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As a warning to people reading this thread: I did not negotiate my current job because it was the only job offer I got out of grad school and now I'm doing a job that I really like but doesn't pay nearly enough. The business plan (what passes for one around here) depends on me being here in 5 years, so I know they want to keep me. But I want to go in to salary negotiations here with another offer, so I'm currently looking for another job that I would like doing, just so I can negotiate for better pay at the one I am currently doing. Moral of the story is that I have to land two jobs because I did not negotiate for the first.
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Apr 30, 2014 20:12
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There have been some good points brought up since I posted. I want to clarify that I am taking my current approach for exactly the reasons Eisenhower outlined. That said, if/when I do get another offer, I don't know whether or not to say "match this" or just "I want a raise," the reason being that I would be happy getting 90-95% of the salaries I'm seeing at these other jobs to stay (maybe after a potential interview that will change). That said, I will absolutely be taking another job if the current place wont play ball. The biggest problem right now is that ~20% of my salary comes in the form of a bonus, which I know better than to count on even though it has yet to fail me. I would achieve a significant increase in my standard of living if my total pay was increased to the current with-bonus level and the bonus was eliminated. As for what Otto Skorzeny has said. If they do want to replace me, I guess they could try. I told them when I was looking in grad school that they were my dead last choice and they waited for me with glee, which makes my lack of negotiation all the more shameful. As for not getting any raises, the difference between where I am now and where I think I should be is 4-5 years of 8% raises, so missing out on a few years of raises (and then moving on if they are being vindictive) isn't all that bad in the grand scheme of things.
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Apr 30, 2014 23:39
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The whole point of my original post was to inform other readers of the consequences of not negotiating (among other things) at the time I took my job. Because of this, I am now not as happy here as I would otherwise be and I have to make some tough decisions that I wouldn't have had to otherwise make. If you are reading this, don't let the last few posts concern you, bosses are not ubermensch, negotiate when you can!
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May 1, 2014 15:11
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Omne posted:I pushed back to the recruiter saying I wasn't comfortable discussing salary until I had talked with the company. He responded back that he is only forwarding resumes that are within their salary range, so I said I'd be willing to consider in the range of $140k-$160k, given the cost of living difference. His response: "See, this was a valuable exercise. This position pays $85k per annum..." and that was that. It seems like you are either paid way above industry standard or are way over qualified for this position or the company and recruiter are fishing for chumps. VVV Yeah, this. VVV MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Sep 26, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 23:02
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asur posted:You can't use CoLA for expected salaries. Places with high CoLA almost always highly desirable places to live so companies can pay somewhat less (or you could say the opposite, but the outcome is the same). I'd expect done bump, especially if the difference is large, but something between 10% and 20%. Salary sites should be able to give you a pretty good idea of what to expect and you can also look at the GS pay scale adjustments for an idea. Well, yes and no. I agree with you that using a straight ratio of CoLA and salary to compare jobs might lead one astray, but (assuming Omne is paid pretty average for his job/location and he is a good skills match for the job), the recruiting company is absolutely low balling. Maybe I am more sensitive to this because I've seen a bit of hay (  ) made over the supposed STEM worker shortage that is actually a result of companies not wanting to pay for talent.
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Sep 26, 2014 00:56
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Skier posted:I could use advice on negotiating an offer I've received. I asked for a salary and the written offer meets it by tacking on an almost $10,000 possible bonus to base salary. Benefits are more expensive and covers less than what my current position offers. My current position also has a bonus but with almost three years with the company, bonus is this nebulous thing where I can knock it out of the park all year and get no bonus. With these factors in mind, I requested if we could get closer to 5% more base salary than the offer. Bonus money that doesn't have clear objectives and payouts seems like a great way for a company to promise you something and never have to give it to you. Sure, if they never pay out people will move on to places that will pay better, but it will take years for them to find out!
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Oct 25, 2014 22:59
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Senturion posted:From what's been said in this thread, is it fair to say that someone entering into a career pretty much fresh from college is not going to have any negotiating room? I didn't negotiate my first job out of grad school and I regret it, don't do what I did. Further, you have experience at the company, doing the job they want you to do, that merits more than base new guy pay, because that pay is for people who don't know the job as well as you do. Finally, just as much as the company is a known quantity to you, you are a known quantity to them and that also has value. Clearly, I can't offer advice on the negotiating part, but I can say that you shouldn't start at the bare minimum for the position. e;fb that was fast swenblack!
