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Comment by CinchWrench | Hacker News Reader

The dirty secret about staying in smaller markets through your 20s and 30s is that your pay never catches up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you, but I'm swallowing some pretty bitter pills here having just crossed the 30 year mark and watching my company hire in people at my level for 20-50% more.

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I don't think that's the market. It sounds more likely that you're just not negotiating well or selling yourself to your best advantage, or you're accepting a tradeoff for something else in return. My advice is to search for a new job ASAP seeking 50% more than what you're making now, tweak how you're applying and interview, and you'll have it within a year or less.

Remember also that remote work is becoming much more normal.

great advice; i agree completely. that response was so passive and defeatist i'm almost upset on his/her behalf. it is almost beyond belief what high quality engineers can earn by simply changing jobs.

>it is almost beyond belief what high quality engineers can earn by simply changing jobs.

(and not just top engineers; just about everyone benefits from competing offers. If you haven't gotten a competing offer in the last year or two, you have no idea what you could be getting, and you are probably underpaid.)

This, I think, is one of the major advantages of silicon valley; I can walk from my house to tens of big name employers; hundreds of smaller ones. I can switch jobs and I don't have to move. I can pretty easily still get drinks with the same people after work (if that's what we all want) - and the culture is such that it's okay to go work somewhere else for a few years and then to come back. it's not even a little weird.

I'm curious if what is current / high level work in midwest is different to what you are exposed to at least in SF -> there is a risk in some quieter areas that you just are not current and plugged in with the meetups, the hackathons, exposure to strong other talent.

When I was in my late 20's someone gave me a real kick in the butt to go the distance -> which paid off in hindsight big time.

Your company will continue to pay you the maintenance rate to keep you on. If you are willing to go through the process of finding a new job, someone will pay you more, but to your current company you're a fixed asset. That's just the market now. If you want a 20% raise you're gonna have to go across the street to the competitor. Otherwise, why would they pay you more money when you're obviously willing to settle for what they're paying you now.

By that logic, companies shouldn't offer raises.

A company cannot assume that someone is "willing to settle" just because they accepted an offer. Good companies try to proactively keep people, and part of that is making sure their compensation roughly keeps Pace with the market. By the time a company gets the signal that the "maintenance rate" isn't it's too late to do anything about it.

Companies who want to keep you need to offer you enough that stay. You can skip raises to keep people for a few years, but they will remember that and expect you to make it up latter. (the ability to keep your paycheck through a downturn - and thus house and local friends - is valuable) Eventually employees catch on that their pay is significantly less than they can get elsewhere and they will leave. It is better to proactively give raises to everyone so that they don't go looking: replacing someone who leaves is going to be more expensive than keeping them in general.

> If you are willing to go through the process of finding a new job, someone will pay you more

Be careful, though - there’s some cartelization/collusion going on. If you change jobs too many times, that’ll be used as a strike against you, and a reason to offer you lower pay.

You have to change jobs, nobody gives raises worth anything.

By "just crossed the 30 year mark" I'm not sure if you mean you just turned 30, or that you have been working at the same place for 30 years.

Assuming that you meant you just turned 30, I am 31 and managed to get myself a 50% raise this past year by getting the offer from a different company in town and then negotiating to stay in my current role for the same pay as the offer.

To get better pay, you need to force your employer to acknowledge that someone else out there is willing to pay you more. That requires you to do most of the legwork, and to actually be willing to switch jobs.

So this is just (relatively inexperienced) me, or maybe it's just some misplaced mistrust of even the best places to work but...

I would never have confidence in my job security after negotiating a 50% raise with a competing offer.

I have negotiated some large increases in compensation in short period of times due to changing output and expectations from a role, but I feel like bringing a competing offer is inviting being replaced or made redundant, because companies don't want everyone to hold that level of negotiation over them just by saying "I could leave you know?"

Also, in my head, if they were underpaying me by 50%, I'd assume a big part of my value proposition was I cost 50% less than market rates.

And maybe this is even more paranoia, but I'd imagine a laser pointed at me and my performance afterwards, which ironically might end up affecting my performance (or at least my enjoyment of work)

Also for context, I just accepted an offer from what will be my first company in a "superstar" city last week, even the signing + relocation bonus almost felt like life changing money compared to what I've made at other companies.

One big problem is companies are moving to "up and coming" cities then paying less based on cost of living... but the cost of living on those cities is rapidly rising due to their "up and coming" status, as more and more "superstars" move into the area.

So COL ends up rising faster than your salary unless you're on a seriously fast moving career path.

I had every intention of taking the competing offer, things just ended up working differently.

The company I work for is very small (~10 people), so the negotiating dynamics were probably different than they would have been somewhere larger.

Plus, even if I did get "made redundant", that just means the next time around I have a larger base salary to negotiate from.

Who knows.

you know, you can just lie about your base. It's not unethical to lie if the only reason they're asking is to use it against you during negotiations.

when interviewing, tell the prospective employer you already have the base you want, and that you're only looking for a small pay bump, or retaining the same pay. New employer is now forced to evaluate your pay on an "absolute" basis (Are they really worth X?), rather than a relative one (am I willing to give them a pay increase of Y?). This eases tensions a lot. Don't let anyone hold you back because your previous employer underpaid you.

Yes, someone in HR might find out when they process your tax slip (P45 in the UK), but:

a) the salary person almost definitely won't be looking out for that, they have no interest in screwing you out of a job, unless it's a very, very small company, and the CEO is also the HR guy and the team lead.

b) they're probably not allowed to tell your manager, legally speaking.

c) they simply won't care.

If they really do find out and kick up a fuzz, who cares? you have a legally binding contract. besides, screw those people, if they thought you were worth the money before, what changed? Nothing, that's what. Besides, you now have proof you're worth that money, so someone else will think that too.

I second this. Never tell an interviewer what you are currently making, only what you want them to pay you. There is no need for them to know and it only gives them leverage.

That's the strategy I took, but there is also a psychological aspect to asking ridiculous amounts more than you are currently making. Particularly if you are unsure what the true market rates are for the area you're living.

What I more-so meant was since I pulled it off once, I'd be more confident the next time I went to interview to ask for even more.

If I wouldn't tell my salary to my parent or friends, I won't tell it to some random recruiter. They get lies when they ask for salary.

The people you _should_ tell your salary to are colleagues at similar levels, especially those from often-underpaid groups (immigrants, women, etc.).

Isn't the risk here that they find out what your real base was in the background check and rescind the offer? I have been honest up until this point and feel that I have been anchored by my base pay at least two times. Still got 5 figure increases but who knows how much I could have got.

The way I did it was to never directly say my salary, so I wasn't lying. I just said, "I need an offer of $X to seriously consider this position", which was true.

It just happened that $X was a 50% increase from what I was previously making.

Changing jobs is only way to fix this.

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