The 1 commandment that has always worked for me: If you're happy with the salary and the work, take the job.
Life is too short to fight for every penny.
Life is too short to fight for every penny.
I agree with the above poster which is, if you’re happy, take it. The great part about America and especially developed, if you become unhappy there’s 100 other jobs waiting.
Unless you were a colossal ass about the negotiations, I’d not pull an offer while we’re negotiating; we may not find a zone of agreement, but you’re not going to hurt yourself by negotiating in good faith for your interests.
* Legally, the accepted offer may still have been valid if the candidate wanted to force that issue. They’d have to be fairly crazy to do that, though.
In 2020 I had two offers pulled after I had accepted them. That's without me coming back to ask for more or anything else. We were well past that stage: An offer was agreed and accepted.
So far as I can tell, neither pulled offer was caused by pandemic issues. They were both from companies doing ok.
The second time, having been burned earlier in the year, my acceptance was as clear and formal (without being rude) as I could in writing (by email), CC'ing the recruiters to be sure everyone knew.
At the point of acceptance I declined other offers, terminated other interviews in progress and negotiated the end date to a current contract.
That offer was pulled about 2 weeks after the acceptance. A strange ghosting in the interim, when I was expecting a new-employee pack in the post, caused me a creeping feeling of paranoia. It felt off, but I also felt like it must be my imagination, as we had completed and I had an official start date. I was looking forward to starting, and I wanted to feel relaxed about it.
It worked out well for me in the end, as I ended up at a much better place with a much better job, a few months later. But it was stressful both times it happened, and caused significant hardship.
In the time between acceptance and "we're closing the role", the recruiters reassured me the company was just being slow. Then when the offer was pulled, the recruiters told me they didn't understand what had happened, and would talk to the company and "sort it" - and then did nothing and ghosted me. At the time I felt they were good recruiters, "would use again", but obviously I don't think that since they ghosted. I guess they had nothing to say and needed the ongoing business with that company. But an apology, commiseration, or just telling me how unusual it is would have been welcome. These are people who had reached out to me initially, kept in touch regularly throughout the process, and done a great job helping with the application. Nope: Blanked.
I was never given a reason other than "we don't have to give a reason if it's due to change of business circumstances". I suspect high levels of BS.
Something I found really striking: The HR person giving me the bad news told me it was "their standard practice" for an executive to review job offers after they had been accepted.
My view is legally I was entitled to the signup bonus and notice-period pay because we had formed a contract by exchanging offer and acceptance. I suspect I could have sued and won, but that would have been onerous, not an easy win. I worked through several legal theories to formulate a solid claim, but in the end I wasn't up to pursuing it, and needed to focus on the remainder of the contract I still had in the hand.
Edit-aka “mindfulness”
Life is too short to subscribe to company loyalty.
At large FAANG companies, I've seen candidates leave $100k+ on the table, as they simply accepted the first offer (on-hire stock awards and signing bonuses).
On the other hand, I've seen candidates spend weeks negotiating over some trivial point and spoil their relationship(s) before they even started the job.
Knowing the range for the role you're applying for (via Blind, or Levels.fyi, or similar) makes this process so much easier.
I once referred an acquaintance I knew was underpaid to a job on my team, with explicit instructions to negotiate their initial offer. They did not, and I was quite disappointed.
> It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but Bob is not super motivated to do so, because Bob is not spending Bob’s money to hire you. Bob is spending Bob’s budget. Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of his hiring budget: you get a new Macbook if you convince Bob to give you $5k extra, but Bob gets (if he is anomalously lucky) a dinner at TGIFridays if he convinces you to take $5k less.
I've a few data points on this, and disagree. Hiring Managers (and their managers) have to approve and signoff on things, and VPs are needed for major deviations from the norm. Yes, the HR team can do many things but it's all done in conjunction with the hiring manager.
I distinctly recall talking with one of my GM's one day about a new start. The discussion was, "I'm excited for $person to start, but I'm really worried (s)he's a player of games. The negotiation process was non-stop angle-shooting, and please keep an eye open for actual work vs politics."
