How to negotiate salary in the software development market of 2019 | Hacker News Reader

How to negotiate salary in the software development market of 2019

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12 pointsfreework35 comments

My experience is exactly the opposite. In the market I've prospected (France) the applicants have leverage because there is more positions than candidates. Even if there is a lot of candidates, there is a lot more positions. There is even more discrepancies beetween available positions and qualified candidates.

Even if there was not, once a company has eliminated 99% of the candidates and put their mind to hiring you there is a good chance you have a little leverage at negotiating your salary.

I don't think the author work the same jobs than I do.

I think it's nonsense to present this as a general truth the way the author does. There are likely plenty of geographical locations, skillsets and business domains where the opposite is true. If he's writing for the US, it's most likely not even generally true for the US.

In Dallas, there are many, many, many more open positions than there are reasonable candidates for those positions.

In any case, the article is foolish, because really good candidates can always negotiate. This isn't fast food, where it barely matter which body you stick in which role.

Spoiler: Don't believe everything you read.

"But these days that doesn’t work because the market is oversaturated." - Literally all companies I know of struggle with finding candidates.

"When they’ve rejected 99% of applicants, they’ll offer a job to the last remaining candidate." - If the role is for one person, then they will reject all others except the one they deem suitable, obviously.

But hey, if it's posted on the internets it must be true.

I'm flagging this post as it is an utter waste of time and highly inaccurate.

Edit: After reading the author's other posts, I see there is some frustration related to job seeking. Perhaps there is some advice we can give or experience to share to help? The tech job market is as good as it gets, but it can vary depending on languages, tooling, industry and so on. A bit more context might help for this article to be relevant. I un-flagged the post hoping there is something positive that can come out of this.

The market is "oversaturated" if you take all the candidates completing these bootcamp type courses. Some are fantastic but many I have encountered still have a lot to learn.

Just because there are a large number of candidates does not mean that a large number of them are at all qualified. There is a huge variance of quality across the development market from that I have experienced. No real proof of any of these claims here.

> No real proof of any of these claims here.

The proof is my own personal experience. If programmers were truly scarce, then every time a programmer passes a programming puzzle interview, then they'd be offered a job. I can't tell you how many interviews I've aced over the years only to be ghosted afterwards. If ghosting existed (which is very much does, and is quite common), then that means the market is oversaturated.

have you asked for feedback when this happens, and if so what responses have you gotten?

They usually either ignore me after telling me they won't hire me, or they'll say something like "We've received many qualified applicants, and have unfortunately decided to go with other candidates"

I'm really sorry to hear that. I imagine you are looking for your first job out of college?

Even as a quality candidate there might be a lot of way that you are going wrong. I would advise you try and get your CV looked at. This can make a big difference. I'm sure there is lots of advice out there. What market are you looking in?

It might mean that the company is selecting for skills other than raw problem-solving talent

Oversaturation, as typically defined, would result in falling wages, either in absolute or real terms, and that doesn't seem to be the case yet. In fact, the growth in IT salaries is probably among the few that regularly outstrip inflation rates. You have no "oversaturation" until coder rates match more traditional (and really saturated) white-collar jobs like accountancy, where salaries are much lower.

That doesn't mean the job market is not getting more competitive - it might well be, but that does not mean it's oversaturated yet, not even saturated.

I get that but my experience has been the exact opposite for all but my first job.

I really don't think being able to pass these "programming puzzle" type interviews is a good measure of a good engineer. Just finishing them is often not what a company is looking for.

I think most people think oversaturated means that there are a lot of developers available that qualify for a given position. However from my experience companies are listing open positions as a means to fish for top candidates when the companies don't actually have funding slotted for those positions.

The experience for the candidate is that they make it through all the gates and then get ghosted while the hiring manager is stalled by their bosses to approve the hire. That has happened to me often enough in the past three years that I now just think of interviews as an opportunity to meet other nerds.

You are interviewing far less well than you think you are

Any proof to back this up? I just interviewed at places in various Western European countries and when I rejected offers I was being asked what they could do to keep me. Sounds like the article says the exact opposite.

The great leverager that isn't mentioned or discussed generally is domain knowledge. The company has leverage if the cost of replacing you is low, and if your focus is React or Go or whatever, then the cost of replacing you is the cost of the next programmer who can answer the same interview questions you were asked, or write similar code to what you write.

If your skills also include valuable knowledge in the domain that you work in, or expertise in getting things done in that particular environment (or even in that company) you're well on your way to being priceless. And that pricelessness is what puts things back in your favour.

Domain knowledge can only be leverage if your domain knowledge is rare. The examples you cited (React and Go) and not rare.

I think you misread the comment.

Is the market really "oversaturated" as the writer claims though?

IDK about the Bay Area, but in plenty of other places there just aren't enough developers to fill all the roles available.

Sounds like "leverage" to me

Especially in the search for competent developers or developers with experience.. We receive a lot of applications of completely underqualified candidates

Agreed.

