I was underpaid for years and I didn't know it
limedaring.com
limedaring.com
I guess don't hate the player hate the game as it is all game theory in the end and the complainers or negotiators will always tip in their favor. You can be a team player and get your worth but you have to speak up and be aware.
I think it is better to be fair at salaries even though you could pay the great developer you have lower than the good one that knows the market and is a negotiator. If you don't and they find out they are gone as happened in this instance. Open salaries might even be a good idea with bonuses for performance.
Job hunting while you don't need to helps you overlook those places where you know you might not be a good fit for whatever reason, and interviewing when you don't need to helps you build your negotiating skills.
I got my current job while happily employed at my last one, the only reason I applied was quite literally for the interviewing experience. But I liked what I saw, they agreed to a salary that I decided ahead of time was the bar that had to be met to be seriously considered as a potential new job, so I said yes and so did they.
2 years later, I'm loving my job, my team, and my management team. Job hunt while you don't need to.
How do I know I'm making market rate? I check glass for periodically and share salary info with colleagues who reciprocate.
* we aren't all bad at negotiating but enough of us are that I think its a safe generalization here.
If I was unemployed, I might have considered $X-20%. Since I have a job, there's no reason to accept a job for a lower salary than I'm getting now, especially when the interviewer is being a jerk. (If it seemed like an awesome opportunity, I'd consider equal or slightly less. This was not one of those, it was a contracting company looking for a warm body RIGHT NOW to fill a client need.)
One other lesson I've learned that's surprising: You would think that in a job where you're underpaid, you'll be appreciated, and in job where you're paid well, you'll be abused more. My experience has been the opposite. In the jobs where I was paid well, it was a more pleasant experience than in the jobs where I was underpaid. In business, money equals respect, so if you're underpaid, that means they don't respect you.
But what is "in their favor"?
Hypothetically, I'm new to a field, interviewing with a company in another city. If I'm completely honest with them, then I might say, "You can make me a lousy offer if you want; I'd probably accept it. I don't know the job market, and I don't know your city. But soon, I will. And when I do, unless you offer me enough now to encourage me to stay, I'll be gone. And all your effort in finding me and interviewing me and moving me there and training me and bringing me up to speed on your business will be wasted. So why not just make me a decent offer now?"
Of course, no one ever says that.
But, viewed through that lens, I think it's clear that many businesses are awfully poor players of "the game", as well.
The trouble with an issue like this is that it is difficult to disentangle a calculated risk of the kind you are talking about from mere short-sighted thinking. People proceeding from the two different viewpoints could end up acting identically.
And then there is the fact that the company is often not really the one making the salary decisions. Rather, someone has had hiring authority delegated to them. And this person's motivations in making an offer might not aligned with the long-term best interests of the company.
> there is only the collective behaviour of all the players, some of whom end up influencing the game more than others
You drew the wrong conclusion from your own example. The sum of all of the players actions is the game, and it delivers results similar to the Nash Equilibrium. Everyone works in their own best interest and the system is actually not "broken". This is the system working. If you would work for half what another employer might pay you, fine. Obviously, I weight the benefits of saving money on your salary, with the negative (and likely outcome) that when you find out, you may leave taking talent away. Some employers pay well to prevent this (google, yahoo, amazon come to mind), and thus their talent is largely safe from financial poaching.
This is how the system works, and how the world works. It isn't equitable and it isn't a fairytale. However, it is true.
You assume that all actors are rational. It ignores things like office politics, people building fiefdoms, people holding grudges, the idea that you aren't a "team player" if you're asking for more money, the idea that one should be "loyal" to the company (but that the company can be "cold and calculating" when it comes to you), gender/racial/whatever discrimination, etc...
People often do not work in their own best interest. Or maybe they work in their best short-term interest while ignore their medium- and/or long-term interests.
The player's action is not separate from the game. The game is what the various players do.
Hate the player. The player is someone you can hate and blame and point fingers to and make an example of so that other players refrain from unwanted behavior.
Hating the game does nothing constructive.
This saying completely ignores the fact that the "players" are adults, fully capable of taking responsibility for their own actions.
I am currently reading through Thomas Schellings The Strategy of Conflict, which is brilliant, but even the first chapter is enough to outplay the normal plays that you will encounter (e.g buying a car, demanding a certain wage etc). It is a surprisingly easy read for an old book.
So, I end up paying people around, or even slightly over, the top of the range they quote. It's certainly within our means, and being well paid should allow them to focus on the work and not worry too much about compensation. (From my own past experience, normally if you say you're looking for $X to $Y, the employer hears $X.)
