Talking About Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Talking About Money

#141

Post by derefr » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #105

kamaal wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get fired if they figure out you have been fudging the figures and 'lying' to them. I'm not sure how they would know, but if they do, it can create problems for you.

Error-level analysis of the Jpeg. As you say, if it comes out later that could have bad legal consequences - the term is 'detrimental reliance' and the dishonest person could conceivably face fraud charges. Even if not, it could easily become a a career-damaging topic of gossip.

Re: error analysis—it's a "picture of line-art" kind of document, isn't it? Not even a watermark. So: scan it at super high resolution, blow out the contrast, countour-vectorize it to SVG (effectively equivalent to recovering the original PDF), edit that, print the result, and then scan the print.

(It just occurred to me that if there was "an app for that" in this case, no parent would ever be able to trust their child's report card again.)

Re: Talking About Money

#142

Post by kelukelugames » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

ph0rque wrote: post #51

hobs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I've been putting $1 out of pure spite. Feels great when I get an offer and they meet my asking price.

Re: Talking About Money

#143

Post by nulltype » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:24 PM UTC

15155 wrote: post #114

dkrich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deve…

Correct. Transparency benefits the company for this exact reason. There is a non-zero cost (headache, dollars, what have you) in leaving an organization. This means that salaries can be at market rate, drift below, and people still may not see enough value to leave. Good negotiating means you will always see market rate or above. Transparency means salaries will drift below market rate until someone deems you worthy…

Salary is only one part of a company's compensation. For instance, in the Buffer case, they do remote working, so some people could find that to be worth quite a bit.

Re: Talking About Money

#144

Post by patio11 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:24 PM UTC

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #55

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.

The typical consultancy would try to sustain ~70% utilization (+/- 35 weeks worked per year). I was generally doing closer to 10, as it was a sideline to my software company. I am reasonably confident that I could have sold 35 weeks of availability, or 100 for that matter, if I wanted to run a multi-person consultancy (c.f. tptacek's comment).

Re: Talking About Money

#145

Post by takinola » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:25 PM UTC

bcg1 wrote: post #65

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…

Not snark... serious question... its not clear to me what sort of services anyone could offer for 30k per week... what sort of thing commands that kind of price tag?

Imagine you are running a business making $30 million in annual revenue. You run into someone that reliably assures you they are able to increase your sign-up rate by 1% by optimizing your sign-up flow, SEO, and other general magic. This 1% increase in sign-up rates is easily worth $1 - 3 million to you. As a business man, the only question in your mind should be "When can you start?"

Re: Talking About Money

#146

Post by otterley » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:25 PM UTC

civilian wrote: post #75

marktangotango wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

> They can't legally ask for proof, no. Bluff away!

Well, I am a lawyer, and this is also not legal advice.

To lie and accept a job offer whose salary is predicated on the lie would constitute fraud. Lying about your former compensation history is no different than lying about a prior criminal record, if the counterparty relies on the false assertion.

Re: Talking About Money

#147

Post by lifeisstillgood » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:26 PM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #137

Objection 1: In most of the instances I'm aware of (please comment if you know of counterexamples), salary transparency only happens in places where compensation is based on a few obvious parameters like years of experience and job title, with little room for individual variation. In cases where there's a large variation in productivity between employees with the same role, it's not going to be possible to pay them c…

Objection to objection 2 - are you seriously suggesting that basic market functions like price transparency will be a bad thing because it will make well paid people feel less well paid? They can cry all the way to the bank.

Paying people proportional to their productivity is one measure - paying relative to marginal contribution is probably more accurate - so a CEO of 100,000 people who manages to get them all to work 1% harder has made quite a valuable contribution. Edit: this presupposes the PR / in house magazine publisher is not really Responsable ...

Re: Talking About Money

#148

Post by ochoseis » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:27 PM UTC

Interesting use of the term Rack Rate in the article -- I had to google it: The published, full price for a room in a hotel that has not been pre-booked [1]

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rack_rate

Re: Talking About Money

#149

Post by derefr » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

interesting_att wrote: post #139

There has been a recent trend in tech discussions to have greater transparency in compensation, and more importantly, removing negotiation from employment procedure (see recent changes at Reddit). I fear that this move would dramatically hurt startups, who need all the flexibility they can get. Moreover, this move could dramatically kill any form of cohesiveness in startups. Lastly, this move would de-emphasize the i…

Publicizing salary just requires, as a prerequisite, publicizing the objective value each employee is adding to the company. Which requires everyone agreeing on an objective standard for calculating that value. Once you have that, kbowing salary isn't nearly as scary.

On the other hand, once you have that, people will start actually thinking of their peers in terms of being high- or low-ROI...

Re: Talking About Money

#150

Post by krick » Fri, May 01, 2015, 10:32 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 not really surprised, because, well, whatever people do just ceases to surprise at some point, but I guess it's quite likely that there's something in my contract (and I guess it's quite typical, so the same could be assumed about yours) that legally disallows me to disclose whatever there is to disclose about my relations with my current employer, including my salary. Of course, it doesn't stop me from actually doing so, because, well, the inequality of market knowledge between your typical employer and your typical employee just really isn't fair when it comes to discussing your remuneration. But sure as hell I'd remember of that NDA thing when asked of something like this by an HR, and would try to sound as shocked by the assumption I can disclose something like this, as possible.