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My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Counteroffers can be great tools to increase your salary, whether you accep

by byoung2 10y ago

My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Counteroffers can be great tools to increase your salary, whether you accept or reject them. In my case it was purely about money. I was making $117k and I wanted a raise, but the company only wanted to give options. If it were an early stage Google or Uber, I'd go for it, but not this company. I wanted cash. They played the old "not in the budget, lets revisit in 6 months game" but my ace in the hole was an unsecured network share drive where I found an offer letter for a coworker showing he made $135k. I was genuinely ready to leave so I contacted my recruiter (who had placed me at 2 consecutive companies) and she got me an interview at CAA (the Hollywood talent agency) as a node.js dev. They beat my salary with an offer of $125k, plus some perks like 2 week company shutdown around the holidays, half day before every gov't holiday, generous bonuses and 401k match. The downsides were a commute to Century City, and having to wear a suit everyday. I went back to my employer and handed in my resignation and told them about the offer. They came back (unsolicited) with a counteroffer of $140k and an extra week of vacation. I took it and told my recruiter. She told me horror stories about people who take counteroffers who get fired or quit within months and how I would never work in this town again, etc. I stayed at the company for 2 more years and was promoted to director of engineering, and got raises to $155k and then $175k before resigning to work freelance. On my way out the company was begging me to stay and I could only imagine what they'd offer if I chose to entertain them.