So far, so good. I certainly wouldn't want to pay less. However, our profits are still very healthy. In other words, I effectively still make considerably more than my developers. Of course, I would expect to make more given the time I've put in and the risk I've taken. It's just a job to them. And they're happy with what they're making, and it IS market level. But... I still feel awkward about how much the company is making compared to their salaries. I wonder how they would feel if they knew the exact numbers. (Although I imagine they could estimate it fairly closely if they wanted to.) I wonder if I'm being greedy watching my savings rapidly grow while my employees make good but not fantastic money. But at the same time, I have trouble with the idea of voluntarily paying everyone considerably more than they a) are happy with and b) asked for, given that I know the rates we're paying are already competitive and we have no trouble hiring.
The advantage here is that employees are 1) rewarded for the work they do, and 2) shows that the company understands the value that they bring, 3) the employees become invested in the success of the business because they benefit directly from it (as opposed to a flat "10% bonus based on salary").
As an employee myself, it's hard to look at companies that make massive profits but don't reward those responsible for helping make that happen (the labor force). One could argue "anyone could do that job", or "if it wasn't him it would be someone else", but that doesn't matter. Just because you CAN take all the profits for yourself doesn't mean that you should.
From an economic perspective, funds going to employees are turned around in the economy and generate more economic activity that money sitting in your bank account.
Still, obviously it's something I'm considering, or I wouldn't have posted. And I guess it doesn't have to be all or nothing; I can obviously choose to share any amount of the profits.
Really don't follow the last argument. I would hope if my employees got a sudden large raise, they would put most of that money into their own retirement savings, rather than just increasing their spending. But even if they didn't, by your argument the best thing I could do would be to just blow the profits myself buying cars or whatever. I think the money does the economy just fine in an investment account, providing capital to public companies and the government.
For example, for someone that makes $10k a year, give them an extra $10k, that whole $10k is going back into the economy as an increase in demand. For someone making $100k, maybe 50% of an extra $10k goes back into circulation through spending, for someone making $1m/yr, the extra $10k does nothing to increase demand.
Economic activity = spending. The more wealth that's concentrated in investments and saving, the less is available for increasing economic output.
This type of argument is used to explain how an increase in the minimum wage would actually make the economy better for everyone, not just those that get the pay increase.
Simple supply and demand. Increase demand (higher income for laborers) increases supply (which increases employment by requiring more workers).
Think of it another way, would $10k make a bigger difference to your employee or to yourself?
You successfully started a business. Not many people even try to do that, and of those who try, not many succeed. You have created jobs that people are evidently happy to have. In short, you have come by your wealth honestly.
The only other thing I would encourage you to do is, if any of your employees express interest in the entrepreneurial path, encourage and even mentor them. Maybe even be their angel investor, if you believe in them and like their idea. That would be a great way to give back to the world out of what you have received.
Really curious about this part of your comment.
People with more to lose often imagine that they risk more than someone with little to lose. I think of it the other way around, do you risk more but betting a hundred k if you still have fifty in your pocket? or a hundred bucks if it's your last hundred? My take is, your risk gets higher as you get to the point of only having your health and future well being to lose.
And have you done your sums as to when your risk / reward profile starts getting even? maybe that is the point you start thinking about sharing the profit?
"It's just a job to them."
I have had a few jobs where my employers treated me as 'just' an employee.. though i never treated it as 'just' a job. If your employees stay with you for any length of time, then it is not 'just' a job, but a step in their career. You are in a position of power to help them in their career, or 'just' exploit them for profit. It is not all about money for employees.. if you are giving them a boost in their career, maybe that is more valuable than the cash for them?
I do agree with you that there is value in providing a positive work environment and helping further employees' careers, so I'm happy to be able to do those things.
but i also think employees risk a fair bit in moving to a new job, and in the the success or failure both of the job and the business. particularly if they aren't able to build savings of cash or spent time behind them to start the new step in their career, if something goes wrong. to add to that, they typically have no power in managing the risks of the business, and little power in how their efforts are valued in the job.
so, anything you can do to minimise those sorts of risks for employees—like you say, positive work environment and helping further employees' careers—also goes towards reducing their risk/reward profile.. and perhaps some way toward assuaging your doubt about pay?
I've tried to avoid this taboo. When my previous employer closed the office I was in, I shared all the offers I got with a co-worker as did he. I was getting better offers, but I had more experience and neither of us felt embarrassed or insecure about it. We both ended up with pay increases at our new jobs.
