Salary negotiations for techies
jacquesmattheij.com
jacquesmattheij.com
I was always small for my age and looked nerdy with my glasses and attraction to books, etc. I was always picked last for sports teams, drew little attention from girls, and was usually the first one to be bullied. It even happened in my own family, subconsciously I hope. It was always easier to pick on the little guy to get what you want.
Fast forward to adulthood, and not much has changed, especially with bosses. It seems like my boss was always a sales/business guy, extroverted, and bigger than me. His/her natural reaction was to "bully", probably because they knew they could get away with it. This was for almost everything: project management, discussions about work, and of course, money.
No more. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I decided not to take this shit any more. The more anyone picked on me, the harder I shot back, right between the eyes. Nothing pisses me off more than being bullied, especially about money.
This is not natural behavior for me. (I imagine if it was natural, I would have become a sales person or a lawyer.) I have to consciously work hard to stick up for myself. But as soon as I paint the other person, especially my boss, as a bully, I put myself on even ground. And as soon as they see that, they understand that they can no longer take advantage of me. Only then can I be treated like everyone else.
If I was sitting in my room trying to figure out some bizarre IRQ conflict between my sound card and my wireless card, nobody was standing there making fun of me for not being able to run as fast as them, or not being able to do any pushups.
"We judge people based on what they say and thing, not what they look like, and you call us criminals."
I think that's why a lot of kids turned to tech.
Well the same thing is happening now in the workplace. If we just shut up and sit in our cubes, nobody will bother us. Standing up to $boss means that we might be embarrassed.
In the past, when others behave slightly offensive to me, verbally or physically, I'd duck and paint him as a bully; but now, I take those as jokes and if they are funny, I laugh. Occasionally I act offensively too, (hopefully) in a funny way, and that actually makes people like me more than when I respected everyone.
It's not so much that you're bullshitting and it's turning to gold - it's that you pretend to be comfortable in a situation where you are not, and then as you get used to it you become comfortable, and then you "make it."
Basically, you're not going to suddenly become great as a CEO, but if you don't at least give off SOME confidence, your employees, partners, board, competitors, customers won't have any faith.
;)
It was a slow process, and not really something you can accurately monitor yourself. A lot of the changes happen without me realizing until pointed out by friends.
No you can't switch, but you can definitely shift your personality slowly. If you think grass is greener on the other side, start walking this way now. :)
Oftentimes, people are far more relaxed and natural with their friends than they are with co-workers or strangers. Subconsciously, we assign these 'roles' for ourselves (you with friends, you online, you on the bus, you at the doctor's office etc) and stick to them. Breaking the boundaries of the roles a bit and being the same across the board is what I found to be quite helpful in being more social and just feeling better about life overall. For example, I'll randomly chat up a stranger waiting for a delayed bus; make eye contact and smile at a person random person on the subway (especially if attractive ;P); or talk to or play with someone's kid while on a train (kids are usually very approachable and love playing on a boring subway ride; your mileage may vary though as North American parents seem to think everyone around them is a potential child rapist).
It might feel strange at first, but the more you behave like a friendly approachable being the more people respond with the same. After all, most people, unless they are rather extroverted, are just like you, and are basically waiting for someone else to initiate contact with them.
I'm a geek and am sympathetic to the problems you've described, but for me negotiating salaries is every bit as miserable from the other side of the fence (I run a startup) for the same reasons (introverted, etc.). When I encounter engineers who have been "hardened" by crummy bosses in the past, I often just toss salary negotiations off onto my business and sales-minded cofounder who doesn't mind playing hardball.
Many managers hire people as a sudden reactionary event ("we have an open rec, we've got to hire before the rec closes!"), leading to rushed hiring decisions, and then negotiation issues a year later where you ended up hiring someone (and they took the offer) out of immediacy / desperation, and the employee ends up leaving or accepts the lack of interest and doesn't work to his/her full potential.
Hell the whole point of working is to advance in the world. You as an employer should be making more money with each year that passes in comparison to past years. Employees as people with goals and dreams should be making more money as time passes also. If you're making more money thanks to your employees, your employees should be making more money also. Not just because they're entitled to it, but because there's always the possibility that by letting them go could end up costing you more money than a raise of a couple of thousand dollars.
