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On the subject, is it really standard to ask for a signing bonus equal to everything you’re leaving on the table? Is it standard to get it?
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Jul 18, 2020 18:40
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I would always ask. Most employers will throw in something, and if they say no or give you a hard time, that's valuable information.
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Jul 18, 2020 18:57
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Sign-on money is hella easier to get than fighting rigid PTO policies from my experience. Something something CapEx vs OpEx
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Jul 18, 2020 19:09
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raminasi posted:On the subject, is it really standard to ask for a signing bonus equal to everything you’re leaving on the table? Is it standard to get it? I'd say it's pretty standard to ask for (and get) signing bonuses, at least at mid-level and up. One-time cash bonuses are easy to budget for as the cost of recruiting and aren't a recurring cost. Whether you try to justify it as leaving something on the table at your old employer is up to you. I suppose it depends a bit on how much we're talking. If you're walking away from 100k+ well good luck with that unless you're extremely specialized/experienced/in-demand. My last new job 18 months ago I got an extra 10k signing bonus just for asking, no particular reason. I didn't have any golden handcuffs at the time, beyond some paltry profit sharing. Caveat: tech hub and public company. While it sounds nice, very few companies will give much wiggle room on things like PTO policy, unfortunately.
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Jul 18, 2020 19:27
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e: ^^^ My corp doesn't pay as much as some of the FAANG or FAANG-adjacent companies, but boy howdy do I appreciate an unlimited PTO policy that the company actually encourages taking advantage of. You can bet that I'm gonna use it next year when we can actually travel once again. Yeah, for some reason, one-time cash is something businesses are more willing to front than recurring cash. Like you might be asking for $15k and it's easier to get that up-front than asking for $5k more in salary that might pay out $15k over 3 years. But if they didn't match bonuses up front, it'd be much harder, bordering on impossible, to pull anyone away from their golden handcuffs. kayakyakr fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 18, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 19:28
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That's good to know. I did the opposite the last time and got extra PTO, then my company switched to "unlimited". Now it's limited again, by "untracked", which just means they just don't payout if you don't use it or if you leave with a PTO balance.
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Jul 18, 2020 19:28
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Guinness posted:I'd say it's pretty standard to ask for (and get) signing bonuses, at least at mid-level and up. One-time cash bonuses are easy to budget for as the cost of recruiting and aren't a recurring cost. Whether you try to justify it as leaving something on the table at your old employer is up to you. I suppose it depends a bit on how much we're talking. If you're walking away from 100k+ well good luck with that unless you're extremely specialized/experienced/in-demand. The scenario in my head is not so much "compensate me for what I'm leaving on the table", as much as "help me avoid leaving money on the table", which can be a lot cheaper than the former. For example, if you have options that you think are worth $500k that you would lose if you left and did nothing: sure you could ask for that $500k and not get it, but the specific scenario I have in mind is where you want to exercise but the cost to do (strike price plus potential taxes). Perhaps that cost is more like $30k and you don't have cash on hand allocated to do so; if the hiring company can spend $30k to get you $500k in value, that sweetens the deal a lot for little cost, relatively speaking. Totally made up numbers of course, but that's the idea.
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Jul 18, 2020 19:48
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Fair enough, I wasn't thinking about it in that way. But at that point it doesn't seem that much different than any number of reasons people would ask for signing bonuses, such as relocation costs or whatever. If the company's recruiting budget is up to, say, 25k in signing bonuses I doubt they particularly care where it goes on your end. But if it makes you feel more confident asking for a signing bonus so that you can exercise options, and can frame it as "I'm this close to accepting, I just need $xxx bonus" then sure.
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Jul 18, 2020 19:57
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Yeah, I'm not suggesting at all that that's the only scenario where asking for a signing bonus makes sense, or that it would necessarily result in a larger one, just that it's one sweet spot scenario where it can make a ton of sense for both parties involved
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Jul 18, 2020 20:00
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Hadlock posted:Is it unreasonable to ask for the new company to give you a cash bonus on top of your starting bonus, that's equivalent to what it would cost to buy out your vested shares at the old company? Er, if you're sticking to the 30% of your income on house rule then 5% of your mortgage is only like 3 months salary. A chance to maybe get a one-time 25% bonus at some point more than a year in the future is not a very golden set of handcuffs. Even if you were a time traveler and knew for sure that the IPO will happen 18 months from now it wouldn't take that large of a large salary bump to beat that. Obviously you should ask for a signing bonus to make up for what you're walking away from because companies don't cancel offers because you asked for more money, but unless you dropped a digit or something it doesn't sound like you're walking away from enough to make it a reason to justify staying at your current job if they say no.