Companies rely on this taboo to negotiate the lowest wages possible for each employee, to the point that I know managers that made less than the people they managed, or a developer doing the same level as work as me making $48 when I was making $83, because he came in as a junior developer rather than being higher at the level he was producing at. I encouraged him to ask for $70k or get another job. He got another job at $67k.
The only reason he knew he was underpaid was because I brought up the topic and shared what I was making.
Using your "risk" as a way of explaining why you take way more than one of your staffers sounds like the typical post hoc ergo propter hoc handwaving. Exploitation by any other name.
Sorry, I don't mean this to sound totally dismissive, it sounds like you run a decent shop and I like that your devs are happy, but talking about your pay disparity in terms of "risk" just sounds like a thin explanation for "because I said so".
Some of us (men and women) are just not cut out to play this salary game. :-(
It never hurts to keep tabs on the market by doing interviews outside. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know many folks that got promotions/raises simply because they bothered to look elsewhere.
Keeping in mind, of course, that monetary compensation is only one aspect of a rewarding job.
Worst decision of my life, and I still regret it to this day. But knowing the fact that my old job was taking advantage of me just because I am a new-graduate, I couldn't return back there. But sometimes money isn't really worth comparing to being absolutely happy at work.
Interesting framing. The way I see it, you were successful in determining that you're worth more, but you landed at the wrong place. Like, the issue isn't that jobs that are awesome AND that pay well don't exist, the problem was you just didn't land in one.
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Some penny-pinching bosses can be annoying. One boss fired a guy that got paid a lot less than me, but then I had to take over his tasks, which meant I was doing a lot more low-value work (updating pages on his WordPress site) instead of higher-value work (programming).
But deciding that most inner quality of character is difficult (since it's an hidden attribute on people), so it makes sense to look for various outward expressions of that hidden trait... one of which I postulate to be the question of whether your boss is in it for money, or in it for a vision. In the finance sector, where it's only about money, my postulate admittedly breaks down.
One of the most valuable things you will ever sell is your time and work energy. That's a sale worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, every year.
It is incumbent upon you to understand the value of what you're selling, or else someone will lowball you and take advantage of the situation when you say "yes."
Maybe that's unfair. But it's just how things work.
This is also a reason unions exist, such that a fairer negotiation can happen where both sides come from a more even footing.
In other industries not experiencing our current boom, desperation and a deep applicant pool can make things more difficult.
Always know where you stand in negotiations, you are the only advocate your worth has.
I've always found that switching jobs is easier than getting a proper pay rise. Asking your boss for +10% and getting offered 2.5%. Go to some interviews, accept, hand in notice. Boss offers +15% for me to stay... wtf. Poor communication skills from both me and my boss I guess.
I have found that to be the case as well. Using a combination of skillful salary negotiation, leveraging counteroffers (use sparingly), and hopping between companies, I have averaged 19.5% yearly salary increases for the past 10 years. Obviously this is not sustainable, since my current salary level limits the number of positions I can take without taking a pay cut.
For those who are curious, it took 6 companies over those 10 years, with 1 career change from teacher/manager to programmer. During that time, the largest year to year jump was 38% (2nd was 37%), the longest time spent at a company was 3 years, the shortest was 3 months. I used the counteroffer trick twice, once quitting and once staying.
After seeing how difficult it is at any company with an HR department to approve raises or approve title changes, I'm not even going to bother in the future with trying to do that. Do a good job somewhere for 1-2 years, accept offer at new company, rinse, repeat.
What did you tell the next company during the interview when they asked you why you were looking to leave your current job?
I didn't interact with anyone outside my company, and pretty much the rest of my coworkers were the same. It was like we were in this little bubble and that's how we thought things were outside the bubble. Pretty much everyone in the company (<20 people) went to this startup right after college so AFAIK almost no one got recruiter spam because we didn't even have LinkedIn profiles. It was also over 6 years ago, so the ecosystem was a lot different too. But we were definitely in our own little bubble and it was only when I met my husband (a software dev) did I realize that I was being underpaid.
Glad you got your pay rise.
Reason #1 against taking the counter-offer: The boss is already planning to replace you, just on his terms instead of on yours. I.e., you could stay but get laid off as soon as they hire and train a replacement.
Reason #2: They didn't respect you properly before, and the information of a new job offer isn't going to fundamentally change that.
(anyone with other documentation that could easily be referenced in a salary negotiation?)
