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Eric the Mauve posted:Agreed, except for this quibble: you don’t need a story and shouldn’t give one. It’s not about your story. It’s about your BATNA. Negotiating is basically both sides bluffing about the strength of their BATNA and seeing who blinks first, but you go into it knowing exactly what your BATNA actually is and exactly what is, ultimately, the absolute minimum that tops that. dis post it's a good post Don't tell the other party what is better than what you have, or they'll try and nickel and dime their way to better but only just. Provide a goal, if they meet it agree. If they don't, walk.
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Jun 12, 2018 16:03
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I don't think this is a good reason not to ask for it.
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Jun 12, 2018 18:16
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Sock The Great posted:So I shot for the moon. Asked for 100k and 5 weeks of vacation. We'll see what happens. Scheduled a call for later today to discuss my counteroffer, which is significantly higher (20%) than their initial offer. How do I frame the fact that their benefits package is not competitive without getting too specific about my current total compensation?
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Jun 13, 2018 13:01
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“Your benefits package is inadequate so I will require $110,000 a year in salary to make this move worthwhile.” Don’t overcomplicate or overthink it. Just tell them politely but assertively what you want. Be prepared to walk away if they balk, though. Anything is possible but in my experience (unless it’s a small company) sucky benefits usually indicate the company has three priorities when it comes to staffing: cheap, cheap, and cheap.
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Jun 13, 2018 13:44
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Eric the Mauve posted:“Your benefits package is inadequate so I will require $110,000 a year in salary to make this move worthwhile.” It's a very small company. Less than 30 employees.
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Jun 13, 2018 14:40
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Ah, that’s different then. Assuming you’re in the US, the benefits suck because the healthcare system is rigged to screw small companies. So you still need a high enough salary to make it worthwhile, but you can definitely frame it sympathetically.
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Jun 13, 2018 15:01
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Eric the Mauve posted:Ah, that’s different then. Assuming you’re in the US, the benefits suck because the healthcare system is rigged to screw small companies. So you still need a high enough salary to make it worthwhile, but you can definitely frame it sympathetically. I never understood why all business in a state with less than 100 employees or so couldn't all pool together for health insurance purposes. Most states have a small business association that could administer the whole thing.
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Jun 13, 2018 15:14
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Eric the Mauve posted:“Your benefits package is inadequate so I will require $110,000 a year in salary to make this move worthwhile.” He already anchored at 100 plus five weeks vacation so i don't really approve of resetting your ask to a higher point
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Jun 13, 2018 21:45
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Sock The Great posted:I never understood why all business in a state with less than 100 employees or so couldn't all pool together for health insurance purposes. Most states have a small business association that could administer the whole thing. .... never understood why all people in a nation couldn't just pool together and do single payer ... (hint: it's republicans)
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Jun 13, 2018 21:51
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:He already anchored at 100 plus five weeks vacation so i don't really approve of resetting your ask to a higher point Actually I just made up the $110,000 number and wasn't paying attention to what his ask was, so yes obviously don't move it now.
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Jun 13, 2018 22:38
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Eric the Mauve posted:Actually I just made up the $110,000 number and wasn't paying attention to what his ask was, so yes obviously don't move it now. Yeah I am not going to up it now. $100,000 base is acceptable in combination with their lackluster benefits package. Call is re scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I fully expect to be asked what the hell I am thinking increasing my ask by 20%, I'll explain that their overall benefits package is less than I was expecting and that this is the fair rate with that taken into consideration.
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Jun 14, 2018 00:23
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Anybody in this thread should read the book "Never split the difference" by Chris Voss
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Jun 14, 2018 03:54
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ratbert90 posted:Anybody in this thread should read the book "Never split the difference" by Chris Voss Yeah it's real good.
