211–220 of 331 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>FWIW, my first programming job only paid $45,000 a year. What a ripoff. How is that a ripoff? That seems right at about average for starting salary programming.
If people are getting $100,000 right out of college, then $45,000 is not very good.
Earlier 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.
If I create a lot of value, I want to be able to capture a portion of it in my salary. I don't want to capture some average wage determined by a manager who doesn't have the guts to admit, even privately, that some people create more value than others.
Are there parts of the world where it's customary for salaries to be known?
Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented…
That said, mission effing accomplished for the company: they're well north of a million dollars richer because good little kids don't drop their drawers or talk salary numbers. This topic makes me feel positively Marxist: we're willingly participating in a system designed and perpetuated to exploit us because to do otherwise would be impolite.
Earlier 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.
With this article and the one yesterday I am going to assume that in any salary negotiation the other guy is trying to cheat me, so I would just ignore that.
Wow, 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…
You shouldn't have to ask for anything, they should present you with an offer.
Meanwhile, you should do appropriate due diligence and interview with other companies that interest you and see what other offers you get. If Apple is interested in hiring you, no doubt other companies will be too.
Also: keep in mind that relocating will incur at least a few thousand dollars in expenses (which your future employer should cover as part of the comp package) and that living in the bay area is very expensive. 50k is do-able, but won't take you very far.
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If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. The modular-arithmetic alternative is better, at least in terms of political stability: they figure out that there's an average of $86k. Then the people making $70k all negotiate up to $90k and, even if getting shafted, people are happier.
> If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. Why not? I'd be completely fine being the odd one out, especially if it helped to encourage my lower-paid co-workers to renegotiate their salaries. The whole point of this exercise, IMO, is to determine if there's inequity, and how much. I'd want to know the full salary range, not just the average. Companies rely on you knowi…
HN needs anon comments. I have specific questions, but not ones I want my name on =)
Here'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…
We did this amongst ten of us, but as the beers flowed everybody kept asking about the numbers (one person was significantly higher than the others) and by the end everyone knew what each other was getting. The bottom two people had left within a year... go figure!!
If they were people you wanted to lose, good job!
In academia, it is common for professors' salaries to be listed in public databases that are searchable by anyone. I don't particularly draw any conclusion from this; indeed, there is some debate as to whether this is a good thing overall. My impression is that it doesn't make much difference one way or another. In any case, it may be interesting to HN readers to know that this is the norm in the public sector.
More interesting was to see the relative salaries of professors and administrators. Some professors are clearly able to demand much higher than average salaries, but nothing like head sports coaches...