Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably means health insurance.
Correct.
You're going to have to tell us more about your situation - where are you, what sort of company is it, and what is your general experience in software?
The Programmer Salary Taboo
181–190 of 331 posts
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though you have to pay your own taxes -- probably 30%, in the end -- and your own medical.
You pay your own taxes now.
Yes... the key is sending in the estimated payments. If you fall behind or (worse) wait until the end of the year, you'll be stuck with a huge tax liability.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it does benefit you, personally: by not having your information out there in public, you can claim whatever you want when you go into salary negotiations, and the hiring company has no way of knowing that you'd be perfectly happy with a significantly lower salary. Generally, whichever side has less information public about them is at an advantage in negotiations. Unfortunately, this leads to a prisoner's dilemma…
This argument is circular: "Keeping your salary private benefits you when negotiating a new salary"... which is difficult mainly because everyone's salary is private.
...which is the case with most game theoretical situations.
You don't get to choose the world you live in, you only get to choose the choices you make. If you want to move from one world to another, you have to figure out how to get the rest of the world to make those choices.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#184Wow, this article comes in perfect timing for me. Hopefully, you, the HN community could help me.
I am currently being offered a software engineering job at Apple through a recruiting company. What I want to know is, how much should I be asking for? I am 4 months out of college (no Ivy league, just a state college) with little professional experience. So far, I have said $50k, but is that low-balling it? Should I be asking for more? From what I gather, Apple won't be paying me directly; it will be the recruiting company that will be issuing my checks.
edit: Forgot to mention that I would be moving from Louisiana to California if I get the job.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#185I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…
For my first programming job I asked for $50k and got $40,000. I always resented that, as I thought I was giving them a break in the first place, but I had just moved to the area (DC) and didn't have time to look very hard.
So 6 months later I got them to raise it to 50, and a few months later they they fired the other programmer (my boss, who was making $85k) and expected me to do the work of both he and I, which I was capable of doing. They told me they just gave me a raise so I shouldn't be greedy.
I left of course. They hired my replacement at $90k after having a consultant do the job for three months at typically high rates. I would have accepted $60k! I just didn't want complete disrespect.
A year or so later I was making $80k and found out another guy at this company was making $40k. What the hell? I don't thing anyone should be so royally fucked.
Companies that do this deserve no loyalty. Salary information should be public as long as they persist in such behaviors.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's "only" for social security and medicare. You still pay federal income tax on top of that.
And on top of that the state income taxes in most states, and sales taxes that usually approach 8 or 9%, and property taxes on real estate (and autos where I live). Also if you manage to save anything after all that, you can look forward to paying dividend or capital gains taxes (a form of double taxation). It is a myth that America is a low tax nation.
Most other countries have twice that sales tax, as well as having all those other taxes. The best rough estimate of taxation burden might be proportion of government spending of GDP, which IIRC is about 35% for US, and is lower than eg most European countries.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#187Wow, this article comes in perfect timing for me. Hopefully, you, the HN community could help me. I am currently being offered a software engineering job at Apple through a recruiting company. What I want to know is, how much should I be asking for? I am 4 months out of college (no Ivy league, just a state college) with little professional experience. So far, I have said $50k, but is that low-balling it? Should I be…
That is very low for a junior software engineer. I would ask for 75k but be OK with taking less for a "trial" period of 3-6 months.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: "If he's going to turn the job down over $5,000, do you really want him?" Couldn't the same be said from the applicant's perspective? If a prospective employer is going to nickel and dime you over 5k, do you really want to work for them?
A good work place environment is easily worth $10k in salary. If a manager were up front with me - "Hey we pay everyone the same rate, and everyone else makes this much. Still interested?" - I would consider that to be a good sign.
I am not sure I agree with this idea. Does that mean we all stay the same forever? What if I work extra hard and others are slacking? Are they all really the same skill level to begin with?
Sounds great that we all make the same until someone is working harder or less hard than someone else, then it will be a sore spot.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#189many years ago, i was a fresh grad with an ms in comp sci working at a bay area startup. i sucked at negotiations too, and my starting salary was 75k, which actually wasn't too shabby (or so i thought). long story short: the company imploded, but i was one of the few people kept around until they turned off the lights. most of my friends had been laid off, and we had all revealed our salaries. they made closer to 95-125k, and i was the guy in the OP's story: they guy that worked tirelessly, did the work of 2.5 of my co-workers, was well liked, and had a grad degree. i was pretty annoyed, so i went into the ceo's office and said i was due a salary bump. it was the least he could do seeing as how the company would be gone in a month, and i could use that as leverage in negotiations for next time. he complied, and bumped my salary to 90k. i got a new job about a month later and i negotiated 98k.
usually, you will get some incremental improvement when you move to a new position.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#190Here's a trick I once heard to share salary with your coworkers without the uncomfortableness of finding out you are over or under-paid. Over beers with several of your coworkers, each write down your salary on a piece of paper and then mix them up. Randomly draw them out of a hat and then read them to each other. If you're all roughly peers, then you get all the benefit of knowing the salary range of the group, with…
Another method I've heard: person 1 picks a large random number, adds their salary to it, writes down the resulting number, and passes it on to person 2. Person 2 adds their salary to the number, writes down the new sum, and passes it on to person 3. This continues until the result gets back to person 1. You end up with the large random number plus the sum of everyone's salary. Person 1 then subtracts the large rando…
That reminds me of a technique for randomly selecting someone in a small group. Suppose that there are 6 people. On the count of 3 everyone has to hold out 0-5 fingers. Add the numbers mod 6, and that selects the person.
The funny thing about it is that as long as anyone picks randomly, the answer is perfectly random. But everyone can feel some sense of control.