Live data from Hacker News

Talking About Money

kalzumeus.com

331–340 of 412 posts

Re: Talking About Money

#331
post #245

>$20k a week! is astonishing. What kind of consulting service are you providing for the clients for that sum of money!?

I think the context is that OP is very conversant with both Japanese and US corporate/startup culture. That can't hurt.

No, he does (did) software marketing: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...

Japanese startup culture would be a terrible niche to try to make any money in.

Re: Talking About Money

#332

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.

You can triple-dog-dare an employer to fire you "with cause" from a role where you are performing well for lying about previous salary. This is a silly concern. It's just not going to happen.

In sny job where you deal with confidential or financial data - you would be unwise to try it.

Re: Talking About Money

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

1% of $30MM is $300K, not $3MM. (Few companies trade at 10x sales, so that advice isn't worth $3MM.)

That 1% increase compounds.

Re: Talking About Money

#334
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 That is actually not true. This kind of employee low balling is condoned behavior. I applied for a position at Automattic and had Matt Mullenweg (CEO) pull this on me. Everything seemed to have gone perfectly well - everyone involved in the process see…

Thank you for sharing. It takes courage to name and shame a company for bad behavior.

[deleted]

Re: Talking About Money

#335
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…

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

FWIW Glassdoor is about the most inaccurate tool out there. $98k for a web developer in the Bay Area? Ha...yeah.

Re: Talking About Money

#336
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be getting paid that much because they can answer your "stumpers." You might be better served by using the interview to find out why they add so much value instead of trying to prove that you're superior in some way.

uh, well, my stumpers include, "why should we pay you 200 grand?" which should naturally flow into a conversation into the amount of value this particular engineer or executive will bring to my organization. here's another one: "how will you pay for yourself in 6 months?" i'm no longer technically competent enough to stump an extremely talented engineer on a technical question. not really sure where you get the 'supe…

That makes more sense.

There's a lot of context that made me assume you were talking about stumping them on technical questions. This is Hacker News and the topic of how to do technical interviews is a frequent focus.

Re: Talking About Money

#337
post #330
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…

Those are the standard skills of marketing people I've worked with, getting paid around £30000/year. I find this very peculiar, maybe the companies particularly dysfunctional, but there seems to be a missing variable.

patio11 sells progress. Your folks sell motion. There is a difference.

Re: Talking About Money

#338
post #284
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...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..." Are you referring to Japan? I've worked in two states in the USA and never been required to produce such documentation.

I've always had to do that in the UK. Your previous employer gives you a form called a P45 when you leave that has information about your tax code and your earnings for the previous year.

The new employer just needs your details to identify you correctly with HMRC.

You can give them sufficient detail without handing over your P45 or income data. I have never given a P45 to a new employer and it has never been a problem.

It's possible that your tax code will reveal some information, if you're still in the same financial year, but this is an unreliable way of calculating salary.

Re: Talking About Money

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time they have the p45, you've already negotiated a salary, thus unless you lied about previous salary the new company won't really care.

But the question is explicitly about lying about previous salary.

Yeah, I misread. You're right and I know people who have lied and got away with it and those who lied and didn't.

Re: Talking About Money

#340

>> 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 heard of recruiters doing this with the sole purpose of discovering what their competitors are paying. Depending on how far along in the hiring process you were, it may be that she actually had no interest in hiring you but was simply polling for salary information.
Post reply on HN