Comment by Peroni | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Peroni | Hacker News Reader

In the UK the pay difference between males & females under the age of 40 in Tech roles is nominal. There is a difference but it's not even remotely close to the disparity you would find 20 years ago.

That being said, over the past twelve months, female candidates consisted of approximately 5% of the people I represented. There are very few women in the industry and I've rarely come across any who are afraid to argue their worth. On the contrary in fact. Occasionally I have come across one or two women who were demanding a salary that was simply far beyond their worth and I imparted the same advice to them as I would to a male candidate and both women were incredibly offended by my feedback and refused to budge whereas almost every single male that I challenged actually listened to my advice and adjusted their rate to suit.

The idea of negotiating salary offers still appears to be a relatively unknown phenomenon here in the UK. You'd be surprised how few candidates stand their ground and push for more than 5% of the original offer regardless of gender.

Interviewing recently (in the UK) I find the same to be true. Although we only had 1 woman in the interviews, she was double the asking price of the other candidates we were getting in that are male.

I can't say for certain why this is, maybe it was the role we were hiring for? The male candidates were more or less happy to move to us for the same price they are currently being paid where the woman actually asked for double what we were willing to pay for much less experience than the males.

Likely enough to be random variation as to have some real underlying cause.

The concept of salary negotiation is alien to me. Given how difficult it is to find developer jobs in my part of the UK and given that employers are expecting to pay lower and lower amounts these days, I would consider a salary negotiation too risky. There's just too many people applying for too few positions.

That's why I like recruitment agents, when you apply for a job, you already know the salary (or at least the salary range). Obviously, there's disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be fixed with a bit of research.

Obviously, there's disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be fixed with a bit of research.

It's a legal requirement in the UK for a recruiter to have your explicit permission to submit your CV to a company. The law is black & white but unfortunately most recruiters tend to be ignorant of it and those whe aren't simply ignore it as they know most candidates aren't aware of the fact. Never ever let an agent submit your CV to a company before they tell you who the company are.

Salary negotiations are incredibly simple. When you are offered a salary, simply push back and say you would be comfortable with 10% more. The worst that can happen is they will simply say that the budget won't allow it. The offer is still on the table and you've lost nothing.

It's attitudes like yours that are pushing the prices down. Your view is also wrong. There are lots of jobs and lots of workers to fill them. You could also just go abroad. There are lots of nice places to work and with English you can work in pretty much any big city in western Europe.

Your view is also wrong.

He voiced his opinion and it was a valid one.

There are lots of jobs and lots of workers to fill them.

In certain parts of the UK and moreso throughout Europe jobs are in fact quite scarce regardless of your development ability.

I've hired dozens of developers (in the UK and elsewhere), and I've never taken an offer off the table because a candidate has asked for more. The worst I've ever done is not offer more than the initial offer.

There's almost always wiggle room - personally I've never accepted the first offer, and typically I've gotten 30%-50% more. Conversely, because I know there are people like me out there, I never offer the maximum I'm ready to pay - nobody has ever just quietly walked away if the offer wasn't good enough.

The only exception would be if I was hiring for specific very high level talent when the market is totally overheated.

> That's why I like recruitment agents, when you apply for a job, you already know the salary (or at least the salary range)

Recruiters are not your friends. While it is in their interest to get you the highest salary possible because it increases their commission, it is also in their interest to hire as many people as possible in as little time as possible, which means getting you to accept a lower offer if that's the quickest way there.

I am not saying not to use recruiters - I have successfully gotten got jobs via recruiters - but be very clear with them about salary expectations, and remember that just because a recruiter is involved does not mean the offer isn't negotiable.

On the contrary, if, when you get an offer, you make it clear you need more to accept right away, they will bat for you because they want that commission. Conversely, realize that they will at the same time bat for the employer if they think they can get you to sign right away. What matters to them is which side is most likely to cave.

Be nice to a recruiter and they also often will give you an indication of how far the potential employer is likely to stretch. I've several times had recruiters tell me "the instruction we got says X to Y, but I think they'll stretch to Z" where Z was a number I thought would've been outrageous to even ask for. In one of those cases, the company did in fact come back with an offer of Z after some strong hints + a very significant (far above normal levels) guaranteed raise at a specific later time.

Do practice interviews. Apply for a job you're not that interested in, and be actively unreasonable about what you ask for. You might sometimes find they don't think it's so unreasonable.

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