3 ms·

Funny thing that I was having a discussion with one of my friend who is in the middle of salary negotiation. The company is pushing him hard to accept the offer

by rajeshp1986 10y ago

Funny thing that I was having a discussion with one of my friend who is in the middle of salary negotiation. The company is pushing him hard to accept the offer well below than his expectations and he was expecting more hike as he was relocating to bay area. He was quite disappointed that he didn't get the salary figure he was expecting but still wanted to accept the offer as he didn't want to loose the opportunity. We discussed at length about how the salaries in software ended up like this. Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. This is also the standard structure across the world for all software industries irrespective of the country. The salaries are not transparent and the developers are kept in dark. How did we end up like this? Is it not a bad thing for the company that employees are demotivated when their pay sucks? I feel it is a very basic thing. To make more profits you need to build better products and sell better. How much can you save on operating costs by paying employees less? I feel the companies & HR needs to modernize itself. There was a time, you could get away by paying a particular employee less and he may never find out. This is an Information age!! Information freely flows. There are many sites like Glassdoor, Paysa where people can go and find out more about salaries that you are paying to your employees. It is no longer a well kept secret. What is required here is that companies and HR's understand this and make salaries open and relevant to the value produced/added to the company. Since the early managers probably didn't understand the dynamics they went with what they could do best at their time. I feel this model of negotiating a salary based on previous salary should be deprecated. It should be replaced with a more open model. It doesn't hurt much to know that the next guy is getting paid more than me, if that guy truly deserves it and produces much better code or is adding more value to the company than me. What hurts more is that to know that the company values the other guy more and pays him more just because he is straight out of college or gets lucky at salary negotiation. I think it is time Developers & Engineers talk more freely about their salary.

kgwgk 10y ago
> Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. What makes you think that the situation in other fields is any different?
- beachstartup 10y ago
  because it is. don't you know any bankers, lawyers, or doctors? discussing how much they get paid is a big part of the culture.
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    i think there is a lot of embarrassment discussing salary because it shows how you're valued by the company. I get uncomfortable discussing mine because i don't want to provoke jealousy. However, if i was paid less than most i'd find it embarrassing to admit the company found me less valuable than others.
    - jamez1 10y ago
      Discussing with your peers how much you are being paid is the only way you figure out your value. Companies are quite opaque and it's hard to know what you are worth to them, that's why they don't disclose this sort of thing. (and get angry when workers discuss it) You would do yourself (and the people in your world around you) a whole lot better service if you worked together, rather than worrying about embarrassment.
      - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
        i had a friend stop talking to me because I made more money than him. Maybe its rare but his jealousy was insane and don't want to deal with again.
morgante 10y ago
> Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. The average banker or lawyer is an order of magnitude better at negotiation and valuation than the average developer. It's literally their job. For a finance guy, not optimizing your compensation package is sacrilegious. Meanwhile we have still have lots of developers who think it's absurd that they'd even be paid $100k and don't want to think about money at all. [0] They drag down compensation for themselves and for others. Unfortunately it's not simply a matter of information. You can tell people that the market rate for their position is $200k/yr but they'll tell you that's absurd, that they think it's too much, or that they'd rather just focus on code. Doctors solved this by sharply restricting supply and making it illegal to practice without being part of their cartel. [0] Seriously, on HN people regularly complain about making too much. Even in this very thread you can find people who are skeptical of high salaries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588504
- collyw 10y ago
  I was interviewing in Spain a while ago, the salaries are fairly poor here. Some guys with ten years experience were asking for very little. I should have told them to up their requirements. At the same time none of them seemed very enthusiastic at all.
gjem97 10y ago
> Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc In the world of top-tier law firms the "transparency" actually works against the incoming lawyers. You notice the quote in TFA: "Cravath announced that it would pay first-year associates $180k, and many other firms followed suit"? I see that as an implicit agreement to fix prices among these top law firms. I'm sure they're not foolish enough to actually collude on salaries, but Cravath knows exactly what it's doing when it says to the world "this is what we're paying our employees, sound good?"
dahart 10y ago
> The company is pushing him hard to accept the offer well below than his expectations That sounds like leverage. Did he ask for more? Depends on the company. Lots of small companies can't pay what Google does. Also possible that your friend's expectations aren't realistic. > How much can you save on operating costs by paying employees less? In a software business, a lot. Employees are the primary operating cost in many software businesses. > Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. I could be wrong, but I believe most employees in all industries in the US are either asked or implicitly expected to keep their compensation to themselves. I also believe that salary-transparent organizations outside of public institutions (government, universities, etc) are fairly rare. Salary is default private AFAIK, has been for a long time, and has nothing to do with software vs other industries.
soulnothing 10y ago
Between me and my friends we are readily open up about salary and rates. Not just that we also are open about bills, benefits we pay etc. It's not the salary, but what you take home after all the bills are calculated. I'm in a similar situation, and have had this happen so many times. I explicitely state when starting the process I'm a contractor. I lose wages when I interview, so I want to ensure we're on the same page. It's also an allocation of your companies time, and resources interviewing me. This is my minimum, are you able to meet it. Because between software projects, phone screens, and on sites. That's alot of time sunk into an application, and again your resources interviewing me. I've had so many times, after all the work get to the offer stage and it's 20k to 50k short, after they ensured me they could meet the minimum. I've renegotiated at times, but it's like pulling teeth. One company even tried shaming me, for not putting enough value into the awesome company culture. I'm here because I love your company, but if you don't want me worrying about bills and retirement during working hours then pay me a decent rate. I just got an offer 10k shy of what I asked. I already took 30k off my current rate, because it was a less populated area. I can cross counter negotiate or come up with other ideas. What got me was that it's based on me being a "junior" in the stack they use. I don't like the inflated use of senior. But a good techie/programmer can move from stack to stack. If we were more open about rates and what's avaialble. I think it would do more good.
ryuker16 10y ago
There is a big difference between back-office and front office or finance pay. I'm sure back-office monkeys get jockeyed around for at little as possible in salary negotiations with promises of a huge bonus to help them ignore it. Law pay is great on the upper on end and a shit show on the lower end. Many lawyers are self employed for a reason. Doctor pay IDK much about but given the small pool of applicants, it makes sense to be transparent.

