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Democratic Pirate posted:One of the more common experiences in business: Never enough money to do it right, always enough money to do it twice
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Nov 8, 2021 06:11
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Eric the Mauve posted:Never enough money to do it right, always enough money to do it twice You don't get enough money to do it right the second time either
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Nov 8, 2021 15:40
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So many people in roles of official responsibility don't know how to confront hard decisions and conversations, then repeatedly make the obviously wrong move as a result. They need psychotherapy but don't even know it
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Nov 8, 2021 16:29
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Well, an update from whenever ago I posted, definite failure story. My second job finally made the permanent position for my unexpectedly long-term temp spot. I think I finally interviewed in August after screening in July. Decision came down in October, not selected. Asked for any feedback from my manager, thought we’d gotten along well enough, absolute silence. I can only assume I was too porous with my info and maybe asked too high. I’ve also been in the hospital twice during this period (I did let them know as I had to drop off the radar) but no evidence they tried to reach me. At any rate they’re starting to bleed top level execs and support staff, so likely fine in the end, just a bit grating that I did the job for almost a year then don’t get selected. I’ll get over it eventually. Not sure if/when I’ll look again, have some health issues to try and get sorted that may take a while. Y’all keep on winning out there.
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Nov 8, 2021 18:47
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I would strongly doubt you could have landed the job with a lower ask. That's almost always a "Here's the counter" if they thought you were the best person. It is very likely that your health/hospital stays contributed. They found the 1 weird trick to avoid a FMLA lawsuit and find someone else.
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Nov 8, 2021 19:38
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Trip report.LLSix posted:Thank you for all the help and encouragement. I am a terrible negotiator and have never successfully negotiated my compensation upwards. I have successfully talked myself out of jobs before by convincing myself I could make more somewhere else. I'm planning on replying to their offer email with the below tomorrow. Any suggestions? They immediately replied back that they'd get back to me "in a few days." After a week of not hearing from them, the external recruiter I'd been working with pinged them and they finally replied. The updated counter offer only added 40 hours of banked PTO (so start with 40 hours, but the same PTO per year). No seniority and no change in salary. Their counter offer didn't mention my requested salary at all. It's something, and I guess I'll accept because it's better than what I have now. The counter offer came from a different person at the company than the initial offer. Which seems odd, but what do I know.
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Nov 8, 2021 19:41
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Lockback posted:It is very likely that your health/hospital stays contributed. They found the 1 weird trick to avoid a FMLA lawsuit and find someone else. It's exactly this.
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Nov 8, 2021 20:37
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Eric the Mauve posted:It's exactly this. Yeah, shot myself in the foot trying to be considerate, I guess. Seems part of the core message in this thread I guess. Thanks for the confirmation at any rate, y’all.
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Nov 8, 2021 21:20
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REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:Yeah, shot myself in the foot trying to be considerate, I guess. Seems part of the core message in this thread I guess. Thanks for the confirmation at any rate, y’all. Dik Hz fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 02:51
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No, this was all after the fact. I did notify them when my contract was still active (August) so I wasn’t just MIA. I believe my second hospital stay ended after the rejection was sent, I reached out to see if they ever wanted their equipment back. Neither hospital trip was planned, so I couldn’t have let them know in advance. One way or another I did something(s) wrong, not denying that.
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Nov 9, 2021 03:05
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I don't think you did anything wrong, they just probably weighed the health stuff heavily. I think it's more likely that instead of your salary ask being too high. I just don't want you to think you need to low-ball yourself in the future.
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Nov 9, 2021 06:21
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REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:No, this was all after the fact. I did notify them when my contract was still active (August) so I wasn’t just MIA. I believe my second hospital stay ended after the rejection was sent, I reached out to see if they ever wanted their equipment back. Neither hospital trip was planned, so I couldn’t have let them know in advance. One way or another I did something(s) wrong, not denying that.