econner 10y ago
Why did you quit to freelance?
- beachstartup 10y ago
  probably more money, and more time. people get what they ask for. when you make nearly 200k working for someone else you quickly start to realize what you are actually worth in the open economy compared to someone who is trying to imprison you professionally.
- DominikR 10y ago
  If you have the experience, contacts and social skills (very underestimated by many professionals in our field) you can make much more as a freelancer/contractor. I'm now self employed for 4 years and I earn 6x as much as I earned in my last job. (though I believe I was underpaid in my last job)
  - not_kurt_godel 10y ago
    I'm sure many people would be interested to learn more details about your current gig. How much are you making now? How did you get clients initially? What sorts of development do you do now?
    - ams6110 10y ago
      >How did you get clients initially? He said it, contacts and social skills. One other way is referrals but you generally need to have a few clients before that starts happening.
      - ryandrake 10y ago
        > "contacts and social skills" I'm curious too, because that's what everyone says, but they stop there. It's always: 1. Have contacts and social skills 2. ??? 3. Make 6X as a freelancer! Let's say I'm starting with contacts and social skills. And a mortgage and a full-time job that lets me pay it. Any good books or blog posts that describe what's in step 2?
        morgante 10y ago
        Just keep in contact with your network and make sure they're aware that you're freelancing and what sort of projects you do. I know it sounds simplistic, but the hard part is building a network. Once you have it, they do most of the work for you, especially if you keep them abreast and happy (ex. reciprocal referrals).
        OvidNaso 10y ago
        The reason it always seems to stop at step one is because the experience feels like a natural consequence of those two factors. A step two would be something like "exercise those social skills with your contacts" and that seems redundant. 'social skills' encompasses discussing professional situations and (unfortunately or not) being a person your 'contacts' are attracted to and comfortable with extending opportunity to.
- byoung2 10y ago
  Why did you quit to freelance? I have a daughter (turning 4 this month) and I wanted to work from home and have a more flexible schedule. I applied for a few companies that offered remote work, but the schedules weren't that flexible (they all seemed to have core hours, except WordPress, which was a top contender). I also love to travel...my wife and I average 6 weeks of vacation and a dozen or more countries per year, and that has been a problem at every company for me so far. She is a registered nurse, so she can easily get a month off at a time. I work for a company (Surge) that guarantees 40 hours a week, though I regularly exceed that, either through clients who don't mind overtime, or when clients overlap. The team is distributed, and the schedules are completely flexible (I spent a month at our condo in the Philippines in February, and was able to put in work despite the time difference). If I had a time machine, I would go back and do this sooner. EDIT: If you want me to pass along your resume to Surge, email me (contact info in profile)
  - cr1895 10y ago
    >She is a registered nurse, so she can easily get a month off at a time Tangential, but...a friend of mine is an RN in an ICU who works nights (how he copes with the long hours is beyond me). He's struggled to get a single week off, much less an entire month without quarrel. Turnover is high, they're shortstaffed, etc. What is different about your wife's hospital (maybe there's less pressure and more nurses available in other sections of a hospital)?
    - byoung2 10y ago
      She works for Kaiser in the DOU (direct observation unit, ICU stepdown). To get a calendar month off she schedules it almost a year in advance. 2 weeks off she can do with a month notice. A week off usually only requires switching a day or two with another nurse since she only works 3 days a week.
      - tunap 10y ago
        Do her 3 days = 72 hours? I've known a few medicos/1st responders, including a brother, who do this(take a month/week off, etc). It sounds enviable to most until you see/hear/experience what their 24 hour shift often entails.
morsch 10y ago
[H]ow I would never work in this town again I can see where the arguments about trust etc are coming from (not that I necessarily agree), but that one I don't get at all.
- byoung2 10y ago
  She said that neither she nor anyone else at her recruiting firm would work with me ever again, which lasted about a year before they started emailing me job listings again. Be prepared if you accept a counteroffer after working with a recruiter, they will definitely hold it against you (that fee is 20% of your first year salary or more), plus it makes them look bad to the company they're working for.
  - dahauns 10y ago
    Whoa...so she basically tried to blackmail you into declining the counteroffer? What the hell?
  - amyjess 10y ago
    > She said that neither she nor anyone else at her recruiting firm would work with me ever again If she actually thought that was tantamount to "you'll never work in this town again", she needs a reality check. Oh, this one recruiter firm won't work with me, whatever will I do? I've worked at four different companies. In order, I got those jobs through Craigslist (2007), Monster (2012), Indeed (2014), and a friend referral (2016). None of them involved recruiters. Also, during the times I've been looking, I talked to a very large number of recruiters. If one of them blackballed me, it wouldn't affect me because I talked to so many other recruiting firms, and even then I ended up getting all my jobs without them.
    - fecak 10y ago
      If one recruiting firm won't represent you as a candidate, it's no loss, as there are thousands more that will - and recruiting firms aren't comparing notes with other firms on who took a counteroffer. It's a threat that is totally unrealistic. As a recruiter, I'd actually say that technologists are more likely to be able to damage a recruiter's career than the other way around. If word gets out about a recruiter not behaving properly, that word can travel much faster in the worker space than word travels in the recruiter space.
fidget 10y ago
> my ace in the hole was an unsecured network share drive where I found an offer letter for a coworker showing he made $135k. Eww
- byoung2 10y ago
