Comment by maxk42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxk42 | Hacker News Reader

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You determine the value you're willing to work for: not just your employer. It sounds like you've never looked for a job while still employed. Take your location out of the equation: Is another employer willing to pay more for your skills? If so, you should be interviewing. When I'm hiring an employee I'm looking for anybody that has the skills I need, not their location. I'll pay top dollar to get hard-to-find skills regardless of where that person is located. I'm not going to tell them "Well you live in India so I'm only going to pay you half of what you're looking for" because they'll reject my offer and take one from another employer. If your colleagues are making more than you and your skills are comparable then you need to begin interviewing immediately because you're undervaluing your own work.

It's shocking to me that I had to read a whole blog post and scroll through 50+ comments on HN to find someone who understood how salaries work. Well said.

I feel like this entire discussion can be summed up in four sentences: "Feel like you're not making enough? Find another company that will pay you more. No one will pay you more? Keep adding skills until they do."

Everything else is just window dressing for the negotiating table.

> I'll pay top dollar to get hard-to-find skills

I feel like that's more true at a small-scale company than a large company with thousands of employees. Maybe the large company has already found those "hard-to-find skills".

So what? Don't work for a large company if they're not willing to pay your salary.

Small-scale companies are probably more likely to have shapes for hard-to-find people. If you can hire one person to do three jobs you need 1/3rd of a person for, that's more valuable than finding three people who can do that; especially if those three people would have needed to be in close communications with each other.

Big companies tend not to have as many places where they need one person to wear many hats; so their hard-to-finds will tend to be finding deep experts, but there's probably not a lot of positions that really need that.

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