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Kind of dumb follow up question now that I've accepted the offer (and they've acknowledged receiving my acceptance): when do I give notice at my current job? The new offer is contingent on references/background check and drug screening, and while I don't anticipate any problems with those in my mind the offer isn't "locked in" until I pass all of them. Or am I safe to tell my boss that I'm on my way out in a couple of weeks? In the interest of professional courtesy I'm hoping to give notice on Thursday since my boss is off-site on Friday, Monday's a holiday, and he's on PTO Tuesday, but I don't see myself getting in for a drug screening in 48 hours.
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Aug 27, 2019 17:27
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I'd wait until those checks pass. There's always the possibility of some error in a check resulting in a delay, or worse a pulled offer.
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Aug 27, 2019 17:33
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Seconding passing the checks before you give notice. It's a slim chance, but you absolutely do not want to leave yourself high and dry if the worst happens. If they wanted you sooner, they'd guarantee you the job without the checks. That's all there is to it.
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Aug 27, 2019 17:34
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In my case it wasn't really possible to wait until after the background check completed. And actually for one of our new joiners hers didn't complete until weeks after she had begun work.
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Aug 27, 2019 17:58
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I thought that might be the case, though I think they picked my tentative start date based on the fact that my supervisor will be on-site that week. Maybe I'll go back to HR and ask for a time estimate, I'd like to give a full two weeks but would also like to start on that specified date which makes for a fairly tight window.
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Aug 27, 2019 18:00
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Eric the Mauve posted:My advice is to do something drastic without talking to your boss first This always strikes me as an odd thing for your boss to say Like, if you speak to him before doing something drastic, it seems to me that boss is implying that there is something they can do to cut a deal to keep you Which itself implies that there are things/options boss is choosing not to do while they slow-roll whatever it is you need over six months
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Aug 27, 2019 18:03
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i don't think that's inherently true that Boss is holding out on him not that this is good or right, but if Boss went to his superiors who are presumably the decision makers in this situation and said "Guy is gonna leave right fuckin now if we don't do something" that inspires a different solution set and sense of urgency than "Guy might leave"
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Aug 27, 2019 18:07
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spwrozek posted:If he goes he goes. Wasn't my top choice. Where he came from paid oddly high for not having his PE. He can make more consulting but he will work 50-60 hours a week instead of 40. Honestly if he just takes his PE exam and passes I can promote him. Out of curiosity, what kind of work do you do that a PE matters? Civil Engineering or something where people need to sign off on plans? I'm in plastics engineering and I've never heard having a PE even mentioned in terms of career advancement, no one seems to care about it in the field.
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Aug 27, 2019 18:24
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Ranidas posted:Out of curiosity, what kind of work do you do that a PE matters? Civil Engineering or something where people need to sign off on plans? My brother got his PE as a civil engineer, was necessary for his progression and compensation to increase.
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Aug 27, 2019 18:34
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:i don't think that's inherently true that Boss is holding out on him Right, which is either "shrug, let him walk, who cares" or "OK, give him what he wants so we can sort out a replacement before we shitcan him" So "talk to me before you accept another job" (what else would "do something drastic" mean? Talk to me first before you shoot up the place?) is either yet another vague empty promise or a trap
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Aug 27, 2019 18:39
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Ranidas posted:Out of curiosity, what kind of work do you do that a PE matters? Civil Engineering or something where people need to sign off on plans? Structural engineering. Need FE to get to engineer 2, PE to get to engineer 3. Nothing leaves our office without a PE seal on it. E: so if you can't seal I need another engineer to be the lead and then another engineer to be the reviewer. E2: C-Euro definitely wait to give notice. I can't pick a start date for my hires until they pass the background check. If they gave notice and failed that or the drug screening.... Just kinda of SOL... spwrozek fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Aug 27, 2019 |
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Aug 27, 2019 18:47
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Honestly if your manager says 'Talk to me before you do something drastic' your first response should be, to his or her face, 'what are you holding back, then?' The implication is that there is something more that can be done before you quit, and it's not being done right now. If you are having this discussion, you are unhappy right now. Either Boss can do something to alleviate that, and Boss isn't, in which case Boss is the problem, or Boss has done "everything they can" but wants to try some Hail Mary to keep you around, which back to point one: they didn't try everything they can. I've had manager friends who structurally can't give raises to their valuable team members at certain points of compensation without some counter offer they're matching in hand. Is my manager friend the problem? No, the organization is the problem, but friend's employee is still hosed because they have to get a counter offer every year now that they're exceeding a pay band. My friend's employee still needs to leave because the org is hosed. This is a "solution" that only works for people who are so afraid of change that any token surrendering of better compensation will make them satisfied. If you are reading this thread this far you are not the kind of person who's satisfied by "talk to me before you do something drastic"
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Aug 27, 2019 21:27
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Honestly if your manager says 'Talk to me before you do something drastic' your first response should be, to his or her face, 'what are you holding back, then?' Yeah this says what I meant but much better
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Aug 27, 2019 21:31
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C-Euro posted:when do I give notice at my current job? The new offer is contingent on references/background check and drug screening, and while I don't anticipate any problems with those in my mind the offer isn't "locked in" until I pass all of them.