  I agree on many levels...the coworker was an idiot and a project manager, not an engineer, but had an MBA, which likely appealed to the founders, who were both "business guys". Also, it was silly to have sensitive info on a shared drive where anyone could see it. It was probably less than ethical for me to use that info in negotiations, but it couldn't be unseen.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I don't think it was unethical. In fact, finding out there is a salary disparity between peers is probably one of the most common ways that large salary raises occur. For that reason, and also because that disparity may result in legal liability if the peers have differing demographic profiles, some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee.
    - signa11 10y ago
      > ... some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee. after this, i was wondering if there is a way to get the average salary of a group without revealing / knowing actual numbers ? edit-001: ok, one thing that i can think of: 1. take a big number, and add your salary to it. this becomes the 'token' for the next guy. 2. he adds his salary to the number. etc. etc. once you have the final number, remove the original number, and divide by number of folks. since this scheme appears to be so trivial, i am now wondering what i did wrong ?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - bzbarsky 10y ago
fecak 10y ago
I believe it. Especially when it's a young recruiter, not used to people changing their minds, and really needing the money. Once you've been recruiting for a while you realize that you don't celebrate a placement until they show up for work (not to mention there is usually a guarantee period of say 90 days).
- sitkack 10y ago
  The recruiters that are the most pissed, are the ones that have already spent the money. They should relax, no they have a good person and sell them to someone else for even more money in 18 months. Coercion is not a good quality in a person.
donretag 10y ago
I once was searching for a file locally (Windows) and my search ended up searching the shared drive of my company, which contained a zip file. Inside this zip file were excel spreadsheets containing the salaries of all employees (around 50 IIRC). The instructions from the CEO were to limit raises due to the economic conditions at the time (very true). Apparently the tech manager was not as good fighting for us, since our department (4-6?) averaged the lowest raises. The departments with managers better at negotiating got average raises that were higher than the CEO's policies.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  This is one of the many benefits to working for a high performing manager. They will have more clout to argue on your behalf for raises and promotions. Not to mention it's easier to grow around higher caliber people.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    Some of the best advice I've ever gotten, and I'm so glad I followed it, is to ignore details like what the product is entirely, and pick the team to join solely based on the manager. It's worked out very well. There was a survey I remember reading earlier this year about how the single biggest factor causing dissatisfaction at work is having a bad boss.
    - quantumhobbit 10y ago
      How do you identify a good manager? I ask because I've had both good and bad but no indication of which is which at the beginning. Some seemed super engaged when interviewing but disappeared once I started working.
      - pm90 10y ago
        Its much easier if its within the same org, of course, but even in another company, you can possibly talk to the people who will work with you under the same manager and ask them. Unfortunately, there isn't any surefire way of knowing whether you will work under a good manager, just as there is no surefire way for the company to know you will be a stellar employee. Personally, what I look for the most is honesty. Even if the product/company is crap, if the people working on it are honest about their current state and where they want to be in the future, I find that much more interesting than a well-known established company whose manager is just OK.
charlesdm 10y ago
Out of interest, why didn't you counter the counteroffer at $140k? Realistically, you could've probably gotten $150-155k on the spot, right there. They basically just showed their hand telling they want/need you to stay.
- kardashian007 10y ago
  Exactly. It's possible to make many tens of thousands more in mere seconds if couched right in those situations.
  - byoung2 10y ago
    I am quite good at negotiating raises, and I know when I can push and when to hold back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122526
    - dlhavema 10y ago
      i definitely am not. that is one skill i hope to learn before i move on. Granted, i'm pretty happy where i'm at right now, but it could useful in the future...
      - fecak 10y ago
        One helpful tip - if you're not good at it, try to avoid doing it in real-time. Negotiating via email is much easier for beginners. In face-to-face communications, those not accustomed to negotiating will often give in just based on misread cues. For example, if someone asks how much you want, and you say a number, stop talking until you get a response. Many beginner negotiators will interpret silence as disagreement (even a short amount of silence) and quickly add "but that number is negotiable". I have this happen all the time when I'm doing profiles of new candidates, particularly when they are junior. They say "I"m looking for 60K, but I am willing to negotiate". I usually respond by telling them they have already backtracked before receiving any objections. Practice or get some coaching, and until that time, try to do it via email.
technofiend 10y ago
I worked at a savings and loan back during the 1988/1989 crisis that took them out and we were no different. Hired as a 'C' programmer I was quickly turned into a Sybase DBA, sys-admin and anything else I could handle. In fact I ended up writing an in-house payroll system so like you I had inside information. When the sys-admin left I asked for a raise since I was doing his job and my own. They made some excuses about his better education (he was a few hours away from his PhD in music) and the fact the company was under FDIC control. I found a new job at a local oil company but contracting: my new salary was more than double what the bank laid. My bosses exact words when I quit were "Oh, shit" because he knew all along he'd been screwing me and he was never going to get a programmer/DBA/UNIX sys-admin for $27k/yr. He asked if he could make a counter offer it was with great satisfaction I was able to reply "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"
- co_dh 10y ago
  This line makes my day: "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"
- engi_nerd 10y ago
