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Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentil

Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income. The harder I push on comp the more I get each time. I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companies bidding against each other. Meanwhile I get offered nothing in terms of growth from every employer I have ever worked for ever. Literally never happened my entire career. Just this time after I already had an undisclosed offer in hand I got a promotion with no meaningful compensation increase. It was the first promotion of my 15 year career! Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone.

dfrage 7y ago
> Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone. I've never tried it myself, but it's supposed to be common knowledge that perhaps more than half the time a company is forced into granting you a raise to match an offer you have in hand, they're only doing it long enough to arrange replacing you. There are certainly many reported exceptions to this, but why take a chance with a company that's already shown they don't respect you?
- salarycommenter 7y ago
  I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on. I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate. Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise. I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong. Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.
  - hnuser355 7y ago
    I agree. No need to make it emotional and confrontational with a “respect” interpretation in my opinion. Of course this is hard but if I can do it I imagine the best approach will be to simply make the best choices for my career while recognizing management has their own bizarre incentives I will never understand.
  - dfrage 7y ago
    The bottom line the US is that respect is ultimately measured in dollars. I won't argue there isn't some toxicity to that, but a company that doesn't reward the vastly increased value of its developer employees as they move from entry level to journeymen to experts will suffer greatly from it, often fatally. If employers can't afford market salaries, they should think very hard about the issue and see if they can't address it in other way, or accept that they're going to deserve and get no loyalty from most of their employees.
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      It kind of reminds me of the Brain Drain Microsoft experienced in the mid 2000s and saw them fall behind apple and google as the top of the tech food chain.
luminati 7y ago
Off topic - but your username and the vast majority of your commenting history is primarily on salaries. Curious - is there some backstory to it? Feel you got severely underpaid? To each and his own, but bay area engineers pissing about making ONLY 300K has always come off as being a bunch of spoilt brats - especially considering the vast majority just gem/npm/pip install this and that and glue all the code together. Of course the market deserves to pay accordingly but I think it's just a big bubble that's going to crash soon - since there is a huge mismatch between demand and supply of CRUD glue programmers (which most programmers are). My guess is that once Lambda School, Make School, ISAs all become mainstream and the pool of CRUD glue programmers matches the demand all salaries will come crashing down. I think overall it's a good thing for society in general (and especially the tech towns). ps: Pardon my tone. I work in the space industry. Maybe I have an axe to grind ;)
- pro-duct 7y ago
  The hard part of engineering isn't the ability to glue packages and microservices together. Those tasks are literally done by entry level, bottom of the totem pole engineers. You're saying that all bankers do is run models and spit out valuations, and all a chef does is put stuff in a pan. I'm not speaking toward your argument of a bubble bursting, but engineering isn't going anywhere. And where else would an entry level engineer start than at the bottom, npm installing the package that solves their problem? It's using these concepts every day that builds good engineers who think of tomorrow's solutions, and can architect it both technically and socially. That is the line between software development and computer science. Engineers paid under 120k that whine aren't doing anything beyond their immediate usefulness, i.e. 'just doing their jobs.' The engineers that get paid 300k are usually the ones running the show, and writing significantly less / no code.
  - ubertaco 7y ago
    Consider the scaling factor for salaries; My salary is on the high end in my area, but would be on the low end of a living wage in the Bay Area. My salary is in the neighborhood of 120k; I'm a senior-level engineer with almost a decade of experience, involved in some of the high-level planning tasks you describe.
dbancajas 7y ago
how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?
- swiftcoder 7y ago
  No. If you give your current salary during a negotiation, the other end is going to come right back with that salary +5% (at best). Hidden information is your friend in any negotiation, but especially here, since the hiring folks also know how variable industry salary ranges are. You want to put the first move in their court - decline to give your current salary at all costs, and ideally also avoid offering up your preferred compensation number until they've made a first offer. The only point where quoting your current salary makes sense is if the company offers less than you are currently making, and you are in such a bad situation at your current where you'd be willing to absorb the pain of changing jobs for no additional money.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    This advice functionally doesn’t work. They’ll just intentionally lowball the first offer and then say well they can’t read your mind so you need to tell them what you want. A better strategy is to really research competitive wages and anchor high by honestly saying what you want. If they can’t come close, then walk away. If they ask you to compromise, tell them you’re not going to negotiate against yourself by stating any specific compromises, that you arrived at what you stated by considering what you’re worth, and that you’re happy to consider any kind of offer they would like to make, but that to accept an offer you have to believe it is competitive for the value you can add. Any arguments about salaries at different cohorts of companies, or salary bands based on years of experience, just outright ignore and tell them if it’s a dealbreaker, you understand but aren’t going to compromise just because of their pay bands or random assertions about market analysis.
    - mamon 7y ago
      First of all, they cannot force you to give them your current salary. My standard answer to such question is a slightly more polite version of "it's none of your bussiness". And if they don't want to provide a salary range, and ask you to come up with the number, then just give them your current salary +50% and see how they react. Of course you might then need to step down a little, and accept your current salary + 20-30% instead, but that's still pretty good.
noego 7y ago
You went from 300k to ~460k? Well done. Have you considered sharing your experiences around how you negotiated that?

