Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Some related advice I just gave a family member on this subject:

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.

The truth is: most companies have no interest in providing you a big bump as their additional input will not dramatically improve your output, if at all. If you want to market yourself better - then do it where it counts: get out there and interview.

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.

It's true that your negotiating power is at its zenith when negotiating in a seller's market for a new job, and at its nadir when negotiating for a raise in a job you already have.

But if you want to keep your job, you still might as well play the game right.

In that situation, don't ever take the counter-offer. Seriously.

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.

Be very wary of taking the counteroffer.

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.

I had a scenario a few years back where I interviewed with another company in which the person I interviewed with was friends with someone I worked with.

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.

Did you write on your resume, "Do not contact my current employer without my permission?"

I did. I also explained that the place I worked had a very strict policy forbidding any employee from serving as a reference (the only thing we're allowed to do is give them an 800 number to call which will verify employment)

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.

I'm surprised you're so calm about it. I would have been furious!

I was annoyed when it happened, but it was a few years ago, and I try not to dwell on negative experiences. Usually about a day after something happens, I process it and move on.

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.

That's a passive-aggressive mindset. We're all beautiful snowflakes but salary isn't based on how special you are, it's based on what you're worth, which is very closely related to what others would pay for you. Don't be all offended because your boss doesn't want to pay what you feel like you're worth, you know, in your heart.

"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).

Without digging into whether you're right or wrong about this, there is a common pathology that happens where someone decides to leave, secures a strong offer, informs their manager, receives a counteroffer, and accepts the counteroffer instead of leaving. Many such counteroffers aren't really good-faith counteroffers (even if the company thinks they are); they are effectively "options" for the company to have you leave on their terms instead of yours.

> but salary isn't based on how special you are, it's based on what you're worth

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.

Did I say anything about skills?

So many managers are too stupid/lazy to value devs based on their output, and instead do so based on what other managers are willing to pay? Excellent.

I think this is a fallacy, for the simple reason that I've yet to come across a company that had their shit together enough to make it happen. In 6 months you'll be on a different project with a different manager possibly even in a different office, and the HR people will have had similar turn over.

Everyone says, "don't take the counter offer."

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.

You can; it's called "yearly performance review".

I think employers are missing an opportunity by not doing this. In a high-tech business, an employee with several years' experience with the company's products can be worth several times as much as one who has been around only a few months to a year, even if the latter is qualified and talented -- some of these products are just so complex it takes years to learn their ins and outs. It only stands to reason that retention bonuses for the long-time employees would be money well spent. And I mean substantial retention bonuses, on the order of 100% of salary. I don't mean for every employee, but for the stars.

> Why can't rank-and-file employees negotiate some type of agreement where they get paid to stay?

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.

I don't think that's they point they are missing. They know that an employees who shops is "damaged goods", but they don't know why employers don't give pre-emptive raises to everyone, and avoid the confrontations altogether.

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.

In unusual cases they do. Around the end of the dot-com boom (2000+) the company I was working for for offered a bunch of us bonuses of 20-25%, paid each paycheck, as a "retention benefit." IIRC, they did it for about 3 years.

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.

Another semi-related tip I've given is:

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.

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