  Oh, the joys of sticking it to a particularly evil boss. I got this exact same satisfaction when I left my job working on sounding rockets. The boss was a micromanager who was eventually demoted (and then left the company) after I left, because he had driven away more than half his department. Two days before I left, he had been threatening, in a roundabout way, to fire me. But when I handed in my resignation letter, he was eager to keep me and asked what it would take to keep me. I named the salary my next job was offering. "You'll make more than I do now!" he said.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  I had a similar experience. I was brought on as a junior fresh out of university and quickly made a name for myself in the company, I wasn't the top developer by any means, but after a few years and a couple of pay rises, the £32k/year they were paying me (in central London) was definitely much lower than what I should have been getting. One of my colleagues had the year before, and had recently got funding for his startup. He offered myself and another developer a job, so we went to tell our boss together who obviously wasn't too pleased. He then spoke to us separately about negotiations, and he offered me £55k/year. The look on his face when I said "Sorry, but they are offering me much more than that" was priceless. A few years later (after all the team I'd worked with had left) I went back to what was left of the company as a contractor for a few months. I was earning more per week, than I was per month, when I first started.
technofiend 10y ago
I worked at a savings and loan back during the 1988/1989 crisis that took them out and we were no different. Hired as a 'C' programmer I was quickly turned into a Sybase DBA, sys-admin and anything else I could handle. In fact I ended up writing an in-house payroll system so like you I had inside information. When the sys-admin left I asked for a raise since I was doing his job and my own. They made some excuses about his better education (he was a few hours away from his PhD in music) and the fact the company was under FDIC control. I found a new job at a local oil company but contracting: my new salary was more than double what the bank paid. My boss's exact words when I quit were "Oh, shit" because he knew all along he'd been screwing me and he was never going to get a programmer/DBA/UNIX sys-admin for $27k/yr. He asked if he could make a counter offer it was with great satisfaction I was able to reply "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"
loeg 10y ago
I, too, have had good results accepting a counteroffer. The problem was pay; I got two offers and asked for more pay; they fixed it (40% salary raise and much better bonuses). This was probably 4 years ago; I'm coming up on 6 years with this employer. Not everyone who accepts counters leaves immediately.
- acveilleux 10y ago
  When the main pain point is money, counter offers can be great. When the problem is the job itself or the environment, accepting counter is probably a bad play (except maybe a lateral move in the org, if large enough.) That's my experience anyway.
  - dlhavema 10y ago
    I can agree with that, i interviewed at a couple of other places when i worked at my last job, mainly to see what i was worth, and found it was clearly higher than i was making. I loved the team i was working with and didn't really want to leave. i ended up getting a pretty decent size raise, and planned on staying a while... Sadly 6 months or so later started multiple rounds of layoffs, while i didn't get hit, our team size went down 30% in one round of layoffs. Being my team was the reason i stayed, i ended up leaving another 6 months later...
manyxcxi 10y ago
I was hired as a Software Architect at one company and after about a year and a half on the job we were without a CTO and nobody over my direct manager, who essentially managed the team internally (very well) but wasn't the public persona that I was within the company. Being an agency we needed a lot of internal self promotion as a team, as well as making our sales team aware of what we were capable of and doing that they may not know, as well as being part of pitches that were more technical than average. I drafted a new role that formalized all those things I had been doing and some, suggested a meager salary bump (like 5-7% when year over year bumps were between 3-5). My manager was on board, but getting leadership buy in besides "that's a great idea" languished for months. I finally got an offer from a different company that offered all that and more, at a large salary bump (over 25%), large bonuses, options, and a number of other perks just not available to my privately held 200 person company. The huge problem with the new role was at least 30% travel (which means more like 60) and I had a baby and a baby on the way. I offered my resignation and they begged for 24 hours to put together a counter. Their counter was a blanket okay of my plan, with a twist. I went from Architect to Director and became my boss' boss. They couldn't quite match the salary "because that would make me the highest paid employee at the company" but offered some creative ways to make bonuses to cover the gap. I always preached the 'never accept a counter' theory, but I'd liked working at this company more than anywhere else and the thought of traveling that much (I used to travel a lot before) was awful sounding. I accepted and was gone 16 months later- so I made it! Honestly though, as much as I loved the work and the creativity we didn't have the time to really get deep into interesting tech. If we did, it was skunkworks projects (I started the skunkworks lab with beer and pizza) that meant working before and after hours and weekends to ever get a concept done. I didn't leave for just any other company though, I went and started my own. I'm glad I accepted that counter, I never would've had the chance to take my current leap if I had left for the other company. I've semi-changed my stance now. If you trust your team and leadership, and trust that you are going to be given the power to affect the changes you were looking for that had you looking to leave- then accept the counter. If it's the same ol' same ol' but you have a higher salary, you will wind up leaving sooner rather than later.
pmarreck 10y ago
This here is a smart negotiator
intoverflow2 10y ago
>I was making $117k >They beat my salary with an offer of $125k This barely seems worth switching companies for after tax.
- johnward 10y ago
  $700 a month isn't worth switching jobs?
jrockway 10y ago
> I would never work in this town again, etc. Of course they contacted you in 6 months and begged you to reconsider their offer, right? ;)
VikingCoder 10y ago
I worked somewhere for four years with no raises. I turned in my resignation, and my boss offered to double my salary on the spot. No. Thanks. I'll work somewhere that doesn't need me to RESIGN to be willing to pay me what I'm worth.
coldtea 10y ago
>My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Sounds like he/she didn't make a wise career choice. So why the duck did they feel qualified to guide others to jobs?
- gogopuppygogo 10y ago
  Recruiting is a sales job. Its the only sales job I know of where you can sell a product, the contract can be signed and the product can change it's mind and you don't get paid. It's brutal.

