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How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

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Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#101

Post by ryandrake »

well_negotiator wrote: post #99
ryandrake wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, anonymous person on the internet. You are talking about outlier people at outlier companies. The majority of software engineers not in top roles inside top companies are not making even close to that. Every compensation discussion on HN invariably brings out of the woodwork That One Guy Who Knows That One Guy Who Makes $400K at Google. The take-away from reading these threads should NOT be that this is an…

Yes. I'm not in average but i won't call myself an outlier. Outliers never come out and talk about their compensation to be frank. Not posting this to brag. I'd like to increase awareness among engineers to negotiate. I can show you my W-2 at the end of this year.

I don't need to see your W-2. I'm not replying to you to accuse you of lying--you're probably not. I'm replying for the benefit of other readers who read comments like yours and start believing that $300K, $400K, $500K etc. are normal salaries for software engineers, only to be confused and frustrated at what they actually see out there in the real world. All of those salaries are likely at least 3 standard deviations from the mean. I don't know what your definition of "outlier" is, but those are extreme outlier salaries. Congratulations on being so fortunate!

Your aim to "increase awareness" does nothing for a normal or even above average software engineer negotiating their offer at a non-outlier company. How does this help them? "I think $200K is reasonable because somebody on the Internet told me that some people at Google make $400K?" Is that really going to fly, basically anywhere?

EDIT: Another source:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151132.htm

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#102

Post by pc86 »

well_negotiator wrote: post #37
bentlegen wrote: post #25

Slightly-related: has anyone interviewing with Airbnb used the author's public starting offer of $220k total compensation to negotiate their own starting offer? Genuinely curious. http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii...

Really sad to know he didn't get a good offer in Airbnb and you both think it's a good offer. But this looks totally like a new grad offer. I have my friends who just got offers in Airbnb who are getting paid 180k in salary and ~600K in stocks which is basically $330k/year. My other friend who is senior engineer with 5 year experience is compensated around 500k/year. I have similar experience and i recently did a job…

Since when does 5 years of experience warrant "senior" and half a million dollars in comp?

This whole thing is a joke.

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#103

Post by vonmoltke »

well_negotiator wrote: post #99
ryandrake wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, anonymous person on the internet. You are talking about outlier people at outlier companies. The majority of software engineers not in top roles inside top companies are not making even close to that. Every compensation discussion on HN invariably brings out of the woodwork That One Guy Who Knows That One Guy Who Makes $400K at Google. The take-away from reading these threads should NOT be that this is an…

Yes. I'm not in average but i won't call myself an outlier. Outliers never come out and talk about their compensation to be frank. Not posting this to brag. I'd like to increase awareness among engineers to negotiate. I can show you my W-2 at the end of this year.

> Outliers never come out and talk about their compensation to be frank.

My experience is that only outliers ever come out and talk about their compensation, leaving the audience with the impression that most everyone is either a $400k/year Googlecorn or a $40k/year code slave.

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#104

Post by stale2002 »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #68
stale2002 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O.o These numbers are surprisingly high, to the point of almost being unbelievable. And I go around telling my friends that software engineers can make 120k right out of college, and I'M getting laughed at by my friends at how apparently unbelievable ridiculously high this is. I've got 3 years experience and I'm making not much more than that working at a midsized startup (I went to a top tech school and everything!)…

> And then I go on Hacker News and learn that the fair salary for people working at big companies, with around my experience is 330k!?! Man what am I doing wrong. Why not go interview at a big company, then?

I've job hopped a little too much already, and I do like my job. But things like this make it awfully tempting....

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#105

Post by stale2002 »

well_negotiator wrote: post #99
ryandrake wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, anonymous person on the internet. You are talking about outlier people at outlier companies. The majority of software engineers not in top roles inside top companies are not making even close to that. Every compensation discussion on HN invariably brings out of the woodwork That One Guy Who Knows That One Guy Who Makes $400K at Google. The take-away from reading these threads should NOT be that this is an…

Yes. I'm not in average but i won't call myself an outlier. Outliers never come out and talk about their compensation to be frank. Not posting this to brag. I'd like to increase awareness among engineers to negotiate. I can show you my W-2 at the end of this year.

