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My partner has potentially landed a consulting gig. The gotcha is going to be writing her own employment contract or whatever, and then negotiating that with the team she's consulting with. Anyone have any guidance on this? I think I've seen getting started forms for designers, artists, etc floating around for this. We've gotten an employment lawyer to deal with a different situation, but it's pricey and we wouldn't want to spend a large portion of the pay for this contract on getting the contract written. We'll probably get by with the simple writeup we have, which establishes expectations from both sides, two pay options (full pay, or capped revenue share). We have no idea what the finances of the party we're working with are, either, and in software development that can be a huge range from "Negative money, I couldn't pay you a penny I found on the ground" to "My boss has given me a blank check, ask for whatever your heart desires" I figure there are basically 3 parts to this: 1) Hours & contract length example: 20 hours a month, for 2 months, with a decision to extend the contract made by the conclusion of the contract period. Any time put in after that won't be automatically billed, the consultant won't be expected to attend any meetings or deliver anything past that time, but will be responsible for quick answers to small questions. 2) Job description and expected work output example: 5 pieces of art a month, or lead the team through these review meetings 3) Pay. Example: $100 an hour paid at the end of each month over Venmo, or $15 an hour paid at the end of each month over Venmo, with an additional $185 target hourly rate paid out of a 2% monthly revenue share. We expect the second sort of pay to be what the client goes for, it has a cap so it's not indefinite, and my partner's pay is basically tied to the app's success. So what we're looking for is: 1) are there any good straightforward guides to writing up a contract like this? I know that for smaller indie people, there are often free tools, like https://dopresskit.com/ for a press kit. Something that's "Here's a guide for consulting, with forms to fill out to set rates" 2) tips on negotiating this all without making it a confusing mess example: "What if instead of a capped hours per month, it was instead paid out per work artifact delivered?" Not sure if this is the best thread for this, but negotiation is one of the next big steps, and I didn't see any sort of general consulting thread or self employed contract work thread floating around.
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Dec 23, 2020 06:31
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Zarin posted:Question for the thread: I've recently accepted an offer, and now it's time to move forward with a background screen, drug test, etc. Usually you should tell them not to contact your current employer, and they'll respect that request.
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Feb 3, 2021 20:22
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When a company can't hit a pay range, what alternate negotiating options are available? Extra PTO or other things? I'm in a situation I feel like is the opposite of everything on the first page: I'm making average pay for my role outside a specific subset of my industry, but way above average for that subset of the industry. I have a few job options that are really compelling for different reasons, with one that's a favorite. I can also remain where I am. Of the opportunities: My current place is above a few of them (my place is probably 1.5x the total compensation of the lowest end offers), one place is probably 1.5x my current pay. The jobs I'm most excited about are on the low end, so a pay cut. I'm trying to think of alternate options for negotiation, things that they might be able to put into the offer to make it more compelling when it's past their pay cap. These are all good jobs, with good people, etc, but it's an industry that can be just as driven by the product, and I'm definitely more excited about some of these products than others. I also had people point out that if I go for the place that's 1.5x my current pay, I'm basically going to be locking myself out that subset of the industry.
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Mar 19, 2023 02:22
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Dik Hz posted:One thing you can negotiate for is steps on a seniority ladder, if one exists. Oftentimes PTO or other perks are graduated based on seniority. I don't know if this is an actual problem with it, or just companies using it as an excuse, but I had two places tell me that, due to Washington state salary transparency laws, they can't move job titles up / down in seniority. The job has to match the public listing and the listed salary. This is going from non-games software to games software, so the pay is just much lower. In some cases, a role that's one level of seniority higher than mine would pay less than half of a traditional software job. So it's tough to argue "bump me up 4 job levels from the offer." I even had places immediately turn me down based on my current place. The phone screen with that recruiter was "I see you're at company X. We're games, we can't get anywhere close to that pay, we'll only talk to you if you're willing to take a pay cut to <a number that's 2/5 of what I make now>"
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Mar 20, 2023 15:06
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Arquinsiel posted:If you're trying to get into games then you just need to accept that the pay is "gently caress all" and the conditions are " I'm willing to get back into games because conditions have improved since the mid '00s when I was regularly working 80 hour weeks and sometimes 100 hour weeks. Most places I've talked to are against crunch because every game is a service game now. It's not like the rush to a boxed product launch of 80+ hour weeks and then fire everyone after the game ships. Now they need people to maintain the game post-release and provide updates. That plus all the people who left games due to crunch resulted in bigger gaps at senior roles that companies want to re-fill. It's just a tough decision between: Take a job that will vastly advance my skills, on a project I would be very excited about, but pay way less than what I make. Or, move farther out of games to a standard software job that wouldn't really build new skills and just rely on existing skills, for a 30% pay raise. Or I guess stay where I am, half a foot out of games, which is still on the table. I'm talking to friends who stayed in games, love what they do, but they're looking at their equivalent of a $150k a year job at 30-40 years of experience to their friends who left games for traditional software jobs. It sounds like people with ~40 years of coding experience are able to pull down around $700k a year. I'm much less experienced than that, and based out of the US, so the pay swing isn't nearly as much for me as a choice between $700k and $150k. It's not an easy decision, and it's why I've been basically spending every waking hour thinking about it. Building budget spreadsheets, figuring out where we could cut back, etc. leper khan posted:Pay is better in mobile, but still not FAANG levels. I've gotten multiple offers from AAA companies this year that would be a 50% cut and I'm already in games. Outside of a few games I find really compelling, I'd rather stay where I am than most mobile studios, unless it was a pay bump. I did some time in mobile development, and I did not enjoy the predatory nature of a lot of it.