by byoung2 10y ago

econner 10y ago

Why did you quit to freelance?

beachstartup 10y ago
probably more money, and more time. people get what they ask for. when you make nearly 200k working for someone else you quickly start to realize what you are actually worth in the open economy compared to someone who is trying to imprison you professionally.
DominikR 10y ago
If you have the experience, contacts and social skills (very underestimated by many professionals in our field) you can make much more as a freelancer/contractor. I'm now self employed for 4 years and I earn 6x as much as I earned in my last job. (though I believe I was underpaid in my last job)
- not_kurt_godel 10y ago
  I'm sure many people would be interested to learn more details about your current gig. How much are you making now? How did you get clients initially? What sorts of development do you do now?
  - ams6110 10y ago
    >How did you get clients initially? He said it, contacts and social skills. One other way is referrals but you generally need to have a few clients before that starts happening.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      > "contacts and social skills" I'm curious too, because that's what everyone says, but they stop there. It's always: 1. Have contacts and social skills 2. ??? 3. Make 6X as a freelancer! Let's say I'm starting with contacts and social skills. And a mortgage and a full-time job that lets me pay it. Any good books or blog posts that describe what's in step 2?
      - morgante 10y ago
        Just keep in contact with your network and make sure they're aware that you're freelancing and what sort of projects you do. I know it sounds simplistic, but the hard part is building a network. Once you have it, they do most of the work for you, especially if you keep them abreast and happy (ex. reciprocal referrals).
      - OvidNaso 10y ago
        The reason it always seems to stop at step one is because the experience feels like a natural consequence of those two factors. A step two would be something like "exercise those social skills with your contacts" and that seems redundant. 'social skills' encompasses discussing professional situations and (unfortunately or not) being a person your 'contacts' are attracted to and comfortable with extending opportunity to.
byoung2 10y ago
Why did you quit to freelance? I have a daughter (turning 4 this month) and I wanted to work from home and have a more flexible schedule. I applied for a few companies that offered remote work, but the schedules weren't that flexible (they all seemed to have core hours, except WordPress, which was a top contender). I also love to travel...my wife and I average 6 weeks of vacation and a dozen or more countries per year, and that has been a problem at every company for me so far. She is a registered nurse, so she can easily get a month off at a time. I work for a company (Surge) that guarantees 40 hours a week, though I regularly exceed that, either through clients who don't mind overtime, or when clients overlap. The team is distributed, and the schedules are completely flexible (I spent a month at our condo in the Philippines in February, and was able to put in work despite the time difference). If I had a time machine, I would go back and do this sooner. EDIT: If you want me to pass along your resume to Surge, email me (contact info in profile)
- cr1895 10y ago
  >She is a registered nurse, so she can easily get a month off at a time Tangential, but...a friend of mine is an RN in an ICU who works nights (how he copes with the long hours is beyond me). He's struggled to get a single week off, much less an entire month without quarrel. Turnover is high, they're shortstaffed, etc. What is different about your wife's hospital (maybe there's less pressure and more nurses available in other sections of a hospital)?
  - byoung2 10y ago
    She works for Kaiser in the DOU (direct observation unit, ICU stepdown). To get a calendar month off she schedules it almost a year in advance. 2 weeks off she can do with a month notice. A week off usually only requires switching a day or two with another nurse since she only works 3 days a week.
    - tunap 10y ago
      Do her 3 days = 72 hours? I've known a few medicos/1st responders, including a brother, who do this(take a month/week off, etc). It sounds enviable to most until you see/hear/experience what their 24 hour shift often entails.

morsch 10y ago

[H]ow I would never work in this town again I can see where the arguments about trust etc are coming from (not that I necessarily agree), but that one I don't get at all.