Today, after a lot of negotiation, we've agreed that I'll be brought on as a contractor for 3 months at $200/hr.
The difference between those two outcomes is nontrivial. By paying myself through an S corporation, and then distributing out 40% of the income as tax-free dividends, I'll be further magnifying this opportunity.
In my opinion, I wasted too much of my life not doing this. And all it took was playing a little hardball and being willing to walk away.
(For curious readers, my secret superpower was that I already had a banking job I was happy with. Sure, this was my dream job, but from a game theory POV that really doesn't matter. What matters is whether you're spending your days doing something you want. Are you sure you want to make small, lateral movements?)
Part of the reason this is hard to discuss is because I truly never believed that opportunities like this were ever going to be available to someone like me. The choice between a $200k/yr salary and a $200/hr contract is so far of an outlier that you read it on HN and just roll your eyes. Right?
Or at least, I did. For years. And then one day I woke up and realized I should've had kids about 8 years ago. It's a lot harder at 33. It means that by the time they're 18, you'll be so old they can barely relate to you. I try not to think about it too much or I'll get a bit sad.
The real motive was that IVF costs $40k in America. $40k! Forty fucking thousand dollars to have a baby.
That really lit a fire under my ass. I looked at it from the point of view of "Okay, my wife's salary pays the bills. I've heard of people making $40k. It's a thing that happens. How can I make $40k?"
It's more tractable than it seems. But it requires you to be "selfless" in a certain sense: it's so tempting to take a cool programming job that you really enjoy. It was almost physically painful to decline their original offer. It was like, which would you rather do? Banking, or ML? Hell yes I'd rather do ML. Give me that ML!
... Except the salary would be the same. And unlike banking, where everyone is pretty chill (we're all here for the people and the money), ML is often on a time crunch that reminds me of gamedev. Which means I'd be trading a relaxing job for a stressful job, with no compensation other than "being happy with the salary and the work."
Why? Why do that, when you don't need to? All you have to do is say no and shop around. But us programmers rarely seem to do it.
By the way, if the amount of money here seems enormous, it turns out to be roughly standard salary for a Google ML engineer. That was my baseline: step one was to ask a buddy at Google "How much would you get paid for this?" and step two was to refuse offers less than that.
Google pays RSUs, which startups can't offer. But they can pay you equivalent amounts of cash. Think of it like selling your stock today rather than waiting for it to vest: I won't be receiving stock, so I won't have the chance to become a millionaire, but I will be having a reliable stream of "holy crap, my bank account isn't negative for the first time in a decade" amounts of money.
Honestly I think there's something wrong with me, because I can't even talk about this without feeling incredibly guilty. I know (too well) how much people struggle just to make end's meet. And I know how many programmers struggle too. I was one of them. Here I am, making it sound easy.
... but what do you do when it actually is easy? All it requires is for you to focus on it for a year or so. I am incredibly lucky, but I also know how to exploit opportunities that fall in my lap. I encourage you to do the same, dear reader; the diff between me and you isn't as big as you'd think.
I'll console myself that this comment will be buried nice and far down the site, and that the story is falling off anyway. (For some reason, audiences are starting to scare me.) But I did want to encourage some lone reader to stop and think. Are you sure you're not inventing reasons why you can't do this?
If you decided to buy a car for $100k over the course of a year, you'd probably wince. Yet I didn't realize I was doing the same thing. Turns out, you have to focus on making money if you want to make a lot of money.
Without more detail, it's hard to say if it's an outlier or not. $200k is $96/hr, but the employer pays their half of SS. Self-employed, you're paying both. And how many hours are they giving you in a week? What if they cancel arrangement 3 months in, and it takes you 6 months to find another contracting gig? You would've made more at the $200k job in that event. But with so many different dimensions (job security, hours, taxes), it's a bit comparing apples to oranges.
