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Talking About Money

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Re: Talking About Money

#211

Post by [deleted] »

eropple wrote: post #151
civilian wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the area, I guess. I don't think people would have blinked in SF or Boston at that. Or he was screwing with you to try to drag down your ask. Happens pretty frequently, because their incentives don't align with yours (it's the realtor problem all over again).

[deleted]

Re: Talking About Money

#212

Post by ghaff »

r00fus wrote: post #158
ghaff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of such a thing but it undoubtedly happens. Your pay stub is really just showing the floor though. For many positions, there are fairly regular bonuses, variable comp, etc. So, in reality, there's usually some wiggle room in providing current salary info while still being essentially truthful.

I've seen colleagues in Sales offer to show W-2 information, to disclose all compensation.

It sorta makes sense in that context given variable sales comp plans. "I really am that good. Here are the audited numbers to prove it."

Re: Talking About Money

#213

Post by cperciva »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #191
otterley wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Unless current employer a) receives your permission to pull your tax return transcripts or b) receives your permission to contact your previous employer and you provide permission for previous employer to divulge said information, you will almost surely not be found out. Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, not your lawyer, but fairly confident based on past experience with this over ~15 years.

you will almost surely not be found out.

... unless, like patio11, you decide to blog about your salary history at some point.

The problem with lies is that you need to remember what they were so that you don't contradict yourself later.

Re: Talking About Money

#214

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

pmichaud wrote: post #193
beachstartup wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, of course it works. why wouldn't it? someone asks you a question, you give them an answer. to me all of this buffoonery around hiding your salary requirements sounds ridiculous. i'm a startup co-founder, i hire all the time. if i asked someone what their salary requirements are and they said 200k or 300k i'd immediately interview them to see if they're worth that much. i would take it as a personal challenge to…

There's an important distinction here though. This isn't a discussion about disclosing salary requirements, it's a discussion about disclosing previous salary, presumably so the company can make you an offer only marginally better than that. That's a big problem if you're already underpaid.

So you refuse the offer! I've been in the position where I was underpaid to the point where the next job almost doubled my salary. When asked, I told them what I had been making and what I expected to make.

They hired me. I would have refused any offer less than I was asking for. Lesson learned: if they want you they will pay at least market rate.

I also "negotiated" (negotiated, hell. I just asked for it) a raise well above what they offered a year later at my first review.

Re: Talking About Money

#215

Post by beambot »

> I recently sold my first SaaS business, Bingo Card Creator.

Patrick, was that already well known? Do you have any plans to discuss that experience?

Re: Talking About Money

#216

Post by encoderer »

beachstartup wrote: post #206
pmichaud wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an important distinction here though. This isn't a discussion about disclosing salary requirements, it's a discussion about disclosing previous salary, presumably so the company can make you an offer only marginally better than that. That's a big problem if you're already underpaid.

huh? what distinction? who says you have to tell them the truth? obviously if you make 40k you're not going to be competent enough to jump to 200k, but if you were making 150k and ask for 200k, just tell them you were making 190 before. who cares? when it comes to this kind of topic on HN, sometimes i feel like i'm taking crazy pills.

Yeah, just lie, who cares? ...

If you want $200k but are making $150, just say you are looking for a salary around $200k. If they ask again how much you make presently, you can say "I negotiated my present salary years ago, it's not relevant to the value I provide now, I'm sure you understand".

I'm not going to be pushed into lying and making things up out of expediency. YMMV.

Re: Talking About Money

#217

Post by grecy »

beachstartup wrote: post #206
pmichaud wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an important distinction here though. This isn't a discussion about disclosing salary requirements, it's a discussion about disclosing previous salary, presumably so the company can make you an offer only marginally better than that. That's a big problem if you're already underpaid.

huh? what distinction? who says you have to tell them the truth? obviously if you make 40k you're not going to be competent enough to jump to 200k, but if you were making 150k and ask for 200k, just tell them you were making 190 before. who cares? when it comes to this kind of topic on HN, sometimes i feel like i'm taking crazy pills.

The reason you're a co-founder is because you take risks and are willing to push the limits of what's socially acceptable, and have face-to-face discussions about personally-difficult topics.

Most engineers want to "stay within the rules", which is why they get walked on.

(I'm not for one second saying you do that, personally)

Re: Talking About Money

#218

Post by rhizome »

jtroyer wrote: post #207
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…

Many times asking for your salary isn't a nefarious negotiating tactic - it's just to make sure both parties are in the same ballpark. If you're already at $110K and the opening tops out at $80K, there's no reason to waste either party's time.

If that was the case, why couldn't they say "This position tops out at $80K, will that be a problem?"

Re: Talking About Money

#219

Post by kasey_junk »

robinhoode wrote: post #165
patio11 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making $20 million a year SaaS companies into $22 million a year SaaS companies. If you have reasonable expectation that I can actually deliver on that, then you're pretty much willing to say yes to any rate I quote. If you're curious "How does one turn a $20 million a year SaaS company into a $22 million a year SaaS company?", there exist many options depending on the specifics of the company and virtually all of th…

What books can I read to, at the very least, attempt address the questions in your 3rd paragraph, given how unique every business is? Isn't anything you find a book on sales or marketing so abstract that it's 2 or 3 layers of assumptions before you can talk about projections? How does one begin a career in SaaS sales / marketing? What makes for a good "portfolio piece" in that domain?

One of the things that has made Patrick a "tech. celebrity" is that he has written extensively and openly about this very topic. In particular his brand of uniqueness was to take a lot of things that engineers don't like and then turn it into an engineering problem. He didn't guess, he tested.

Here is the amazing thing, he also did all of us a huge service and wrote it up and put it on the internet for everyone to find!

If you haven't yet, spend as much time as you can diving in his blog. Every post he's written is worth the price of admission, but you could definitely limit your search to the ones that focus on the SaaS sales and marketing aspects.

Re: Talking About Money

#220

Post by grecy »

acveilleux wrote: post #116
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…

That sounds an awful lot like many healthcare IT behemoth. They mostly need bodies to bill them out by the hour keeping seat warms, conference line/room busy and to act as a buffer.

I'm at a telco, this is precisely how it works.
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