Another thing: I have an easy copy-paste response to recruiter cold contacts on linkedin where I say basically: I'm committed to my current company, but I'm always interested in real salary information, if you have something you can share I'd be happy to keep you in mind in the future. ... sometimes that gets me a number.
Having accurate information that you trust is half the battle IMO.
> Software Engineer 2015 $ 96,000 - $147,250
Uh...really‽ Is that range like [new grad - experienced]? Should I expect the same range from a software engineer at a device manufacturer not-on-one-of-the-coasts?
How to find out what you're worth without dating a programmer:
1. Save your vacation days. Apply for jobs, take vacation days for interviews and see how much your worth. You don't have to take the job but you're more than welcome to practice your interview skills, negotiation skills, and find out what you're worth (via how much they're willing to offer you before they tell you to screw off). Make mistakes in those interviews and learned from them.
2. Network with people and talk to them you might get an idea of what you're worth too.
3. Use sites like Indeed.com and search your particular title or skill set. They might give you an idea.
4. Talk to your head hunters. They might spam the crap out of you, but ask them about the position they're giving you and what their successful candidate got as salary. Remember job recruiters get paid via percentage of the negotiated salary. If they hired me for 80k and the recruiter contract with employer is 20% of the salary then they get 20% of 80k from the employer (NOT I, or out of my pocket).
> "PS: I left that job a few months later — one of the best decisions I've ever made!"
I would bet my first born and my entire life savings that she didn't leave voluntarily.
A good portion of my previous job was doing salary negotiations and personnel management. What I would bet the farm on, and would do so without hesitation, is that they gave her the raise, then immediately began looking for her replacement. Once they found a suitable candidate, they either canned her or found reasons to ding her on performance reviews, being late, etc, which would be justification to fire her with cause. I know because it's pretty much the operating manual for anyone who was in my position. Why pay someone double when you can find another sucker to work for half the pay? Even if it was 3/4 pay, it's still a savings and when we're talking tens of thousands of dollars, it's enough.
She was fired from her job and/or shown the door after asking for (and getting) her raise. I guarantee it.
It's another example of the challenge women face in our industry, not to mention the overall culture of shame around firings.
That is not to say that the parent poster and their employer/company does not sound sociopathic, just that we needn't bring sex warfare into this.
I have to say though, if the parent is being truthful (i.e. not trolling), it is a pretty sad state of affairs and pretty disappointing. If you ever find yourself working with/for such actors, start looking elsewhere. There are plenty of great employers/people in the world that you needn't waste your time working with scrooge-like caricatures.
> "Why pay someone double when you can find another sucker to work for half the pay?"
I see no mention of a "woman". Just because the person of interest was a woman, that doesn't make the comment sexist. Where I work (not in America), women get the exact same treatment as men. And when a women / lady gets a bad code review, she doesn't attribute it to being sexism and threaten to sue. She has the common sense to acknowledge her mistakes and improve upon feedback.
From my perspective (again, I'm not American), sexism is becoming a poor excuse for getting preferential treatment. And that's absurdly ironic.
Who says you can? People who will do that are rare, and often aren't as good as people who expect something closer to market.
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies...
As organizer, you get a bonus if you manage to come to a consensus without having to call the police (and honestly, you are wasting your time as a programmer if you have such amazing people skills).
The current situation sucks. In an ideal world, management would say, "Here is how we ranked people. I'm sorry if it doesn't match your expectation. If you wish to move up in the rankings, come and see us and we will work together with you to create a plan for doing that."
In an ideal world, people upon hearing this would say, "Awesome! I'm going to work super, super hard to make sure that I do more of what my management values and less of what they don't. And if it turns out that I'm limited by a lack of talent, I will feel good about myself because I tried my best".
I really, really, really wish I lived in that world, but I suspect the current crappy situation is likely to persist for some time to come.
In a practical world, collective bargaining provides a front for fairer negotiations such that a compensation that's closer to what a free market would bear is met for the individual.
I think each year people should evaluate how they're expertise and duties differ from the previous year.
Many people I know inadvertently become team leads, head up projects, mentor others, or change roles entirely and wait for their old position's performance review to address it.
That's a mistake.
As a manager, I've had the best success with getting better comp for my team when giving a new title + bump around 4 months before review.
That way, the discussion with execs is closer to "what eould we pay for a new hire for this position?" and the upcoming review allows for minor comp tweaking.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-ban...
I've worked in companies that paid 1/3 less than others (management consulting), many people knew they were paid less, but few people left. Jobs can often be sticky.
