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In most cases most people low ball themselves out of the gate. It's a two-fold problem: know what you're worth and have the confidence to demand it. If you feel that you have those two things, go for it, put your number out first. Anchoring can go both ways. But most people don't (even though they should). It's easier to generalize and recommend against it in most cases. There are always exceptions.
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Mar 16, 2016 00:19
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poeticoddity posted:I would like to solicit some unusual negotiation advice in advance of when I may need it. This shouldn't be a hard thing to do, but some companies might be stubborn about it. Usually that language is just standard legalese; most companies won't go after you unless you really stole/copied from them. That said, I would highly suggest hiring a lawyer to review your contract and assist in rewording those clauses. If you're doing "real" side work/research and not just little home experimentation it's better to CYA than hope for the best. And then assuming you can reword the contract, be diligent about not using company resources (laptops, servers, etc.) to do your side work/research.
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Mar 18, 2016 02:53
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Typical start up bullshit. Promise the sun and stars in lieu of market rate pay, and deliver none of it. The long delay on Series A funding might signal problems, too. If you want to get paid what you're worth, get out. Unless you really love the insanity, start ups are a lovely proposition unless you're a founder or significant equity ground floor employee. Even then, 99% chance your equity is worthless in 12 months when the company folds. Guinness fucked around with this message at 23:07 on May 12, 2016 |
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May 12, 2016 23:04
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Deadite posted:Given my experience over the last two days: never try to negotiate and internal offer or expect a lecture from your HR rep gently caress that, absolutely try to negotiate internal offers if it's a big promotion or significant change/increase in responsibilities.
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May 18, 2016 00:05
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Gin_Rummy posted:So it has now been a full week since I was given the promise of an offer and I didn't get a reply to my email used to attempt to initiate salary negotiations nor my "hey, you never replied, is this even still a thing?" email. Should I just assume they didn't want to negotiate at all, or is this still a normal thing for HR departments? After a week I definitely would not consider it obnoxious to call for a follow up, especially if that's where they left the conversation. It's unfortunately probably not a good sign, but you never know. Sometimes people get busy or distracted, or are just disorganized.
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May 20, 2016 19:17
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Yeah, it's not so much that you literally show them the other offer or even necessarily bring it up as a specific issue. It's just that other offers that you are actually willing to take give you confidence in asking for a high number and sticking to it, knowing that if you don't get what you want you walk. poo poo, in my experience I've gotten better "final" offers after I earnestly declined. If you're actually willing to put your money where you mouth is an walk away you are in such a stronger position. Guinness fucked around with this message at 05:47 on May 26, 2016 |
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May 26, 2016 05:44
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I would never show an interviewer another company's offer letter on principle. If I say I have an offer, I have an offer, asking for proof beyond that tells me a lot more about you than it tells you about me. This. If you say you've got another offer and they don't believe you or demand proof, then you're basically in one of two situations. Either they didn't think you were serious, or you were bluffing. If they didn't think you were serious, take the offer and leave, good riddance to them. If you were bluffing, well... they called your bluff and you just lost.
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May 31, 2016 19:11
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I agree with everything you just said and also love and prefer working at an established, healthy small company (~85 people total). Growth is natural/organic, not a feverish desire to grow grow grow at all costs to please some VC or shareholders. We've got a flat management structure, first-name basis with everybody including all the leadership, and I mostly know how every employee fits into the organization at some level. We're given the power and freedom to generally do the right thing for the business and customer, and there's very little "well, that's not my job" syndrome among my colleagues. Which, to relate it to this thread, means that you can do and be recognized for your accomplishments and drive your own career growth and promotions/raises/bonuses very directly. Having also worked at/for large companies, the red tape, bureaucracy, and silo culture is loving maddening. Guinness fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 12, 2016 20:48
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Any employer whose "relationship" would be compromised because of good-faith compensation negotiation can go piss up a rope.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:30
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Frankly I think it's reasonable to interview at companies you don't want to work for, just for interview experience. It's their job to sell you on the company, if they've failed to do that then it's on them regardless of how you felt when you walked in. Absolutely this. Once you're past the "oh please just give me a job any job" stage in your career, interviewing and hiring is far less adversarial and more of an even playing field. They need to convince you to come work for them just as much, if not more, than you need to convince them that you are the right person for the job. Dwight Eisenhower posted:You're allowed to turn down offers for literally no reason. You're allowed to interview literally just to get the number and then walk out of the interviewing process entirely. If you want to dip a toe in the water to see if your raise is keeping acceptable pace with your value on the open market and then sit fat and happy where you are, that's a totally okay thing to do. Yep, literally starting to do this right now to most likely push for a raise at my current job. Unlikely that I will jump ship at this moment, but who knows. Maybe a new company will do a great job on selling me on why I should come work for them. Never hurts to see what is out there and measure where you are in the industry at large. Worst case you walk away realizing that you are in a good situation.
