18 ms·

That dev's salary is higher than mine

178 points by bhoung 16y ago

jarin 16y ago
I think the last point about your best chance for getting a good salary being during the interview is a pretty good one. Salary increases tend to be considered in relation to your current salary, not in relation to your value to the company, unless you do something mind-blowing. Better to get in at $120k and never get a raise than to get in at $80k and get small raises every 6 months.
- deleted 16y ago
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- davesmylie 16y ago
  yeah, most definitely. I used to work for what was basically the largest company in the fairly small country that I live in. Time and time again, new developers (with similar skill sets) would come in off the street at a vastly higher rate than the current herd of developers. Every time the annual pay review came around, any permanent staff would get a token 2-3% raise and that would be it. Team leaders would be given 3% to spread around their team, so the only way for any individual developer to get a more-than-inflation raise, would be at the direct expense of another developer in their team. Not exactly conducive to good team moral! In the end, the only effective way to get a reasonable pay rise was to either change jobs (giving you a chance to jump salary bands), or to leave the company, wait for 6 months or so, and then reapply for another job. The advantage being that this time around, you would know the likelihood of getting a decent raise after you started, so you would be a lot more insistent about coming on-board at a decent rate. Whenever HR was questioned about this policy, their answer was basically to shrug and say something to the effect of: "We need to pay market rate to acquire new talent - once you're working here you're unlikely to leave a stable job, so we don't need to pay you as much money to retain you". Personally, I left (with the intention of coming back in 6 months or so). Five years later, I've yet to get around to reapplying for a job back there =)
latch 16y ago
INAL. Disclosing/discussing your salary, while often forbidden in your employment contract, isn't enforceable in many countries. In the US, some states have specific laws that make such clauses unenforceable (yes, even if you sign the contract). Beyond this, Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act says that you have the "right to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid and protection." The section has more pretty clear wording on just how well-protected you are. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 also protects such discussion/disclosure for the purpose of ensuring you aren't being discriminated against (how can women know that they are being paid less than men if they get fired for talking about salary). I have to believe that other countries have similar laws, but you should obviously double check. Of course, if you piss people off, they can generally get rid of you for some other infraction (or none at all). This is easier in some places (like the US with At-will employment) than others (like the UK where I'm told it's considerably harder).
- enjo 16y ago
  Except in at-will states your employer doesn't need to state a justification to fire you. This means if you discuss your salary and get caught, you have to prove that to be the cause (which is nearly impossible).
  - latch 16y ago
    Not sure why you say "Except..." since that's exactly what I meant and said. Beyond this though, At-will isn't practiced outside of the US (as far as I know). I am curious though with whom the burden of proof lies. If your employer says they fired you for no reason (as they can), but you say they fired you because you discussed your salary...something's gotta give. If you can prove that you discussed your salary before being fired, I would think it would look very badly on your employer. At-will might mean that they can fire you for no reason, but it doesn't mean that they can fire you for any reason.
    - masterzora 16y ago
      Actually, that's exactly what it means. At-will means that either party (the employer or employee) can end the employment for any reason, good or bad, or no reason at all. Anti-discrimination laws have amended this, so the reasons aren't allowed to be "because the person belonged to a protected class", and there are a few exceptions for things such as employers not being allowed to fire employees for refusing to take part in illegal activities, but it is otherwise largely intact and very well can be used to fire somebody discussing their salary.
patio11 16y ago
The takeaways seem to be disconnected to the article. Do we have evidence that the phone calls mattered a hill of beans? That sounds like a post-hoc justification to cover an employee's sudden unexpected possession of reliable market data. I love tradition as much as the next guy, but I think there is virtually no advantage to employees from our cultural norm that comp information is as sensitive as health information. The advantage to employers is, ahem, fairly straightforward: they get to pay systematically lower salaries to people who don't realize that e.g. failing to say one sentence when you're 22 costs you almost a hundred thousand dollars by the time you are thirty. (The contents of that sentence is essentially "Your offer plus $5k.")
- eroded 16y ago
  > failing to say one sentence when you're 22 costs you almost a hundred thousand dollars by the time you are thirty. Wow. As a CS-grad about to take a full-time job offer, I'd surprisingly never thought of this at all. But how easy is it to say "Your offer plus $5k"? What could be the possible consequences of this?
  - Afton 16y ago
    There is virtually no downside to this. Your university/college has coop advisors and employment offices. Go and get some advice for salary negotiating.
  - SamReidHughes 16y ago
    You'll get a mark on your permanent record.
  - paulbaumgart 16y ago
    Worst case, their reply will be "no", and then you can still decide you want to take the original offer. More likely, they'll agree to give you some more money. I'm no expert on the state of the art in salary negotiation books, but http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Make-Minute/dp/1580083102 http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Make-Minute/dp... is decent for getting you in the right mindset.
  - 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