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Aug 27, 2019 21:53
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spf3million posted:My most recent job move included a drug screen and background check which took a whole 3 months to conclude. Wait until you are 100% "go" before giving notice. Your tentative start date will move as necessary to include appreciate notice to your current employer. Oh God I hope it doesn't take that long, I gave them my signed offer eight hours ago and am already struggling to care about my current job. They have had a somewhat aggressive timeline throughout the hiring process (multiple phone interviews in a day, wanted to interview me a week earlier than I agreed to) and I'm hoping that applies to their finalization of it all.
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Aug 27, 2019 22:05
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C-Euro posted:Oh God I hope it doesn't take that long, I gave them my signed offer eight hours ago and am already struggling to care about my current job. They have had a somewhat aggressive timeline throughout the hiring process (multiple phone interviews in a day, wanted to interview me a week earlier than I agreed to) and I'm hoping that applies to their finalization of it all. Background checks are usually farmed out to other vendors though, so it might not matter how aggressive the company was with getting you an offer. At my job they were under a time crunch (I told them I already had another offer in hand) so my interview to hire was one week, but the background check still took like a month.
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Aug 27, 2019 22:18
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:i don't think that's inherently true that Boss is holding out on him That’s my read on it too, yeah. Dwight Eisenhower posted:Honestly if your manager says 'Talk to me before you do something drastic' your first response should be, to his or her face, 'what are you holding back, then?' Also this. I didn’t respond with that but that was the takeaway I got. They COULD make things work but I’m going to have to threaten them more aggressively to get it. That’s not acceptable to me because I’m not even asking to be lifted above the payband. I just want to be in it. It was real disappointing because I thought this place would be better than that.
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Aug 28, 2019 02:06
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Rex-Goliath posted:That’s my read on it too, yeah. It's a hard lesson to learn but almost no company is "better than that"
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Aug 28, 2019 06:16
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Chaotic Flame posted:It's a hard lesson to learn but almost no company is "better than that" I should be more clear: not out of any goodness in their hearts. The company is an extremely niche technology where the only people you can find who know it are basically the employees themselves. It takes a long time to become proficient at it- typically it takes over a year until new employees are really self-sufficient. Also since they're still private I figured they'd be able to take a longer-term view on employee retention. And all of this would have been avoided if I'd just refused to answer HRs prodding right when I was at the finish line.
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Aug 28, 2019 06:34
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So to update, I was offered 110k + 0.8% equity for the position of Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at a startup, to which I sent a counter reply of 140k-145k based upon Glassdoor averages (146k was the nationwide average). They got back to me today and said it could be 120k+5k relocation+1% equity, but can try to push it to 125k. They also said Glassdoor is unreliable because it's self reported, and their salaries are based upon Radford, and it would be hard to push my salary much higher due to my salary would be much off what Radford reports, and would skew my salary against the other employees. My guess is 140k might be too high, especially for a small company, and Right now, they are my good option (other is 6 month contract job at $65 an hour, but no benefits), and the increase is something. So while I didn't to what I was expecting, I still doubled my salary so it's not all bad. Thanks everyone here for all the help. Hopefully my lottery ticket wins.
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Aug 29, 2019 02:39
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just_a_person posted:So to update, I was offered 110k + 0.8% equity for the position of Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at a startup, to which I sent a counter reply of 140k-145k based upon Glassdoor averages (146k was the nationwide average). They got back to me today and said it could be 120k+5k relocation+1% equity, but can try to push it to 125k.