byoung2 10y ago
She said that neither she nor anyone else at her recruiting firm would work with me ever again, which lasted about a year before they started emailing me job listings again. Be prepared if you accept a counteroffer after working with a recruiter, they will definitely hold it against you (that fee is 20% of your first year salary or more), plus it makes them look bad to the company they're working for.
- dahauns 10y ago
  Whoa...so she basically tried to blackmail you into declining the counteroffer? What the hell?
- amyjess 10y ago
  > She said that neither she nor anyone else at her recruiting firm would work with me ever again If she actually thought that was tantamount to "you'll never work in this town again", she needs a reality check. Oh, this one recruiter firm won't work with me, whatever will I do? I've worked at four different companies. In order, I got those jobs through Craigslist (2007), Monster (2012), Indeed (2014), and a friend referral (2016). None of them involved recruiters. Also, during the times I've been looking, I talked to a very large number of recruiters. If one of them blackballed me, it wouldn't affect me because I talked to so many other recruiting firms, and even then I ended up getting all my jobs without them.
  - fecak 10y ago
    If one recruiting firm won't represent you as a candidate, it's no loss, as there are thousands more that will - and recruiting firms aren't comparing notes with other firms on who took a counteroffer. It's a threat that is totally unrealistic. As a recruiter, I'd actually say that technologists are more likely to be able to damage a recruiter's career than the other way around. If word gets out about a recruiter not behaving properly, that word can travel much faster in the worker space than word travels in the recruiter space.

fidget 10y ago

> my ace in the hole was an unsecured network share drive where I found an offer letter for a coworker showing he made $135k. Eww

byoung2 10y ago
I agree on many levels...the coworker was an idiot and a project manager, not an engineer, but had an MBA, which likely appealed to the founders, who were both "business guys". Also, it was silly to have sensitive info on a shared drive where anyone could see it. It was probably less than ethical for me to use that info in negotiations, but it couldn't be unseen.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I don't think it was unethical. In fact, finding out there is a salary disparity between peers is probably one of the most common ways that large salary raises occur. For that reason, and also because that disparity may result in legal liability if the peers have differing demographic profiles, some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee.
  - signa11 10y ago
    > ... some companies threaten to terminate anyone who reveals his or her salary to another employee. after this, i was wondering if there is a way to get the average salary of a group without revealing / knowing actual numbers ? edit-001: ok, one thing that i can think of: 1. take a big number, and add your salary to it. this becomes the 'token' for the next guy. 2. he adds his salary to the number. etc. etc. once you have the final number, remove the original number, and divide by number of folks. since this scheme appears to be so trivial, i am now wondering what i did wrong ?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - bzbarsky 10y ago

fecak 10y ago

I believe it. Especially when it's a young recruiter, not used to people changing their minds, and really needing the money. Once you've been recruiting for a while you realize that you don't celebrate a placement until they show up for work (not to mention there is usually a guarantee period of say 90 days).

sitkack 10y ago
The recruiters that are the most pissed, are the ones that have already spent the money. They should relax, no they have a good person and sell them to someone else for even more money in 18 months. Coercion is not a good quality in a person.

donretag 10y ago

I once was searching for a file locally (Windows) and my search ended up searching the shared drive of my company, which contained a zip file. Inside this zip file were excel spreadsheets containing the salaries of all employees (around 50 IIRC). The instructions from the CEO were to limit raises due to the economic conditions at the time (very true). Apparently the tech manager was not as good fighting for us, since our department (4-6?) averaged the lowest raises. The departments with managers better at negotiating got average raises that were higher than the CEO's policies.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
This is one of the many benefits to working for a high performing manager. They will have more clout to argue on your behalf for raises and promotions. Not to mention it's easier to grow around higher caliber people.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Some of the best advice I've ever gotten, and I'm so glad I followed it, is to ignore details like what the product is entirely, and pick the team to join solely based on the manager. It's worked out very well. There was a survey I remember reading earlier this year about how the single biggest factor causing dissatisfaction at work is having a bad boss.
  - quantumhobbit 10y ago
    How do you identify a good manager? I ask because I've had both good and bad but no indication of which is which at the beginning. Some seemed super engaged when interviewing but disappeared once I started working.
    - pm90 10y ago
      Its much easier if its within the same org, of course, but even in another company, you can possibly talk to the people who will work with you under the same manager and ask them. Unfortunately, there isn't any surefire way of knowing whether you will work under a good manager, just as there is no surefire way for the company to know you will be a stellar employee. Personally, what I look for the most is honesty. Even if the product/company is crap, if the people working on it are honest about their current state and where they want to be in the future, I find that much more interesting than a well-known established company whose manager is just OK.