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Sep 28, 2016 17:53
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I'm no expert, but from what I've seen professional salaries in the UK seems to be drastically lower than in the US even accounting for the pre-GBP-decline exchange rate. Sure, there is are a host of excellent social programs that you get for "free" but even accounting for that the gap still seems really large. Professions that in the US are comfortably in the 100-150k+ USD/yr range in a major city with a couple years experience are often listed making like 40-50k GPB/yr in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world.
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Oct 4, 2016 17:57
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Maybe it's a testament to how complicated the US tax code can end up being, but trying to compare net instead of gross can be extremely misleading. Two people each making 100k gross can have very very different net incomes based on their tax situation, tax deferments, investments, benefits, married, kids, house, etc. I'm a bit skeptical that other countries would compare net instead of gross, but I really don't know.
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Oct 4, 2016 18:10
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Sounds like a really lovely place to work, and likely a bullet dodged.
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Oct 13, 2016 00:38
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:I've played this move before and proceeded to stay at my same employer for another 2.5 years afterwards. Disloyalty is a minor dimension if you deliver, are valuable, and make your company money / make your boss look good. This is pretty much exactly what you should do in this situation. FWIW, I think the whole "never take a counter-offer" thing is entirely overblown on the internet. If you are not easily replaceable and are otherwise a valuable, professional team member, then sometimes you have to force the issue if your compensation has lagged behind the market. Turnover is extremely expensive and good companies generally want to avoid it if possible. It's not disloyalty, it's just business.
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Oct 28, 2016 20:55
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a fleshy snood posted:So I received the offer I posted about earlier that I was told would be low, and well, they weren't joking. That's a big bummer, but it sounds like you were able to see it coming so that's a point in your corner. The hard part now is deciding whether it's worth signing up to be underpaid. Without knowing all the details, my gut instinct is to say no. If you don't have a burning itch to get out of your current job then you can definitely go back and play hardball with them. They will likely balk at a 30% counter, but that's okay. They need to hear it directly that they are wildly underpaying for this role. As long as you are prepared to stick to your guns and walk away if they don't come close to that you have the upper hand in this. Don't buy into whatever sales pitch they'll give you about why it's "worth it" to take such an undermarket salary for the "amazing opportunity" to work there.
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Nov 3, 2016 18:29
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Jordan7hm posted:Eh, it sounds like he's already done that and this was their offer. Seconded. Politely decline and walk away. They know how to contact you if they change their mind (but they likely won't).
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Nov 8, 2016 02:25
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It is both expected and normal to receive the full and comprehensive details of your compensation package for your consideration prior to signing any contract. They should include all of that with your offer letter, but if they don't then requesting all of that for review is an easy way to start the discussion. If they won't provide comprehensive details they are being shady AF.
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Dec 9, 2016 21:17
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Nail Rat posted:There is no typical percentage for promotions at all. Yep. There are a million different kinds of promotions. Getting promoted from floor mop to fry cook is going to look a lot different than Senior Manager to Director of North America.
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Jan 11, 2017 19:22
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Dodge the salary question by requesting a full overview of the total benefits and compensation package, because it is absolutely true that you can't gauge the necessary salary without the total comp information. And when you can't dodge anymore, aim high.
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Feb 23, 2017 20:54
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Piling on the "don't ask, just tell" bandwagon. It'd be a dumb thing for them to put up a fight about, and they will more than likely find a way to work with you on it, whether it be a negative PTO balance or unpaid time or just letting you do it as a sort of hiring bonus. I have done this and know several other people that have done this.
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Mar 27, 2017 19:33
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Every body shop does this; I spent 2010-2016 consulting & receiving a salary roughly ~1/3rd the hourly rate I was billed out at. That does account for vacation time, but doesn't account for bennies. Indeed, bill rates are always going to be a few multiples higher than what you actually get paid when you work for someone else. But that's not necessarily a bad thing assuming you get value out of working for them. I'm a salaried consultant and the bill rate my company charges is about 3 - 3.5x my "hourly" salary rate, but that margin also covers good benefits, vacation/sick days, sales/marketing, contracts, finance, IT & equipment, office space, and of course some net profit for the company after all of that (which a slice of ultimately gets paid back out as profit share bonus). It's tempting to look at $200+/hr bill rates and think "gee I should just go solo and get that all myself" but then I'd have to actually run a business and do a bunch of poo poo I don't want to do and work a lot more hours that aren't billable.