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Jul 19, 2020 04:22
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30% of income in house that you own w mortgage thats not eyepoppin, livin in major figgieland. pick one
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Jul 19, 2020 10:25
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I mean, I work in tech on the west coast, nothing in my situation is textbook normal. I'm not going to get into specifics, but the options are good enough that I'm going to want to try and hang on to them. To the other guys question, always, always ask for more money, especially if they've already offered you the job.
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Jul 20, 2020 05:49
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My last few offers (last year), I've had no difficulty at all negotiating signing bonuses, and significantly more difficulty negotiating changes to the wording of employee contracts. Especially in places that have standard compensation bands aligned with a career ladder, the signing bonus is one of the few levers the recruiting team can pull to sweeten the deal.
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Jul 21, 2020 16:02
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Just curious, for those signing bonuses, what area are you guys in? If not silicon valley / Seattle etc. then how big of a "tech hub" is your region? My professional network isn't especially big, but here in poor, destitute western New York state I've never heard of anyone getting one.
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Jul 21, 2020 16:34
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I was offered a tiny one when I started at Garmin, metro Kansas City, three years ago (5K with a two year repayment schedule). They offered because they couldn’t/wouldn’t flex on PTO and were bringing me in at the scrub tier despite having 12 years of prior experience, which if they’d been Garmin years would have netted me an additional 10 days per their PTO advancement schedule. I believe in ~15 years of being employed in the Midwest that was the only signing bonus offer made to me. When I was a hiring manager for software engineers at another Kansas City area company I know we didn’t offer them up front.
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Jul 21, 2020 17:53
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Sab669 posted:Just curious, for those signing bonuses, what area are you guys in? If not silicon valley / Seattle etc. then how big of a "tech hub" is your region? I am currently working in Syracuse. Over the past twenty years or so, I've been a researcher or have developed embedded systems and Linux user space applications. I've worked in Florida (Orlando, Jacksonville), California (Orange County, LA), and New York (Syracuse). I've received starting bonuses in Orlando and in every single job offer (accepted or not) that I've ever had in California. Every other job market looked at me like I was crazy (or that they were embarrassed) by my asking. My guess on the lack of starting bonuses in your market is that employers in upstate/central/western NY assume that you're trapped in that job market for some personal reason (you want to be by family, you went to school there and want to stay, you're a competitive skier and/or snow shoveller, etc.) and that they are one of the few companies around that will hire you. You don't have enough choice to be picky, so why should they spend the extra money on you? Of course, with the reduced cost of living compared to NYC and California, you're probably still not doing so bad. I'll get pinged by internal recruiters for outfits like Amazon or Google every month or two, and they always assure me that dropping $50K-$100K for a relocation package to move me to the west coast is nothing to them. To get a relocation package like that to move to the Buffalo area, you'd have to be filling a VP or C-level exec position at most companies. Much of New York outside of NYC is gently rusting away under the pressures of high taxes and less/shuttered manufacturing. There are still companies here and there that are doing OK, but those are companies that just need bodies to do a job. Writing CRUD stuff, maintaining old stuff, generic web dev, etc. They aren't looking for the absolute best that they'd be willing to pay a premium for, and they're happy to backfill a leaving employee with a hire fresh out of college.
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Jul 21, 2020 17:54
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My biggest curiosity is how remote-friendly the post-covid world will be. Twitter is a big name going remote-first, but will there be others?
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Jul 21, 2020 18:22
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kayakyakr posted:My biggest curiosity is how remote-friendly the post-covid world will be. Twitter is a big name going remote-first, but will there be others? I fully expect all this newfound love for remote to suddenly disappear in the name of Tried & True
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Jul 21, 2020 18:32
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https://twitter.com/LeverageVc/status/1285194285806018560 There are a bunch of other companies that are remote-first for the duration, but as far as I know these are the biggest tech companies that are looking to make it permanent. We'll see what happens outside of Silicon Valley.
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Jul 21, 2020 18:35
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hendersa posted:I've received starting bonuses in Orlando and in every single job offer (accepted or not) that I've ever had in California. Every other job market looked at me like I was crazy (or that they were embarrassed) by my asking. Yea that's kinda the feeling I get here in Buffalo - I know I'm not hot poo poo and they're not "serious" tech companies, so by those 2 forces combined there isn't much. kayakyakr posted:My biggest curiosity is how remote-friendly the post-covid world will be. Twitter is a big name going remote-first, but will there be others? I would absolutely love to see some increased acceptance for this but I'll be really surprised if there's widespread acceptance for it. I've noticed a considerable downturn in my mood since returning to the office over a month ago.