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Jun 14, 2018 07:47
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Sock The Great posted:Yeah I am not going to up it now. $100,000 base is acceptable in combination with their lackluster benefits package. I was pretty much in your same boat but without quite that big a difference. Was then currently making 100k w/no bonus and offered 100k w/~15% annual bonus. Once I received their benefits info I said I'm going to need 110k and that's what they ended up giving me. I was perfectly happy to stay with my previous work if they didn't match me. It's really a win-win situation for you since you it's up to you to take the better of your current situation vs their offer.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:06
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Just as a note, don't accept bonus in lieu of salary unless it's unconditional (it won't be).
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Jun 14, 2018 15:16
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Eric the Mauve posted:Just as a note, don't accept bonus in lieu of salary unless it's unconditional (it won't be). It's consulting work with a big four company. My understanding is that a bonus is pretty much expected unless you are really terrible at your job. The amount can definitely range but the minimum would probably still be 10% ish.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:25
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It's expected, but it's never fully guaranteed. Don't count on it.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:27
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All it takes is one year of the company "not meeting its goals" (company could still be profitable for the year) and all of a sudden your bonus shrinks or disappears.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:48
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Sock The Great posted:Yeah I am not going to up it now. $100,000 base is acceptable in combination with their lackluster benefits package. Well they came back with $82,500, which is a stretch and assured me that the 1% of profits annual bonus would be worth at least 10k in 4 years. Needless to say i walked away. He asked me to send him some constructive criticism of their benefits package, which I don't mind throwing together for him since everything except for the base salary reeked of an offer you would make to a new college grad in 2008.
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Jun 14, 2018 22:43
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Consulting bonuses are not guaranteed but they are not anything like normal corporate bonuses.Chaotic Flame posted:All it takes is one year of the company "not meeting its goals" (company could still be profitable for the year) and all of a sudden your bonus shrinks or disappears. this, for instance, is not really true
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Jun 14, 2018 23:05
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quote:assured me that the 1% of profits annual bonus would be worth at least 10k in 4 years. Even if true, that's really not a very enticing promise when you can probably find someone who will pay you 10k more in guaranteed base salary today. Now if that bonus was more in the realm of 50-100k+ that'd be something more interesting to talk about. It is true that consulting bonus structures tend to be more contractual and nearly-guaranteed, but there are still scenarios that can shrink or delay them significantly based on business performance.
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Jun 14, 2018 23:08
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You can't just choose not to reason about bonuses if you're in an industry where they represent a large portion of your pay. I wouldn't recommend signing a lease based on your estimated bonus but you have to at least model it somehow in order to compare offers. It can have strange second-order effects if it's a yearly thing - your February BATNA is different from your August BATNA because walking away mid-bonus cycle gets you nothing, unless your new company makes you whole.
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Jun 14, 2018 23:24
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:You can't just choose not to reason about bonuses if you're in an industry where they represent a large portion of your pay. I wouldn't recommend signing a lease based on your estimated bonus but you have to at least model it somehow in order to compare offers. It can have strange second-order effects if it's a yearly thing - your February BATNA is different from your August BATNA because walking away mid-bonus cycle gets you nothing, unless your new company makes you whole. Totally, but being promised a bonus worth only 10k four years from now can be modeled pretty easily as "meh"
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Jun 14, 2018 23:26
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Yeah my note about bonuses definitely doesn't apply for consulting. But out in the corporate world companies will try to sucker you with promises of big bonuses in exchange for lower salary.
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Jun 14, 2018 23:26
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Guinness posted:Totally, but being promised a bonus worth only 10k four years from now can be modeled pretty easily as "meh"
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Jun 14, 2018 23:33
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Consulting bonuses are not guaranteed but they are not anything like normal corporate bonuses. Except it is. I'm in consulting and a large portion of people got smaller bonuses this year because the company overall didn't meet goals (but was still profitable and grew). Our group got our full bonuses because we had a stellar year but not everyone else did. They didn't disappear overnight or anything but it's never guaranteed. Chaotic Flame fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 23:57
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How often would a company like Deloitte or E&Y not have bonuses? I'm pretty new to consulting, I kind of just assumed that people would get at least 10% on a bad year.