charlesdm 10y ago

Out of interest, why didn't you counter the counteroffer at $140k? Realistically, you could've probably gotten $150-155k on the spot, right there. They basically just showed their hand telling they want/need you to stay.

kardashian007 10y ago
Exactly. It's possible to make many tens of thousands more in mere seconds if couched right in those situations.
- byoung2 10y ago
  I am quite good at negotiating raises, and I know when I can push and when to hold back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122526
  - dlhavema 10y ago
    i definitely am not. that is one skill i hope to learn before i move on. Granted, i'm pretty happy where i'm at right now, but it could useful in the future...
    - fecak 10y ago
      One helpful tip - if you're not good at it, try to avoid doing it in real-time. Negotiating via email is much easier for beginners. In face-to-face communications, those not accustomed to negotiating will often give in just based on misread cues. For example, if someone asks how much you want, and you say a number, stop talking until you get a response. Many beginner negotiators will interpret silence as disagreement (even a short amount of silence) and quickly add "but that number is negotiable". I have this happen all the time when I'm doing profiles of new candidates, particularly when they are junior. They say "I"m looking for 60K, but I am willing to negotiate". I usually respond by telling them they have already backtracked before receiving any objections. Practice or get some coaching, and until that time, try to do it via email.

technofiend 10y ago

I worked at a savings and loan back during the 1988/1989 crisis that took them out and we were no different. Hired as a 'C' programmer I was quickly turned into a Sybase DBA, sys-admin and anything else I could handle. In fact I ended up writing an in-house payroll system so like you I had inside information. When the sys-admin left I asked for a raise since I was doing his job and my own. They made some excuses about his better education (he was a few hours away from his PhD in music) and the fact the company was under FDIC control. I found a new job at a local oil company but contracting: my new salary was more than double what the bank laid. My bosses exact words when I quit were "Oh, shit" because he knew all along he'd been screwing me and he was never going to get a programmer/DBA/UNIX sys-admin for $27k/yr. He asked if he could make a counter offer it was with great satisfaction I was able to reply "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"

co_dh 10y ago
This line makes my day: "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"
engi_nerd 10y ago
Oh, the joys of sticking it to a particularly evil boss. I got this exact same satisfaction when I left my job working on sounding rockets. The boss was a micromanager who was eventually demoted (and then left the company) after I left, because he had driven away more than half his department. Two days before I left, he had been threatening, in a roundabout way, to fire me. But when I handed in my resignation letter, he was eager to keep me and asked what it would take to keep me. I named the salary my next job was offering. "You'll make more than I do now!" he said.
lucaspiller 10y ago
I had a similar experience. I was brought on as a junior fresh out of university and quickly made a name for myself in the company, I wasn't the top developer by any means, but after a few years and a couple of pay rises, the £32k/year they were paying me (in central London) was definitely much lower than what I should have been getting. One of my colleagues had the year before, and had recently got funding for his startup. He offered myself and another developer a job, so we went to tell our boss together who obviously wasn't too pleased. He then spoke to us separately about negotiations, and he offered me £55k/year. The look on his face when I said "Sorry, but they are offering me much more than that" was priceless. A few years later (after all the team I'd worked with had left) I went back to what was left of the company as a contractor for a few months. I was earning more per week, than I was per month, when I first started.

technofiend 10y ago

I worked at a savings and loan back during the 1988/1989 crisis that took them out and we were no different. Hired as a 'C' programmer I was quickly turned into a Sybase DBA, sys-admin and anything else I could handle. In fact I ended up writing an in-house payroll system so like you I had inside information. When the sys-admin left I asked for a raise since I was doing his job and my own. They made some excuses about his better education (he was a few hours away from his PhD in music) and the fact the company was under FDIC control. I found a new job at a local oil company but contracting: my new salary was more than double what the bank paid. My boss's exact words when I quit were "Oh, shit" because he knew all along he'd been screwing me and he was never going to get a programmer/DBA/UNIX sys-admin for $27k/yr. He asked if he could make a counter offer it was with great satisfaction I was able to reply "Vick, I now make more than you do. What's your counter offer?"