The worst thing that can happen is you'll be told "no" and you'll have the same raise (or job offer) that you had before.
She then took that confidence boost and changed companies with a further 30% salary boost!
Unfortunately you don't get what you don't ask for.
He went into his boss' office and said "It think I deserve a promotion" and his boss said "ok, I'm promoting you to X" and he said "no, I deserve two promotions to Y". His boss thought about it for a minute then said "you got it".
I suggest my friends to figure out how much they want and ask for 10 more (10k more/year, $10 more/hr). Best case they might not even flinch and pay it (it has happened to me a couple times), worst case they will counter-offer down to somewhere higher to what you originally wanted.
The fact that you were underpaid for a year is a sunk cost. That time is gone and wasted.
However, considering the costs of employee turnover, and the fact that top programmers are more productive than average, it probably does make sense to pay above-market. Plus, if you aim to only pay market, you'll be lagging due to inflation and rising salaries and the fact that your employees gain experience.
Remember that switching jobs is also risky for the employee, so switching for the same salary doesn't make sense unless your current environment is bad/toxic. I've had the old bait-and-switch a couple of times, where a job didn't turn out to be what I thought it would be. I've also had jobs where my boss wasn't the person I thought it would be when I was interviewing, and then my actual boss decided he didn't want to work with me.
This applies geographically, as well - if an employer says "Well, they might be paying that rate in SV, but round here..." then you need to be applying for remote positions. They don't get to opt out of that market either.
The thing is that if you ask for a raise like that, you will either be
1. Shown the door
2. Offered the money but your subsequent appraisals will take a hit. Oh and once their crunch period is over they will try to get rid of you.
And i am too afraid to lose the job i currently have because i don't think i'll find a better culture anywhere else in the country that i live in.
I am given great freedom to explore and learn, and my higher-ups are very willing to try new technologies and techniques if I suggest them. My peers are intelligent and have different areas of expertise, meaning I have plenty of learning opportunities and exposure to new ideas.
Would I change jobs if offered a higher salary? No, not unless the culture shift was also worth it.
I've hit that level of salary where increases are nice, but it's the other perks that make the job ideal. For those curious, it's $83,000 a year, in the Twin Cities region. I have nearly ten years of experience. I'm not a bad negotiator, and I know roughly what I'm worth (somewhere around $95-105k, for this geographic area).
Sometimes culture really does trump raw numbers.
For example, suppose you were offered 3X more for a job with a worse environment. If you kept your living expenses the same, you could save up the extra money and then, for each year worked in the lousy job, you could take 2 years off to do whatever you wanted.
I worked at a telecom startup. Was given a beefy salary ($45K) plus commission. As a young sales guy, I had a blast. Then I scored a huge account, just as the company was about to go under. They paid me, then sent me a letter demanding I give back the commission check because they were going under and needed it to pay their attorneys and would file a lawsuit against me for a "fraudulent" sale.
I went back and started looking at my checks and realized they were only paying me $35K instead of the agreed upon $45. I sent them a letter stating if they wanted to give me my back pay (almost twice as much as the commission check) I'd be happy to send the commission check back.
Never heard from them again.
Just goes to show, you not only need to negotiate your raise or your salary, but always make sure the company does not pull a fast one and short change your paycheck.
It had me wonder if there was a gap for having professionals negotiate on your behalf as a service come these one to one reviews.
http://www.amazon.com/Land-Tech-Love-Pragmatic-Life/dp/19343...
Really helped me out navigating the whole salary process.
I didn't say $2k, that was the floor — Rapportive was just design mockups + 1 main design. Also, this was five years ago.
I wonder if we, as an industry, need to learn to talk to each other better. We're very good at getting things done, but we rarely talk to each other about the hard economics of what we do.
I hate to be trite, but... is there an app for that?
Here in Greece, it's pretty common for us to ask "oh, hey, you got a new job? That's great, where is it/what will you be doing/how much does it pay?" as the usual, accepted questions of someone getting a new job. You're always happy for your friends if they are well-paid, after all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-will-n...
Less charitably, it seems to me that you saw the word Greece and figured you'd chime in with a cliché.
- Domain experience and company-specific experience (and loyalty) are extremely valuable, but those tend to be completely overlooked in salary/raise computation. Unless you can specify dollar amounts (like sales) or acronyms (which management and HR love), the value of experience seems to be 0 or even negative (loyal employee won't leave if we skimp on their raise, and we paid for their training, so they owe us).