dfrage 7y ago

> Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone. I've never tried it myself, but it's supposed to be common knowledge that perhaps more than half the time a company is forced into granting you a raise to match an offer you have in hand, they're only doing it long enough to arrange replacing you. There are certainly many reported exceptions to this, but why take a chance with a company that's already shown they don't respect you?

salarycommenter 7y ago
I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on. I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate. Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise. I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong. Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.
- hnuser355 7y ago
  I agree. No need to make it emotional and confrontational with a “respect” interpretation in my opinion. Of course this is hard but if I can do it I imagine the best approach will be to simply make the best choices for my career while recognizing management has their own bizarre incentives I will never understand.
- dfrage 7y ago
  The bottom line the US is that respect is ultimately measured in dollars. I won't argue there isn't some toxicity to that, but a company that doesn't reward the vastly increased value of its developer employees as they move from entry level to journeymen to experts will suffer greatly from it, often fatally. If employers can't afford market salaries, they should think very hard about the issue and see if they can't address it in other way, or accept that they're going to deserve and get no loyalty from most of their employees.
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    It kind of reminds me of the Brain Drain Microsoft experienced in the mid 2000s and saw them fall behind apple and google as the top of the tech food chain.

luminati 7y ago

Off topic - but your username and the vast majority of your commenting history is primarily on salaries. Curious - is there some backstory to it? Feel you got severely underpaid? To each and his own, but bay area engineers pissing about making ONLY 300K has always come off as being a bunch of spoilt brats - especially considering the vast majority just gem/npm/pip install this and that and glue all the code together. Of course the market deserves to pay accordingly but I think it's just a big bubble that's going to crash soon - since there is a huge mismatch between demand and supply of CRUD glue programmers (which most programmers are). My guess is that once Lambda School, Make School, ISAs all become mainstream and the pool of CRUD glue programmers matches the demand all salaries will come crashing down. I think overall it's a good thing for society in general (and especially the tech towns). ps: Pardon my tone. I work in the space industry. Maybe I have an axe to grind ;)

pro-duct 7y ago
The hard part of engineering isn't the ability to glue packages and microservices together. Those tasks are literally done by entry level, bottom of the totem pole engineers. You're saying that all bankers do is run models and spit out valuations, and all a chef does is put stuff in a pan. I'm not speaking toward your argument of a bubble bursting, but engineering isn't going anywhere. And where else would an entry level engineer start than at the bottom, npm installing the package that solves their problem? It's using these concepts every day that builds good engineers who think of tomorrow's solutions, and can architect it both technically and socially. That is the line between software development and computer science. Engineers paid under 120k that whine aren't doing anything beyond their immediate usefulness, i.e. 'just doing their jobs.' The engineers that get paid 300k are usually the ones running the show, and writing significantly less / no code.
- ubertaco 7y ago
  Consider the scaling factor for salaries; My salary is on the high end in my area, but would be on the low end of a living wage in the Bay Area. My salary is in the neighborhood of 120k; I'm a senior-level engineer with almost a decade of experience, involved in some of the high-level planning tasks you describe.

dbancajas 7y ago

how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?

swiftcoder 7y ago
No. If you give your current salary during a negotiation, the other end is going to come right back with that salary +5% (at best). Hidden information is your friend in any negotiation, but especially here, since the hiring folks also know how variable industry salary ranges are. You want to put the first move in their court - decline to give your current salary at all costs, and ideally also avoid offering up your preferred compensation number until they've made a first offer. The only point where quoting your current salary makes sense is if the company offers less than you are currently making, and you are in such a bad situation at your current where you'd be willing to absorb the pain of changing jobs for no additional money.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  This advice functionally doesn’t work. They’ll just intentionally lowball the first offer and then say well they can’t read your mind so you need to tell them what you want. A better strategy is to really research competitive wages and anchor high by honestly saying what you want. If they can’t come close, then walk away. If they ask you to compromise, tell them you’re not going to negotiate against yourself by stating any specific compromises, that you arrived at what you stated by considering what you’re worth, and that you’re happy to consider any kind of offer they would like to make, but that to accept an offer you have to believe it is competitive for the value you can add. Any arguments about salaries at different cohorts of companies, or salary bands based on years of experience, just outright ignore and tell them if it’s a dealbreaker, you understand but aren’t going to compromise just because of their pay bands or random assertions about market analysis.
  - mamon 7y ago
    First of all, they cannot force you to give them your current salary. My standard answer to such question is a slightly more polite version of "it's none of your bussiness". And if they don't want to provide a salary range, and ask you to come up with the number, then just give them your current salary +50% and see how they react. Of course you might then need to step down a little, and accept your current salary + 20-30% instead, but that's still pretty good.

noego 7y ago

You went from 300k to ~460k? Well done. Have you considered sharing your experiences around how you negotiated that?