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Talking About Money

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Re: Talking About Money

#221

Post by bigtunacan »

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).

While dealing with recruiters can be a hassle their goals align much more closely with ours if we are maintaining the fallacy that only the money counts. Recruiters are typically paid a percentage of your salary so they want you to receive the highest salary possible since that is the best payout for them as well.

My experience with recruiters is they want to know how little it will take for you to accept the job, but this is because they need to know which jobs they should do the legwork on.

If I'm looking for a job I call up several recruiters I trust and I tell them the specifics I'd what I'm looking for and the price I'm willing to accept. I then continue working my network and looking on my own, but now I have 4 times as many jobs and a better chance if finding the perfect fit.

Re: Talking About Money

#222

Post by chrisbennet »

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 is the real reason, there is nothing keeping them from disclosing the salary range for the position. That way they don't waste anyone's time...

Re: Talking About Money

#223

Post by boulos »

tptacek wrote: post #84
cpeterso wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glassdoor.com seems to have fairly accurate salary reports across different companies, jobs, and geographies.

Glassdoor has never been accurate about any firm I had firsthand knowledge of.

As mentioned in the article, I think it's accurate at the very low end (i.e. the salary and bonus for fresh undergrads at Google).

Re: Talking About Money

#224

Post by rgovind »

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…

1) recently, I had very good success with a professional social networking site in this matter. Recruiter asked what my current salary details are. I told me, "If I give you this information, what information will you give me". Initially he asked me to look in glassdoor but when I said he can also do the same thing, he relented and disclosed that salary for senior software engineer is minimum of $150k going to a maximum of $190k. I was happy with that information.

Also, I discovered recently that companies cannot talk to one another about salaries, but they can all participate in a "survey" where the surveyor aggregates all this information, in a very detailed way. So, every company knows exactly what the other company is paying, even in a different industry. I guess that is another way of fixing price.

Re: Talking About Money

#225

Post by galfarragem »

dkrich wrote: post #106
chralieboy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. This is exactly why salaries _should_ be transparent. Skill at negotiating salaries, unless you are an agent, is not a relevant skill. If you are an engineer, for example, the company should not be rewarding o…

I disagree. If engineers are notoriously bad at negotiating (which we probably are), the solution is to improve that skill, not to seek to avoid negotiating in any form or fashion. The idea that you can willfully eschew any responsibility for asking for what you want (which is really what a negotiation is) and still get it, is both self-defeating and naive. The reason lawyers/agents/salespeople are good at negotiatin…

I agree with you. Anyway developing this skill also means that you allocate a considerable brain processing power into this activity; far more than some devs want/can allocate. This skill probably will make (or force) them into management.

Re: Talking About Money

#226

Post by rgovind »

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...

I don't know about US, but in India, its standard practive to ask for previous paychecks.

Re: Talking About Money

#227

Post by rgovind »

j_lev wrote: post #161
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...

In the original post Patrick already touched on the Japan case, but one thing I'd add is that one of the pieces of paperwork you must hand to your new employer is your final tax slip from your previous employer showing how much tax you have paid in the current year. From there it's trivial to calculate your previous salary. There are ways around it but it seems most people go with "my base was XX.... and that's one o…

As I mentioned in another thread, standard practice in India is to show previous pay check.

Re: Talking About Money

#228

Post by bobjordan »

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.

I'm a bootstrapped entrepreneur CEO with ~30 employees in my company now, growing quickly, expect to have ~60 in next 12 months.

I am not so interested in previous salary. Rather, I always directly ask "what is your salary requirement". I think it is good business sense to not underpay what people think they require, though sometimes this means we must pass on what could otherwise be good employees, so requesting moonshot salaries is definitely a filter for us.

Furthermore, when I ask applicants their requirement, if they just deliver a number to me using logic that does not include salary levels at previous jobs to justify, then I evaluate how close it is to my budget target for the position, and if feasible, I make an offer at that requested level.

However, if the applicant uses a previous salary to justify their current salary requirement, and it's a lot higher than I expected or had targeted for the position, I have on a few occasions offered jobs with compensation to match previous salaries, so long as applicant proves to my HR they are not lying about the salary.

So far, all offers I’ve made predicated on proving their salary claims, my HR has proven the applicants were lying to significant degree, except for one person. Those that were caught lying had job offers rescinded. The one person that wasn't lying only lasted 90 days because he clearly couldn’t add value to justify.

From my point of view, the best strategy for negotiating a higher salary is to get in front of a person that cares if you can help them make them more money than it costs to pay you, regardless of your previous salary (an HR manager is usually not the person that cares about this). Then present a clear vision to them for how you will deliver that added value.

Re: Talking About Money

#229

Post by chrisbennet »

ochoseis wrote: post #148

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

I had never heard of that phrase before either - and I'm a consultant. ;-)

Re: Talking About Money

#230

Post by galfarragem »

kasey_junk wrote: post #219
robinhoode wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

I wouldn't call Patrick a 'tech celebrity', I would call him a 'marketing celebrity' in tech. His writings on how to market yourself are without doubt the best essays I've ever read on the subject.
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