One nice thing is that it's an evaluation on both sides. If they cancel, it's a mutual benefit, because I wouldn't want to be in a situation where someone was unhappy with my services. But the reverse is true: having the option of noping out after three months is underrated. All signs point to "this is an awesome company and I'll be here for many years," but eliminating the uncertainty is no small benefit.
One other interesting aspect is that when you bill daily, you can do two gigs at once. It's impossible to have two salaried jobs, but having two contracts is entirely feasible, as long as you can do the work. So that was another tempting thing that tipped the scale. Taking a salary job generally means you'll need to either backburner your existing contracts or call them off entirely, since full time job + contracts is a recipe for not having a life outside of work.
COVID made some of these things easier, too, so it may be a recent phenomenon. Getting the sweet jobs used to require a commitment to e.g. San Francisco. That may be true in 5 years, but circa 2021 I can do this in my pajamas from lovely Lake St Louis middle-of-nowhereville. (Our aunt is coming to visit us on Monday, and she's bringing her cat -- I'm super hyped to see both of them again. Stuff like that is normally a nonstarter when your aunt would otherwise have to fly across the country to come see you.)
It could all be a terrible idea. It'll be interesting to revisit this in a year. But it's also exciting to try out a new path. Hopefully it won't be the wrong sort of exciting. :)
(Sure, if you bill 2000 hours/yr, they’re different amounts of money, but most consultants aren’t billing 2000 hours/yr.)
Being able to squirrel away a substantial multiple of the 401(k) limit is a huge benefit, though!
It's a lot harder after 40, but 33? That's still a pretty prime age. The vast majority of people who I know with kids started in their early 30s.
> The real motive was that IVF costs $40k in America. $40k! Forty fucking thousand dollars to have a baby.
While your hourly rate as a contractor is decent, it's worth nothing that quite a few companies (including YC startups/unicorns) provide IVF with health coverage benefits.
I have had many years where my stock-based compensation and medical costs covered by insurance combined exceeded $100k/yr.
I only mention this because the path you highlighted may mean success to you, but the alternate path may be a greater success for others.
You’re absolutely right that benefits are a huge consideration for almost everybody. I guess I happened to win the lottery, as my wife’s health insurance covers both of us, so I’m starting to question whether it was even worth sharing.
She carried me for about 5 years while I recovered and found my footing again, so I’m just happy to repay her with a nice vacation. She’s been dreaming of going to the Seychelles for about that long.
I dunno. It’s also counting chickens, as they say. If it works out, I’ll just try to pay it forward however I can. If not, we’ll still be happy. Was just hoping to convince some outliers that there’s a different road ahead; one I never gave much thought to.
You’re also correct that I’ll be pushing 40 soon enough. She and I joke that we’ll both find a role for ourselves at a big bank somewhere when we’re 70, so that we have impressive titles but no one is quite sure what we do. That way I can work on lisp while occasionally writing legacy banking software, and she’ll be tinkering with React (which by then may as well be in a museum).
Your experience isn't typical, at least for women
> The average age of first-time mothers in America is now up from 21 to 26, while for fathers, it’s increased from 27 to 31. This isn’t just within America; women in other developed countries are waiting too with the average first birth happening for new mothers at age 31. [1]
Also curious, where are you getting your info that 33 is a "prime" age for having children?
> A woman’s peak reproductive years are between the late teens and late 20s. By age 30, fertility (the ability to get pregnant) starts to decline. This decline becomes more rapid once you reach your mid-30s. By 45, fertility has declined so much that getting pregnant naturally is unlikely for most women.
> Down syndrome (trisomy 21) is the most common chromosome problem that occurs with later childbearing. The risk of having a pregnancy affected by Down syndrome is
> 1 in 1,480 at age 20
> 1 in 940 at age 30
> 1 in 353 at age 35
> 1 in 85 at age 40
> 1 in 35 at age 45 [2]
If people want to have children late in life then they should go for it, but it's a disservice to readers to pretend that 30-35 is the same as teens-twenties. Not everybody has access to education on reproductive health and discussions like these are an important way for some people to learn.