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Jan 8, 2015 04:37
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Sand Monster posted:I interviewed multiple times with a company. When it came time to discuss salary, they won the "get the other person to name a number first" game, and I gave them an honest number for what I would need to even consider another opportunity. The response was that the position was budgeted for much less than that (a substantial amount less). I later responded via email to say, "thanks but no thanks". They're acting shocked and saying that the budget is not actually what they told me. Am I out of line to have walked away? Maybe this is the way the negotiating game is supposed to be played, and I'm woefully unprepared. Which is fine, it is what it is and I guess I'll learn from my mistakes and prepare myself to get lied to every time going forward, but to be deceptive like that is something that bothers me and gives me a poor impression of the company itself (e.g. "What else will they misrepresent?"). I'm curious. Did they name a price or did they just say that they had budgeted substantially less?
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Feb 2, 2015 21:14
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Dango Bango posted:Update on my situation: After asking for $6k more than the offer at the end of last week, the recruiter called me back to say they won't adjust the original offer. Reason being the offer was 19% above my current salary and they had to get "special approval" from HR for that offer. Even though 10% of the offer is an adjustment for pay area and 8% is to get me to the bottom of the pay band I'm supposed to be in. I'm pissed. You appear to be in a terrible negotiating position, your prospective employer knows both your current salary and that you won't have a job in X months/years if you don't accept. The only recourse you have is to get another job offer.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:23
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Dango Bango posted:It's the same company so of course they're going to know my salary and situation. I actually have quite a bit of leverage -- my two biggest agencies want me to continue to work with them and I have been performing well and building a ton of momentum in my territory. Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, I'm just a dude on the internets. If you have leverage, it appears you'll have to use it. It appears that the company is happy to let people who don't want to play ball on their terms walk, so they don't seem all that desperate to me. The recruiter has already told you they aren't goint to negotiate and if they thought they were getting a good deal on your labor, even with the extra money, they would have agreed or at least negotiated. Maybe HR is criminally stupid, or has been given unusualy restrictive instructions for hiring because they have to make a lot of hires and don't want the budget to blow up, I don't know. Neither of those bode well for taking a second bite at the negotiating apple. None of this should discourage you from trying.
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Mar 17, 2015 05:05
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C-Euro posted:Speaking of recruiters, I might have an interesting salary negotiation coming up. I got contacted by one with an opening in my industry to do way more interesting work than what I have now. On top of that, the pay is insane- I make $19/hr now and the pay rate on the listing is $42/hr Know when you have won the negotiation, even if you did nothing to win it yourself. Also, you're one of those guys with great benefits, see if you can estimate what the difference in benefits is for a more accurate comparison between your current and maybe future jobs.
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Apr 1, 2015 02:18
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If I get to the salary negotiation phase of the hiring process, what do I do? I only have a year and a half of work experience and would never have suggested that number in a negotiation. Is it OK to take the first number they give you if that number is beyond your wildest dreams? What signals would it send if I didn't make an effort to haggle, or if I did try to haggle over such a good starting pay rate? I know I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch but this opportunity came with no warning so I feel like I should be ready for anything to happen at any time.
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HonorableTB posted:The verbal offer was, the way I took it, a confirmation that I wanted the position. I had to also formally apply for the req on the internal website, which started the HR process going. I've been watching my coworkers go through this as well, and the process is always the same: go to an info session, get an interview, pass the interview, get an email from the hiring manager saying "Hey, we'd like to give you this job, if you want it then go to this URL and apply, and we'll send you a paper offer once the bureaucracy is finished" and then they get the paper offer about a week later. Why turn down an interview for a job? See what the other company has to offer. Maybe you can get a signing bonus that will allow you to repay the Amazon moving cash? You seem to be really hesitant to not go to this interview, but I can't think of a reason I wouldn't do an interview unless I had no desire what-so-ever to take the job.
