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My 3 favorite things to say to recruiters: 1. Bartenders make more than what you are offering me. 2. According to last year's 10K SEC filing, you made $X Bill

My 3 favorite things to say to recruiters: 1. Bartenders make more than what you are offering me. 2. According to last year's 10K SEC filing, you made $X Billion, and you can't afford me? 3. You must be accustomed to dealing with desperate people, not talented people.

JacobAldridge 17y ago
Wish I had the cojones - here are the 3 least favourite responses I'd expect: 1. Sure, but bartenders have people skills 2. According to last month's data, our pool of potential employees has 10.5% unemployment, and you can afford to live on food stamps? 3. There are many talented and desperate ways to reject your application, but you've probably heard them all.
- vishaldpatel 17y ago
  1. I wouldn't offer a salary to someone who I felt wasn't good enough for a job. If the job needs people skills, then he'd only get an offer from me if I thought he already had them / could gain them. 2. Pointing out to someone that they are very successful and can afford you isn't insulting. Pointing out to someone that they'd be on food stamps if you don't throw them a bone is, because it belittles them. 3. Dick move all around. Don't forget that salary negotiation is supposed to be just that - a negotiation. You arrive to it when most other terms of employment seem acceptable.
- camccann 17y ago
  4. How appropriate, you fight like a cow! ...sorry, just seemed to fit the theme.
- commonsense 17y ago
  You're assuming that I don't have other clients. That's the #1 difference between someone who makes money, and someone who works at the mercy of their employers. > 1. Sure, but bartenders have people skills No they don't. They serve drinks in very loud, noisy bars where everyone is drunk. That's the kind of bartender that makes $75k+ Furthermore, so do I. That's how I charge $150/hr. > 2. According to last month's data, our pool of potential employees has 10.5% unemployment, and you can afford to live on food stamps? That's begging the question whether or not I am employed. I am employed. I have other clients. I do not live on food stamps. I am currently making my asking rate on a regular basis and have been for nearly a decade, or else I would not be asking for it. If I were not able to make this rate, I would lower it. This is very simple logic, although it may not be if you are viewing it through the prism of desperation. REJECT the prism of desperation. It will handicap you for the rest of your professional life. > 3. There are many talented and desperate ways to reject your application, but you've probably heard them all. Really? The only one I've heard is "we can't afford you.", or "we found someone cheaper", which really is not my problem at ALL. You need to get those cojones, or you will be continue to be taken advantage of. Business people actively LOOK for weak willed developers. But - believe it or not - they respond positively to developers with balls, because they are so unaccustomed to hearing it. This is a basic tenet of human nature that many developers do not realize because they are too busy preoccupying themselves with machine logic. At some point, you need to tell yourself that you've learned enough fucking machine logic. You're not going to be writing assembly language for these people. You're building applications (dev and integration work, basically) that will make them money. That frees up your brain to think of other things like human interaction and how to sell yourself. Humans are not machines. Business is not a logical process. It's human interaction. When money changes hands, it's from one human (or group of humans) to another, no matter how deep the abstracted technical logic has been built to be.
  - quickpost 17y ago
    What kind of consulting do you do?
    - commonsense 17y ago
      Enterprise search. But I have a degree in Economics. Think of it this way. Look at a company's overall profit margins - the profit they are making off of your labor / work should fall within this ballpark. If it's not, you're being ripped off, because that means other employees (or shareholders) in the firm are capturing a larger share of the value you create than you are, compared to the average. This is really, really, REALLY simple math, folks.
      - dpritchett 17y ago
        Could you please elaborate on that bit? I am having trouble visualizing the equation. Let's say my company's net profit margin is 10%. What does that tell me about the value I'm generating and what I should be taking home?
        commonsense 17y ago
        > Could you please elaborate on that bit? No. Learn something very few other people know and it will explain itself.
        dpritchett 17y ago
        In that case I'm guessing that you are personally responsible for a value-generating product and that you figure any extra profit the company keeps from this project that is above their average profit margin is money that should be going to you instead? IOW, company had a net margin of 10%. Your project makes $1M/yr revenues and the company claims $200,000 revenue on that, a profit margin of 20%. You figure that they should reallocate half of that $200k to you so that you are paid commensurate with your contribution and they keep the remaining 10%? That makes sense and I suppose the math is pretty easy in a smaller corporation or with a specialized product.
dnsworks 17y ago
#1 is a stretch. Bartenders make $50-$100/hour 2-3 nights per week, for 4-6 hours of their shifts. The best bartenders in SF are grossing $65k-$75k .. Not really the equivalent. They're still working poor by local standards.
- lg 17y ago
  Are you saying 65-75k is 'poor' in SF? Or are you excluding the best bartenders from that category?
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    Most bartenders in San Francisco are below the national poverty rate. The best paid bartenders in this city make less than a first-year programmer.
- commonsense 17y ago
  > grossing $65k-$75k That's my fucking point! Remember bartenders get paid in cash. And they're free to spend that tax-free cash with a MASSIVE homie discount when they go out to bars and restaurants and clubs and other establishments in the same city they work in because hospitality industry people give each other discounts. How much do you think a developer who charges $50/hr is grossing after taxes? Not EVEN $75k, especially not if they apply the same confidence to their Schedule C deductions that some people on this forum have applied to their careers. Highly skilled people like competent UNIX engineers should be making a LEAST 2-3x a bartender. Naive, naive, naive.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    This all goes back to people skills. I've got a friend in the sex industry .. yes that means what you think it means. Every once and a while we talk shop .. I think I respect myself more, but she made about $175k in cash last year, a lot of it while "working" in other cities .. so she got to travel. That being said, she has more social skills then almost every sysadmin I know. Same thing with the bartender. A bunch of my friends are bartenders, and I'd much rather hang out with them than with most of my colleagues .. Of course the bartenders are far more dramatic, and most of them are either alcoholics or recovering alcoholics. There are trade-offs.

