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They ended up not budging on either - the guy called me back, offer's firm and final. In the balance it was still a role, salary, and benefit set that I wanted, so I accepted. Thanks for the advice, it was worth a shot!
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Aug 21, 2019 18:48
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And now you know why you never, ever name a range. There's a reason they pressure you so strongly to.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:20
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Fortunately the lowest end of my range was more than I'd have settled for to get out of the job. In the past whenever I tried to evade naming the range, they dropped me from consideration. Here's hoping I don't have to do that dance again for a long time.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:40
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moana posted:That letter is way long and none of your reasoning or justification are things they care about. Don't mention your wife, your health, your tax considerations, how stable you think their bonuses are. They know how much you're worth to them, and none of that other poo poo matters.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:15
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The OP says to not disclose salary, which makes sense for most instances. But what if I'm moving from one industry to another and it is generally known that there is a big difference in salary between the two industries? For example, say I move from academia (decent salary) to tech or finance (great salaries). My previous salary would obviously be much lower and everyone knows it. It almost seems useless as a number since they are two different worlds. Would it still be worth it to hide that?
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Aug 22, 2019 12:53
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drainpipe posted:The OP says to not disclose salary, which makes sense for most instances. But what if I'm moving from one industry to another and it is generally known that there is a big difference in salary between the two industries? For example, say I move from academia (decent salary) to tech or finance (great salaries). My previous salary would obviously be much lower and everyone knows it. It almost seems useless as a number since they are two different worlds. Would it still be worth it to hide that? The point isn’t that they don’t know you make more or less money. The point is to anchor your salary to the value provided to your new employer rather than the salary of your previous employer.
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Aug 22, 2019 12:57
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leper khan posted:The point isn’t that they don’t know you make more or less money. The point is to anchor your salary to the value provided to your new employer rather than the salary of your previous employer. Ok, I saw that mentioned in the OP but didn't realize that that was the crucial point. Thanks for hammering that home.
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Aug 22, 2019 13:06
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Hello, I know what to do but I need a confidence boost so thought I'd post up in here and get some thoughts. I've been with my large corporation for 6 years and have been working real hard to climb the ladder. I applied for a line management position (people management on top of my day to day), interviewed two weeks ago, and then my son was born and *boom* I'm on paternity leave for 4 weeks. Hiring manager (my current department manager) called me while I'm out to let me know they'd like to pick me. It was a couple minute convo where she went over how they want to lateral me (no promo because I was promo'd earlier in the year) and she didn't bring up money. I wasn't thinking on my toes well so I kinda "ok" my way through the call, but remember at the end to say I'll be on the lookout for communication with HR on the actual offer. In my head my plan is to see the actual offer sheet before I start negotiating, because I definitely need more money with this. I'm thinking it'd be a day to two, but it has been over a week, so I reach out to Hiring Manager about the offer and she says she just signed off on it and it should be to me shortly. I feel like I burnt some good will by not just getting back to her the day after our call saying "Hey I thought about our call and I'd actually like to discuss the terms", and now I have a hole I need to dig out of because she's already signed off on some paperwork with HR based on a verbal. I haven't signed anything, so the answer is definitely just let her know I want to enter into negotiations, but I guess my question is do I need to sweat the fact that I didn't speak up during the call (or shortly thereafter) when I start planning my negotiation strategy? I feel like it was bad form to let it fester for as long as it did, but I'm a people pleaser and tend to overreact, and also i have been caring for a newborn baby so I can't say I've had a ton of time to think about this.. Crazyweasel fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 13:30
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You're overthinking it. The onus is not on you to workshop the position with them unless she specifically said "you're not getting a raise" and you agreed on that. If it's really bugging you I guess you could reach out and ask about numbers, but you can always negotiate after you receive the offer. I think that'd be better for your sanity, frankly, because any conversation you have with her now where you attempt to negotiate is invariably going to end with "well I'll run it up the ladder and see what they say." She can always correct the paperwork. That's not a massive undertaking.
