71–80 of 412 posts
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Regarding bluffing: I've seen it happen where the company has asked for a pay stub as part of the final paperwork to confirm that the stated current salary was legit. So yeah that could be a downside to bluffing if you want the job.
Photoshop is a wonderful thing :)
It would be interesting to see networth along with the salary numbers.
The liabilities side of the balance sheet is less complicated: I owed $22k in student loans at graduation, paid that off, incurred a fair bit of debt back in ~2013 (raided the 2012 tax fund to pay for my wedding and then 2013 ended up being radically less lucrative than expected), and anticipate paying it off this year.
As a recent graduate about to go into his first ever salary negotiation, I'm really grateful for the perspective this provides. My dad was a taxi driver (now drives for Uber) and my mother a stay-at-home mom. I was raised with the notion of earning enough to support myself. Anything beyond that is something I'm expected to figure out myself. Posts such as these are very helpful. A question though: 1. If I've had conv…
Re 2), you should make sure your salary is at market-level and more or less ignore equity. Chances are you'll be let go or the company will collapse before it's worth anything. If you have a reasonable salary, equity is just a cherry on top, but if an employer tries to get you to trade cash today for a startup lottery ticket, say no. This is especially important early in your career given the time value of money. An…
Although perhaps north of $600k is a bit too optimistic, you'd need a solid 6.4% inflation & fee free ROI on that.
In any case it's important to look at it in 'today's dollars'. For example, the S&P 500 did 20x in the past 40 years (roughly the length of a solid full-time professional career), so $10k could have turned into $400k if following that index. But in the 80s inflation went up to 15% causing devaluation, that 1975 dollar is worth about $4.5 today, meaning that $10k turned into perhaps 9x more purchasing power. Of course that's before all the fees get involved. Even if you'd get $600k by your retirement age, it likely will be the equivalent of less than $200k today.
But yeah 6% per year isn't crazy. If you manage to scrape together $50k in your fund by age 25 and work until 65, 500k is very doable, north of 600k perhaps optimistic but who knows what we can expect. Perhaps we'll see gigantic returns once we get 4 billion people on cheap mobile computing, free wifi in the sky, access to modern education, 3d printers, drone deliveries, digital money and a graphene industry haha. But historically speaking $600k is tricky!
Either way, doesn't change the fact this is great advise.
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I had a similar experience with a recruiter. I asked why and she couldn't come up with a compelling answer, she just said "That's just how it is, we need your salary." She escalated it to her manager and he pulled the same. I eventually complied but not without telling them I didn't ever receive a good reason and it makes zero sense and I couldn't see how it would do anything but hurt me. Funny enough I ended up gett…
It's a pretty strong signal that they want people who won't negotiate and aren't assertive. In some businesses, it's just counterproductive to hire an assertive employee: the business processes are in place, the command structure is well-established, and they just need bodies to fill places in the org chart. If it's one of those companies and you're one of those people, getting hired there will likely be painful for…
And this company was a very small and fast growing firm that would require a lot of hustle and assertiveness. My entire in person interview process was based on a case study that took 12 hours where I spent a large part of that arguing with my results/reasoning. So I don't think that holds.
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Crazy. I'd definitely send a quick note to someone higher up if you can get a hold of him/her. I know, not worth the time, a hassle etc. 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. I mean, hell, asking the question is one thing. I can live with that. But turning that into some kind of litmus test…
Yes, one might think so, but this was the CEO in question[1]. Edit, and so far as bluffing, could an employer legally ask for W2's to verify? [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-m...
I did a small bluff to try it out, just 5k above what I was making. The recruiter was surprisingly skeptical! I know I've done an good job of bumping up my salary in a short amount of time, but it was kind of off-putting to have him question it.
>> 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…
That's the point where you quote a wildly inflated salary with a straight face. "My last salary was $300,000. Yes, seriously. Is that too high for you? We can discuss this further in negotiations, I'm flexible"
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Yes, one might think so, but this was the CEO in question[1]. Edit, and so far as bluffing, could an employer legally ask for W2's to verify? [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-m...
They can't legally ask for proof, no. Bluff away! (I'm not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal advice.) I did a small bluff to try it out, just 5k above what I was making. The recruiter was surprisingly skeptical! I know I've done an good job of bumping up my salary in a short amount of time, but it was kind of off-putting to have him question it.
"Salaries are not just internally transparent at Japanese megacorps but so predictable that any middle-class adult in central Japan can accurately predict my salary history. I mention this partly to say that salary transparency by itself does not guarantee happy outcomes for employees." Yes. Salaries at Buffer might be transparent but also quite low.
Yeah, I actually prefer a lack of transparency. I fully recognize the right of others to discuss salaries openly and support their ability to do so. However, I think aside from benefiting companies, a lack of transparency around salaries benefits those who are good at negotiating, whereas complete transparency helps those who are not good at negotiating. If for example, you know company X's highest paid software deve…
This is exactly why salaries _should_ be transparent. Skill at negotiating salaries, unless you are an agent, is not a relevant skill. If you are an engineer, for example, the company should not be rewarding or penalizing you for your salary negotiation skills.
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Because I enjoyed running the software business more than I enjoyed running the consultancy. Partly that is for difficult-to-explain personal reasons (I feel the sense of satisfaction with operating a software company that some people feel when painting things). Partly it is because of reasons which are endemic to consultancies, even successful consultancies. Feel free to ask if you're curious. I also have a quirky r…
Not snark... serious question... its not clear to me what sort of services anyone could offer for 30k per week... what sort of thing commands that kind of price tag?
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 them are doable. For example, if you increase the rate at which the SaaS company closes deals by a modest amount, that could reasonably hit that by itself. You could do that by some combination of A/B testing, better email marketing, tweaking sales processes, etc, alone or in combination. I've blogged pretty extensively on all those topics if you're curious.
These are not necessarily all that technically complicated. If you can figure out ActionMailer, an if statement, and a for loop, you have every technical capability you need to be an engineer in charge of email marketing. The interesting bits are "What emails do I decide to send?", "What words go in those emails?", and "What goes in the if statement?"
The actual work is exactly as dominated by meat-and-potatoes execution ability as you think it is.
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Re 2), you should make sure your salary is at market-level and more or less ignore equity. Chances are you'll be let go or the company will collapse before it's worth anything. If you have a reasonable salary, equity is just a cherry on top, but if an employer tries to get you to trade cash today for a startup lottery ticket, say no. This is especially important early in your career given the time value of money. An…
Great insights, can definitely recommend not taking big equity gambles in your earlier years. Although perhaps north of $600k is a bit too optimistic, you'd need a solid 6.4% inflation & fee free ROI on that. In any case it's important to look at it in 'today's dollars'. For example, the S&P 500 did 20x in the past 40 years (roughly the length of a solid full-time professional career), so $10k could have turned into…