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Apr 13, 2017 19:19
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Having a strong BATNA makes interviewing for a job a lot more fun! Thanks for everyone's insight! It really makes all the difference in the world, and makes someone come off a lot more confident and honest as well. I've done the same thing with random opportunistic interviews. Make it very clear up front that I am not actively looking for a new job, but to effectively have them try to sell me on it. It's a very different and enjoyable power dynamic when you've got nothing at stake and you are interviewing the company more than they are interviewing you.
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May 19, 2017 19:29
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:I don't subscribe to the strident "Never accept counterofffers" boat, but I think there's a high bar to hurdle there. You should be getting a counteroffer that is objectively better than what you are leaving for. It should be robustly defined and specific before you agree to it. And you should evaluate the question "Am I being retained, or is my employer just trying to get control of the pace of my exit?" I agree. I also think that the "do never accept counteroffer" mantra is overly extreme, but I understand where it comes from. Especially when talking about advice to negotiating newbies or people who are early on in their career / low man on the totem pole. It's also good to push people who would otherwise stay in the comfort of the known environment, even if it's lovely and they need to move. I still think counter-offers should be viewed with skepticism, and whether it's a good idea to take one or not really comes down to a whole lot of very situation and person specific details that can't be explained or understood via an online forum very well. It's really up to the person to read the situation, environment, and trajectory within the company. So really it comes down to "it depends". 
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Jul 19, 2017 19:08
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As if to imply that your previous salary should have any bearing on your newly negotiated salary, which it really should not.
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Jul 24, 2017 22:57
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Hoodwinker posted:Goons, gently caress that guy, because the company I had that interview with yesterday just extended me an offer. I asked the lady to repeat it twice just in case I didn't hear it properly, but I believe my salary just went from $73,700 to $100,000. Thanks, thread. Big congrats to you!
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Jul 25, 2017 18:29
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Motronic posted:The correct question for a director level position is "what is my budget for hiring my team and will there be any interference/requirements from outside of my organization on hires?" Listen to this guy right here.
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Aug 2, 2017 03:02
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If company A wanted you that badly they should have just hired you without the contingent offer BS. I work for a small-ish software consulting company, and if we have a candidate that we really like, we will hire them even if we don't have an immediate customer for them to work. Finding good candidates and actually getting them to accept an offer is hard enough. And finding customers for good developers is not terribly difficult. A few weeks of bench time is worth eating to get a good hire. That company A did not do that is a sign that they are not so much a consultancy, but just a contracting body shop. That is, if you don't have a contract to work immediately after your previous one ends, you are probably about to get fired. Don't give that sort of company any more loyalty than they give to you (zero). Guinness fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 5, 2017 |
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Oct 5, 2017 19:33
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For what it's worth, in my experience negotiating big raises at my current employer the yearly review is not the best time to do so. Since it's a company-wide salary review and adjustment, there's a lot more rules and budgets in place that make it effectively just 3% COLAs for everyone, plus or minus a percent or two. It's annoying, because you think the annual salary review would be the time to push for big raises, but the way it is structured is that there is limited adjustment money per group, and one person getting more means someone else gets less. Real stupid but that's business, and is certainly not necessarily the case everywhere. Instead, both my big raises/promotions were "mid cycle" when it was more of a case-by-case basis sort of thing. I certainly made clear in my annual review that I wanted to discuss career progression and compensation, but we made a plan to do so and it was handled separately. But if you were getting flat-out "no" without the possibility of a separate review & discussion, then good luck on your new job search. 
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Dec 27, 2017 22:20
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:"run your finances" lol Yeah, what the heck does this mean? No company I have ever worked or interviewed for has ever "run my finances", nor would I let them.
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Feb 12, 2018 21:34
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m0therfux0r posted:Dunno if it's the same for Switzerland, but there have been multiple times where I've seen people I worked with be promised a higher salary when they complete [x] undergrad/grad degree and then it mysteriously "not being able to happen" or "bad timing" when they actually complete their program. Get the review clause in the contract, not just a verbal promise. It still doesn't guarantee that anything will come of it, but it gives you hard evidence to force the issue at least. If it's a job you want to take despite the potentially below-market salary, it sets up a timeline for a) the company to give you the raise/promotion and/or b) you to look for other alternatives with your new credentials. It really doesn't hurt anything and any reasonable company should be okay with it IMO. Worst case is that nothing happens, which is what will happen without the review anyway.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:51
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sim posted:I find the risk of layoffs from a larger company to be just as likely. It's not.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:26
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:What you negotiated for, over the course of a career, is a $3k annuity paid over the next 30 years with a present value $39,000. This is a really underappreciated aspect of salary negotiation. Doubly so if you have additional benefits like 401k matching or performance bonuses that are based on a percentage of your salary rate. And future raises, adjustments, and promotions, too. Do always negotiate.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:45
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Sunny Side Up posted:Update: Huge congrats, sounds like you're sitting pretty now. Amazing what a little asking will do huh? Never don't negotiate.