A great team is something you should strive to maintain and cherish, but is also something that becomes exponentially more expensive as years pass. If they're working like a well oiled machine and creating insane amounts of value for your company, just pay up. If by comparison they're average (or worse) and your company isn't growing one bit because of lack of innovation or performance on their part, then you're correct in playing hardball... while you look for replacements that can actually benefit your company.
In my experience, "fairly rational geek-type" and "boss" are a contradiction in terms. I honestly believe that a rational geek has to give up some rationality in order to become a boss.
I didn't mean to infer that anyone has to play hardball. I just needed to give myself an attitude adjustment to level the playing field.
In any negotiation, only 2 things are really needed: (1) Treat the other person the way you would want to be treated and (2) Do the right thing. What could be more rational than that?
Uh, that doesn't make sense. Becoming a boss might cause your incentives and perspective to change, but if "rationality" makes you worse at your job then whatever you're calling "rationality" isn't.
Maybe at a larger company this model doesn't work as well, but I would assume that development managers at most small tech companies are highly proficient developers. Am I totally off base here...?
Instead, here is my hack: when a recruiter first calls, be blunt with them. Ask "do you know the salary range for the position?" and if it isn't great, say "Sorry, I'm only looking at senior roles that can pay in the 115-125 range because I have n years and a strong background in x." Keep in mind that something around the lower number of the range you give is what the offer will come in at if you eventually get hired--the recruiter is taking notes. If the recruiter is not sure about the upper end of the employer's range, he or she may even call the company and confirm for you by feeling out what they would pay their "best candidate."
If your number is beyond the range for the position, move on. If not, you've set a price for yourself, in advance, set an expectation that you are worth that price, and sent the message through the recruiter without ever having to negotiate a thing.
If you're thinking "do I really want whoever is hiring me to have to pay a recruiter?" the answer should actually be yes. Why? People who pay recruiters 1-want someone badly enough to pay extra for them, 2-are spending their time on more important things, 3-have the money to pay a recruiter, and so are showing at least some budgetary strength and flexibility and 4-recruiters will sell you to the company, and act as a non-threatening channel to pass information like "I have another offer at 110 with work from home 2 days a week I'm considering."
edit: minor edits to clarify whose "range" I meant.
Also, if it was unclear, to get recruiters contacting you, put your resume on monster.com and make it public. Then sign in/update it every now and then as I think that bumps you to the top and shows you as recently active.
Keep in mind that something around the lower number of the range is what the offer will come in at
Not strictly true. Every employer wants to pay as little as possible obviously to keep costs down but if the salary range is, for example: £100k to £120k and it's clearly communicated to the employer that your minimum expectation for the role is going to be £120k then there is no reason why you would ever end up being offered much less. The key, as you mentioned is to be clear with the recruiter from the beginning. Recruiters have no reason to lie about the salary. Bottom line is, the more you get paid, the more we get paid. It's in my best interests to get you the highest possible salary on offer and I won't waste your time, my clients time or my own time putting you forward if you tell me your minimum is £120k and the client told me their absolute top end is around £110k.
It's in my best interests to get you the highest possible salary on offer
It's discussed on HN now and then, but the reason for that is that most recruiters are terrible at their job and are really acting as middle-men. Meaning that they do the minimum (often less than that actually) to present a resume and get their commission, with no consideration for the job or the candidate.
Granted maybe it's just me and my resume might not be sexy enough… I don't know. But in any case, the recruiters I have talked to always sounded like your typical sales guy.
Well, partially. They also want to raise a barrier to entry to competitors and one way to do that is to make it hard to match salaries.
This is a point against applying for jobs through recruiters.
The use of a recruiter does indicate a desperation on the part of the employer, and an inability to fill the job through more informal means.
To me that usually indicates that the company and/or job just isn't very good. Or otherwise they'd have no problem filling the position some other way.
Help wanted ads basically indicate the same thing, except that some companies are required to post such ads by law (even when they've already decided to hire someone else). But if they are seriously considering you based on your response to a job ad, then it's another indicator that the job/company is just not good enough to find applicants through more informal channels.
So in both cases, I'd really much rather look somewhere else.
Of course, there are some exceptions, for really huge and famous companies like Google or Microsoft, which would really have no problem getting plenty of candidates through informal means, but might still advertise or use recruiters for other reasons.
So I wouldn't avoid job ads and recruiters in every single case. But I think it's a good rule of thumb, all other things being equal.