kgwgk 10y ago

> Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. What makes you think that the situation in other fields is any different?

beachstartup 10y ago
because it is. don't you know any bankers, lawyers, or doctors? discussing how much they get paid is a big part of the culture.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  i think there is a lot of embarrassment discussing salary because it shows how you're valued by the company. I get uncomfortable discussing mine because i don't want to provoke jealousy. However, if i was paid less than most i'd find it embarrassing to admit the company found me less valuable than others.
  - jamez1 10y ago
    Discussing with your peers how much you are being paid is the only way you figure out your value. Companies are quite opaque and it's hard to know what you are worth to them, that's why they don't disclose this sort of thing. (and get angry when workers discuss it) You would do yourself (and the people in your world around you) a whole lot better service if you worked together, rather than worrying about embarrassment.
    - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
      i had a friend stop talking to me because I made more money than him. Maybe its rare but his jealousy was insane and don't want to deal with again.

morgante 10y ago

> Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. The average banker or lawyer is an order of magnitude better at negotiation and valuation than the average developer. It's literally their job. For a finance guy, not optimizing your compensation package is sacrilegious. Meanwhile we have still have lots of developers who think it's absurd that they'd even be paid $100k and don't want to think about money at all. [0] They drag down compensation for themselves and for others. Unfortunately it's not simply a matter of information. You can tell people that the market rate for their position is $200k/yr but they'll tell you that's absurd, that they think it's too much, or that they'd rather just focus on code. Doctors solved this by sharply restricting supply and making it illegal to practice without being part of their cartel. [0] Seriously, on HN people regularly complain about making too much. Even in this very thread you can find people who are skeptical of high salaries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588504

collyw 10y ago
I was interviewing in Spain a while ago, the salaries are fairly poor here. Some guys with ten years experience were asking for very little. I should have told them to up their requirements. At the same time none of them seemed very enthusiastic at all.

gjem97 10y ago

> Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc In the world of top-tier law firms the "transparency" actually works against the incoming lawyers. You notice the quote in TFA: "Cravath announced that it would pay first-year associates $180k, and many other firms followed suit"? I see that as an implicit agreement to fix prices among these top law firms. I'm sure they're not foolish enough to actually collude on salaries, but Cravath knows exactly what it's doing when it says to the world "this is what we're paying our employees, sound good?"

dahart 10y ago

> The company is pushing him hard to accept the offer well below than his expectations That sounds like leverage. Did he ask for more? Depends on the company. Lots of small companies can't pay what Google does. Also possible that your friend's expectations aren't realistic. > How much can you save on operating costs by paying employees less? In a software business, a lot. Employees are the primary operating cost in many software businesses. > Why are they not transparent like finance guys, lawyers, doctors etc. I could be wrong, but I believe most employees in all industries in the US are either asked or implicitly expected to keep their compensation to themselves. I also believe that salary-transparent organizations outside of public institutions (government, universities, etc) are fairly rare. Salary is default private AFAIK, has been for a long time, and has nothing to do with software vs other industries.

soulnothing 10y ago

Between me and my friends we are readily open up about salary and rates. Not just that we also are open about bills, benefits we pay etc. It's not the salary, but what you take home after all the bills are calculated. I'm in a similar situation, and have had this happen so many times. I explicitely state when starting the process I'm a contractor. I lose wages when I interview, so I want to ensure we're on the same page. It's also an allocation of your companies time, and resources interviewing me. This is my minimum, are you able to meet it. Because between software projects, phone screens, and on sites. That's alot of time sunk into an application, and again your resources interviewing me. I've had so many times, after all the work get to the offer stage and it's 20k to 50k short, after they ensured me they could meet the minimum. I've renegotiated at times, but it's like pulling teeth. One company even tried shaming me, for not putting enough value into the awesome company culture. I'm here because I love your company, but if you don't want me worrying about bills and retirement during working hours then pay me a decent rate. I just got an offer 10k shy of what I asked. I already took 30k off my current rate, because it was a less populated area. I can cross counter negotiate or come up with other ideas. What got me was that it's based on me being a "junior" in the stack they use. I don't like the inflated use of senior. But a good techie/programmer can move from stack to stack. If we were more open about rates and what's avaialble. I think it would do more good.

ryuker16 10y ago

There is a big difference between back-office and front office or finance pay. I'm sure back-office monkeys get jockeyed around for at little as possible in salary negotiations with promises of a huge bonus to help them ignore it. Law pay is great on the upper on end and a shit show on the lower end. Many lawyers are self employed for a reason. Doctor pay IDK much about but given the small pool of applicants, it makes sense to be transparent.