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Apr 21, 2015 03:40
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Jato posted:I'm about to get my BS in Computer Science and am currently interviewing for a Junior Software Developer position at a small (25-30 employees) software company. I had a phone interview with the owner this morning and I think it went pretty well. He's having me fill out their official application now before I come in for another interview and it has a field for "expected salary". I don't like putting anything down there because when I'm thinking about working somewhere, I don't just think about the money. I think about vacation, atmosphere, health insurance, retirement, management style, flex time, work type and other perks/benefits. When you put a number (even a range) in that field, the person reading it may be assuming a standard package from their company that you know very little about. I'd almost always take a deal with less salary and more vacation but if they see $55k minimum and offer $55k and two weeks vacation, they might expect me to give up some money for another week or something. On the other hand, if they make you an offer or you get farther in to the interview process when they ask you to name a price, you can ask about all this other stuff so whether they ask you for a number then (better than earlier) or make you an offer (best), you can look at the entire compensation package in light of the intangibles like whether your boss's boss is a piece of poo poo or whatever. I don't know if this has cost me interviews, it is not as if I regularly get emails from people who don't interview me telling me why. But I'm comfortable with the risk and if you are too, you might consider putting in negotiable. Edit: As a cautionary tale, recently a goon in the interview thread named his price and then found out that his job was in two locations and was unable to get any compensation for that. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 20:42
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null gallagher posted:I've been interviewing at a few different places now, and last week the recruiter for one of them said they want to make a written offer once they talked to my references. Yesterday, they got back to me saying that they can't give me the agreed salary but they promise they'll have the written offer next week. I'm pretty pissed, because my references were former coworkers (this is my first job) who might still be in touch with my boss, so I've gotta assume he knows I'm looking for a job. They probably were planning on doing this to pressure me into taking the job for a lower salary. Why would you continue to negotiate with someone who has apparently unilaterally changed agreed upon terms? Do you expect whatever you negotiate for now to stand the test of the other party's fecklessness and bad faith? Do you want to work for a company that would do this?
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May 31, 2015 01:49
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Exactly this. Any time anyone comes along with "don''t be so concerned with money" the immediate retort should be "if concern for money is unreasonable you shouldn't concern yourself with giving me what I am asking for." When an employer, who's business is to make money - usually explicitly so, says that an employee should worry less about money I think about a line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre: quote:Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn’t know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:04
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I guess this isn't a story about getting a raise per se, which will make sense later, but I did negotiate for a change in pay format because I hated the old one, so I'm going to post a win, even though other people might say it isn't (please do, I want to learn more from this thread!). This is probably too long, but our pay system isn't just a salary or hourly rate.MickeyFinn posted:As a warning to people reading this thread: I did not negotiate my current job because it was the only job offer I got out of grad school and now I'm doing a job that I really like but doesn't pay nearly enough. The business plan (what passes for one around here) depends on me being here in 5 years, so I know they want to keep me. But I want to go in to salary negotiations here with another offer, so I'm currently looking for another job that I would like doing, just so I can negotiate for better pay at the one I am currently doing. Moral of the story is that I have to land two jobs because I did not negotiate for the first. I posted this last year, it sucked. I'm a "salaried" employee, but my company's pay structure goes like this. You get an hourly rate, that is your base pay, that is supposed to account for 80% of your income. On top of this there are incentive bonuses that add up during the year and you "cash out" by charging for overtime, instead of not charging for overtime. There is also an end of year bonus. These two bonuses are meant to account for 20% of your income. Both bonus structures are totally opaque and intentionally so and they are also haphazardly run. As a pretty conservative guy with money, I can't count on that money at all. The worst part of this is that with all the bonuses the pay is middling for my education level, experience and value to the company. A few months ago my boss walks in to my office to talk about the fact that I'm pulling the weight of two people and its totally rad and that they are going to have trouble hiring the other guy who quit after 10ish months and whose job posting was up for 1.5 years and I should talk to him about keeping the work load under control and getting support and blah blah. So I figure during the August raise period its time to talk money for the first time at this job. Two weeks ago I get notice of a raise in my base rate of $40/hour to $45/hour. I immediately shoot back with information from my PhD cohort showing that even at the new level I'm under paid on the base rate and that $60 would