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Jun 15, 2018 03:36
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bamhand posted:How often would a company like Deloitte or E&Y not have bonuses? I'm pretty new to consulting, I kind of just assumed that people would get at least 10% on a bad year.
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Jun 15, 2018 04:01
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my bonus is variable to my benchmark amount based on firm performance but there has only been one year in 25 where that bonus payout was below benchmark If a big firm isn't paying out bonuses or squeeezing those bonuses they will lose people very quickly because let's face it consulting firms are fairly fungible for the actual consultants
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Jun 15, 2018 13:15
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bamhand posted:How often would a company like Deloitte or E&Y not have bonuses? I'm pretty new to consulting, I kind of just assumed that people would get at least 10% on a bad year. Depending on level and area of practice some years the bonuses can be smaller than expected. You can’t pretend like it’s not part of compensation. Obviously if you could get it as salary, you should, but you also shouldn’t treat it as 0$, because it’s not even close to that. In a previous career I worked for a place where our bonuses were directly tied to P&L, which we saw and had control over to a certain extent. You could see 50%+ of salary if you were in the right area and had a good year. Even a bad year was 10-15%. The only way to not get a bonus was to actually finish negative after paying corporate. Salaries weren’t amazing though, considering the level of responsibility.
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Jun 15, 2018 14:13
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bamhand posted:How often would a company like Deloitte or E&Y not have bonuses? I'm pretty new to consulting, I kind of just assumed that people would get at least 10% on a bad year. It's never guaranteed, I'm from EU and from my experience you shouldn't count on the bonus. Here one of those companies changed their bonus policy to not include below manager grades for couple of years (without any adjustments to salaries!), and many companies here have had very limited bonuses during recession. Obviously the US firms are much larger and this might not apply. In any case the valuation of bonus is not face value and it is not 0 either.
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Jun 19, 2018 09:34
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Glad I found this thread. Just negotiated ~11% over an offer, which is approx. 25% more than my current salary. The advice in here was super helpful. Certainly helps that I'm leaving the only professional job I've had after 7 years, so all my references were current employees, which meant that my employer offered a decent raise and promotion to try and get me to stay, which I leveraged in the negotiation. I'm nervous but excited! Says everything about the current employer that I asked for the raise and promotion at my review in December and they couldn't offer anything at all at that time, and nothing's really changed since then!
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Jun 20, 2018 04:04
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I really have poo poo experience with negotiating and I'm trying to get a sanity check for my girlfriend. She's a freelance live event associate producer who has been working with a small production company for the past year. They just kept renewing her contract because as they've realized that she's basically a miracle worker and has saved their rear end on multiple occasions and every event they've produced has given her glowing reviews and according to the owner he's "never gotten such consistently great reviews for a freelancer" so today they said they are going to offer her a full time producer job as opposed to renewing her freelance contract. She's thrilled but now comes the question of salary. Current freelance rate comes out to roughly $65k per year. That does not include any health benefits (she's currently uninsured). Due to a leak where everyone's salaries got publicised (that person was quickly fired) she's apparently one of the higher paid non-executive employees in the company right now because she's a freelancer with good experience. She said her floor is $67k, which I think is too low considering she'll now be paying for benefits as a FTE. While having benefits is good, we don't know how expensive they will be and she can't really afford the loss of take home cash flow right now. I thought her target should be $75k, accounting for how integral to the company she has made herself (there are houses in the city that will only work with her and she's the only one in the company who is on good terms with the teamsters here) and the fact that if she leaves, they are going to lose her partner producer as well, and they can't afford to lose both of them at the same time. I want to think she has a stronger BATNA than the company at the moment. Yes she will be unemployed if she walks but that would be for a few weeks tops since her network is deep here and there are other production houses who know she's freelance and have already offered her her rate if she becomes available. So we don't expect her to be left out in the wind for long. The company on the other hand stands to lose not one, but two producers which means they can't run as many shows, losing revenue, and burn a lot of employee and eventspace goodwill (which seems foreign to me working in finance because no one cares about you but in live events apparently this is a big deal) if they let her go. They haven't put an offer in front of her yet, so we're waiting to see what they open with but she's expecting something between $65k and $70k. Am I crazy for thinking a $75k target is feasible considering if they kept her as freelance her rate would go up, putting her closer to an annualized $70k salary, and now she would have to start paying for benefits on top of that? Being a small company we don't expect the benefits to be cheap.