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Nov 9, 2021 11:53
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Or maybe there was a cheaper alternative to hiring you they decided to go with. I wouldn't put much stock into it either way, just fill out the next application and move on.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:01
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Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards 
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Nov 9, 2021 22:36
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Thanks y’all. Right now I am having to juggle possibly being on disability for some length of time and wondering how that might affect this game going forward.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:49
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sadus posted:Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards My 5B tech company is only just starting to offer a "3%" match but capped at $2k/yr so it's effectively 1% or less for senior devs, it's dogshit but better than no match. They are playing it up as generous but we all know it's a load of bull. At least our salaries are competitive and we get paid in stupid amounts of (public) stock to sort of make up for it. But once my golden handcuffs get a bit looser I'm likely going to have my eye out unless things change.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:52
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sadus posted:Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards Ours is 5/4 and I'd consider that "Pretty good". 5/5 is really good though. Last place I was at was 3/3 I think.
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Nov 9, 2021 23:04
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sadus posted:Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards Hey, my last job dropped the 401k entirely when they got bought out. Yes. You read that right. This is multinational company and it was around a 10 billion dollar buyout. There were other bad things as well, it’s not why I left but it’s part of it.
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Nov 9, 2021 23:12
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sadus posted:Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards
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Nov 9, 2021 23:21
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sadus posted:Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards I don't know if there is a consensus, but I'll share my history First 3 companies were 5/4, immediate vesting. 100% match on the first 3% then 50% on the next 2%. 4th company 2% no matter what, then 4% match on 4% contribution - no vesting - This company had no ESPP, a terrible bonus plan, and middling benefits. These were tech companies of various valuations/market caps. 700M at job 1, 2.5B, job 2, 6B job 3, 9B job 4. Current company 4/8, but 2 year vest on company contributions. This company is not publicly traded, so no ESPP or any other sort of comp possible outside cash and cash bonus. Current company is a Fortune 100 financial services company, but has a large tech component, but is not a true tech company. TLDR; Most of my career its been 5/4, 6/3.5 is a little under industry standards in my experience. another edit: 5/4 is extremely common when it comes to matches as it's the bare minimum that meets the Safe Harbor /non discrimination tests from the IRS regarding 401k plans. skipdogg fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 23:27
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Guinness posted:My 5B tech company is only just starting to offer a "3%" match but capped at $2k/yr so it's effectively 1% or less for senior devs, it's dogshit but better than no match. They are playing it up as generous but we all know it's a load of bull. My much smaller company matches half up to 6%, so effectively a 3% match but worse since if your salary caps out before 6% you don't get the full 3% match. Garmin matches up to 10%, but also does entry level salaries of 60k (a decade ago when they hired me).
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Nov 9, 2021 23:30
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To contribute hard anecdata, first job matched 3% and current job matches 6%. Both are/were 100% match, no true-up, and immediate vesting. Both are fairly big companies (10s of thousands of employees). Everything else about comp/bennies is also better at current job than first job.
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Nov 10, 2021 00:26
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sadus posted:Is there a general consensus on what a normal 401k match is for tech companies in the 1-5 billion value range is? Going through yet another buyout and the new company (already dealing with a ton of people quitting) is dropping from 5(employee)/5(company) to get the max match to 6/3.5 and claiming it exceeds industry standards 401ks are one of the few programs that are actually incentivized correctly and once you understand what those are you'll understand why some companies provide really good matches while others provide nothing. The reason companies provide 401ks in the first place is because they get a really nice tax break for doing it, however there's a catch. A certain percentage of your employees have to be using it in order for you to qualify for the tax break. I think they also check the distribution of employees using it across different income brackets as well but I'm not sure. Anyways, because of this, companies that are really large and have a lot of lower-income employees need to provide greater incentives for those employees to actually use the 401k. People with lower incomes actually NEED that money in their check so you have to provide a greater bonus for them to do it. Companies that are mostly comprised of highly paid workers don't need to incentivize their employees to use it, because they already have disposable income and it won't hurt them in the short term to take advantage of the tax breaks you get for socking away into a 401k. All of this is to say: 401k offering will be what they are, and there isn't anything you can do to change it. You can probably roughly guess what the benefit will be just by sizing up the company before you even start interviewing, but at the end of the day it's going to be dependent of their employees' distribution on the income scale. So yeah if you look at Glassdoor one of the biggest things you'll see in tech startups or tech companies in general is people saying things like, "Benefits are great but I guess the 401k match could be a bit better"
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Nov 10, 2021 01:14
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Strated at a public company at 6/6, immediate vesting. The company got bought by a privately held one, and they dropped it to 6/3 match. Time to leave.