Of course if I was so desperate that I couldn't find a job through more informal channels, then it might be worth considering job ads and recruiters. But then I'd probably have to reconcile myself to being employed at screwed up company or job.
Paying an extra 20% on top of the first year's salary for help in unearthing a local gem may be preferable to trying to lure a Googler from Mountain View to Topeka at a rate that would be twice what the rest of the Kansan developers are asking.
In most mature companies, you're reviewed on a cycle, and the bump you get is preprogrammed according to an HR spreadsheet. The conversation that results from this is not a real salary negotiation. Your goal needs to be to break out of the cycle.
What I think you should try is, let the review run, and get your HR-approved comp pellet. Then say,
"Thanks for increasing my comp. I appreciate it. I have a question. What were the factors that led you to raise my salary?"
They'll give a platitudinous answer. Let them. Then say,
"That makes sense. I have another question. Over the past year, I did XXX, YYY, and ZZZ. You didn't mention these things. That's fine! But I'd like to make sure I'm putting my energy into things that the business values here. Instead of XXX, YYY, and ZZZ, what should I do?"
Then have the conversation, in specific terms, and follow up with an email recapping the conversation.
I have a couple theories about this approach:
(1) (Extremely important and something I know to be valid:) Business isn't a meritocracy. The winners know how to market themselves. Coders look over each others shoulders on Github and developer a sense of who the bad-asses are. Successful business people always broadcast their wins. You need to seek out and seize opportunities to toot your horn on the record. This is something tangential to salary negotiation that introverted and meritocratic tech people also suck at.
(2) The "objectives" most people are given at salary reviews are inevitably vague. This serves the purpose of the business by making comp something out of the control of both the team member and the manager.
(3) Even if you don't want to push for a bigger bump (and most of you, if you think about it seriously, don't, or you'd already be making more money), it is still in your long term interests to establish a winning track record on your terms. If you leave it to the managers to decide what goes on the track record, you will lose out to every member of your team who is better at politics and marketing than you are.
At my last job, I was being paid at a mid-level admin rate but was expected to do senior-level engineering and even architectural work (I had proven that I could). The best they could do is 3-10% (and even that was pulling teeth) per year. I had already been there several years and it would have taken me several more to finally make what I should have been making all along... minus the opportunity for raises based on that income.
In the end: I went out, interviewed, and negotiated a salary elsewhere at such an insanely high increase (just under 40%) that I figured my then-current employer would just show me the door and say thanks for my time. Much to my surprise, despite having a hard time squeaking out a few extra K before, they were not only offering to match my offer but exceed it by an appreciable margin.
The moral of the story: a lot of employers will aim to profit on your complacency. Period. It is more profitable to pay you the least as possible as long as possible. They got damn good (if I do say so myself) engineer at a steep discount. Even if I had taken their offer (which I didn't), it would have taken me a couple more years just for my pay to normalize to what it should have been all along.
Everything else you were unhappy about before will still be true. They will now have a chip on their shoulder about you. And furthermore, part of the reason why they will pay more is that they don't have a replacement for you. But now that they know that you are a risk for leaving their top priority will be to have you transfer your knowledge, to hire a replacement, and then to fire you as soon as they feel that they are in a good position to.
They don't have a chip on their shoulder. Necessarily. But they have a very rational concern that you, unlike your peers, are particularly likely to bolt. Many forms of compensation, including bonuses, training, and senior positions on teams, are viewed in terms of investments that pay off or lose depending on whether you're retained.
I wasted a year and a half or so of my career by accepting a counteroffer (I didn't really want to leave that badly) and getting marginalized.
That doesn't mean every counteroffer is bad, but I would be up-front and overt about the concern that the "counteroffer" you've been offered is really more of an "option" on you, so that you'll leave on the company's terms and not your own.
As part of their due diligence, they asked that person about working with me, and that person then proceeded to tell my boss that they heard I was looking for another job.
My boss then spent the next few months transitioning all of my responsibilities away to other managers, basically leaving me with no responsibilities.
Thankfully, I transitioned back to being a consultant, and all of them were fired; but you don't even need a counter-offer to be marginalized. Sometimes, just talking to another company is enough to do it. So be wary.
The person I worked with was apparently a really really good friend of the person I was interviewing, so I assume it just came up in conversation, like "Hey, do you know so-and-so. They're applying for a job here."