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rorrr 16y ago
Me and my co-workers always share how much we make. It's not a big deal. We understand that some make more, some make a lot less. Most often it's how well you negotiate. It rarely has to do with how great your skills are. If that spreadsheet happened to be in my hands, I wouldn't know how to exploit it. What the author did is ruined the relationship with his manager over a crappy 2% raise. I would just return it, make a joke, and started interviewing. If you're at the bottom while they tell you that you're great, it's a long way up.
- krobertson 16y ago
  Actually, I think what he did with it was what he should have done. I doubt it ruined the relationship, and from the sounds of the article, nothing indicates that. If anything, it could have strengthened it because he kept his word and approached the situation level headed. He didn't go on the offensive when talking to the manager. It would have put the manager on the defensive and surely ruined the relationship then. Instead, he tried to take the approach of what can he do to make more. He finally got constructive feedback, got a clear explanation of why the differences, and asked for harder assignments to prove himself.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    "He didn't go on the offensive when talking to the manager." Right, and in return the manager put the squeeze on him which cost him thousands if not tens of thousands over the years. He should have * gone to the manager first and have asked for a higher raise (in a non-confrontational way). * used it as leverage for a better description of what he needed to do to get a higher raise in the next review round * not let him be pushed in a corner where he's being compared to his colleagues. This is a sure loss position. You need to differentiate yourself so that you are freed from the mental chains of other people's salaries, and you can argue a higher salary on individual merit. This is a rookie mistake I hear so often (and that people have thanked me for pointing it out to them when I discussed with them about their upcoming salary negotiations). (apart from this, it's refreshing not to have post scores visible!)
    - 16y ago
crasshopper 16y ago
Subtitle: the benefits of paying everybody the exact same base salary. Managers, read up. Do you want to make your team members feel like this? Communicate clearly beforehand about what leads to incentive pay (good code) and disincentive pay (chatty phone calls). If you didn't communicate clearly, you don't get to skimp on labour costs.
- tobtoh 16y ago
  Isn't the subtitle: Make sure you keep confidential info confidential? Being cynical, I would say that up to the point the info leaked, you had a good developer at a cheap rate who actually thought he was being paid well. A win win for the manager.
  - danssig 16y ago
    I wouldn't call a situation where said developer discovering one small piece of information changes from him being a happy, productive member into a disgruntled employee a "win win". It could easily lead to a situation where much more value is lost than was ever created from this arbitrage situation (through morale-based negligence, not actual malice).
- aplusbi 16y ago
  I think that people should be able to negotiate their salaries even if it leads to a large disparity in base salary. Without negotiations, companies risk losing talent. However, I think the way raises are calculated needs to be revised. Currently raises are typically some percent of the salary and the range of percentages is fairly narrow (so the disparity remains constant). If instead raises were calculated with the goal of equalizing the salaries of like-performing employees the disparity would fade in a few years. The problem with this, of course, is that lower paid employees get larger raises, which may seem unfair to the better paid employees. This can be solved by making salaries more transparent. Although if salaries were more transparent then you probably wouldn't have as many problems in the first place.
  - deleted 16y ago
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Osiris 16y ago
I often get the feeling that I'm significantly less well paid than others in the company. I've seen pro formas for certain management positions and some ideas on wages in a company we just acquired, and I'm sure I'm pretty low on the list. Part of the disparity is likely negotiating tactics (I know one employee who got a nice raise after getting a competing offer), and the desire of the company to pay the least amount possible. For me, another big part is that my job can't be directly attributed to a revenue stream (we're in the services industry). For those who's jobs are directly paid by contract with the client, they'll pay whatever the client will agree to. For those of us in "overhead", they'll pay as little as possible because it's difficult, if not impossible, to assign a dollar amount to the value that we bring to the company. I would venture to guess that devs that work for software development business get paid more than those that are just in IT at a non-software company.
- jarin 16y ago
  You always have to be willing to walk away. If you're early in your career, this means building up your skills (and certs, if you're in IT) to the point where you feel very confident that you can get another job quickly if necessary. If you're more advanced in your career, it means keeping your networks/skills fresh and possibly doing some freelancing on the side. It's not even just about salary negotiation; knowing you can walk away whenever you want to (and actually believing that you will if you decide to) gives you the freedom to take risks and just have more fun at your job in general.
- yardie 16y ago
  I work in the software and it can be just as hard for developers to figure out where they fit in the revenue stream. I've talked to guys that work IT in large corporations and they make boats more than I do for the equivalent amount of work and expertise. The only difference is they are a company of 5000 and we are a company of 25. I believe the only people that can truly justify their pay with any accurate metric are salespeople. They are paid entirely by commission and no sales means no income so there is no question about what they are paid. They do get additional perks like company cars, expensed meals, etc that fall outside the metrics. So 10 developers work on one product that draws in $2 million of revenue. How do you slice that up? by lines of code, hours worked, bugs squashed? I would also say that large software companies pay developers more than small software companies. But I find this to be the case in almost every industry.