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Aug 22, 2019 13:47
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Crossposting this from the grad/academics thread since Absurd Alhazred pointed me here. I've read through the first few posts and I really wish I found this thread much earlier since I've already broken the rule of never giving out a number. Thankfully, with my most recent interview for which I expect an offer letter, they haven't asked at all about salary. From what I understand, I should always try to negotiate, so once I get an offer letter, I'll probably post to ask for specific advice since I've never negotiated salary before in my life, since I'm in academia (postdoc currrently). My one concern is that I love the job that's being offered as it's a direct application of my research toward translational medicine, i.e., I could see my research get applied to therapeutics and make a difference down the line. I'm the perfect candidate for them, too, since I wrote 2 papers on this subject, and they don't have any bioinformatics person to bring this forward. The position itself is Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, and on glassdoor and it says the average salary for this position type is 140k, with low end being 120k and high end being 200k. Should I be aiming for 140k? Also, since the company is a start up, and I would be the senior scientist, what kind of options should I be looking for, and should that be a bigger concern than my salary?
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Aug 22, 2019 16:51
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You should be aiming for $250k to start. That'll make pushing for the upper end of that range a little easier. You're an expert in your field and you should treat yourself like one. Don't talk numbers again until you get an offer, and start shopping yourself around immediately. When you do get an offer, hopefully you'll have standing to negotiate something better than what they put forth. Things you can negotiate besides salary are vacation, stock comp, and remote work. That all varies from position to position.
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Aug 22, 2019 16:56
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Not a Children posted:You should be aiming for $250k to start. That'll make pushing for the upper end of that range a little easier. You're an expert in your field and you should treat yourself like one. Don't talk numbers again until you get an offer, and start shopping yourself around immediately. When you do get an offer, hopefully you'll have standing to negotiate something better than what they put forth. Things you can negotiate besides salary are vacation, stock comp, and remote work. That all varies from position to position. I think this is why I'm a terrible business person, I was only going to push for 10k on top of whatever if it was resonable (120-130k would've been "reasonable" to me). I can't even fathom 250k. That said, once I get an offer letter, I'll check back in and discuss it here.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:04
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To be clear, I'm not saying you should be hardballing with a quarter mil figure. However, people who do not operate in the money side of business have a serious tendency to undervalue themselves because a) they have no idea what the cashflow of the business is like and b) they have no perspective on how useful or rare their skills are, because they developed those skills over several years and have been working with people with similar skill sets. The people looking to hire you are 100% willing to take advantage of that discrepancy in knowledge. Don't think about what's "fair" -- your job is to figure out what you could theoretically make, what the target company can afford, and how you can best get them to admit that figure to you. If you go in with the mindset that you COULD be making $250k, it makes it a lot easier to demand, say, $175k.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:15
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Since you don't actually know what you're worth you should try to avoid giving a number and just wait for their offer. I think Not a Children had a couple posts about how to respond if they press you, but you can basically give some variant of market rate, compensated fairly, etc.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:43
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Reading that has got me wondering. For the people that actually are hiring managers, what do you do with someone who you’ve done the legwork to being in for an interview and you want them for the position and they drop a ridiculously high salary requirement on you? Do you drop them immediately and laugh about how foolish their ask was? Do you tell them you only budgeted for half of what they’re asking for and try to negotiate from there? Do you keep looking for someone with a similar skill set that will take a lower rate? Do you re-evaluate the budget for that role?
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Aug 23, 2019 01:49
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just_a_person posted:Crossposting this from the grad/academics thread since Absurd Alhazred pointed me here. I've read through the first few posts and I really wish I found this thread much earlier since I've already broken the rule of never giving out a number. Thankfully, with my most recent interview for which I expect an offer letter, they haven't asked at all about salary. From what I understand, I should always try to negotiate, so once I get an offer letter, I'll probably post to ask for specific advice since I've never negotiated salary before in my life, since I'm in academia (postdoc currrently).
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Aug 23, 2019 03:12
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Cacafuego posted:Reading that has got me wondering. For the people that actually are hiring managers, what do you do with someone who you’ve done the legwork to being in for an interview and you want them for the position and they drop a ridiculously high salary requirement on you?