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Mar 20, 2023 15:43
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Lockback posted:40 years of coding experience? Yeah, 30-40 years. My buddy's at roughly 30 years, and he's got friends from when he started out that had been coding a while. I'm at just under 20 years of experience, which is why I'm talking to people farther down the path than me. Edit: ideally everyone has mentors in their role with more experience. However, his feedback is mixed. Definitely get back into games, but also don't go back into games because those software jobs paying potentially $500k is a lot of money to turn down, even if you're working for a mega company everyone hates on software everyone hates. So the way I look at it is, neither answer is wrong, and hopefully the other options will still exist in 5-10 years when I'm ready for the next job jump. Chainclaw fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 15:52
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Lockback posted:ok, so I think your perspective on the industry is kinda skewed, as I wouldn't bucket people differently between "20 years" vs "30-40 year" of experience. At that point, you have the skills or not. I'm not looking at a 45 year old saying "Man, this dude will be great once he gets more time under his belt". You can obviously still grow in any role at any age, but it's not like you have to have coded during the Reagan Administration to qualify for a job. That pay range you listed is closer to games job with that experience. The non-game roles are higher for the same experience, and sometimes a job level down. A principal engineer job in games seems to be around $220k to $240k total comp, the software jobs are $300k to $500k total comp for job levels 2-3 lower than the principal role in games. So the ranges I'm seeing right now is anywhere between $150k for the lowest end at my job level, to $500k at the highest. Total comp being the asterisk, because some places that might be $150k base pay and $300k+ a year in bonuses, other places try to have a higher base pay for stability. Some places those are cash bonuses, some places they are equity, stock, etc. Sometimes it's a combination of everything. edit: I just noticed the years of experience thing. I am definitely not the highest-paying phase. I'm at the "career position" level where I could stay at my current job level and never get promoted again without anyone batting an eye, but there are probably a good 5-6 job levels above mine. Principal, Senior Principal, Technical Director, roles like that and higher. It feels like there's a new job level or so added to the ladder every 5-10 years right now. Chainclaw fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 16:32
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Does anyone have any good examples of what successful negotiation e-mails look like? The OP doesn't have it, and google gives me a lot of results similar to the OP: why you want to negotiate, what info to disclose/not disclose, etc, but not a "Here's what a negotiation e-mail looks like." I want to read through a few to get an idea on what they look like, how long or short they should be, how to press on some points and coming across as firm but not an rear end in a top hat.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:15
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Interesting, I figured it would need more rear end-kissing of some kind, and to be more vague on the request to see how high they will push it up, and not to be specific there. Something like "The project is great, the team is awesome, but this is under my expectations for this role." It's also tough because I need to now figure out the differences between all the different kinds of bonus structures, and what they actually mean for take home pay each year. ISO, NSO, RSA, RSU, etc. It feels like I'm comparing apples and oranges with packages due to the caveats and differences of each of these. Also so many companies seem to do that awful "unlimited" PTO thing nowadays, which I don't like at all. Can't really negotiate on it, it means that severance on layoffs will never include PTO, there's no retention incentive with additional PTO, and obviously it's not actually unlimited, you can't just take the job and never show up, so you have to figure out what the actual secret acceptable PTO you can take is.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:33
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:If you say "this is under my expectations for the role" the first question that is going to come back are "What are your expectations for the role so we can attempt to meet them?" (or, alternatively "gently caress off.") Guessing games are for children. The employer has put forth an offer; you respond to that offer with your specific requirements. The various bonus and deferred comp structures make things more difficult, for sure, but you still have to have a specific ask. My general advice would be to not try to change the structures, but instead change the amounts. If the company's comp includes ISOs, don't ask for RSUs instead. Yeah I wouldn't try to change the type of comp, it's more trying to do the mental math of what X ISOs mean in take home pay compared to Y RSUs, for example. I'd hate to be like "This is low, I was expecting total compensation in the range of $X+Y, with a base salary around $X and bonuses around $Y" and then have them be like "The offer we gave you puts you above $X+Y already." Right now it looks to me like some of these stock structures are setup where it's not easy to cash out until a pivotal event happens (IPO, corporate buyout, etc), which says to me that you'd be basically gambling a lot of potential income on one company, your own, instead of playing it safe and spreading out investments. This also says to me that I probably wouldn't want to negotiate up on the ISOs, and instead lean more heavily on the salary, I'd rather take stable higher pay now than the potential for a huge cashout or not in however many years. Does it hurt to be more aggressive on pushing on the base pay? I'm in a position where I can probably walk away from most offers (well, hopefully, the economy is hosed right now so no job is actually secure), and I like where I am already. So pushing harder on offers is a potential for me, but I also don't want to come across as an rear end in a top hat with something like "Can you make that offer 3x what it is?" KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Which is also why at any joint with unlimited PTO you should be asking everyone who interviews you how much PTO they took in the trailing 12mos. This is something I've leaned into with everywhere I've talked to that offers unlimited PTO. I'm definitely seeing patterns between companies, some people are actually making use of it, others definitely not. Unlimited PTO is also lovely in software development in general, and games in specific, because people are bad about taking PTO and will burn themselves out in those spaces. Having an actual PTO with a cap and accrual forces people to actually take time off to avoid burnout. I know plenty of people who would take zero days off a year with unlimited PTO and would probably end up with an explosive burnout event from that lack of self control. Chainclaw fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2023 15:49