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Aug 29, 2019 03:05
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Dik Hz posted:Grats. Are the coding flavor or the molecular biology flavor of Bioinformatics scientist? Coding flavor (PhD in computer science), but I would be involved in all steps of the drug development pipeline. It's actually super cool work as I'd be able to apply my postdoctoral research into translational medicine. I think I'm also going to apply for the managerial track so regardless of how this company turns out, I'll work toward being a CTO type position for the next job. It's going to be weird to jump from academia to industry, but I'll be surrounded by an amazing team, as I found out a few of the biologists I worked with will also be joining with me.
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Aug 29, 2019 04:11
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just_a_person posted:So to update, I was offered 110k + 0.8% equity for the position of Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at a startup, to which I sent a counter reply of 140k-145k based upon Glassdoor averages (146k was the nationwide average). They got back to me today and said it could be 120k+5k relocation+1% equity, but can try to push it to 125k. This isn't even an option; if you worked a full year at that job on all nominal business days you're only gonna hit 131K and you're gonna be paying employment tax on top of your income tax that a W2 position doesn't. Their excuse about why they can't pay you is typical bullshit, and, doing better than you are doing now is still a win. Don't value that equity, and don't stop looking for something that actually pays you what you're worth. You are worth at least 140k. Appreciate doing better than you were and leverage it into getting paid what you're worth at someplace that doesn't have the implicit risk of going tits up literally any day now.
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Aug 29, 2019 16:11
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:This isn't even an option; if you worked a full year at that job on all nominal business days you're only gonna hit 131K and you're gonna be paying employment tax on top of your income tax that a W2 position doesn't. Seconded. Also, in the future, I'd advise against revealing your market research sources. Doing so just gives them the opportunity to nitpick your argument for better pay. "Fair" is not the objective here, "what they can afford" is.
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Aug 29, 2019 16:21
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Not a Children posted:Seconded. Thanks for advice. I'll remember that for next and probably stick with what my peers made leaving the program. I imagine this being more of a stepping stone for me as my first industry job and won't be with this company for more than 3 years. If the company goes belly up before then, we should be okay due to my wife's income. She's in residency now, but come summer time, will have found work as a full-time doctor.
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Aug 29, 2019 16:44
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just_a_person posted:Thanks for advice. I'll remember that for next and probably stick with what my peers made leaving the program. I imagine this being more of a stepping stone for me as my first industry job and won't be with this company for more than 3 years. If the company goes belly up before then, we should be okay due to my wife's income. She's in residency now, but come summer time, will have found work as a full-time doctor. So I did a quick review of your posts in this thread and I think this is your first rodeo. You're reading this thread because you're interested in good compensation for your abilities, and if you want that, you need to compartmentalize your behavior better. Reading your posts, it appears you're thinking about this job as a stable place to do your research, you're thinking about negotiating as a coherent set of foundational facts supporting a logical argument to create a moral imperative of what your labor should be compensated at, and you're thinking about your participation in this company as being a institution to benefit social welfare with some safe and sane principles in place to guide everyone's conduct. Your counterparty in this negotiation is trying to eek out every last cent of their capital round to getting to either a) a marketable product regardless of its net social utility or b) the facade of sufficient progress to warrant further capital raises to keep the ride going. Your counterparty in this negotiation is a particularly not well rounded individual who obsesses about their startup project as not only their long term plan of financial independence but an extension of their ego. Your counterparty wants to give you as little as possible and still have you accept. There is no argument that will persuade this person to give you more, apart from your complete and utter unavailability should they not. Your peers' compensation is irrelevant. Industry norms are irrelevant. The Radford data is irrelevant (and they may very well have lied to you about this). The only data that's relevant is how low they can pay you before you walk away and find something else. I've been doing software at startups for 20 years and over the course of 7 companies. There is absolutely a spectrum about how extreme the characterizations I've described above apply to each startup founder, but most of it is true about every single one. You will have to learn a lot about working in these kinds of places for yourself, but don't bother trying to create arguments to communicate to your counterparty why they should accept your position. Describe your position, set firm boundaries, and enforce them unwaveringly.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:25
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:So I did a quick review of your posts in this thread and I think this is your first rodeo. You are right that this is my very first negotiation, and you are probably spot on with your analysis. I think my inexperience combined with my rationalization for the company allowed them to get me for as cheap as possible. I kept thinking in terms of industry average/peer average rather than what I was worth to the company scientifically. It's something I will need to work on and this was an expensive lesson for me. I think my other fear, though, is I had no other real valid offer (contract position was not an option), and if I turned it down, I would continue being a postdoc doing very similar research that I would've been doing in the company setting, but at a much lower pay. I'll keep an eye on the start up CEO and hopefully, he will leave the science to the scientists and won't get too involved. If so, I'll be pretty happy with everything, all said and done. The final offer was closer to what I had originally anticipated (130k+5k relocate, so 18% raise total). I continue to work on my research, but get paid a lot more to do so.