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Aug 23, 2019 03:16
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Cacafuego posted:Reading that has got me wondering. For the people that actually are hiring managers, what do you do with someone who you’ve done the legwork to being in for an interview and you want them for the position and they drop a ridiculously high salary requirement on you? Last person I hired wanted $120k. I could afford $105k. Tried to convince him on 401k match, pension, good cheap insurance, 40 hour weeks, etc and he walked. Got candidate 2 for $82k. Just business. If people put a ridiculous number down I just don't call them. If it is during the interview I just note it and hope I have better candidates.
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Aug 23, 2019 03:19
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spwrozek posted:Last person I hired wanted $120k. I could afford $105k. Tried to convince him on 401k match, pension, good cheap insurance, 40 hour weeks, etc and he walked. Got candidate 2 for $82k. Just business. If people put a ridiculous number down I just don't call them. If it is during the interview I just note it and hope I have better candidates.
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Aug 23, 2019 03:24
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If the candidate wants more than I am allowed/able to pay them and draws a firm line, the negotiation is over and I have to move on to the next. The atmosphere varies from company to company but in my experience, most of the time going to your boss/HR contact/etc. and asking for an exception to go over budget on a hire is sometimes possible but it's really sticking your neck out. There are a lot of ways even a seemingly really great hire can fail to work out and if you persuade your superiors to break the budget for a candidate and then it doesn't work, at best you've blown a lot of organizational credibility that will take a long time to build back up and at worst you've put your own position in jeopardy. I'm a big believer in paying what it takes to get skilled and driven employees. But most executives aren't, and inevitably you sometimes just have to let a great candidate walk because his price won't fit in your budget. And, yes, from the management side of the table I always try to get a candidate to name a number (if HR hasn't already done it for me). That's just common sense negotiating. Though I have found myself in the position where market rate for the job is, say, $70K, and the candidate asked for $45-55K on the phone screen, and now my boss expects me to hold firm at $45K--which, yeah, the candidate will accept $45K because he doesn't know any better, but the risk is huge that within a year he'll figure out he's dramatically underpaid and leave. My boss thinks it's awesome that we saved $25K, I think it's penny wise and pound foolish to end up having to rehire and retrain and the replacement ends up costing $65K anyway which would have kept the original hire happy for years. The company loses in the long run due to the myriad hidden costs of turnover. But corporations usually think extremely short term (more to the point, if it doesn't fit neatly into a spreadsheet cell it doesn't exist) and my boss is incentivized to save that $25K right now. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 03:58
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That part is dumb. A girl I hired asked for $68k which was the bottom of my bracket. I offered $72k and she was more than happy. Started off on the right foot and had been a great employee (just got her a $1000 spot bonus today even). People should have some idea what they are worth but crazy out of the realm on the low side shouldn't be taken advantage of.
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Aug 23, 2019 05:13
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An update - offer came in and it is put together as a true lateral, i.e. same job grade and no raise. Going to have to prep hard for this one because I'm a bit surprised they didn't even throw some extra money in. I work for a Fortune 100 corporation so Glassdoor is stacked with data that tells me average for this pay grade is 20% higher than my current pay. I'm thinking their only excuse is "well we know what you are making now and we want to low-ball the poo poo out of you" Also got an interview call back for a decent job I threw an application at a month ago, so if this does fall through I hope I don't have to be sour grapes for too long... Crazyweasel fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 06:19
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Crazyweasel posted:An update - offer came in and it is put together as a true lateral, i.e. same job grade and no raise. Going to have to prep hard for this one because I'm a bit surprised they didn't even throw some extra money in. I work for a Fortune 100 corporation so Glassdoor is stacked with data that tells me average for this pay grade is 20% higher than my current pay. I'm thinking their only excuse is "well we know what you are making now and we want to low-ball the poo poo out of you" Yep. That's why you have to switch employers to advance. 95% of the time there's no way around that fact.
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Aug 23, 2019 11:06
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That’s all interesting info ^^^^ thanks for that! Always curious what it’s like from the other side.
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Aug 23, 2019 12:10
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Crazyweasel posted:An update - offer came in and it is put together as a true lateral, i.e. same job grade and no raise. Going to have to prep hard for this one because I'm a bit surprised they didn't even throw some extra money in. I work for a Fortune 100 corporation so Glassdoor is stacked with data that tells me average for this pay grade is 20% higher than my current pay. I'm thinking their only excuse is "well we know what you are making now and we want to low-ball the poo poo out of you" Use the promotion as leverage to go work someplace else.