daimyoyo 16y ago
The fact is that while you have the right to negotiate what you're paid, that negotiation works both ways. The truth is that the company will pay you the absolute minimum required to get the work they need. So, it's up to you to know the market rate, and negotiate accordingly. If you aren't paid what you think you're worth, there's no one to blame but you.
tobtoh 16y ago
As a manager, it's been a personally eye-opening experience seeing how companies pay staff and how the constraints a manager has to work under affects their pay rise decisions. People wishfully hope that they get paid based on their contribution/skill level, but there are so many additional factors that come into play. In all the technical teams (sysadmins, dbas etc) that I've managed, I've consistently seen variations of between $50k-100k between the lowest and highest paid person of the same skill (ie I'm not comparing junior to senior staff). The things I learned as a manager: * Always know what the market is paying for your skills. Even if you are not looking for another job, remain subscribed to job websites so you understand what the market is after and what it is paying * Sharing salary information with people you trust is incredibly valuable - you need to know where you stand. It's in the companies best interests to keep everyone in the dark - it means you won't know your true worth. * If you love your job, by all means stay - but make sure you aren't using that as an excuse to cover up the fact that you are scared to make a jump, or that your ego is wrapped up in your job title. There are no medals for long service - and as companies (in my experience) generally only pay market rates to external hires, you are better jumping jobs every few years than staying in the one place. You'll develop more skills, earn more money, and I believe in the long term more employable.
- wheaties 16y ago
  This is as true a post as any. Having actually talked to.coworkers who have left out their salary information by accident I can tell first hand what a silvery world we live in. The guy that has no qualms about leaving the job but at the same time eminates an aura of "won't screw the project over" seems to get more of the nod from management than anyone else. It's much less about skill and contributions than retention.
- brlewis 16y ago
  What job site(s) do you recommend for keeping up with market salaries?
  - eapen 16y ago
    www.glassdoor.com, www.indeed.com/salary
masterzora 16y ago
Any sympathy I had for the author was lost when he said that he would have been happy had he not seen the list. I'm aware of the cognitive biases in effect here but, really, if he was happy with his salary it shouldn't matter if someone else was getting paid more, and if he wasn't happy the list shouldn't have had anything to do with that.
- ilcavero 16y ago
  you are missing the point, is not about money is about repect and professional esteem, if you are a husband and your wife tells you she loves you you will be very happy, but then you find all the other guys she is screwing around with (and loves more than you) and nothing has changed between you two but now you are pretty angry aren't you?
  - masterzora 16y ago
    Tough luck, mate; you happen to be talking to a polyamorist :)
- danssig 16y ago
  Well the part about X is getting more than me is important from a value estimation point of view. He thought he was getting close to market rate until he saw what other people were making. The proper response would have been to start looking around and find out if he actually is being underpaid.
jasonkester 16y ago
Quick poll: Has anybody here ever received a year-end salary increase on the same order of magnitude as what they'd get from simply switching jobs? I didn't think so. Early in your career, your market value increases so fast that there's simply no way a percentage raise can keep up. I remember a situation at my 2nd job after college, where I knew that I was worth almost double what they were paying me. I told them as much and laid out the case as to why. They bent over backward and scraped together something like a 20% raise, which they probably thought was pretty good. Of course, on top of a junior dev salary it was still way out of line with what I should have been at. I polished up the resume and within a couple weeks I accepted an offer for roughly double my pre-raise salary. At my exit interview I told them how much I loved working there (it really was the best job I ever had), but I just couldn't afford to leave that much on the table. It was probably the smartest career move I could have made, and it really drove home the point: You don't adjust your salary through raises in this industry. If you want to be paid what you deserve, you need to switch jobs.
- hessenwolf 16y ago
  Aaarrgghhhhh... I raise my coffee to you. I just got a 2.6% increase after two years - despite that I am a one-guy centre of competence. However, they are paying for me to emigrate (shipping + language courses + letter of guarantee for apartment deposit), replacing the inappropriate job-title-suffix 'assistant' with the awesome prefix 'research', and it is an awesome job.
  - danssig 16y ago
    If you look around you might find you can have all that plus more money. You only live one time, I wouldn't sell myself short if I were you.
    - farout 16y ago
      well said. Time != money Money can be made. Time is much hard to make if at all.
bruce511 16y ago
Understand the following restrictions from the manager's point of view; a) everyone thinks they're smarter / better / faster etc than the folk around them. b) everyone thinks they deserve "above average" pay. c) there is always someone else at the company making more. There's always some company down the road paying more. given these constraints there are always going to be people who think they deserve, or indeed want, more. No matter what he does a bunch of people are gonna be upset. Reminds me of the time I was managing 3 developers, and all 3 independently came to see me to complain they weren't being paid more than the other 2, when in fact they worked harder than the other 2 and were more valuable. Of course they measured "worth" differently to me, but whichever way it turned out 2 were gonna be unhappy.
- gsk 16y ago