Amusingly, the guy actually did speak well of me to his friend, he just then proceeded to notify my boss that I was interviewing at another company.
Also, it tangentially led me to go back to doing technical work, which I much prefer. Having all my responsibilities as a manager removed forced me to decide what I really wanted to do at that point in my career. On the whole, I'd say it worked out for the best.
"Boss, I'd like to make $x."
"No."
"Boss, I'd like to make $x and Y will pay it."
"You got it."
It's very simple. You can't negotiate without options. Nothing personal. You won't hurt someone's feelings by standing up for yourself (unless he is very insecure).
Sorry, but that's just bullshit. Salary and skills are correlated very loosely. The salary spread among (roughly) equally skilled developers is enormous. It's up to you which side of spectrum to be on.
Here's what I'm wondering: Why can't rank-and-file employees negotiate some type of agreement where they get paid to stay? It doesn't make any sense that companies put a "value" on retention, but don't put a $$$ value on it.
It's called salary and other compensation.
> It doesn't make any sense that companies put a "value" on retention, but don't put a $$$ value on it.
You're missing the point. Once someone has accepted an offer from somewhere else, they're very likely to leave soon even if they accept a counter-offer. As a result, money spent on them is wasted.
Effective retention spending happens before people decide to leave.
The point they are missing is, that companies know they can skimp on 'retention bonuses', because only a few employees will shop for a better offer.
Would you rather hire a hard-working, but downtrodden slave; or a hired gun who's only staying because you are paying them what you are worth? Exactly.
The only solution is for enough employees to churn their way to decent positions, so companies are forced to assume that an underplayed employee will quit.
There was no written or verbal agreement to stay, they just made it very clear that they realized that our job options had increased considerably and wanted to give us more incentive to stay. Some people probably negotiated higher amounts, but since I was already being paid more than I knew what to do with and the job was really a lot of fun, I just happily pocketed the money.
But if you want to keep your job, you still might as well play the game right.
Go out there and interview with other companies, even if you aren't seriously looking. You can get an idea of the market for your skills, and - perhaps more importantly for this thread - possible salaries. A wealth of knowledge can be learned this way, and may give you some leverage for salary negotiations.
BTW, you probably don't want to tell your manager you've been interviewing and therefore, know your salary could be $NNN. Err on giving less information and word it as, "I know companies ABC and XYZ are offering salaries in the $NNN-NNN range." Then you can follow up with tptacek's advise, "That's my target. What can I do to reach that?"
I do this periodically, though I try not to abuse it or waste anyone's time with a company I have no interest in whatsoever. There's a fine line here. I don't mean to advocate wasting anyone's time, and never do this with startups. It's a small industry and someone could catch wind that you're interviewing just for the sake of interviewing. I find this tactic more useful with large corporations. And used judiciously, it can be advantageous.
The most important thing you can do is to take a close look at what value you provide for the company. Your dev manager will definitely care about how difficult it will be to replace you, but once you leave the technical stratosphere, the only thing that matters is your effect on the bottom line. Consider what you've done to make a dent and be sure that those efforts are communicated up the chain of command, even if you have to do it yourself.
I asked for a raise, got half of what I wanted, and began the process of looking elsewhere. My managers wanted to keep me and noticed that I wasn't particularly happy with the result. A week later, they made the difference and then some with a bonus vesting at the end of the year. In the end, I got more than I asked for and the company was able to provide it in a way that made sense for them financially.
I love my job so it took me many more months to act than it should have for fear of losing it. But, like jacquesmattheij said, you've got to realize that neither party has a long-term obligation to each other- this is a business relationship, first and foremost.
This is the critical insight! This also applies in other business deals like sales and hiring. If you are desperate, if you have to get the job or close the deal, then you are meat. The other party can sense this (through instincts that have been honed over millions of years of evolution) and they know that they can string you along.
This is exactly what is happening with the super-slick sales guy who can't seem to close the deal but keeps on coming back to the devs for that one additional feature. This is what happens to the startup with the one big client that keeps stringing them along. This is also why nerds can't close the deal with women and why many people end up staying in dead-end jobs.
Be willing to walk. Get yourself the resources so you can walk. (It's not a lot. When he was struggling, Humphrey Bogart had a $100 bill in his sock drawer, and whenever the world got him down, he looked at it and thought to himself, "I don't need those jerks. Screw them!")
