Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
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Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
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Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#2"In reality, the only things you need to focus on away from the actual salary are specific details surrounding Intellectual Property Agreements and Non-Disclosure Agreements. More and more companies are stifling their developers creativity by restricting them from contributing to open source projects...."
Agreed. This is something that is essential to consider. With stackoverflow karma, github check-ins & the like becoming a way to evaluate your expertise, this is something that should be considered carefully.
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#3This article contradicts the single largest pro-employee piece of wisdom ("don't walk up to the table with your cards showing") without providing any supporting argument. What does your salary in an unrelated job have any relevance at all to another company? Any company that asks the question has shown that it is not "worth its salt" and so the "trust me" advice immediately dissolves.
I told my personally retained recruiter my previous salary, under promise of confidence, only to hear it quoted back to me by the hiring manager. I watched the same thing happen on the other side when I sat on a hiring committee. Why would anyone believe him? Divulging your current salary is basically asking for that plus 5%.
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#4I was at MSFT for a decade or so and several times saw folks who turned down the first offer get a second offer that was much more to their liking. The hiring manager has to really want you in order to push back sufficiently with HR, but if you're unhappy with the offer and willing to risk losing the job I've seen it pay off...
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#5I was at MSFT for a decade or so and several times saw folks who turned down the first offer get a second offer that was much more to their liking. The hiring manager has to really want you in order to push back sufficiently with HR, but if you're unhappy with the offer and willing to risk losing the job I've seen it pay off...
willing to risk losing the job
In almost all cases, the original offer is still on the table. "Negotiating with the decisionmaker will cost me this offer, so don't negotiate" is something which is only really believed by engineers who are -- and I say this with love -- abominably incompetent at negotiation. This is regrettable, since skill at negotiation matters a whole heck of a lot more than skill with Chef or mastery of Postgres trivia for determining both the instant results of the negotiation and one's larger career trajectory.
Still working on that blog post on negotiation, should be up early Monday for more elaboration on this.
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#6Prospective employers want your current salary so they can get a bead on what the negotiating floor is. Most prospective employers hear "$80k" and immediately assume "we can get this person for $88k". You might be worth $90k, $95k, or $110k, but once you said "$80k", you gave the prospective employer's HR team an excuse to play hardball: they know they're not going to insult you, even if their opening offer is $20k lower than what they expected to pay the role.
Don't tell people your current salary unless you know it's going to help you, and be wary of taking negotiating advice from anyone who thinks you should disclose it as a matter of course.
Your current salary has nothing to do with how much you are worth to a new employer.
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#7This article contradicts the single largest pro-employee piece of wisdom ("don't walk up to the table with your cards showing") without providing any supporting argument. What does your salary in an unrelated job have any relevance at all to another company? Any company that asks the question has shown that it is not "worth its salt" and so the "trust me" advice immediately dissolves. I told my personally retained re…
To pile cynicism on top of cynicism, remember that recruiters have the same incentive structure as real estate agents: they make their money on deal flow, so they're motivated to spend as little time on you as possible.
Giving a recruiter your current salary allows them to be choosy about where they send you. It may keep you away from lower-paid opportunities, but also might keep you away from more senior roles.
Not generally a fan of recruiters at all, really. If you code and you're good, you'll do better on your own.
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#8Prospective employers want your current salary so they can get a bead on what the negotiating floor is. Most prospective employers hear "$80k" and immediately assume "we can get this person for $88k". You might be worth $90k, $95k, or $110k, but once you said "$80k", you gave the prospective employer's HR team an excuse to play hardball: they know they're not going to insult you, even if their opening offer is $20k l…
Without implying any bad will about the author of this post, who is a recruiter, recruiters are incentivized to close deals, not to get you the best possible package. It is possible that this background would convince a recruiter that advice which is against your interests is still a good idea, because if he adopts advice which will predictably results in employees underpricing themselves, his conversion rate from interviews to paychecks will improve, possibly dramatically. If his placements are routinely leaving $10k on the table, that only costs him $3k per placement, which might on a subconscious level either a) not be motivational or b) might be a totally rational decision because of the increased volume of placements he gets by advising people to take any reasonable deal.
My father is a real estate agent, and real estate agents have demonstrable blind spots (seriously, academic literature exists on this) for negotiation when negotiating for clients versus when selling their own homes. When they're selling their own home, five hours of extra work might add $5,000 to the sales price, so of course they go the extra mile. When they're selling a client's home, five hours of extra work might add $5,000 to the sales price but their commission check only goes up by $300, so they'll generally opt to tell you "That's a really fair offer. You should take it. Can we close this today? I have a young couple who I'd really like to meet with now about buying a brownstone, and the expected value of my time with them is way higher than the marginal value of my time with you. Oh whoops did I just say that out loud?"
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#9This article contradicts the single largest pro-employee piece of wisdom ("don't walk up to the table with your cards showing") without providing any supporting argument. What does your salary in an unrelated job have any relevance at all to another company? Any company that asks the question has shown that it is not "worth its salt" and so the "trust me" advice immediately dissolves. I told my personally retained re…
To pile cynicism on top of cynicism, remember that recruiters have the same incentive structure as real estate agents: they make their money on deal flow, so they're motivated to spend as little time on you as possible. Giving a recruiter your current salary allows them to be choosy about where they send you. It may keep you away from lower-paid opportunities, but also might keep you away from more senior roles. Not…
Wow, we really think alike. I posted the same thing and then saw this.
Re: Negotiating a Job Offer with a Company
#10Prospective employers want your current salary so they can get a bead on what the negotiating floor is. Most prospective employers hear "$80k" and immediately assume "we can get this person for $88k". You might be worth $90k, $95k, or $110k, but once you said "$80k", you gave the prospective employer's HR team an excuse to play hardball: they know they're not going to insult you, even if their opening offer is $20k l…
Without implying any bad will about the author of this post, who is a recruiter, recruiters are incentivized to close deals, not to get you the best possible package. It is possible that this background would convince a recruiter that advice which is against your interests is still a good idea, because if he adopts advice which will predictably results in employees underpricing themselves, his conversion rate from in…
The topic that patio11 mentioned is covered pretty well in chapter 2 of Freakonomics. The actual text doesn't seem to be part of the official sample excerpt, but somebody posted the relevant portion in a forum here: http://www.nachi.org/forum/f11/exerpt-freakonomics-book-rega...
This is not an endorsement of other portions of the book as a whole.