  I understand. Isn't that what a manager's job is? Manage constraints? I have worked with some great managers and have a lot of respect for the good ones. However, we can't get our appreciation for our manager get in the way of our compensation. As a non-manager I care more about maximising my compensation than the manager's point of view.
  - bruce511 16y ago
    Fair enough, as long as you recognize it's a zero-sum game. Indeed regardless of what he does it's probably at least two thirds of the people will be unhappy with the outcome. You're obviously welcome to (and should) push for your own cause. My point is that a) you cannot make all the people happy all the time b) chances are, at least some of the time you'll be in the unhappy group. c) if you change jobs every time you're not happy (in this context) you're gonna have a lot of jobs because every manager is working under these same constraints. Or put another way - the rules of the game are not set by the manager - therefore changing jobs to find a better manager (generally speaking - and in this context) is not a fruitful solution. I'm _not_ saying all managers are the same, or you should work for a moronic manager who is bad at their job. I am saying that in order to play the game it's helpful to understand what the rules are. The running-back can blame the quarter-back all day long, but if what he's asking for is unachievable, then no amount of quarter-back-changing will help.
gyardley 16y ago
Since a lot of the comments here are about strategy when negotiating salaries - everyone really should buy a book about negotiation and then find opportunities to practice. (You might not be hopping jobs at the moment, but you can negotiate a lot more than your salary.) I like Roger Dawson's 'Secrets of Power Negotiating' myself.
- eru 16y ago
  > (You might not be hopping jobs at the moment, but you can negotiate a lot more than your salary.) Play boardgames, if you have no other opportunity. (Diplomacy is good, and can be played by email.) Or start haggling in shops.
Unosolo 16y ago
> 5) A developer’s best chance at achieving a maximum salary increase is to negotiate during the hiring process. Once you are on board, you are at the company’s mercy unless you bail. This is true indeed for a worse than average developer: after a year or so the employer learns that they are not really worth the money; at this point it will be hard for employer to cut back the salary. Any developer (good or bad) stands a better chance to get hired by agreeing to lower compensation. Best developers have a good chance of successfully negotiating a significant salary raise after a year or so once they've proven their worth. At this stage they have much more leverage over the employer because it's quite costly to let a good developer go. Overall I feel the author could have negotiated a much better deal.
- petervandijck 16y ago
  That's how it should work, but not how it works.
daniel_iversen 16y ago
The author seems to feel a bit envious/jealous of the other peoples salaries and thinks it's the boss' fault (and by the way the boss is just making up stuff to tell him). My advise would have been to get over it! Salary is not black and white. Was he "happy" with his salary before he learned what others earned? If so who cares what the others make. When starting out "many" years ago I knew with certainty that I was almost paid the lowest of everyone, funnily enough it made me think intellectually about what makes the salary beyond just skill and contribution; your context, past history, current market demand (dot com hire vs post do com hire) etc. I never felt bad for even a second.. Never used it in a netotiation. Chase the passion and strive for excellence and solid dedicated work in a "good" organisation working for great people and the money will usually follow I think (or at least you will feel good and happy). (sent from phone)
Hisoka 16y ago
While salary is certainly important, I can't help but think that it's wiser to work harder on yourself than on your job. In the end, the stress/time that you spend worrying about salary increases and getting underpaid should be spent improving yourself and finding alternative ways of income besides making a living
atacrawl 16y ago
I recently interviewed for a job at a web agency that I was perfect for; literally, the job listing described my resume. Consequently, I nailed the interview. He asked me what my salary requirements were and I told him; he said he'd run it by the powers that be. It was clear they would offer me the job, the only question was the salary offer. So he gets back to me and says they want me but my salary requirement is a bit high. Hmm, okay, what do you have in mind? He throws out a number that is $30-40k lower than my salary requirement. I laughed out loud and said good luck finding the right candidate. I found the same job listing on Craigslist the other day. They lowered the years of experience from 5-7 to TWO, and made a bunch of required experience optional. Good luck with that!
genbattle 16y ago
I sort of feel mixed on this one. I myself took a very low starting wage because the company I work at does gaming technology, and it's in a fairly small town, so my costs are very low. This wouldn't be a problem except that the technology the company uses is so specialized that it can't be applied anywhere else in the world (they have their own programming language and game engine technology which is used exclusively internally). Now, 2 years in, I have the experience out of uni to be able to move to other jobs, but i'm still on a pathetic salary, with no additional benefits or anything, even during crunch times. Since coming to this realization, I have made a plan to do something about it, so I have started learning new programming languages and tools, generating a portfolio of project euler problems, brushing up my CV, etc. Articles like this serve as good motivation/reminder that I need to keep doing this and aim for something better.
mhartl 16y ago
you are at the company’s mercy Only if you have no better options. This guy was building a house and probably had limited savings. His manager knew it. If you want a higher salary, improve your negotiating position—for example, by having enough savings to live for a year at your current lifestyle. Focus on accumulating that cash reserve before building a house or otherwise overextending your finances and you'll suddenly find yourself less of a pushover when performance review time comes along.