~~~~
1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-stud...
2: https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/having-a-baby-after-...
Better to go into it with both eyes open though.
Another option someone floated was to use Adopt International. It was somehow the only non-horror story I’ve ever heard about adoption. Everything else is “I’d do it again, but it wouldn’t be pleasant” type stories. So maybe we’ll import a baby from some shady back alley in China or something, who knows.
It’s so unfair that when you finally get your life in order, it’s already bordering on too late. Gah. Ce’st la vie, or however it’s spelled.
Anyway, thanks!
As to the rest of your question, if you found my stats helpful, then you're welcome. I hope you didn't take it as an attack as, frankly, my comment wasn't even directed at you (another reason I found your response off-putting). It is unfair, but one thing I've tried to do is just keep looking forward and making the most of my time rather than looking back. As a software engineer who grew up poor and can now afford to pursue hobbies like extreme sports, it's too late for me spend my summer breaks in grade school snowboarding or mountain biking. But I focus on the fact that at least I can do it now, whereas many people may never be able to have the luxury. We can't change the past, but we can change the outlook we have on life.
Maybe it'd be better if people spent 5 more years working, until they were say 70, instead of retiring at 65.
And could instead take some years off in their late 20's and have kids. (Men too, although for them it's not biologically important in the same way)
Any tips on how you convinced a company that wanted to hire you as an employee to accept you as a contractor?
I did solo consulting for a few years (Silicon Valley) but while everyone was wanting to hire me as an employee (fairly specialized and in-demand skills), approximately nobody was even slightly interested in taking me on as a part-time contractor. Finding companies willing to do that was so difficult I eventually gave up and took a W2 job and here I am.
Two factors helped. One, the CEO wanted me so badly that they put me through an “accelerated interview” process that consisted of no technical questions. (I was asked to design a security system for a hypothetical billionaire, and then to think of as many creative uses of a soda can as possible with a 3 minute timer counting down.)
The other factor is that a $50M contract is at stake. I do think they can land it, and I have a pretty clear idea of how to get them there. It also helped that I happened to be chatting with their client about an unrelated thing right when the CEO happened to first talk to me. He said “small world” and was like tell him so-and-so says hello.
Honesty I’ve started to conclude that perhaps it wasn’t useful to use me as a model for others. Everyone’s path is different. I think I’ll write this up into a Book Of Crazy Stories instead of saying it’s advice.
As Picard once said, “It’s possible to do nothing wrong and still lose. That’s not a failing; that’s life.”
Some better advice for you is probably “have a job you’re totally happy with, and then look.” They could tell that I would walk away, which was a source of strength during negotiations. (I needed it, too.) Maybe it’s a bit like getting an investor; the best way to get it is not to need it.
Also, look around a lot! I can’t underscore it enough that most people simply don’t put in the time to go look. They often feel guilty (employer loyalty) or that the interview process is too much of a pain (totally understandable).
Perhaps the closest thing to a recipe is, look into this stuff as a side hobby; fly through the interview as a challenge to yourself; after impressing everybody, walk away and see what they’ll do to get you back. Now that I’ve written that out, it suddenly feels a lot more tractable. A dedicated person could do this a few times, repeatably.
And therein lies the conundrum.
> Why are you even working if not money?
Including bargaining too hard.
You said: life is too short to forgo being able to own a home or raise kids
Why would you think someone would be happy with their salary if they wanted to own a home & have kids, if that salary didn't let them?
Implicit in the caveat if you're happy are all of those the goals predicated on having a salary at a specific level.
If the salary won't let you afford a home & kids, you're not going to be happy with it. So you don't take it.
I think the clear implication is that if someone didn't realize that a small amount of negotiation on their part could have made the difference between being able to buy a home or not, they might regret not having negotiated when they do realize it, regardless of how happy they were in the past with their salary.
Your interpretation is essentially "if you are as happy as you could possibly be, and a higher salary couldn't possibly make you any happier, then don't negotiate," which is logically valid but fairly unrealistic.