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Jul 21, 2020 18:36
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Inacio posted:I fully expect all this newfound love for remote to suddenly disappear in the name of Tried & True Yahoo was one of the earliest remote-friendly tech companies to switch back to in-office back in the day. It was one of those laughable things that they did as they were desperately trying to cling to some semblance of life. Will be interesting to see. I think there's going to be some measure of backlash from people who enjoy working in offices (we have a few of them on my team) and from companies that can't help but want to control every aspect of their worker's waking lives for sure. Indeed is my guess at the next big to go remote-first. They'll still have their offices, but they were already a remote-friendly multi-national corp. I'm wondering if they join the FAANG grouping in the next few years as far as compensation goes: they make so much money when the economy is in recovery mode and there are a bunch of unemployed folks and a bunch of open positions. They already pay pretty well, and their profit sharing/golden handcuffing is intense. Remains to be seen what direction VRBO goes. They've been hiring remote employees, but from their open listings it sounds like they're planning to reopen the offices and force everyone to start coming back in once they're able. Sab669 posted:I've noticed a considerable downturn in my mood since returning to the office over a month ago. As someone in Texas, it terrifies me that anyone would suggest going to work in an office any time in the next 6 months...
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Jul 21, 2020 18:47
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Sab669 posted:I've noticed a considerable downturn in my mood since returning to the office over a month ago. What sort of software/office job has had you back in the office for over a month, during a worsening pandemic? The numbers now are far worse than in early March when we shut it all down.  My whole company has officially closed its offices until 2021 at the earliest, and it's still TBD what happens after that.
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Jul 21, 2020 18:56
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I'm told that Facebook/Instagram allow remote for ICs, but anyone with at least 1 direct report must work from the office.
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Jul 21, 2020 19:02
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I work for a company that, amongst other things, supplies a federal agency with physical goods. Why that means a loving programmer needs to be in the office is beyond me, but I don't really feel I have any power to argue otherwise. And I just double checked my email, we've actually been back for 2 months now. 5/19 they sent this: "Phase 1 of reopening manufacturing plants has started, so in an effort to get back to normal business operations, working from home will end for business staff. Beginning next week all staff should back to the office." And to make it even better the CTO commutes to Ohio every single weekend  New York state is recovering well, much better than the rest of the country because we locked poo poo down so quickly. But it's still dumb.
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Jul 21, 2020 19:03
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I've been a professional developer for 12 years. I was in the midst of trying to move overseas when COVID happened - borders were shut down right before I was going to leave and I got stuck staying at my mom's house. I had already gotten rid of *all* my stuff, and I had no job, so I didn't have anything to fall back on. I waited for a while to see how things would go, but since it's clearly not getting better anytime soon, I'm now looking for a job here in the US. ... And it sucks. 90% of places don't respond at all, half the ones that do respond just disappear after a while, and the rest always seem to find some reason why I'm not a good fit for them. I got the closest with Amazon - they decided not to hire me after the final interviews, but didn't give me any specifics as to why. My skills aren't the broadest - the company I worked for was *just* starting to touch the cloud when I left, and they didn't operate on massive scale. Even if I've messed around with some of that stuff on my own, it's hard to tell someone I feel comfortable using any of it professionally. I feel stuck. I feel like I'm just not going to find a job. Do I just keep spamming applications to any place that looks halfway like a good fit, hoping for the best?
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Jul 21, 2020 19:36
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what do your ratios of send resume out, get response, phone, onsite look like? what's the bottleneck?
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Jul 21, 2020 19:37
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I work for a tiny startup that loves in-person collaboration and definitely won’t become remote permanently or even remote-first, but it’s going to be a very long time before we go back to the office because leadership is taking this seriously and lots of folks (including the CEO) are parents to young children and they don’t want to cause extra hardship due to schools and most daycare options being closed for the foreseeable future. I do look forward to eventually going back to the office because I miss having the strong work/home separation. And I miss the lunch options. In other news, as a member of the dev team I get to undergo a background check! New customer that’s intense about security wants to make sure that none of us are embezzlers or whatever. I think I have like one or two parking tickets and I got detention once in eighth grade for throwing a fleet of pin-tipped paper airplanes at the ceiling and getting them stuck there, but can’t think of anything else.
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Jul 21, 2020 19:54
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Queen Victorian posted:In other news, as a member of the dev team I get to undergo a background check! New customer that’s intense about security wants to make sure that none of us are embezzlers or whatever. I think I have like one or two parking tickets and I got detention once in eighth grade for throwing a fleet of pin-tipped paper airplanes at the ceiling and getting them stuck there, but can’t think of anything else. Most background checks are looking through mostly-public information for stuff like felonies, unpaid taxes, or debts in collection. Also it just confirms who you say you are (name, address, workplace, etc.). Unless you're talking like government clearances, it'll be nothing.