178 points by bhoung 16y ago

jarin 16y ago

I think the last point about your best chance for getting a good salary being during the interview is a pretty good one. Salary increases tend to be considered in relation to your current salary, not in relation to your value to the company, unless you do something mind-blowing. Better to get in at $120k and never get a raise than to get in at $80k and get small raises every 6 months.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
davesmylie 16y ago
yeah, most definitely. I used to work for what was basically the largest company in the fairly small country that I live in. Time and time again, new developers (with similar skill sets) would come in off the street at a vastly higher rate than the current herd of developers. Every time the annual pay review came around, any permanent staff would get a token 2-3% raise and that would be it. Team leaders would be given 3% to spread around their team, so the only way for any individual developer to get a more-than-inflation raise, would be at the direct expense of another developer in their team. Not exactly conducive to good team moral! In the end, the only effective way to get a reasonable pay rise was to either change jobs (giving you a chance to jump salary bands), or to leave the company, wait for 6 months or so, and then reapply for another job. The advantage being that this time around, you would know the likelihood of getting a decent raise after you started, so you would be a lot more insistent about coming on-board at a decent rate. Whenever HR was questioned about this policy, their answer was basically to shrug and say something to the effect of: "We need to pay market rate to acquire new talent - once you're working here you're unlikely to leave a stable job, so we don't need to pay you as much money to retain you". Personally, I left (with the intention of coming back in 6 months or so). Five years later, I've yet to get around to reapplying for a job back there =)