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Aug 29, 2019 18:52
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just_a_person posted:You are right that this is my very first negotiation, and you are probably spot on with your analysis. I think my inexperience combined with my rationalization for the company allowed them to get me for as cheap as possible. I kept thinking in terms of industry average/peer average rather than what I was worth to the company scientifically. It's something I will need to work on and this was an expensive lesson for me. I think my other fear, though, is I had no other real valid offer (contract position was not an option), and if I turned it down, I would continue being a postdoc doing very similar research that I would've been doing in the company setting, but at a much lower pay. I'll keep an eye on the start up CEO and hopefully, he will leave the science to the scientists and won't get too involved. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could shop yourself around either now or in a year and get another 20-50%. If the specific work is worth that to you then cool; congrats on the job.
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Aug 29, 2019 20:21
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leper khan posted:I wouldn’t be surprised if you could shop yourself around either now or in a year and get another 20-50%. this. the best thing you can do with this offer is accept it and use it as a step on the path the worst thing you can do is mistake it for the destination
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Aug 29, 2019 20:45
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Like, not to piss in OP's Cheerios when he's pumped about a new job at a higher salary, but he'll be lucky if his new employer exists a year from now, and luckier still if he's not miserable there by Christmas. Live and learn, it's the way life works. Long run OP will be fine--especially if when it all crashes down he remembers, "oh yeah, the people on that comedy forum who have experience with startups warned me about this, maybe I should listen to the advice of people more experienced than myself who want to help me next time."
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Aug 29, 2019 20:54
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Eric the Mauve posted:Like, not to piss in OP's Cheerios when he's pumped about a new job at a higher salary, but he'll be lucky if his new employer exists a year from now, and luckier still if he's not miserable there by Christmas. I am probably way too doey eyed because the leading scientist in my field is involved as a co-founder. I've worked with him before and he's top notch and extremely ethical, so I have a lot of belief in the science/company finances as long as he continues to be involved, aka, it won't be a Theranos type situation. I could be way off, though, and I will make sure to update this thread on Christmas so you all can have the gift of schadenfreude as the world crushes another ivory tower elitist.
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Aug 29, 2019 21:10
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just_a_person posted:I am probably way too doey eyed because the leading scientist in my field is involved as a co-founder. I've worked with him before and he's top notch and extremely ethical, so I have a lot of belief in the science/company finances as long as he continues to be involved, aka, it won't be a Theranos type situation. I could be way off, though, and I will make sure to update this thread on Christmas so you all can have the gift of schadenfreude as the world crushes another ivory tower elitist. crush? no. you'll just have hard data confirming our observational results and will be one of us google goggle one of us, one of us
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Aug 29, 2019 21:27
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just_a_person posted:I am probably way too doey eyed because the leading scientist in my field is involved as a co-founder. I've worked with him before and he's top notch and extremely ethical, so I have a lot of belief in the science/company finances as long as he continues to be involved, aka, it won't be a Theranos type situation. I could be way off, though, and I will make sure to update this thread on Christmas so you all can have the gift of schadenfreude as the world crushes another ivory tower elitist.