JacobAldridge 17y ago

Wish I had the cojones - here are the 3 least favourite responses I'd expect: 1. Sure, but bartenders have people skills 2. According to last month's data, our pool of potential employees has 10.5% unemployment, and you can afford to live on food stamps? 3. There are many talented and desperate ways to reject your application, but you've probably heard them all.

vishaldpatel 17y ago
1. I wouldn't offer a salary to someone who I felt wasn't good enough for a job. If the job needs people skills, then he'd only get an offer from me if I thought he already had them / could gain them. 2. Pointing out to someone that they are very successful and can afford you isn't insulting. Pointing out to someone that they'd be on food stamps if you don't throw them a bone is, because it belittles them. 3. Dick move all around. Don't forget that salary negotiation is supposed to be just that - a negotiation. You arrive to it when most other terms of employment seem acceptable.
camccann 17y ago
4. How appropriate, you fight like a cow! ...sorry, just seemed to fit the theme.
commonsense 17y ago
You're assuming that I don't have other clients. That's the #1 difference between someone who makes money, and someone who works at the mercy of their employers. > 1. Sure, but bartenders have people skills No they don't. They serve drinks in very loud, noisy bars where everyone is drunk. That's the kind of bartender that makes $75k+ Furthermore, so do I. That's how I charge $150/hr. > 2. According to last month's data, our pool of potential employees has 10.5% unemployment, and you can afford to live on food stamps? That's begging the question whether or not I am employed. I am employed. I have other clients. I do not live on food stamps. I am currently making my asking rate on a regular basis and have been for nearly a decade, or else I would not be asking for it. If I were not able to make this rate, I would lower it. This is very simple logic, although it may not be if you are viewing it through the prism of desperation. REJECT the prism of desperation. It will handicap you for the rest of your professional life. > 3. There are many talented and desperate ways to reject your application, but you've probably heard them all. Really? The only one I've heard is "we can't afford you.", or "we found someone cheaper", which really is not my problem at ALL. You need to get those cojones, or you will be continue to be taken advantage of. Business people actively LOOK for weak willed developers. But - believe it or not - they respond positively to developers with balls, because they are so unaccustomed to hearing it. This is a basic tenet of human nature that many developers do not realize because they are too busy preoccupying themselves with machine logic. At some point, you need to tell yourself that you've learned enough fucking machine logic. You're not going to be writing assembly language for these people. You're building applications (dev and integration work, basically) that will make them money. That frees up your brain to think of other things like human interaction and how to sell yourself. Humans are not machines. Business is not a logical process. It's human interaction. When money changes hands, it's from one human (or group of humans) to another, no matter how deep the abstracted technical logic has been built to be.
- quickpost 17y ago
  What kind of consulting do you do?
  - commonsense 17y ago
    Enterprise search. But I have a degree in Economics. Think of it this way. Look at a company's overall profit margins - the profit they are making off of your labor / work should fall within this ballpark. If it's not, you're being ripped off, because that means other employees (or shareholders) in the firm are capturing a larger share of the value you create than you are, compared to the average. This is really, really, REALLY simple math, folks.
    - dpritchett 17y ago
      Could you please elaborate on that bit? I am having trouble visualizing the equation. Let's say my company's net profit margin is 10%. What does that tell me about the value I'm generating and what I should be taking home?
      - commonsense 17y ago
        > Could you please elaborate on that bit? No. Learn something very few other people know and it will explain itself.
        dpritchett 17y ago
        In that case I'm guessing that you are personally responsible for a value-generating product and that you figure any extra profit the company keeps from this project that is above their average profit margin is money that should be going to you instead? IOW, company had a net margin of 10%. Your project makes $1M/yr revenues and the company claims $200,000 revenue on that, a profit margin of 20%. You figure that they should reallocate half of that $200k to you so that you are paid commensurate with your contribution and they keep the remaining 10%? That makes sense and I suppose the math is pretty easy in a smaller corporation or with a specialized product.

dnsworks 17y ago

#1 is a stretch. Bartenders make $50-$100/hour 2-3 nights per week, for 4-6 hours of their shifts. The best bartenders in SF are grossing $65k-$75k .. Not really the equivalent. They're still working poor by local standards.

lg 17y ago
Are you saying 65-75k is 'poor' in SF? Or are you excluding the best bartenders from that category?
- dnsworks 17y ago
  Most bartenders in San Francisco are below the national poverty rate. The best paid bartenders in this city make less than a first-year programmer.
commonsense 17y ago
> grossing $65k-$75k That's my fucking point! Remember bartenders get paid in cash. And they're free to spend that tax-free cash with a MASSIVE homie discount when they go out to bars and restaurants and clubs and other establishments in the same city they work in because hospitality industry people give each other discounts. How much do you think a developer who charges $50/hr is grossing after taxes? Not EVEN $75k, especially not if they apply the same confidence to their Schedule C deductions that some people on this forum have applied to their careers. Highly skilled people like competent UNIX engineers should be making a LEAST 2-3x a bartender. Naive, naive, naive.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  This all goes back to people skills. I've got a friend in the sex industry .. yes that means what you think it means. Every once and a while we talk shop .. I think I respect myself more, but she made about $175k in cash last year, a lot of it while "working" in other cities .. so she got to travel. That being said, she has more social skills then almost every sysadmin I know. Same thing with the bartender. A bunch of my friends are bartenders, and I'd much rather hang out with them than with most of my colleagues .. Of course the bartenders are far more dramatic, and most of them are either alcoholics or recovering alcoholics. There are trade-offs.