Value your independence most of all, be looking for the best value for you, and create genuine value for those you interact with. The rest will follow.
This is only a business relationship. Nothing else and be wary of places that try to make you feel like it's more because they're playing mind games.
If you believe that's too hard a statement and that your company actually has a tighter relationship to you than this; ask yourself what will happen if the company starts having financial difficulty and has no choice but to drop half their staff. Will you survive the cut? What if they keep halving the staff? At some point you will be let go no matter what relationship you think you have. The relationship is only a business one.
1. Always be willing to walk away.
2. Never, ever, take the first offer.
3. Never take an offer immediately. Always sleep on it.
4. Never base your worth on "comps" aka. comparable salaries. You are an individual with your own "value add" to put it in marketing/sales/management speak.
5. Always remember that you always, always work for yourself. Your current employer just happens to be paying for your time now. Most everyone I meet when asked "who do you work for?" will say so and so company. But in reality they have no more commitment to you than you do to the stranger on the street. Always know that everything you do you do to extend your knowledge, your power and your influence. I always say "I work for myself. So and so just happens to be paying me right now."
1. Is there interest in this? 2. Would this be feasible?
Employers sure as hell wouldn't like it, but I wonder if they'd tolerate it.
It probably wouldn't work in other industries without a huge shift in expectations, but it really does work at thousands of employers.
If you could get a unified group of employees to all sign an agreement to be represented as a group, then you would have collective bargaining power...
If we take the 'order of magnitude of productivity' difference in programmers seriously, it seems that the best programmers would have a serious incentive not to join the union, were they actually able to negotiate proportional to their ability level. (Granted, they don't and it is unlikely you will find an employer willing to pay you 10x as much as one of your coworkers, so maybe it does make sense).
Also, the governor of Wisconsin wouldn't stand for it, and the company would likely fire the lot of you as soon as you decided to unionize.
A far better idea for a service would be for negotiation counseling. This service actually already exists, but is so touchy- feely- that it isn't taken seriously by hard-nosed tech workers, who as a result get rolled by their employers.
To complicate matters, I've worked with many BigCo HR departments, and really doubt that they'd deal with a third party that they didn't have on their approved vendor list. In fact, a third party would probably be a deal breaker.
Rubbish. Why would we compromise our bottom line for the sake of getting a deal done? Sure I could push you in at your absolute minimum salary but if you get a better offer in the mean time then I lose my fee. It's in my best interests to get you as high a salary as I can possibly get you.
If I recall correctly, the authors of Freakanomics discovered that when real-estate agents sell their own houses, they sell for a higher price than comparable houses where a non-agent used an agent as a middleman. This confirms the hypothesis that agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner.
- Real estate agent negotiates 8 hours for an additional $10,000 on the sales price: 5% commission gets him $500 for an hourly rate of $63.
- Real estate agent negotiates 8 hours for an additional $10,000 on the sales price of his own home: he keeps all $10,000 for an hourly rate of $1250.
- Recruiter negotiates for 8 hours for an additional $5000 salary: he gets a 20% commission for $1000 or $125/hr.
- Job hunter negotiates for 8 hours for an additional $5000 on his own salary: he gets $5000 for $625/hr. plus compounding effects for every future salary negotiation that is based off of his current salary.
Correction:
This confirms the hypothesis that ESTATE agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner.In other words, results don't extrapolate to all agents.
For your argument to be true, you'd have to assume that there was something special about the sample population chosen by the authors. That flies against the laws of statistics. Further, there is a clear explanation of the behavior that aligns with the economic incentives of the parties.
In buying and selling homes multiple times, I have always casually mentioned the study to my agents, and they have vehemently denied that it is true. However, in every transaction save one, the agents have eventually acted in ways that would close the deal quickly for a loss to me, yet get them their (slightly reduced) commission sooner.
If the statistical results are sound then we can infer some characteristics about the population. But in this case, the sample came from a population of real estate agents. There is a fixed effect found across the whole sample: they're in the housing business, not the headhunting business. No recruiters in that population, so we can't infer anything about recruiters in general.
Sorry to argue semantics, but this is a basic sampling concept that people forget about.