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Aug 23, 2019 17:01
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Cacafuego posted:Reading that has got me wondering. For the people that actually are hiring managers, what do you do with someone who you’ve done the legwork to being in for an interview and you want them for the position and they drop a ridiculously high salary requirement on you? I don't drop them immediately, but I try to understand where the expectation mismatch occurred. Very often it's them thinking the position is being paid in $BayBux since we an SF company when in reality it's being paid based on where the position is located - which is very often not in the bay area. I have very well defined salary bands based on position, level and location. I will typically start somewhere in the middle of that band but go towards the higher end for a very well qualified candidate. In the end, I'm not the one who gets to make up the rules. Maybe, just MAYBE if this person is above the position level and I can use someone more senior I can go back and try to get budget/shift other hiring budget around to accommodate turning that position into a more senior one, but that's not always going to be the case. Sometimes a deal just isn't going to work out and I move on to the next candidate.
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Aug 23, 2019 18:39
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What are some good pointers for negotiating the non-salary parts of an offer? I got a callback from my Wednesday interview and they made a verbal offer that was well above what I was hoping to get from the role, and while I obviously have asked to get it in writing I think I'd rather spend my energy seeing if I can get a couple extra vacation days or a light work from home allowance than on getting an extra percentage point on an already large raise.
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Aug 23, 2019 19:34
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Dang it. HR is calling me directly right now to discuss compensation versus sending me a letter then negotiate. I hope all the reading I did yesterday helps.
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Aug 23, 2019 19:34
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110K salary plus 0.8% of the company via stock options and 10% bonus if targets met, with tracks for managerial position if I want. The salary is lower than I had expected, but the stock options is higher. I think this might be normal for start ups? They said they use an industry database standard to estimate salary, and I told them that the salary was lower than expected since people in my lab left for higher paying jobs, even though they were only PhD students, whereas I have 2 postdocs under my belt. That said, I don't think anyone from my lab got much in terms of equity from their companies, though. Also, everyone in my lab let for very large companies (1000+ employees), so maybe my salary expectations are higher because of that, especially since data from Glassdoor seems to be from larger companies. HR did say they will review the data and come back to me, though. I really wish I prepared more for this by asking my former labmates more about their total compensation coming out of the lab. Part of me is perfectly happy with the offer, but another part of me wants to follow what this thread advises and negotiate for more.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:16
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That stock is worth what, 0 dollars?
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Aug 23, 2019 20:17
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.8% means this place is not public, has no reasonable path towards going public, and is terribly small or badly mismanaged. That equity is worth $0.00.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:18
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Motronic posted:.8% means this place is not public, has no reasonable path towards going public, and is terribly small or badly mismanaged. That equity is worth $0.00. Can you explain more? Maybe I misstated it. My options are 0.8% of stocks currently available for the company, though I guess they could always dilute it. Company is not public yet, so everything is private, which I do understand that it's worthless if it doesn't work out. However, the last company the CEO was behind was bought out for ~8 billion, so if something similar happens, it would be worth something.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:27
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0.8% is a huge percentage for random non-management what employee # would you be?
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Aug 23, 2019 20:34
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:0.8% is a huge percentage for random non-management I would be employee #11 as senior bioinformatics scientist. I know that start ups fail often, but this company is backed by major investors with more than 4 years of cash without needing to generate revenue/bring in outside funding, and I know the science behind this is solid since we have scientific backing from five of the top scientists in my field. And regardless if it fails or not, I would get experience in every part of bringing research to translational medicine, so that my next job in biotech could be at a CTO level position. Maybe I'm huffing my own farts, but I really believe in this company/eventual product.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:44
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There's nothing wrong with deciding to take a lottery ticket for below market pay, providing you are fully well aware of what you are doing. And how this is going to go down (long days, poor work/life balance and leading up to an eventual 90%+ chance of "whoops, we're out of cash sorry").