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Nov 10, 2021 01:22
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PIZZA.BAT posted:401ks are one of the few programs that are actually incentivized correctly and once you understand what those are you'll understand why some companies provide really good matches while others provide nothing. The reason companies provide 401ks in the first place is because they get a really nice tax break for doing it, however there's a catch. A certain percentage of your employees have to be using it in order for you to qualify for the tax break. I think they also check the distribution of employees using it across different income brackets as well but I'm not sure. Anyways, because of this, companies that are really large and have a lot of lower-income employees need to provide greater incentives for those employees to actually use the 401k. People with lower incomes actually NEED that money in their check so you have to provide a greater bonus for them to do it. Companies that are mostly comprised of highly paid workers don't need to incentivize their employees to use it, because they already have disposable income and it won't hurt them in the short term to take advantage of the tax breaks you get for socking away into a 401k. yes, there are nondiscrimination tests to ensure that not only highly compensated employees benefit from the program. the nondiscrimination tests are based on percentage of salaries/wages that are put in to the program by highly compensated employees vs others, so you really want all the lower paid employees to be contributing some decent percentage to bump up that floor. you also want some of your highly compensated employees to be absolute bottom tier morons who think retirement plans are a scam. we adjusted ours a few years back from 50 cents per dollar contributed, uncapped, to 100% match up to 5% of salary, because that drove up the number of junior employees who were contributing 5% of salary (or more). it's worse for young employees who were contributing the max, but it makes sure that the average % contributed is higher because a bunch of employees who weren't interested in a 50% match are interested in a 100% match up to a lower ceiling. anyway i spent a lot of time on that poo poo, perils of a small firm.
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Nov 10, 2021 02:49
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Not to get too lost in the sauce on this but if you follow certain rules such as no vesting and you're covering a match percentage at 4% (I'm over simplifying a bit) then you can skip the discrimination testing as well, so if you have a company with a large divide of highly comped employees and poorly paid ones, there's incentive for the company to be in that range.
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Nov 10, 2021 03:00
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ours in reality is moderately highly comped employees and higher comped employees which makes it difficult for a variety of reasons but yeah there is more than one way to skin this particular cat
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Nov 10, 2021 03:09
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Thanks all, this has always been such a great thread 
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Nov 10, 2021 05:09
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I sent a counter to my offer Friday (asked for about 10% more in salary) and haven’t heard back yet, getting a little antsy now. Pinged the HR person just to ask how things are going, nada. But she isn’t that responsive normally due to being totally overwhelmed it seems like. The waiting kinda sucks! Both the guy who is going to be my manager and a guy who is a level under me on the team have signed their offers and they’re asking what’s up too. Want to get this done this week so can start moving forward with everything else!