After a while negotiating for an extra few thousand gets the recrutor an extra few hundred. If it takes 2 days to get this much more then the recruiter has lost money.
However to the employee, this takes none of his/her time and compounds onto top of each additional raise so it's in their interest to get the most they can no matter how much time, with in reason, it takes the recruiter to get the deal done.
That's the basic issue. If you're getting 5%, then by definition you should care 5% as much as the candidate what the final salary ends up being, and thus care much less if it's a little bit lower than it could have been.
Secondly, negotiating an offer is the quickest and easiest part. It hardly consumes any time at all by comparison to the amount of time and effort invested just to get to the point where there is any offer at all.
If I've invested a massive amount of time and effort into getting a candidate through the process to the point where the employer wants to make them an offer, believe me, I am going to fight tooth and nail to squeeze every penny from the employer that I can get.
I'll buy that; the recruiters I've worked with have certainly put in a lot of time getting me to the point of having an offer.
The point of serious mismatch is when you're working with more than one recruiter (at different agencies). Some years back, I was almost at the offer stage from company X through recruiter A; recruiter B pushed me to apply at company Y, too. Problem was, X and Y were founded/funded by the same people, and had an agreement (possibly illegal) not to compete on candidates. B somehow convinced me to go ahead anyway; I talked to Y, and X dropped me.
- Companies that hire through recruiters have deep yearly budgets; companies that hire direct have shallow project budgets. I have never not gotten a higher rate through a recruiter.
- Companies that hire through recruiters pay on time; companies that hire direct pay late and usually after repeated prodding; sometimes they don't pay at all.
- Companies that hire through recruiters pay for hours worked; companies that hire direct fight for upfront concessions and then fight some more when the bill comes.
- Most recruiters make a percentage and not a set fee, although yes, it's usually capped at around $25/hour. However that means that you need to be making upward of $100/hour to hit that cap. Which means that for the majority of people, the recruiter does make more when you make more.
All in all I never understood the customary programmer/recruiter animosity. Making more and never having to deal with collections is awesome. In my book, recruiters' cut is well-deserved.
Whenever I work direct for a company, I always make way more (basically, my cut, and the headhunters cut).
Despite this, companies seem to always work through headhunters...I've never seen any manager ask any developer "do you know any good ____ people that might be available?" It's really bizarre.
Of course, their incentive is much smaller than mine, since an initial 2K/month salary boost might translate to 50K in extra salary over my tenure with that company and, conceivably, extra hundreds of thousands over my career.
Because they can increase their total commissions by 20% if they increase their number of employees placed by that much.
But really my take on this is different. If it takes an extra 20% of work, then the hiring company is probably not for me. I'd rather work for companies where good compensation is a given, because they tend to do other things better as well.
1. Call a good headhunter, let them negotiate salary for you. Finding a good headhunter can be hard. And be prepared to refuse high paying positions you don't think would work for you. Expect the headhunter to push you a bit but know that eventually they will get the message and look for something which both pays a lot AND is what you want.
2. Interview for another company and do one of the biggest "don'ts" there is - Tell them what you are making now and that's you're not looking to leave unless they offer a lot more.
The above two things are strongly discouraged, but in practice both work remarkably well.
Getting a big raise form the company you are already working for, is always going to be much harder. And unless you really, really don't want to leave your current company, it is much easier to find another job.
Telling a potential employer how much you're making now is often discouraged because it gives them a perceived valuation for you, which might make them reluctant to go too much higher.
The market is in your favor as a programmer. If you have even the hint of a clue it's even better. I remember 4-5 years ago being on a phone screen and was asked what if any books I was reading and when I listed them he said "The job is yours' if you want it." I didn't but it was enlightening. I walked into my bosses office the next day and said I want a 20k raise and got it.
If I turned round and said 'I'm sorry, that information's irrelevant,' what would happen?
When they push back and say they HAVE to know your previous salary, you can tell them your compensation range over the last five years was [$X , $Y] where X is the highest base salary you got in the past 5 years and Y is your highest total compensation during that time.
Total compensation is your salary + the sum of all the cash you would have to pay to replicate all the perks of your current job (401k matching, Covered parking at the office, Coffee, Office supplies, ... everything you can think of)
This gives them a range of numbers (which they're looking for) that are the most favorable to you.
My generic response is usually something along the lines of "Well, they're two different positions, so I'm not comfortable giving out that information. Do you have a range in mind?"