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Aug 23, 2019 21:13
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Motronic posted:.8% means this place is not public, has no reasonable path towards going public, and is terribly small or badly mismanaged. That equity is worth $0.00. .8% means it's better than even money that the company will go bankrupt and OP will be out of a job within 12 months
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Aug 23, 2019 21:50
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Eric the Mauve posted:.8% means it's better than even money that the company will go bankrupt and OP will be out of a job within 12 months To a non-exec management employee? Probably yeah. That's senior adviser after no more than angel funding kind of equity.
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Aug 23, 2019 21:57
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Eric the Mauve posted:.8% means it's better than even money that the company will go bankrupt and OP will be out of a job within 12 months Just want to say thanks to everyone that is replying. This is super helpful, regardless of what advice is given so I am more aware of what's going on. Is there some good guidelines in terms of what equity an employee should look for at a startup and what burn rates one should be cautious of and what red flags to avoid? It definitely sounds like people here have much better experience in this area, and I'm going in all doughy eyed. To me, 4 years funding secured seems good, and my BATNA that allows me to not relocate and keep my same research area would be to change to a staff scientist at my university with a salary of 70-80k. From what I understand from talking to people in biotech is 3 years is the standard time to work for a start up before either leaving or the company making it, and the company does have enough money to get to 3 years already. I could change my research area/work on a different problem, which I believe would increase my salary offers, but I really enjoy what I currently do. That said, I know that Motronic has worked at several start ups from his post and only one worked out. For Motronic and other that worked at startups, were the burn rates grossly underestimated? Did the company run out of money very early and were the signs pretty clear? What big red flags should I look out for before continuing negotiation for more equity/salary?
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Aug 23, 2019 22:35
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just_a_person posted:Just want to say thanks to everyone that is replying. This is super helpful, regardless of what advice is given so I am more aware of what's going on. Is there some good guidelines in terms of what equity an employee should look for at a startup and what burn rates one should be cautious of and what red flags to avoid? It definitely sounds like people here have much better experience in this area, and I'm going in all doughy eyed. To me, 4 years funding secured seems good, and my BATNA that allows me to not relocate and keep my same research area would be to change to a staff scientist at my university with a salary of 70-80k. From what I understand from talking to people in biotech is 3 years is the standard time to work for a start up before either leaving or the company making it, and the company does have enough money to get to 3 years already. I could change my research area/work on a different problem, which I believe would increase my salary offers, but I really enjoy what I currently do. Whatever you think you know about this startup in specificity as to their runway and burn rate is largely a fabrication that was laid out in order to lowball a salary in lieu of The kind of things you are asking for parameters on are all very well thought out, but hopelessly naive to think you would ever get that information for real. In the end, if you are in a good position of savings-to-next-job (be realistic about your prospects) to weather losing a job at any point in the near future and are willing to deal with an early startup work/life balance than GO FOR IT. This eventually made me pretty wealthy, but it took a lot of failed attempts to learn what to look for, learn how to put myself in the right positions.......and even once you've learned that you're still relying on luck to get your payout. My finally-refined in mid career methodology was to make sure I was getting paid decent cash money (salary and benefits.....could have made 30-ish percent more working for Penetrode/Comcast/Verizon/Level3) and make sure I was capable of buffering completely unpredictable job loss (I should say "loss of paycheck".....because you WILL be asked to keep working in a desperate attempt to bail out a sinking ship at least a few times if you go down this path......don't). Motronic fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 23:00
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just_a_person posted:Just want to say thanks to everyone that is replying. This is super helpful, regardless of what advice is given so I am more aware of what's going on. Is there some good guidelines in terms of what equity an employee should look for at a startup and what burn rates one should be cautious of and what red flags to avoid? It definitely sounds like people here have much better experience in this area, and I'm going in all doughy eyed. To me, 4 years funding secured seems good, and my BATNA that allows me to not relocate and keep my same research area would be to change to a staff scientist at my university with a salary of 70-80k. From what I understand from talking to people in biotech is 3 years is the standard time to work for a start up before either leaving or the company making it, and the company does have enough money to get to 3 years already. I could change my research area/work on a different problem, which I believe would increase my salary offers, but I really enjoy what I currently do.
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Aug 24, 2019 04:03
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