I'm all for advocating for yourself during negotiation...but I don't like that it seems she gave them one set of reasons for why she turned the job down, and then turned around and gave the entire internet a different set of reasons.
Analogue Pocket Hate Story
131–140 of 168 posts
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great to me. Yeah, a $1 to $2 raise, how generous. What I got out of this article is that the author knows the value of their time. $20,000 for 4 to 6 months of work for a software engineer is an insult. They might as well ask him to work for free.
>>$20,000 for 4 to 6 months $20,000 for 300-400hrs of work, as estimated, quoted and documented by the author. I don't know why we are trying to misinterpret the story so hard in this thread. And I don't know how much more entitlement we can possibly have as profession on this continent, where we find $50-$66USD per hour of optional, interesting and challenging, comfortable and remote work, a perceived insult worthy…
> And I don't know how much more entitlement we can possibly have as profession on this continent, where we find $50-$66USD per hour of optional, interesting and challenging, comfortable and remote work, a perceived insult worthy of HackerNews front page.
This comment is just so ridiculous I don't know where to start.
Let's start with entitlement, not once did I say things like the author or software engineers in general are "entitled" to anything. My words are about reality, reality is, $20,000 is not enough money to get me to do any work for longer than a month because I can walk down the street and get a job that pays me more after a 5 hour interview.
Let's talk about having the "privilege" to do interesting work remotely. Aka, the privilege to donate your time to someone else's business. I can do interesting work on my own thank you very much, I don't need $20,000 from some company for the privilege to do interesting work, I can open my laptop and do it and I own the result in the end.
If making a lot of money causes you to feel guilt sort your issues out.
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>$20,000 for 4 to 6 months $20,000 for 300-400hrs of work, as estimated, quoted and documented by the author. I don't know why we are trying to misinterpret the story so hard in this thread. And I don't know how much more entitlement we can possibly have as profession on this continent, where we find $50-$66USD per hour of optional, interesting and challenging, comfortable and remote work, a perceived insult worthy…
> And I don't know how much more entitlement we can possibly have as profession on this continent, where we find $50-$66USD per hour of optional, interesting and challenging, comfortable and remote work, a perceived insult worthy of HackerNews front page. This comment is just so ridiculous I don't know where to start. Let's start with entitlement, not once did I say things like the author or software engineers in gen…
I feel we may still be talking past each other, so let me attempt to clarify my position one more time:
* Not taking an offer because it's not worthwhile - more power to you and the author. Zero issues or concerns from me. I wouldn't take it either.
But I wouldn't make a thing out of it either! The person is clearly comfortable in their day job, they have hobbies they enjoy, and they had an offer they negotiated then rejected (eventually; after the other side followed-up; apparently only companies are bad when they ghost employees, employees not replying with change of heart is fine:). Life.Is.Good.
* A well-to-do random person freely not taking a random $20k contract from a random company making top post on Hacker News with outrage at the "disrespect" and the awful exploitative business practices and evil leaders? Yeah, that's entitlement.
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which is atrociously low for [deleted] consultant rates I don't think $50 an hour is a reasonable salary for consulting period. An experienced/senior developer working full time for a company with benefits in a cheap area should still (off the top of my head) probably be looking for at min $100,000 to $120,000 yearly salary (roughly $50 an hour). Depending on the situation you might be able to get more than that, I…
You don't have to go far for Silicon Valley rates to be insane. I'm in Canada. Experienced developer salary under 100k CAD is the norm. Consultant rates of $100CAD/hr are not unusual. And then there's the rest of the world . I have no beef with author for rejecting an offer that didn't make sense to them. I am however disappointed for eagerness to ascribe malevolence and disrespect, and demonize a company whose side,…
> unless, and this is my personal daily fear, an internet mob decides some offense was committed. I expect and hope for more from HN.
Is that what happened here? The second most popular comment on this page starts with, "this reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism."
$50 an hour is low for programming consulting in America in general, which is where Analogue is hiring. That doesn't mean I hate the Pocket, but it's worth just saying that it's not a competitive salary, and if you're in the US unless you have a very good reason you should think extremely carefully before you accept an offer like this, it's below market-rate. I think it's reasonable to read into that offer and say that Analogue is undervaluing the work that Endrift does (maybe not on purpose, but in practice pricing something below market rate is literally undervaluing it). I feel confident that Analogue knows what average market rates are for programmers in America. Again, doesn't make me hate Analogue or the Pocket overall, it's just a thing they did.
But the context of this conversation is a set of top level posts that are immediately accusing the developer of being entitled and of the post of being petty and mean-spirited. Who are we calling out here? You have a very different reading than me of what kind of HN culture is being demonstrated under this post. I'm not seeing a pile-on of Analogue from HN, I'm also not seeing a set of top level comments urging context or describing that this is a normal negotiation process -- what I'm seeing from people calling out the salary as under market-rate is that they are primarily either pointing out an accurate fact about US market rates, or stepping up to defend an author who shared their honest experiences of a US company offering them lower-than-US rates, and then immediately got called selfish/entitled for doing so.