Every time I ended up mentioning what my salary is, I've gotten screwed (rightfully so), and I've never been shown the door for refusing to reveal it. It's always helped in the long run.
I have had a recruiter just get totally confused when I wouldn't tell him. He refused to take no for an answer until I said I was walking out. The same recruiter then tried to tell me I wouldn't be able to get paid what I wanted and would barely get ${10K<Current}. I knew I was already underpaid... He was basically talking shit.
People only want to know for ONE reason: to peg you at a salary so they don't 'overspend'. Do you want to be at a job that doesn't want to pay what you're worth because they think they can manipulate their way out of it?
Could you ignore the question and give them the information that you want instead?
Interviewer: "What salary are you currently getting?" You: "I'm expecting $120k for this position"
?
"Sure, but first _you_ give _me_ a detailed histogram of salaries for your employees [in similar positions/rank]"
I suspect you won't get that histogram, and they'll be offended you asked. Maybe they'll understand why you don't want to share your salary.
Asking is it's own mind game, because they're not asking in good faith, they're asking so they can bully you into accepting a lesser offer. They either don't know what is fair OR they do but want to go "Well we don't pay more then 10% of what you're already on" which has NOTHING to do with your value.
They've already got it in their minds that you're supposed to get the same old salary. It's not so much bullying as just a different perspective on the world. A mindset. You can try to be that guy who finally shows them the light, or you can look at your options in a pragmatic sense. And creating conflict with the guy interviewing you is not super pragmatic.
Edit: One other point. Something is worth what people will pay, by definition. If someone offers you less than you're worth, then by definition you have a better option. So go take the better option. If everyone is offering you the same figure, then by definition that's what you're worth.
Otherwise saying "What do you want?" is just as useful without the judgmental overtones of not looking above your station.
The first thing I do for new clients is get metrics (or set up systems to do so), because you can best believe that when they move in the right direction I'm charging more next time.
Depends on the company. For a mature software development company the engineers' salaries are likely to be quite a large line item. This is especially the case since sales are generally paid on commission and carry quotas, so there's no reason to assume that in a company with a decent focus on R&D this statement will be true.
(1) Part of the reason programmers are bad negotiators are because they don't usually have highly cultivated social skills. If by some chance a programmer is a budding socialite, there is a good chance he/she isn't that great of a programmer.
(2) Trying to get compensation derived from worth to company is not a bad idea except -- and this is a big except -- it can create additional pressures on the person delivering. If you are the best member of a team and also being compensated more than the other members of the team, your management is going to consistently want more value from you and they are going to likely want that in the form of tangible and immediate value, not a refactoring of this or that or some cool experimental project. Which is to say, the more highly compensated you are, the less likely that you will actually be able to enjoy the work you are doing. As far as I'm concerned that is a very good reason to either (1) accept a lower salary on the basis of the factors mentioned or (2) work as a consultant at a high hourly rate and spend your free time on other more interesting projects.
(3) This is related to (2), but people don't work as well when they are thinking about compensation (e.g. the surprising truth about what motivates us short film http://ow.ly/1s8Y9r). Definitely consultants in general are much worse programmers than hobbyists (I've worked with both), although hobbyists may not be the best people to rely on when you are facing a hard deadline. What can you do about it? For me, I think the simple answer is simply do what you love doing and make sure you have enough money to keep on doing it -- which is to say, don't worry about money all that much.
But maybe I'm still in that typical programmer paradigm...
If by some chance a programmer is a budding socialite,
there is a good chance he/she isn't that great of
a programmer.
So let's not box us all into this good programmer-vs.-socialite binary.
If you take only one thing from this thread, it should be the above quote. If you need a highly intelligent, hardworking person to do something tedious and dull, how can you convince them to do it? You pay them buckets of money. Examples: programmers in finance, big law firm associates.
Shitty jobs, on the other hand, tend to be one where you are underpaid.
I want good engineers, so I don't want to punish people for being bad negotiators. We just pay the best we can.
Probably to some degree they were feeding me a line of BS (subtly suggesting that I not negotiate aggressively), but sometimes knowing the personnel in the departments there was probably some truth to it too.
The one thing I am uncertain about is how I would place myself on that range: should I be asking for a 75th-percentile salary and settle for 50th, or ask for 90th and settle for 75th?