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May 23, 2018 02:01
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Eric the Mauve posted:Your BATNA is strong so you can ask for more with polite confidence. Don’t ask for the minimum you will accept. Ask for more. Also don’t be shy about asking for more PTO and defaulting back to “well then I’m going to need more salary” if they say no. This. Don't ask for only $5k more if the benefits are so much weaker, has a worse commute, and less flexibility. You are in the strong position here, you should ask for the moon and stars, especially if you aren't super duper excited to work there and are just as happy to decline. IMO don't value things like vacation time at just your hourly/salary rate. Sure that's what the "book value" is, but there's huge non-monetary value in health, stress, and flexibility in an extra week of vacation. Similarly, 401k matches, employer HSA contributions, etc. all have tax benefits and compounding effects over time that make them more valuable. Also re: dental insurance, most dental insurance is garbage and hardly covers anything major. At best it's just a monthly payment plan for your 2 annual exams that might cover a filling or two. You should examine whether it is actually worth paying for or not. In many cases, it is not. Dentists also tend to be much much much better than doctors/hospitals in terms of knowing what poo poo costs ahead of time and dealing with cash payments. Guinness fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jun 8, 2018 |
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Jun 8, 2018 18:13
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Sock The Great posted:I talked to their HR girl and she couldn't give me a concrete number for the insurance premium; she has to send my information (names and DOB of me and my dependents) to their broker to get me a rate. This seems really strange to me. Everywhere I've ever worked, and with multiple insurance providers over the years , has always offered the same rate for to each employee. The only thing that would change is the premium if you opted for HSA vs PPO/HMO. That seems really bizarre, I've never seen something like that in a group policy...
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Jun 8, 2018 18:59
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quote:assured me that the 1% of profits annual bonus would be worth at least 10k in 4 years. Even if true, that's really not a very enticing promise when you can probably find someone who will pay you 10k more in guaranteed base salary today. Now if that bonus was more in the realm of 50-100k+ that'd be something more interesting to talk about. It is true that consulting bonus structures tend to be more contractual and nearly-guaranteed, but there are still scenarios that can shrink or delay them significantly based on business performance.
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Jun 14, 2018 23:08
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:You can't just choose not to reason about bonuses if you're in an industry where they represent a large portion of your pay. I wouldn't recommend signing a lease based on your estimated bonus but you have to at least model it somehow in order to compare offers. It can have strange second-order effects if it's a yearly thing - your February BATNA is different from your August BATNA because walking away mid-bonus cycle gets you nothing, unless your new company makes you whole. Totally, but being promised a bonus worth only 10k four years from now can be modeled pretty easily as "meh"
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Jun 14, 2018 23:26
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In my developer career I've learned virtually everything "on the job". And those things have changed numerous times and will continue to change. Being a developer can be summarized as "I don't know x, but I can figure it out and do something useful with it in a reasonable amount of time". Experience is doing that lots of times so you start to see patterns and similarities so it becomes quicker, but you're always going to be faced with things you don't know that you have to just figure out. Almost every new project I start has some large piece of it that I've never worked with before, or has been so long ago I'm practically starting over fresh. There are of course similarities that come with experience, too, but never has it been "oh great I know how to do 100% of this start to finish off the top of my head". Not even close. Guinness fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Aug 30, 2018 |
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Aug 30, 2018 21:59
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I can't speak to how large companies operate their 401ks, but a lot of smaller companies use Safe Harbor 401k plans that are pretty inflexible in their rules, which is kind of the point of it since it sidesteps the red tape of the annual non-discrimination test. One of the key rules of a Safe Harbor plan is that all employees/participants be offered matches of an equal percentage of their salary (e.g., 5%). One of the other benefits (to the employee) of a Safe Harbor 401k is that all matches must be vested immediately.
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Oct 16, 2018 17:57
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My company moves very fast on interviewees that we love. Sometimes same-day offers, otherwise always within 24-48 hours. I think it's a pretty good company in the grand scheme of things. We know what we're looking for and we know our budget, why waste time? It's a job seekers market out there right now, especially in engineering. Got to move fast or you get left behind, especially at a smaller company without big-name recognition.
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Oct 19, 2018 04:06
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