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Jun 26, 2018 16:54
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They are trying to lock her down so she can't work for anyone else. That's what they get by making her a FTE instead of an IC, and that poo poo is worth waaaaay more than $5K a year. So even considering that she would no longer have to pay both sides of FICA, if her BATNA really is strong as you say, unless they actually offer nonsalary benefits that are significantly valuable my initial ask would probably be $85,000 and I wouldn't settle for a penny less than $75,000. Maybe not even that low, again depending on benefits and costs. Standard caveat that I know absolutely nothing about the industry in question and know nothing about her situation but what you posted.
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Jun 26, 2018 17:01
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She can certainly ask for her benefits to be paid for by the company, as well - no reason she can't set that as the baseline so all comparisons are apples-to-apples with regard to take-home pay. I agree that this is the time to press them - she's got a lot of leverage if she's as essential as she (you?) thinks she is.
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Jun 26, 2018 17:07
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:She can certainly ask for her benefits to be paid for by the company, as well - no reason she can't set that as the baseline so all comparisons are apples-to-apples with regard to takehome pay. Yes, definitely. I get the impression this is not the kind of outfit that offers any significant benefits, though.
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Jun 26, 2018 17:07
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I agree that this is the time to press them - she's got a lot of leverage if she's as essential as she (you?) thinks she is. Ultimately, everyone is replaceable. The question is, how painful will it be for them to do so? She believes pretty painful, and she's going to use that. Eric the Mauve posted:Yes, definitely. I get the impression this is not the kind of outfit that offers any significant benefits, though. Yeah considering the size of the company I'm going to assume a mediocre to poor High Deductible Plan.
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Jun 26, 2018 17:55
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I'm confused as to how "paying for benefits" (ie actually having health insurance) is considered a net negative in this scenario. You're not obligated to take the company's health insurance. Otherwise, yes, she can negotiate. Do you mean her current freelance rate is $65K year/gross? As others have pointed out, there's a big difference between gross pay as freelance/self employed and an employee that works out very favorably to the employee. If she gets $70K gross as a FTE that is going to be significantly more than a $5K increase in net pay. PS get health insurance
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Jun 26, 2018 22:18
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I'm confused as to how "paying for benefits" (ie actually having health insurance) is considered a net negative in this scenario. You're not obligated to take the company's health insurance. Otherwise, yes, she can negotiate. Do you mean her current freelance rate is $65K year/gross? As others have pointed out, there's a big difference between gross pay as freelance/self employed and an employee that works out very favorably to the employee. If she gets $70K gross as a FTE that is going to be significantly more than a $5K increase in net pay. It's a net negative in that she's cash flow strapped right now so assuming they switch her to FTE and start taking out healthcare deductions her net pay will drop. And while healthcare is good, not being able to pay rent is bad. That's also what I'm trying to figure out. I'm working on a lot of hypotheticals at the moment. How her take home would change considering how she's getting taxed which would depend on how she's getting paid I assume, which is another question I'll probably post to the tax thread once I get more info from her. And yeah health insurance is a priority of course.
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Jun 26, 2018 22:57
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I would have said that usually when you go from IC to FTE your cash comp goes down because you are no longer paying both sides of the taxes, and all benefits yourself. You can certainly negotiate for more, but that would be my expectation for an offer - at or below current cash comp levels. They would be paying more (I'd figure ~90-100k?) with her joining at 65 in salary, vs paying her as an IC. Also, if she is that cash flow strapped, her BATNA is not as good as you say. Pretend it takes her 4 weeks before she'd working full-time as an IC elsewhere. How much does that hurt? 2 weeks? 6?
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Jun 26, 2018 23:08
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