loeg 10y ago

I, too, have had good results accepting a counteroffer. The problem was pay; I got two offers and asked for more pay; they fixed it (40% salary raise and much better bonuses). This was probably 4 years ago; I'm coming up on 6 years with this employer. Not everyone who accepts counters leaves immediately.

acveilleux 10y ago
When the main pain point is money, counter offers can be great. When the problem is the job itself or the environment, accepting counter is probably a bad play (except maybe a lateral move in the org, if large enough.) That's my experience anyway.
- dlhavema 10y ago
  I can agree with that, i interviewed at a couple of other places when i worked at my last job, mainly to see what i was worth, and found it was clearly higher than i was making. I loved the team i was working with and didn't really want to leave. i ended up getting a pretty decent size raise, and planned on staying a while... Sadly 6 months or so later started multiple rounds of layoffs, while i didn't get hit, our team size went down 30% in one round of layoffs. Being my team was the reason i stayed, i ended up leaving another 6 months later...

manyxcxi 10y ago

I was hired as a Software Architect at one company and after about a year and a half on the job we were without a CTO and nobody over my direct manager, who essentially managed the team internally (very well) but wasn't the public persona that I was within the company. Being an agency we needed a lot of internal self promotion as a team, as well as making our sales team aware of what we were capable of and doing that they may not know, as well as being part of pitches that were more technical than average. I drafted a new role that formalized all those things I had been doing and some, suggested a meager salary bump (like 5-7% when year over year bumps were between 3-5). My manager was on board, but getting leadership buy in besides "that's a great idea" languished for months. I finally got an offer from a different company that offered all that and more, at a large salary bump (over 25%), large bonuses, options, and a number of other perks just not available to my privately held 200 person company. The huge problem with the new role was at least 30% travel (which means more like 60) and I had a baby and a baby on the way. I offered my resignation and they begged for 24 hours to put together a counter. Their counter was a blanket okay of my plan, with a twist. I went from Architect to Director and became my boss' boss. They couldn't quite match the salary "because that would make me the highest paid employee at the company" but offered some creative ways to make bonuses to cover the gap. I always preached the 'never accept a counter' theory, but I'd liked working at this company more than anywhere else and the thought of traveling that much (I used to travel a lot before) was awful sounding. I accepted and was gone 16 months later- so I made it! Honestly though, as much as I loved the work and the creativity we didn't have the time to really get deep into interesting tech. If we did, it was skunkworks projects (I started the skunkworks lab with beer and pizza) that meant working before and after hours and weekends to ever get a concept done. I didn't leave for just any other company though, I went and started my own. I'm glad I accepted that counter, I never would've had the chance to take my current leap if I had left for the other company. I've semi-changed my stance now. If you trust your team and leadership, and trust that you are going to be given the power to affect the changes you were looking for that had you looking to leave- then accept the counter. If it's the same ol' same ol' but you have a higher salary, you will wind up leaving sooner rather than later.

pmarreck 10y ago

This here is a smart negotiator

intoverflow2 10y ago

>I was making $117k >They beat my salary with an offer of $125k This barely seems worth switching companies for after tax.

johnward 10y ago
$700 a month isn't worth switching jobs?

jrockway 10y ago

> I would never work in this town again, etc. Of course they contacted you in 6 months and begged you to reconsider their offer, right? ;)

VikingCoder 10y ago

I worked somewhere for four years with no raises. I turned in my resignation, and my boss offered to double my salary on the spot. No. Thanks. I'll work somewhere that doesn't need me to RESIGN to be willing to pay me what I'm worth.

coldtea 10y ago

>My recruiter practically broke down in tears when I accepted a counteroffer in 2013. Sounds like he/she didn't make a wise career choice. So why the duck did they feel qualified to guide others to jobs?

gogopuppygogo 10y ago
Recruiting is a sales job. Its the only sales job I know of where you can sell a product, the contract can be signed and the product can change it's mind and you don't get paid. It's brutal.