Similarly, perhaps its oversaturated in London, but other UK cities don't have this problem.

Yeah to echo others in the Denver area it’s extremely hard to hire and devs can bounce around between places every year or so getting a decent raise each time as employers compete for labor.

The only programmers that have leverage these days are celebrity developers like Linus Torvalds and Guido Van Rossum.

Them, and that streaking Greek dude. Archimedes.

> because the market is oversaturated

lol but no. In London, anyway, the market has a tiny number of devs, and mid-level NodeJS devs are asking for £100,000, which is definitely a sign of the apocalypse.

Not sure where this is supposed to be. Definitely not my experience in western europe (Ireland, Spain and Germany). Companies are _desperate_ to find competent developers, markets like Dublin or Berlin are complete saturated with demand and little offer. Companies are now embracing remote developers out of desperation, the talent pools are depleted. It's definitely a GREAT time to be a developer and if you're decent you have leverage. Tons of leverage.

> But these days that doesn’t work because the market is oversaturated. Companies put up a job ad, and within minutes get 100 qualified applicants. They then reject 50% of them right off the bat, and then interview the rest, rejecting anyone who doesn’t completely ace every single interview question. When they’ve rejected 99% of applicants, they’ll offer a job to the last remaining candidate. In that scenario, the applicant has absolutely no leverage.

At first I was going to harp on whether the market was oversaturated or not, but there's an even bigger mistake -- as far as I can tell this situation can increase leverage for prospective employees who make it through the process. If you know that the company just spent 10/100s of hours reviewing, interviewing, and culling lots of applicants, but you made it through their obstacle course and they want to hire you, this means it's very likely a good fit -- that's rare. This would only be bad if the market happened to be saturated with high quality devs, but prices would drop.

This article seems like well-intentioned bad advice -- always negotiate. Analysis of perceived leverage is great, but in the end, if you get an offer you don't think is what your time is worth, then counter it. Politely but firmly ask for compensation in line with what you value your time at like "thanks so much for giving me a chance to join the team -- I'd love to accept the offer but I was really expecting

> The only programmers that have leverage these days are celebrity developers like Linus Torvalds and Guido Van Rossum.

???? This is just plain wrong -- if you are good at your job, you are going to produce a lot of value for a company depending on how they use you -- you don't have to be a celebrity developer to bring value to a company -- you could lack 100% of the technical or leadership skills of either of those people and simply by suggesting "why don't we just use google sheets" and save the company possibly 100s of thousands of dollars (in pricey subscription fees to data platform du jour).

IMO the real problem is information asymmetry -- companies have (obviously) way more information on what they're willing to pay, and not having any data points on what they're willing to pay makes it hard to search for the right companies (to begin with), and negotiate with advantage (at the end).

Sites like levels.fyi and early glassdoor did the most to help engineers reduce their disadvantage when negotiating -- if you want to get better at negotiating, get more information.

> If you know that the company just spent 10/100s of hours reviewing, interviewing, and culling lots of applicants, but you made it through their obstacle course and they want to hire you, this means it's very likely a good fit -- that's rare

It's not rare. It's very common for people to pass the interview process only to get ghosted after spending hours solving puzzles and answering screening questions. If you're the only person to pass, then that does give you leverage, but you're not likely the only person to pass. I pass interviews all the damn time, and get rejected all the time too.

> if you are good at your job, you are going to produce a lot of value for a company depending on how they use you -- you don't have to be a celebrity developer to bring value to a company

Being able to provide value to a company doesn't necessarily give you leverage, especially if there are many other people who are also able to provide value to the company.

> Politely but firmly ask for compensation in line with what you value your time at like "thanks so much for giving me a chance to join the team -- I'd love to accept the offer but I was really expecting

Just because you want to make lots of money doesn't mean you will make lots of money. If someone else will work for less, then the company is not obliged to pay you more just because you politely ask for it.

What terrible advice. Everyday engineers with a mite of talent have plenty of leverage and should always negotiate. Retaining staff is cost efficient, and real talent is harder to come by than seat fillers.

Depending on the location and profile of the company, I would venture most companies aren't rejecting "99% of qualified candidates"

And the thing is, the question of whether to negotiate only comes up if you find yourself in the 1% who get to that stage. It's very expensive for a company to find that 1%, and once they have they don't want to go back to the drawing board, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of your leverage at that point. Of course you should negotiate. What have you got to lose?

> It's very expensive for a company to find that 1%

Not if the market is oversaturated. They may get multiple people to reach that 1% stage. Then none of them have much leverage.

It doesn't matter how saturated the market is. It's takes time to filter out all the candidates. Labour and opportunity cost via delays and distraction

Nothing in this article applies if you are looking for quality staff (developers or not). I can get "bums on seats" in record time, and feel good about having negotiated all of them down significantly. Quality staff is a different ballgame.

My own experience is that companies will try to meet your demands if they’re reasonable but every position has a budget. My hiring experience is that python developers are in great demand.

This could do with a location attached to it. It's not true everywhere.

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