- If your initial salary was good, (you were able to pay down debts and save) and you haven't changed your lifestyle but now you're having trouble paying your bills (due to increased costs of living), then the company hasn't taken care of you. Their raises/bonuses have failed. You should not be as well off as you were when you started: having gained experience, you should be better off. If not, it will probably get worse.
- Raise = +1-5% (if you're lucky). New job = +20-50% + risk of being less pleasant. Your choice.
- If you're in the design/development industry, there's an ENORMOUS price range. Few people can readily tell the difference between a $12/hour developer and a $125/hour developer. Some of them have been bitten badly by guessing wrong. Expect to get some offers that are half what others are offering or less.
- If you ask a little higher than you believe you can get, and do it confidently (brand yourself as premium), people will tend to believe that you can get it elsewhere (or have got it) and offer much more than if you seem desperate and willing to take anything. That factor alone makes a huge difference, although it has nothing to do with skills, experience, or ability.
These things combined make switching much more profitable for the employee than sticking around, albeit risky. Perversely, they may also make it more profitable for employers to replace employees than give a decent raise, albeit at a risk. That's not really good for employers or employees - everyone's gambling while vast amounts of experience are being lost to churn. But that seems to be how the market's working.
The initial number defines your trajectory. Then everything else is a fight for the "qualitative" process of yearly increases based on "qualitative" (read: arbitrary) opinions of performance.
Unless you are in Sales (in which the amount of revenue you have been able to bring speaks for itself), everything is arbitrary and it's up to you to identify the potential biases in the process.
Also, people think this is a women thing. It is not. I will venture to say that ordinary (i.e. NOT STEVE BALLMER) short guys or bald guys make less money, or "ugly" guys (i.e. not "attractive tall and handsome").
People, you need to fight for yourselves because it's only you in that room. Also, as somebody else said, KNOW YOUR WORTH and DONT DISCOUNT YOURSELF (i.e. immigrants, women, "stereotypical" gays, short folks, people with no degree but tons of experience, blacks, people with bad teeth, extra weight around the waist, etc. etc.).
Fact is, it's a discriminating world. Sorry, it's what it is.
She started at what was likely a quite reasonable $40,000 salary for an unproven undergraduate. Then was hired on shortly after at that rate because it was convenient for everyone.
The problem is that her performance (value) busted the curve and quickly out-paced the percentage-based raise system. Some companies do "corrections" every so often, in fact I have benefited twice from that sort of thing.
It's probably safe to say though, that you probably don't want to sit around waiting for "market corrections" if you're being underpaid.
The problem is that her performance (value) busted the curve and quickly out-paced the percentage-based raise system.
I figure it was implied that either no one noticed or had the willingness to take any personal risks to circumvent the system to fix her salary.
That doesn't happen unless the deck is stacked. It just does not.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me as the usual reason I do so is not to get an offer, but to help out my potential employer, for example by enabling them to hire other people as well.
The actual result is that I get kicked in the teeth. Because of that I ask for what others of my expertise can command, despite that amount of money being far more than what I really require to be happy.
I mean for like a homepage: $250k. Oh those were the days.
So whenever they would turn away work, my friend would anonymously solicit the work himself.
It may have appeared to them you did not respect your own financial needs, and if you don't, why should they?
The bias is too powerful. It's like people saying "they are not racist." Almost everybody is! Same thing with salaries.
Always come up with something more aggressive than your original "feeling." Also, make friend with us guys. We can help you. Don't simply ask your girlfriends how much they are making or how much you should ask for. It's a vicious cycle! Ask the guys!
It amazes me when I have hired females how little they ask for, and the surprise when I tell them the range I am hiring them for.
I agree but only to a point: another poster said it better when you really do need to have some idea what you are worth (which is very difficult I know).
Because if you are in a decent situation making decent money and benefits for satisfactory performance, hardball negotiation tactics can absolutely backfire.
And still, it is very common for recent grads to endure 2 or 3 years right out of college at their starting plus a meager raise until they get that second job which requires education + experience. While I agree that employees should negotiate, this particular woman's plight is totally and massively overblown.
And "this woman"--she has a name, you read her blog, don't be a jerk.
I actually employ a large number of undergraduates (in non-developer roles) and it is really typical to pay them somewhere around $50k for the first 2 or 3 years (depending on geography + what year it is), the good ones are kept on and get substantial raises to low 6 figures. This is pretty typical across many companies. Her experience is pretty typical for recent graduates, not a special burden to bear.
But I guess given your username I wouldn't want you as a boss either.