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Nov 10, 2021 06:42
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I've been posting in the corp thread about being approached by a previous boss about switching to her company. I work for a US big pharma co and would move to a director level position at another big pharma. Reading through this thread has been super helpful in getting myself into a better headspace to negotiate my compensation, but I am having trouble working out what my target should be. My current comp is a bit complicated because I live in Switzerland, the potential job offer is maybe also complicated, and to be honest I am still coming to terms with how much more people earn outside the UK. 1. Is it reasonable to ask for my RSUs that vest in 2022 and bonus coming March as a signing bonus / on top of any signing bonus offered? The amounts are not trivial to me, $150k 2. The new company doesn't have anyone doing my role in Switzerland so it's hard for me to specifically benchmark salary. The job is 100% remote, working for a company and boss in southern California. Should I benchmark myself against Glassdoor CA salaries? The amount for my current role looks roughly equivalent to my Swiss salary. Are they sufficiently accurate in the +/- direction? I would be employed through their office in Zug which seems only to do marketing etc (but still a local contract which is good). 3. My compensation is complicated, including my base pay, then a substantial "car allowance" that's paid in cash and only partially taxed, and I have a "representation allowance" agreement with the local state that gives me a tax deduction which is worth some cash. I also get health insurance included which is not the norm in this country and not cheap. Absent knowing the minutiae of their deal I guess I treat that all as my base salary? Or just refuse to negotiate until I see the full package? [a weird thing about the allowances above is they were only revealed to me when I was already working at my current place which seems super dodgy but w/e. It may not be that easy to find out all the pieces of the deal from the recruiter] 4. My current bonus is decent, 18% multiplied by a performance %age, and stock grant is 11% salary x performance % vesting over 3 years. Is that generally negotiable at all? The deal seems fixed at my current co but I don't have a lot of experience. Obviously I am not going to say a number. I would think a 30% increase in direct guaranteed cash compensation is a reasonable thing to ask for, but looking at my current salary plus allowances that is getting to be quite a big number to me, above the top end of the range in glassdoor for CA (but not much). I am conscious I would need to overshoot that if I theoretically was going to name a price. When I moved to Switzerland the offer was a lot more than I was getting in the UK, and I just said yes. I will do better this time. Thanks! e: thinking about it, it's pretty funny that the "you must not discuss compensation with anyone" clause in my employment contract is actually a great benefit in this situation knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Nov 10, 2021 |
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Nov 10, 2021 13:19
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knox_harrington posted:e: thinking about it, it's pretty funny that the "you must not discuss compensation with anyone" clause in my employment contract is actually a great benefit in this situation The EU generally has better worker protections than the US, and even in the US that clause is meaningless and unenforceable. It's purely there as an attempt to drive salaries down. No idea what comp looks like in the EU, but I negotiated against EU HR for my role in the US at my last company (remote with a team based in UK) and they caved really hard on salary negotiations. They weren't used to the fairly common tactic of casual disinterest _at all_.
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Nov 10, 2021 14:24
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Idk your industry but in tech people negotiate rsu bonus compensation for switching. Might be a cash bonus at some discount rate for time, additional RSUs or some mix of the two. Def you are using socal payscales.
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Nov 10, 2021 15:03
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I think you're going to have a really hard time converting a Swiss comp + benefits to a california one. Instead I'd look more at your market rate in Switzerland and maybe mentally assign some monetary value to some of the benefits (what is a car allowance worth to you, what is an RSU that vests in 2 years worth to you today?) Agree though that you probably will get new RSUs or Options coming to the new role instead of a bonus, but it could be both.
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Nov 10, 2021 15:54
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more anecdata: mine is a big company (~10-20B revenue) and matches 6%/6% with an addn'l 3% from the company that vests over 5 years unless you have 5 years service then it vests immediately
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Nov 10, 2021 15:57
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401k talk. My company just did a review and the findings were average match is 4.5% and best practice is 6% if that helps. Smaller company though, ~500 employees.
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Nov 10, 2021 16:10
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Can someone explain what is meant by 5/5, 6/6 in terms of a 401k? I understand 401k plans broadly, but I haven't seen it written out like that before and google isn't helping, probably because of the symbol. Also, how do you describe a partial match in that way, such as 50-cents on the dollar, up to 6%, which is apparently the most common according to Investopedia.
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Nov 10, 2021 16:26
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So by my reading, 5/5 and 6/6 are a 1:1 ratio, or full match, up to the given percentage (5 or 6%). $.50 match would be 6/3 or 5/2.5, respectively. First number is employee contribution, second is company match. All this talk does make me miss my crazy oilfield 5/10 match though.
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Nov 10, 2021 16:32
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Yeah, when I say 5/4 I'm talking about what you need to do a full match (which is what you almost always should do). In my particular case it's something weird where like the first 3% is 100% match and the next 2% is 50% match? Something like that. I don't care because all I care about is "What do I need to put in to get the full company match %".
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Nov 10, 2021 16:41
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Wow that seems unnecessarily convoluted but maybe it’s to incentivize a broader cross-section of employees as mentioned previously? Otherwise it seems like administering that piece would cost more than just fully funding a match.
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Nov 10, 2021 16:57
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I'm fortunate to have a 6/7 arrangement.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:09
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