Well thanks for the info then!

God do I need to get out of the startup world and start working for one of the unicorns....

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#106

Post by snarf »

well_negotiator wrote: post #66
caminante wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> O.o These numbers are surprisingly high, to the point of almost being unbelievable. Bingo! He's joking.

Sorry, but this is real. It's very normal for a new grad googler to make $185k total comp in first year. Offers i had got, Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, Google, Robinhood, Netflix, Salesforce, Affirm, An investment bank in NYC, Two stealth startup in SF. In Facebook, it's very common for one high perfoming engineer getting discretionary equity of 1M+ if you do re-defines or create a meaningful impact. I'm sorry i'm not goi…

Thanks for sharing an above average scenario and congrats. Genuinely curious, where did the offers initially start out (I'm assuming based on your previous comp) and how much were you able to negotiate up? And were the offers from startups like Robinhood/Affirm and the I-bank competitive with the big tech cos?

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#107

Post by mstade »

vonmoltke wrote: post #93
mstade wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies, particularly the larger organizations, have pretty strict boundaries though. Case in point: in a large corporation we tried recruiting an incredibly talented developer, but because of company rules, we couldn't offer him what he asked for despite us thinking he was definitely worth it (and really, it wasn't outlandish in any way) but HR would never let it fly because rules. His problem then, I think,…

> His problem then, I think, was that he mentioned what he'd earned elsewhere, so some policy dictated we couldn't offer more than 20% than that, or whatever. Stupid, silly policy, and just goes to show you should never divulge information the other party just isn't privy to. (I've never told recruiters what I earned before, that's not their business.) Actually, that sounds like a great reason to volunteer my current…

If I didn't know better, I'd agree with you. Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department – for reasons I guess – and they just seem to throw spanners around for a living, especially into works. HR acts largely as their own separate entity, which isn't uncommon with these kinds of organizations, and play more or less by their own rules. What they do isn't indicative of the rest of the organization. It bugs me a lot that we couldn't offer him what he wanted, and for no good reason either.

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#108

Post by mstade »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #100
mstade wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but the compensation range for developers in London is much narrower than you might think. From what I've seen, most startups offer in the range £30k-70k per year, probably with some mostly useless stock option deal. I've seen salaries out of Amazon and Facebook starting at £50k, and even at investment banks, for more junior positions. These are all basically suckers, given the cost of living in London, among…

Both Facebook and Google pay about £80k for new grads (£60k salary + £20k in stock and bonus). Seniors earn about double that. Palantir pays interns £5k / month plus free rent.

Sounds about right. No one mentioned the free rent thing to me, but I guess that's in corporate housing where you don't want to stay anyway. May I ask how you know?

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#109

Post by dragonwriter »

mstade wrote: post #107
vonmoltke wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His problem then, I think, was that he mentioned what he'd earned elsewhere, so some policy dictated we couldn't offer more than 20% than that, or whatever. Stupid, silly policy, and just goes to show you should never divulge information the other party just isn't privy to. (I've never told recruiters what I earned before, that's not their business.) Actually, that sounds like a great reason to volunteer my current…

If I didn't know better, I'd agree with you. Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department – for reasons I guess – and they just seem to throw spanners around for a living, especially into works. HR acts largely as their own separate entity, which isn't uncommon with these kinds of organizations, and play…

> Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department

If HR is that bad, and the organization gives HR that kind of power, how can you say the organization is "quite good"?

Re: How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation

#110

Post by ThePawnBreak »

mstade wrote: post #108
ThePawnBreak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Facebook and Google pay about £80k for new grads (£60k salary + £20k in stock and bonus). Seniors earn about double that. Palantir pays interns £5k / month plus free rent.

Sounds about right. No one mentioned the free rent thing to me, but I guess that's in corporate housing where you don't want to stay anyway . May I ask how you know?

Usually corporate housing at top tech comapanies is pretty sweet. I have friends who got offers.
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