latch 16y ago

INAL. Disclosing/discussing your salary, while often forbidden in your employment contract, isn't enforceable in many countries. In the US, some states have specific laws that make such clauses unenforceable (yes, even if you sign the contract). Beyond this, Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act says that you have the "right to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid and protection." The section has more pretty clear wording on just how well-protected you are. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 also protects such discussion/disclosure for the purpose of ensuring you aren't being discriminated against (how can women know that they are being paid less than men if they get fired for talking about salary). I have to believe that other countries have similar laws, but you should obviously double check. Of course, if you piss people off, they can generally get rid of you for some other infraction (or none at all). This is easier in some places (like the US with At-will employment) than others (like the UK where I'm told it's considerably harder).

enjo 16y ago
Except in at-will states your employer doesn't need to state a justification to fire you. This means if you discuss your salary and get caught, you have to prove that to be the cause (which is nearly impossible).
- latch 16y ago
  Not sure why you say "Except..." since that's exactly what I meant and said. Beyond this though, At-will isn't practiced outside of the US (as far as I know). I am curious though with whom the burden of proof lies. If your employer says they fired you for no reason (as they can), but you say they fired you because you discussed your salary...something's gotta give. If you can prove that you discussed your salary before being fired, I would think it would look very badly on your employer. At-will might mean that they can fire you for no reason, but it doesn't mean that they can fire you for any reason.
  - masterzora 16y ago
    Actually, that's exactly what it means. At-will means that either party (the employer or employee) can end the employment for any reason, good or bad, or no reason at all. Anti-discrimination laws have amended this, so the reasons aren't allowed to be "because the person belonged to a protected class", and there are a few exceptions for things such as employers not being allowed to fire employees for refusing to take part in illegal activities, but it is otherwise largely intact and very well can be used to fire somebody discussing their salary.

patio11 16y ago

The takeaways seem to be disconnected to the article. Do we have evidence that the phone calls mattered a hill of beans? That sounds like a post-hoc justification to cover an employee's sudden unexpected possession of reliable market data. I love tradition as much as the next guy, but I think there is virtually no advantage to employees from our cultural norm that comp information is as sensitive as health information. The advantage to employers is, ahem, fairly straightforward: they get to pay systematically lower salaries to people who don't realize that e.g. failing to say one sentence when you're 22 costs you almost a hundred thousand dollars by the time you are thirty. (The contents of that sentence is essentially "Your offer plus $5k.")

eroded 16y ago
> failing to say one sentence when you're 22 costs you almost a hundred thousand dollars by the time you are thirty. Wow. As a CS-grad about to take a full-time job offer, I'd surprisingly never thought of this at all. But how easy is it to say "Your offer plus $5k"? What could be the possible consequences of this?
- Afton 16y ago
  There is virtually no downside to this. Your university/college has coop advisors and employment offices. Go and get some advice for salary negotiating.
- SamReidHughes 16y ago
  You'll get a mark on your permanent record.
- paulbaumgart 16y ago
  Worst case, their reply will be "no", and then you can still decide you want to take the original offer. More likely, they'll agree to give you some more money. I'm no expert on the state of the art in salary negotiation books, but http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Make-Minute/dp/1580083102 http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Your-Salary-Make-Minute/dp... is decent for getting you in the right mindset.
- 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

rorrr 16y ago

Me and my co-workers always share how much we make. It's not a big deal. We understand that some make more, some make a lot less. Most often it's how well you negotiate. It rarely has to do with how great your skills are. If that spreadsheet happened to be in my hands, I wouldn't know how to exploit it. What the author did is ruined the relationship with his manager over a crappy 2% raise. I would just return it, make a joke, and started interviewing. If you're at the bottom while they tell you that you're great, it's a long way up.

