilian wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't legally ask for proof, no. Bluff away! (I'm not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal advice.) I did a small bluff to try it out, just 5k above what I was making. The recruiter was surprisingly skeptical! I know I've done an good job of bumping up my salary in a short amount of time, but it was kind of off-putting to have him question it.

But he was right to question it?

I suppose so? If I was a recruiter I wouldn't question what I thought was a 5k discrepancy. I was doing well though--- making 90k after 3 years of programming, and my bluff was 95k. I think that just the real salary alone would have been enough for him to raise suspicions.

Re: Talking About Money

#127

Post by return0 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:08 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…

I am curious though, what were you protecting by declining to tell them? You could just make up an exorbitant number for one. I understand not talking about money with our friends, it's bad social signaling, but a recruiter is a different thing.

Re: Talking About Money

#128

Post by learnstats2 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:08 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #20

davidw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're fortunate enough to be in an industry where it's rare to be really desperate for a job, so I've come to take this kind of thing as a very strong indication that it's the kind of place that would really suck to work at in any case. From that point of view, the earlier all the BS floats to the surface, the better, so you can get on with looking for a good job.

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.

If a company has ugly HR practices, you can be sure you will not be the only good person who is balking at the company.

If you HR put you off, you're not the only one. Externally they will find it more difficult to hire, and internally the real talent will start to notice.

Therefore, you don't need to worry about it. There are other places you can work with good people.

Re: Talking About Money

#129

Post by learnstats2 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:09 PM UTC

Nicholas_C wrote: post #74

nostrademons wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty strong signal that they want people who won't negotiate and aren't assertive. In some businesses, it's just counterproductive to hire an assertive employee: the business processes are in place, the command structure is well-established, and they just need bodies to fill places in the org chart. If it's one of those companies and you're one of those people, getting hired there will likely be painful for…

Hmmm, but this was the recruiter, not the company. The recruiter itself would want me to be assertive and negotiate as their compensation is calculated based on my starting salary. And this company was a very small and fast growing firm that would require a lot of hustle and assertiveness. My entire in person interview process was based on a case study that took 12 hours where I spent a large part of that arguing wit…

>The recruiter itself would want me to be assertive and negotiate as their compensation is calculated based on my starting salary.

This is a fallacy. The recruiter would rather fill the role as quickly as possible and move on to the next mark.

The recruiter's choice is: wait for you to negotiate and maybe lose the role; or act as an agent for someone else.

Re: Talking About Money

#130

Post by kelukelugames » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:10 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…

I'm going to link this again, because it is one of the best pieces from a recruiter's point of view.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-i-reveal-my-compensati...