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Jul 21, 2020 19:58
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Guinness posted:Most background checks are looking through mostly-public information for stuff like felonies, unpaid taxes, or debts in collection. Also it just confirms who you say you are (name, address, workplace, etc.). It’s not government clearance, and boss reassured us it was no big deal and no one cares about speeding tickets and smoking weed - they’re just checking for white collar crime. I’m not concerned, it’s just something new to me.
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Jul 21, 2020 20:08
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Our company planned on doing an initial “start bringing everyone back to the office” starting in September, at around 25% of the local workforce and slowly ramp it up over the next months/quarters/year or whatever. I’m really hoping they’ll consider FT remote so I can keep the job but go live somewhere else for a while. I’ve been wanting to live around southern Utah/Arizona and try it out for a year or two, so here’s to hoping.
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Jul 21, 2020 20:46
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bob dobbs is dead posted:what do your ratios of send resume out, get response, phone, onsite look like? what's the bottleneck? I haven't kept track of how many jobs I've applied for. I feel like it's a lot - maybe others would say it's not? I've never gone through this process before at all, so I'm kind of lost. Besides an automated response, I've probably gotten responses of any kind from less than 10%. I've had 2 phone screens which both went well, 2 coding exercises, one of which went well, and one 'onsite' (virtually, because everything is remote right now). I've been contacted by a couple recruiters for jobs that seemed promising, only to be ghosted after being told we'd talk again after the weekend or whatever. Recently, I keep getting contacted by recruiters for jobs that clearly don't fit my history or skills.
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Jul 21, 2020 21:13
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Now's a bad time be looking for a job. Keep sending those resumes out and something will turn up eventually. How flexible are you about location?
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Jul 21, 2020 21:16
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your job for the next 1-whatever months is sales, so you better keep track of those fuckin numbers
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Jul 21, 2020 21:16
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It's also important to keep track of your applications so that if you end up working with a third party recruiter they can avoid sending your resume anywhere you've already applied. That can cause problems for them and waste your time as well. The value of third party recruiters is questionable, but if you don't have a job and need one, you probably shouldn't rule them out ahead of time.
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Jul 21, 2020 21:19
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ultrafilter posted:Now's a bad time be looking for a job. Keep sending those resumes out and something will turn up eventually. How flexible are you about location? Somewhat flexible about location, but I won't just go anywhere. I have several cities on my list, and would be willing to go to several others. Pretty much any city where I could live without a car, that's also not on the east coast would be acceptable. ultrafilter posted:It's also important to keep track of your applications so that if you end up working with a third party recruiter they can avoid sending your resume anywhere you've already applied. That can cause problems for them and waste your time as well. I've tried looking into 3rd party recruiters, without success. I've been ignored by the few I've tried to contact.
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Jul 21, 2020 21:38
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give us a ballpark number of how many applications
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Jul 21, 2020 21:43
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Kilson posted:Pretty much any city where I could live without a car, that's also not on the east coast would be acceptable. In the US? That's gotta be a pretty short list. You should think pretty hard about expanding your search to NYC (if not the entire northeast) or being more flexible about owning a car.
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Jul 21, 2020 21:52
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Very much treat the search very much as a job. Work on your modern cloud skills. If you're in a niche, then you're gonna have a harder time. It might be your resume that's getting you a low success rate, or it might just be the market conditions right now. I think I had a 80% recruiter callback and 40% company callback last year with a similar years EXP (but a lot more web experience) when I was looking. Angel list (1 response of 15 applications sent) and linkedin (0 responses on maybe 5 applications sent) dragged those numbers down. I don't want to encourage more competitors in my favorite jobs site, but remoteok.io was by far the best for listings with (by my count) about 70% direct hire to recruiter, and a near perfect resume to response ratio. I'm not certain on what site I connected with the recruiter who got me into my current spot, but I think it was remoteok.io. Indeed was 50/50 resume to response, and I think both the other in-persons that I had came from there.
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Jul 21, 2020 22:00
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kayakyakr posted:Very much treat the search very much as a job. Work on your modern cloud skills. If you're in a niche, then you're gonna have a harder time. Also use your free time to hit up your network and improve your online profile. I'm spending evenings and weekends doing personal projects and helping with local open source as well as hanging out a lot on the local Slack channels. Are you targeting your resume and cover letters to the companies you're applying for or just using online forms for everything?
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Jul 22, 2020 00:00
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ultrafilter posted:In the US? That's gotta be a pretty short list. You should think pretty hard about expanding your search to NYC (if not the entire northeast) or being more flexible about owning a car. Yeah, "flexible on location" and "public transportation friendly but not anywhere in the northeast" are basically contradictory.
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Jul 22, 2020 05:16
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