krobertson 16y ago
Actually, I think what he did with it was what he should have done. I doubt it ruined the relationship, and from the sounds of the article, nothing indicates that. If anything, it could have strengthened it because he kept his word and approached the situation level headed. He didn't go on the offensive when talking to the manager. It would have put the manager on the defensive and surely ruined the relationship then. Instead, he tried to take the approach of what can he do to make more. He finally got constructive feedback, got a clear explanation of why the differences, and asked for harder assignments to prove himself.
- roel_v 16y ago
  "He didn't go on the offensive when talking to the manager." Right, and in return the manager put the squeeze on him which cost him thousands if not tens of thousands over the years. He should have * gone to the manager first and have asked for a higher raise (in a non-confrontational way). * used it as leverage for a better description of what he needed to do to get a higher raise in the next review round * not let him be pushed in a corner where he's being compared to his colleagues. This is a sure loss position. You need to differentiate yourself so that you are freed from the mental chains of other people's salaries, and you can argue a higher salary on individual merit. This is a rookie mistake I hear so often (and that people have thanked me for pointing it out to them when I discussed with them about their upcoming salary negotiations). (apart from this, it's refreshing not to have post scores visible!)
  - 16y ago

crasshopper 16y ago

Subtitle: the benefits of paying everybody the exact same base salary. Managers, read up. Do you want to make your team members feel like this? Communicate clearly beforehand about what leads to incentive pay (good code) and disincentive pay (chatty phone calls). If you didn't communicate clearly, you don't get to skimp on labour costs.

tobtoh 16y ago
Isn't the subtitle: Make sure you keep confidential info confidential? Being cynical, I would say that up to the point the info leaked, you had a good developer at a cheap rate who actually thought he was being paid well. A win win for the manager.
- danssig 16y ago
  I wouldn't call a situation where said developer discovering one small piece of information changes from him being a happy, productive member into a disgruntled employee a "win win". It could easily lead to a situation where much more value is lost than was ever created from this arbitrage situation (through morale-based negligence, not actual malice).
aplusbi 16y ago
I think that people should be able to negotiate their salaries even if it leads to a large disparity in base salary. Without negotiations, companies risk losing talent. However, I think the way raises are calculated needs to be revised. Currently raises are typically some percent of the salary and the range of percentages is fairly narrow (so the disparity remains constant). If instead raises were calculated with the goal of equalizing the salaries of like-performing employees the disparity would fade in a few years. The problem with this, of course, is that lower paid employees get larger raises, which may seem unfair to the better paid employees. This can be solved by making salaries more transparent. Although if salaries were more transparent then you probably wouldn't have as many problems in the first place.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

Osiris 16y ago

I often get the feeling that I'm significantly less well paid than others in the company. I've seen pro formas for certain management positions and some ideas on wages in a company we just acquired, and I'm sure I'm pretty low on the list. Part of the disparity is likely negotiating tactics (I know one employee who got a nice raise after getting a competing offer), and the desire of the company to pay the least amount possible. For me, another big part is that my job can't be directly attributed to a revenue stream (we're in the services industry). For those who's jobs are directly paid by contract with the client, they'll pay whatever the client will agree to. For those of us in "overhead", they'll pay as little as possible because it's difficult, if not impossible, to assign a dollar amount to the value that we bring to the company. I would venture to guess that devs that work for software development business get paid more than those that are just in IT at a non-software company.

jarin 16y ago
You always have to be willing to walk away. If you're early in your career, this means building up your skills (and certs, if you're in IT) to the point where you feel very confident that you can get another job quickly if necessary. If you're more advanced in your career, it means keeping your networks/skills fresh and possibly doing some freelancing on the side. It's not even just about salary negotiation; knowing you can walk away whenever you want to (and actually believing that you will if you decide to) gives you the freedom to take risks and just have more fun at your job in general.
yardie 16y ago
I work in the software and it can be just as hard for developers to figure out where they fit in the revenue stream. I've talked to guys that work IT in large corporations and they make boats more than I do for the equivalent amount of work and expertise. The only difference is they are a company of 5000 and we are a company of 25. I believe the only people that can truly justify their pay with any accurate metric are salespeople. They are paid entirely by commission and no sales means no income so there is no question about what they are paid. They do get additional perks like company cars, expensed meals, etc that fall outside the metrics. So 10 developers work on one product that draws in $2 million of revenue. How do you slice that up? by lines of code, hours worked, bugs squashed? I would also say that large software companies pay developers more than small software companies. But I find this to be the case in almost every industry.

