4 ms·

Hiring is broken because employees and employers have asymmetric bargaining power, which leads to unrealistic expectations. No amount of improved candidate scr

Hiring is broken because employees and employers have asymmetric bargaining power, which leads to unrealistic expectations. No amount of improved candidate screening will solve that.

GolDDranks 8y ago
Which side you think as having more bargaining power? What kind of expectations? Those things might depend a bit on depending where you live. I live in Japan, and I have the rough feeling that as a software engineer I have quite a lot more of leverage in bargaining compared to some other professions.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  This is very interesting to me as I work in Japan as well (although working remotely on contracts). I wonder if you wouldn't mind getting in touch with me to chat (my contact details are in my profile). I sometimes think about potentially getting a job with a Japanese company and this is something I worry about. To be honest, I don't even know how to negotiate in Japanese culture :-) Your boss says, "Here is your salary". End of negotiations. (I suppose you can get really drunk at the enkai and accidentally complain about your salary ;-) ).
Zaheer 8y ago
What specific information do employees not have? I'm co-founder of https://www.Levels.fyi https://www.Levels.fyi / https://www.Comp.fyi https://www.Comp.fyi which we built specifically to tackle information asymmetry in the job-seeking process. Would love to get feedback on how we can expand information we collect: hello <at> levels <dot> fyi
- Boxxed 8y ago
  Personally, I never really trust any of these sites because the all claim to have good data, and yet they all report pretty wildly different salary ranges for similar jobs. I have absolutely no idea if I'm actually being paid a reasonable salary, but honestly it's something that's important to me at my current stage in my career.
  - Zaheer 8y ago
    Comp.fyi has over 5k self-reported salaries. Any user generated content will always have slight inaccuracy / variation though we have enough data points to generate a fairly good median figure. You can take a look at the individual submissions on the site and decide for yourself but we've heard from several folks that the salaries are more accurate than other sites.
    - richardhod 8y ago
      Another issue is that location, even 60 miles, can affect salary enormously. Go even to some of the suburbs of London and it's a lot less then inside London. San Francisco Bay Area is a huge anomaly with in California. Berlin commands lowersalaries done the rest of Germany. And to get enough data across different sectors which pay differently and roles which are not quite the same as described elsewhere but titled similarly, seems to be quite difficult. How do your data compare with glassdoor for example?
      - Zaheer 8y ago
        We currently don't have a good story around location. Most of the salaries are in the Bay Area / Seattle. We're working on improving this!!
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    Out of curiosity (I'm not hiring :-) ), what does "reasonable salary" mean to you? Also, how do you evaluate the similarity of jobs? I'm asking because if I were looking to decide if I'm making a reasonable salary, I don't really even know where to start. I mean junior/intermediate/senior developer mean completely different things in different companies. The role of lead developer might be completely different as well. And given those different responsibilities, what is worth more or less money? Knowledge of certain skills (more rare is worth more? probably, but by how much?) Same thing for things like remote vs co-located (how much of a hit should I expect for remote?). Inventions agreement vs. my side projects are my own? The likelihood of a lot of overtime? The current health of the company (high risk company means more pay, I would think???) Not taking a go at you. These are seriously things I think about and was wondering if you had thought about them too :-)

Hiring is broken because employees and employers have asymmetric bargaining power, which leads to unrealistic expectations. No amount of improved candidate screening will solve that.

GolDDranks 8y ago

Which side you think as having more bargaining power? What kind of expectations? Those things might depend a bit on depending where you live. I live in Japan, and I have the rough feeling that as a software engineer I have quite a lot more of leverage in bargaining compared to some other professions.

mikekchar 8y ago
This is very interesting to me as I work in Japan as well (although working remotely on contracts). I wonder if you wouldn't mind getting in touch with me to chat (my contact details are in my profile). I sometimes think about potentially getting a job with a Japanese company and this is something I worry about. To be honest, I don't even know how to negotiate in Japanese culture :-) Your boss says, "Here is your salary". End of negotiations. (I suppose you can get really drunk at the enkai and accidentally complain about your salary ;-) ).

Zaheer 8y ago

What specific information do employees not have? I'm co-founder of https://www.Levels.fyi https://www.Levels.fyi / https://www.Comp.fyi https://www.Comp.fyi which we built specifically to tackle information asymmetry in the job-seeking process. Would love to get feedback on how we can expand information we collect: hello <at> levels <dot> fyi

Boxxed 8y ago
Personally, I never really trust any of these sites because the all claim to have good data, and yet they all report pretty wildly different salary ranges for similar jobs. I have absolutely no idea if I'm actually being paid a reasonable salary, but honestly it's something that's important to me at my current stage in my career.
- Zaheer 8y ago
  Comp.fyi has over 5k self-reported salaries. Any user generated content will always have slight inaccuracy / variation though we have enough data points to generate a fairly good median figure. You can take a look at the individual submissions on the site and decide for yourself but we've heard from several folks that the salaries are more accurate than other sites.
  - richardhod 8y ago
    Another issue is that location, even 60 miles, can affect salary enormously. Go even to some of the suburbs of London and it's a lot less then inside London. San Francisco Bay Area is a huge anomaly with in California. Berlin commands lowersalaries done the rest of Germany. And to get enough data across different sectors which pay differently and roles which are not quite the same as described elsewhere but titled similarly, seems to be quite difficult. How do your data compare with glassdoor for example?
    - Zaheer 8y ago
      We currently don't have a good story around location. Most of the salaries are in the Bay Area / Seattle. We're working on improving this!!
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Out of curiosity (I'm not hiring :-) ), what does "reasonable salary" mean to you? Also, how do you evaluate the similarity of jobs? I'm asking because if I were looking to decide if I'm making a reasonable salary, I don't really even know where to start. I mean junior/intermediate/senior developer mean completely different things in different companies. The role of lead developer might be completely different as well. And given those different responsibilities, what is worth more or less money? Knowledge of certain skills (more rare is worth more? probably, but by how much?) Same thing for things like remote vs co-located (how much of a hit should I expect for remote?). Inventions agreement vs. my side projects are my own? The likelihood of a lot of overtime? The current health of the company (high risk company means more pay, I would think???) Not taking a go at you. These are seriously things I think about and was wondering if you had thought about them too :-)