be a better rate (really high for my job). I don't talk about ending the bonus structure, figuring if they just want to talk about base rate I'll be laughing. Yesterday, my boss comes in to my office telling me that $60/hour is really high and giving me the talk you might expect. I tell him that what I want is to remove myself from the bonus system and that I want to talk about total take-home pay and not base rate plus some to-be-named-at-his-sole-discretion number and he writes the following down of what I should be making over the next year (August to August): $93,600 base $10,000 points bonus $10,000 end-of-year bonus ------------------------- $113,600/year Both of the bonus numbers are higher than I've ever seen (the last two years I've made $90k total). He tells me that he would be really shocked if the EOY bonus is lower than that over the next few years because over the last 4 years, they haven't paid a bonus once. The points bonus he claims is in the bag. He tells me he doesn't want to talk about it any more and when I get home last night I think about the salary data and decide I'd be happy to have a take-home salary of $102k*1.03^2.75 = $111k (about $53.50/hour). He comes into my office today to tell me he wants to split the difference between the hourly rate he offered and the one I countered (anchoring works!). I respond that the numbers he gave me yesterday, discounted for the 25% chance of not getting an EOY bonus comes out to $53.50/hour and he accepted on the spot. Further, I want to cash out my points immediately and want 75% of the mystery EOY bonus at that time. He agreed to that too. So, I got everything I want and the only remaining question is if he is going to try to gently caress me on the EOY bonus I earned for 3/4 of the year. Maybe. Since the 3% SIMPLE IRA match is based on my base rate I get another $530/year in matching, reducing what I "paid" to secure my income and get out of that bonus system I hate. TL;DR I got everything I wanted by negotiating. Thanks thread! MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Sep 2, 2015 |
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Sep 2, 2015 02:38
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Grumpwagon posted:Thanks, I really appreciate the vote of confidence. He thought you were a push over?
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Jan 22, 2016 15:30
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Abel Wingnut posted:essentially, database admin/development in nyc. i've got 4yrs of experience. not sure what the typical salary is, but i think 90 to 120 covered it. and like i said, i really want the job. it's at at one of the bigger museums in the world and that's kind of my thing. also really want out of my current job. I have no idea if that offer is good relative to others in the field/region, but it doesn't look like you do either and that the mistake made here. Did that minimum $90k you threw out (don't use ranges) include what appears to be better benefits? I don't think you've done your homework on either the compensation for people doing your job in your region or what you want to do that job in your region. That is why you are uncertain here, not because the negotiations have gone well or poorly. Indeed, it is hard to tell whether it even has gone one way or the other. Your salary demands could have been ludicrous for a [whatever you are doing at a museum], but they like you so much they decided to be cool and make a reasonable offer instead of dropping your name in the trash. On the other hand, it sounds like you have an offer that allows you to do something you want to do, in an environment you want to do it and gets you away from your current job. At this point, your only options are to play hard ball or take the job. I'd recommend against the first option without doing your homework first and you had better be prepared to walk.
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Jan 27, 2016 06:00
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Pryor on Fire posted:You guys are being a little silly, some people are just old fashioned and want to do things face to face or over the phone. Simply opening and navigating gmail/outlook is a real struggle for a large swath of the population. Just make sure you're prepared ahead of time with as much info as possible and fake confidence even if you're broke and about to get evicted and you can go about these things in person like respectful adults, it's fine. Email and time is preferable sure but don't turn that into a war or anything. Or they are like my boss who wants to do everything face-to-face because it is faster and he can change his mind without a paper trail.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:57
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Betazoid posted:Good point. I'm leaning toward taking it. I see the writing on the wall at this job, and even if the money is good, I feel disillusioned with the contracting system. Your tax dollars are being spent on me and four other people sitting in a room reading Facebook and listening to podcasts, FYI. There are two types of people who encounter the federal contracting system, those who are made uncomfortable with how the whole process works and those who profit from it.
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Feb 27, 2016 18:42
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Trying to dot some i's and cross some t's let's draft a new negotiation thread OP: I would add: Rule 8: Consider the whole package. You don't want to accept $5k more a year only to find out you get 2 weeks less vacation. This also gets you more room to negotiate, maybe the other party can't or won't come up in salary, but a week more of vacation or a signing bonus or something else is totally appropriate. When you understand your offerer's total position, you can get more of what you want and less of what you don't. Rule 9: At the end of negotiations, if you both accept, get everything in writing.
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Mar 4, 2016 21:34
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