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Aug 29, 2019 22:05
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Also, please remember: Just because an ethical top scientist in your field is on board with something doesn't mean it'll succeed. It just means that the science probably won't be a scam. The company can still gently caress with financials, build compensation in a way that screws over everyone not in their inner circle, sell poo poo off for pennies when it gets inconvenient, or take their money and run after selling to a larger player in the field. Also (just since you mentioned Theranos): The standard lifecycle of a biotech startup is to hang their hat on the ONE BIG THING they've been working on, push it with every ounce of their (workers') being, and hope for the best. They'll get beautiful chemistry data, great bioavailability / tox data in rodent models, larger mammalian models will look pretty good, and then maybe the funding starts around FIH or so. They'll drum up tons of support and excitement as their Ph1 data comes back great. They'll get an accelerated approval for limited Ph2 studies, maybe, and bring in a ton of investor or joint-venture capital for Phase 3. Their one big moon shot just... ...just under-performed the placebo in the pivotal Ph3 study. Their golden goose is dead. Their stock, if any exists, crashes by 95%. The business attempts futilely to find someone to buy them / their IP, hunts for more investors to run another round of trials under different conditions because it's 'just an outlier from a poorly-designed study / badly-selected cohort, can't you see the mistake we made in the study design?' Nobody comes to their aid. The company lays off top scientists left and right trying to keep up an appearance of clinical viability, but eventually it all shutters. This is the fate of like 90% of even ethical biotech startups, regardless of how good your scientists are. Most drugs fail, and promising ones fail spectacularly.
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Aug 29, 2019 22:16
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Also keep in mind that if it's not a bootstrapped startup then there's VC involved, and if the lead is more of a science than a business person, they may have signed a deal that gives the very unethical VC people more power. Overall, at (reasonable) worst you'll have industry experience and have been burned by one negotiation, two indicators of a higher paycheck in the next job.
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Aug 30, 2019 00:50
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Never been involved with a start up but I still think the op did a good job getting~20% more in cash. Even if it all crashes and burns in 6 months if they pay him for six months that is an extra 10k in his pocket. It also sounds like he wants to work there and do the work and he is willing to do it for the 130k. So maybe he is off base on the whole thing but it sounds like he is happy with where he is going. Not sure why everyone is making GBS threads on him so hard (honestly I don't think he even knows what his value is, if it is so niche then asking a few others isn't going to work. It is going to be widely variable based on the company). His other option is crap atm. Go work there and see what is what and leave if it isn't what he thought.
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Sep 3, 2019 15:01
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I don't think anyone here is making GBS threads on him. It's fine if that's what he wants to do--so long as he does it with eyes open. It's not so bad if he knows what he's getting into and is prepared for the company to go under within a year or two, as it very likely will (all startups do). I (and as far as I know everyone else who posted on the subject) just want to be sure he is, in fact, prepared for that. The other thing he definitely needs to be wary of is that, just before it formally goes under, he will be asked to work for free ("we're having some minor cash flow issues right now, but this thing will definitely turn around next week when (something vague) and then you'll get paid plus we'll give you a raise, I PROMISE") and it's very important that he instantly and vehemently refuses to. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Sep 3, 2019 |
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Sep 3, 2019 15:23
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When I applied for a job, the application wouldn’t let me progress without filling in a salary field. So I did. After 3 interviews and a reference check, they offered me the job at the salary I asked for. I asked for 24 hours to think about it. Is it poor form to ask for 10% more ($55K versus $50K offer)? Honestly I intend to accept the job anyway, I just thought I’d see if there would be harm in asking. Don’t want to start the job off with them thinking I’m a bad sport. Edit: this job would be almost a 25% pay cut from what I’m making now (moving locations for personal reasons) and I wouldn’t mind telling them that if it would make a difference/make me sound like less of a dick. Blue Scream fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Sep 4, 2019 |
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Sep 4, 2019 05:53
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Blue Scream posted:When I applied for a job, the application wouldn’t let me progress without filling in a salary field. So I did. After 3 interviews and a reference check, they offered me the job at the salary I asked for. I asked for 24 hours to think about it. Is it poor form to ask for 10% more ($55K versus $50K offer)? Honestly I intend to accept the job anyway, I just thought I’d see if there would be harm in asking. Don’t want to start the job off with them thinking I’m a bad sport. Next time put a pie in the sky or "negotiable" or "0" in the field. It doesn't hurt to ask, but you really don't have any leverage here unless you're willing to walk away, which it sounds like you are not. You can always fall back on the "whole compensation package" or "market research" line of reasoning, but honestly if you asked for a number and you were given it, there's no smooth way to revisit compensation unless you have a separate offer in hand that you are willing to accept. Better luck next time.
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Sep 4, 2019 06:04
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Not a Children posted:Next time put a pie in the sky or "negotiable" or "0" in the field. Often if the form doesn’t accept 0 it will accept 1.
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Sep 4, 2019 11:45
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