It's a strange jujutsu that we're talking about whether or not people are piling on Analogue too hard as a direct child thread under a top-level comment that says the salary was good and that the post author has a problem with communication and empathy.
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to go far for Silicon Valley rates to be insane. I'm in Canada. Experienced developer salary under 100k CAD is the norm. Consultant rates of $100CAD/hr are not unusual. And then there's the rest of the world . I have no beef with author for rejecting an offer that didn't make sense to them. I am however disappointed for eagerness to ascribe malevolence and disrespect, and demonize a company whose side,…
> unless, and this is my personal daily fear, an internet mob decides some offense was committed. I expect and hope for more from HN. Is that what happened here? The second most popular comment on this page starts with, "this reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism." $50 an hour is low for programming consulting in America in general, which is where Analogue is hiring. That doesn't mean I hate the Pocket, but it's wo…
I think the answer to both our concerns is "Thread has changed as time progressed" :).
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't matter. She has the needed skills, she gets to set the terms completely. "I want X to happen" and X doesn't happen? No deal. Pretty straightforward. I read all the chat logs and I can say she was much nicer than she probably had to be, honestly. In the end, she realized they wanted to delay mGBA development, that their deadlines were shifting (they wanted no commits for 6-months post release of a product that…
There's a deep and misplaced sense of entitlement here. Some companies have money and want to complete a project, and some developers can do the work and want to be compensated. The process by which the compensation is determined involves negotiation. That is a two-sided process. In none of the presented screenshots did the author actually propose what she thought was a fair compensation for the work. She suggests $2…
Shantae is a GBC game. It's a different kettle of fish. Of course others could write a GBA emulator or BIOS but mGBA is widely regarded as one of the best.
Why isn't it entitlement on Analogue's side to offer so low a bid and with ridiculous restrictions?
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
$20K is at most 100 hours of consulting time in SV. Probably less [it's been quite a while since I was in that market]. Analogue was hoping for a screaming deal on this software. He was right to walk away.
Minor correction, Endrift is a woman
I stand corrected. Apologies.
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't matter. She has the needed skills, she gets to set the terms completely. "I want X to happen" and X doesn't happen? No deal. Pretty straightforward. I read all the chat logs and I can say she was much nicer than she probably had to be, honestly. In the end, she realized they wanted to delay mGBA development, that their deadlines were shifting (they wanted no commits for 6-months post release of a product that…
There's a deep and misplaced sense of entitlement here. Some companies have money and want to complete a project, and some developers can do the work and want to be compensated. The process by which the compensation is determined involves negotiation. That is a two-sided process. In none of the presented screenshots did the author actually propose what she thought was a fair compensation for the work. She suggests $2…
> There's a deep and misplaced sense of entitlement here.
No there isn't.
> She suggests $20K may work but that is the moment to say what she thinks is fair or what would have been worth her time
Actually the "right time" to specify it, is literally any time she decides she's come to an adequate number, and put it in ink, at her own leisure. Again, she has the skills, she gets to makes the demands. Go make another offer to someone else instead. Not difficult to understand.
> The actual offer is not really insulting if the company didn't know she was in such a high COL area.
Again: your problem. Not my problem.
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#139I think Analogue was more than reasonable here? They offered an entirely reasonable amount of money for anyone who didn't live in the valley (most people), then we're flexible enough to double it when it wasn't enough. They asked the person to sign a reasonable NDA that sounds much less restrictive than anything I've ever had to sign, and they were out? 6 months of non-competition on a direct competitor in a tech job…
Non-competition for what??? The blog author is the developer of the mGBA emulator which is free and open source... There is no commercial competition for Analogue there.
In the sense that no one else is making money off of it, sure, but it is a factor which could impact their sales.
This whole thing sounds more to me like one of Analogue's lawyers thought up a scheme to lock down that project for cheap under the guise of paying for some development work.
Re: Analogue Pocket Hate Story
#140This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working. A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great…
For anyone else reading this, when you're negotiating salary information with a company, it is good for you to think about yourself, it's not entitled. You are supposed to advocate for yourself. I'm not sure if the parent comment realizes that the author didn't actually accept the job? It sounds like parent believes she cut off work or something, which isn't at all what the article describes; it describes a pretty st…
Honestly, it's not the looking out for yourself and not wanting to take a lowball offer that makes this come off as entitled to me, it's the idea that they were apparently so offended that they name names about the situation, and post what appear to be chat logs, just for what looks like a fairly benign negotiation fail.
It's professional to treat yourself and your time and skills with the respect they deserve and not bother with lowball offers. It doesn't exactly come across as professional to me to throw all this online for the world to see because apparently they either didn't want to pay (or couldn't afford) what they needed so offered far less than was needed. Maybe there's some subtext here which I'm missing or isn't explained? Did this company disparage her conduct or skills publicly or something? The level of the response (even how it's called a "hate story") just comes across as weird and overly petty to me.