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The last company I worked at was not really a startup (had been around something like 10 years when I joined in 2005), and they had an employee stock purchase program that seemed pointless, so I avoided it. I was glad, because when they eventually got bought out, it sounded like most people who had bought in were lucky to break even on it, and due to the nature of the buyout everyone was forced to sell their shares instead of having them transfer into shares in the new owners or something similar. That experience makes me extra wary of any stock awards besides RSUs setup to auto-sell on grant date, for a publicly traded company, with a strong preference still for cash bonuses instead.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:55
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Lockback posted:Honestly, the worst thing you can do is end up under a lovely manager. Just avoid. That depends on manager turnover at the company. In my 18 years of software development, I don't think I've had the same manager for more than 24 months, and the average is probably 8 months per manager. On the other hand, I know someone in a similar role who had the same manager for 14 years, so it seems all over the place.
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May 9, 2023 20:39
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FMguru posted:Ask A Manager has a post up today nicely illustrated why you should never, ever take a counter offer. That could also easily go the other way right now: They put in their notice at the old place, and then are told by the new place that due to hiring freezes or layoffs, the role was removed. I've heard of that happening a few times in the last 12 months. I wouldn't go for one mostly because pay is only going to be a part of why you're looking for work elsewhere.
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May 15, 2023 20:34
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just a kazoo posted:they are suggesting total compensation of much closer to the salary I am targeting. I can't answer the request of your questions, but having just done a lot of interviewing and getting offers: The suggestions and implications they make about compensation ahead of time are not really related to the actual offer you'll get. Especially because job levels and pay per job level can be all over the place. There might even be a range of job levels that you could qualify for based on the results of your interview, and that can really swing pay up or down if you qualify above/below what the recruiter thought you would get.
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May 15, 2023 21:12
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m0therfux0r posted:I'm probably getting ahead of myself here, but I have a question about preventing myself from looking like an idiot: For my current job nearly 10 years ago I tried to negotiate on PTO, they wouldn't budge. In my current round of searching, I brought it up a few times and half the places are scammy "unlimited" PTO (aka we don't pay out when we lay you off + you're going to take less time off) and the other places really don't want to budge on PTO for some reason. The place I went with said they could maybe negotiate on it if I could bring them some hard data about my current PTO being better. After looking more into it (because everyone without unlimited PTO has 4+ PTO buckets now that accrue at different rates), the starting PTO at the new place is higher than the PTO cap of my current place. leper khan posted:Counter 140 or 150. It's not like you care if they say no and walk away. Only if you're willing to take the job at that pay. I almost chased a job I didn't want for very high pay, and realized the high pay wasn't as important to me as getting a job I really want to do.
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May 17, 2023 15:29
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Lockback posted:You have great BATNA so don't worry feeling like an idiot, you should instead feel like they are trying to get you. With the huge amount of layoffs, I was worried that it would pressure pay downward. There are less openings and more people fighting for them and potentially willing to take a pay cut after being laid off. When I was searching a few months ago, pay was all over the place, but it also might be unique to my situation. I was mostly looking into games, with some traditional software jobs. I was trying to figure out if I wanted to get a job I was really passionate about with a pay cut, or bump my pay up with a traditional software job. The games industry has partially caught up to the traditional software industry pay, but there are definitely still a lot of places paying 1/3 to 1/2 the total comp of software industry pay for equivalent roles.
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May 17, 2023 15:43
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Tnuctip posted:If you haven’t interviewed in a while, warm up interviews can be a very helpful thing. Getting on a plane to visit a place that has a hard limit 20% below your target, ehhhhhh but that doesn’t sound like that. isn't everyone still doing interviews virtually? All mine were virtual. In some cases they were even spread out over a few days so I didn't even need to take PTO, it was really convenient. It was definitely way comfier this year interviewing in my pajamas at home instead of flying, getting sick from flying, and being tired from sleeping in a bad hotel bed.
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May 17, 2023 16:29
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 06:51 |
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You have two levers they can pull, so you could push harder on the pay if they can’t offer more vacation. My previous place did zero vacation time negotiation. The offers I got earlier this year, two were “unlimited” pto, and the others were hesitant to negotiate on pto unless I could provide data I had more time at the current place than what they offered.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:55
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