It's already too late to "plant the seeds" for a big raise, so I'm anticipating some little 1% raise today at my review.
I had my chance a few weeks ago, when I stayed late to confirm and fix a bug that would have cost us a $2M contract, and everybody knows what I did and how important it was. Still, without me actually pushing for a big raise, I know it won't happen. It's a small company and money is not wasted. To pay me a big raise I didn't ask for would be throwing money away.
So why didn't I ask? I think because I don't want the commitment a big raise would impose on me to stay indefinitely, and I don't want to be comfortable. I like feeling the pinch of money, as it keeps me motivated to work on my startup ideas. If I allowed myself to get too comfortable, I fear it might not be the best for me, long term.
Become an "asker". Do it today. People that ask for what they want get told "No" a lot, they also hear "Yes" some of the time-that is they hear it infinitely more than the people who do not ask. I realized this a couple of years ago and it changed my life. Make peace with hearing "No" and start asking for stuff.
Unless it would truly get you fired, come up with three legitimate single-sentence reasons you deserve a raise and go ask RIGHT NOW. You chance is now, it's always NOW.
Do you realize what you're saying? YOU ARE PAYING YOUR OWN MONEY TO GO TO WORK. It's not like you are spending all your cash on hookers and cocaine. Get a raise that covers your basic living expenses, or go find another job right now.
"I think because I don't want the commitment a big raise would impose on me to stay indefinitely, and I don't want to be comfortable."
Your manager will have no problem being comfortable enough to fire you when cash flow is tight.
Why would that impose any commitment? If you’re not under contract, you have no obligation to stay. You can get a raise on Monday, negotiate a better deal with a new employer on Tuesday, and quit on Wednesday.
Not to mention that if you have a family and a mortgage, you really want to have some savings you can live off if some unexpected event happened (sickness, unemployment, etc.). If you're draining your savings just because you don't feel like asking for a raise, you're deliberately putting your family's financial security at risk.
I'll tell you, flat out -- no matter how much you make, you'll feel the pinch, you'll just learn to move the 0.
Don't feel ashamed to ask the owner for a raise if you feel like you deserve one. Change your perspective. They should be ashamed that they haven't been trying to do their best by you. And if it does come down to hurting feelings... who do you care more about, the owner or your wife and kids?
Also, the company has no obligation to you. They could fire you a day after giving you your big raise if they were suddenly short on money, or if they decided to cancel the product you were working on, or if they just felt like it. Why should you have a commitment to them that they don't have to you?
At any rate, the conversation will not be “fresh in mind” after two years. Six months, maybe... one year, just barely possibly... but not two years.
Ask for the bigger raise.
Besides, if you negotiate a raise and then leave, it means that they don't have to pay you that raise after all, right?
We all have to start understanding that the only way to be sure you're working for an employer who values your work is to work for someone who is willing to hear your constructive criticism and wage requests without googling "outsourcing" or "recruiters". It's possible your employer turns you down and gets rid of you. In the worst case, they keep you and move you downstairs into Storage B.
To me, it may be worth staying (temporarily) at a job where you feel that you are underpaid in money, if you are getting lots of opportunities to learn new skills, or you are managing a larger team or scope of work than you would have at another company. Think of it as similar to the time spent in an MBA or other post-graduate training program.
The hard part is to discern when you are being given a growth opportunity, and when you are just being used.
What's the worst that can happen if you ask - boss says no, you feel stupid for a while or a loss of a job. The later means you are working for the wrong man so it may be easier to find out now rather then later.
Regret is harder to cope with. So don't regret and speak your mind!
I also came across this good article which basically stated that our behavior at work has to do with the environment we grow up in. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/yes-rich-kids...
"Middle-class kids generally fuck up their first few years of the career game in one of two ways... fear authority tremendously... or show an open distaste for managerial authority." ... "The rich kid, on the other hand, relates even to the highest-ranking executives as equals, because he knows that they are his social equals. He’ll answer to them, but with an understanding that his subordination is limited and offered in exchange for mentoring and protection. He views them as partners and colleagues, not judges or potential adversaries."
Food for thought.
Don't mean to be a cynic, this article is okay and all, but who is this guy (and what's his secret!)?
The secret: if you build your reputation, you can benefit from your reputation.
Signed,
a different Jacques.