Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#81

Post by RougeFemme » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 2:13 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #22

This is in line with what one of my previous bosses taught me about negotiations: negotiation is about truly understanding the interests of the other side. In this case even those they are not aware of. He also used to put crap clauses into contract drafts (if he knew they'd be passed through lawyers), so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract. A true exam…

Another example. . .deliberately inserting grammatical and other errors to distract the red-pen weenies. And, of course, you already have the corrected version ready to go. . .you're just waiting for management to return the red-lined version.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#82

Post by RougeFemme » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 2:20 PM UTC

crusso wrote: post #54

SatvikBeri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies shouldn't reward loyalty, especially when that means punishing performance. Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company. All other things being equal, a 25-year-old who just joined the company and automated 5 people's worth of work is worth several multiples of the 35-year-old analyst who'd been at the company for 10 years and was doing…

Loyalty is only meaningful in the sense that your company-specific knowledge makes you more valuable to the company. I couldn't disagree more. Loyalty is its own benefit that's worth compensating people for. I value people who come into a group and do more than just contribute a bunch of code. I value people who contribute to the culture and the framework of the ongoing enterprise. Furthermore, I want newcomers to se…

There's also a lot to be said for people who loyally provide/demonstrate leadership (especially when it's not part of their job description) as a core value, thus contributing to the improved performance and morale of others whose jobs were not automated our of existence by the hotshot codeslinger. And maybe imbuing some leadership in others, as well. Something else that cannot be done by here today, gone tomorrow folks.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#83

Post by thejteam » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 2:44 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #22

This is in line with what one of my previous bosses taught me about negotiations: negotiation is about truly understanding the interests of the other side. In this case even those they are not aware of. He also used to put crap clauses into contract drafts (if he knew they'd be passed through lawyers), so that the lawyers can demonstrate being useful without messing with the actual matter of the contract. A true exam…

A former co-worker of mine used to manage 7-elevens. They would do the same thing when a regional boss came on an inspection. They would deliberately do one display just a little wrong so the boss could ding them on that and move on without looking too closely at the rest of the store.

Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money

#84

Post by wpietri » Fri, Mar 08, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #78

wpietri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true only if you value money and nothing else. I know plenty of people who work at below-market wages for nonprofits because they support the mission. This fellow had some of that, but he also valued surfing time more than extra cash. People also value recognition, good colleagues, solid benefits, low stress, and a bunch of other things. Just because people value different things than you doesn't make them wro…

Those claims are fallacious. It has nothing to do with the supposed greed that you absurdly assign to the engineer. It has to do with critical evaluation of the company's financial condition. A company that can not pay market rate because they don't have enough money can't afford to be in business and will not continue to do so for much longer. There are lots of jobs out there, just like there are plenty of potential…

Well, let's test your theory. The article describes a real place that was being run on a shoestring. Looking at resumes, this was 2006-2008, so it's circa 5 years later. Are they out of business?

http://www.kzyx.org/

Looks like they are still going. Just like every shoestring nonprofit I know.

And the reason is exactly that people get paid in things other than money. They could also have run the radio station with market-rate salaries. They would have had a drastically smaller staff. But because they wisely recognized that money isn't the only thing that matters, they looked for people who could take substantially lower salaries but valued other things they could offer.