daimyoyo 16y ago

The fact is that while you have the right to negotiate what you're paid, that negotiation works both ways. The truth is that the company will pay you the absolute minimum required to get the work they need. So, it's up to you to know the market rate, and negotiate accordingly. If you aren't paid what you think you're worth, there's no one to blame but you.

tobtoh 16y ago

As a manager, it's been a personally eye-opening experience seeing how companies pay staff and how the constraints a manager has to work under affects their pay rise decisions. People wishfully hope that they get paid based on their contribution/skill level, but there are so many additional factors that come into play. In all the technical teams (sysadmins, dbas etc) that I've managed, I've consistently seen variations of between $50k-100k between the lowest and highest paid person of the same skill (ie I'm not comparing junior to senior staff). The things I learned as a manager: * Always know what the market is paying for your skills. Even if you are not looking for another job, remain subscribed to job websites so you understand what the market is after and what it is paying * Sharing salary information with people you trust is incredibly valuable - you need to know where you stand. It's in the companies best interests to keep everyone in the dark - it means you won't know your true worth. * If you love your job, by all means stay - but make sure you aren't using that as an excuse to cover up the fact that you are scared to make a jump, or that your ego is wrapped up in your job title. There are no medals for long service - and as companies (in my experience) generally only pay market rates to external hires, you are better jumping jobs every few years than staying in the one place. You'll develop more skills, earn more money, and I believe in the long term more employable.

wheaties 16y ago
This is as true a post as any. Having actually talked to.coworkers who have left out their salary information by accident I can tell first hand what a silvery world we live in. The guy that has no qualms about leaving the job but at the same time eminates an aura of "won't screw the project over" seems to get more of the nod from management than anyone else. It's much less about skill and contributions than retention.
brlewis 16y ago
What job site(s) do you recommend for keeping up with market salaries?
- eapen 16y ago
  www.glassdoor.com, www.indeed.com/salary

masterzora 16y ago

Any sympathy I had for the author was lost when he said that he would have been happy had he not seen the list. I'm aware of the cognitive biases in effect here but, really, if he was happy with his salary it shouldn't matter if someone else was getting paid more, and if he wasn't happy the list shouldn't have had anything to do with that.

ilcavero 16y ago
you are missing the point, is not about money is about repect and professional esteem, if you are a husband and your wife tells you she loves you you will be very happy, but then you find all the other guys she is screwing around with (and loves more than you) and nothing has changed between you two but now you are pretty angry aren't you?
- masterzora 16y ago
  Tough luck, mate; you happen to be talking to a polyamorist :)
danssig 16y ago
Well the part about X is getting more than me is important from a value estimation point of view. He thought he was getting close to market rate until he saw what other people were making. The proper response would have been to start looking around and find out if he actually is being underpaid.

jasonkester 16y ago

Quick poll: Has anybody here ever received a year-end salary increase on the same order of magnitude as what they'd get from simply switching jobs? I didn't think so. Early in your career, your market value increases so fast that there's simply no way a percentage raise can keep up. I remember a situation at my 2nd job after college, where I knew that I was worth almost double what they were paying me. I told them as much and laid out the case as to why. They bent over backward and scraped together something like a 20% raise, which they probably thought was pretty good. Of course, on top of a junior dev salary it was still way out of line with what I should have been at. I polished up the resume and within a couple weeks I accepted an offer for roughly double my pre-raise salary. At my exit interview I told them how much I loved working there (it really was the best job I ever had), but I just couldn't afford to leave that much on the table. It was probably the smartest career move I could have made, and it really drove home the point: You don't adjust your salary through raises in this industry. If you want to be paid what you deserve, you need to switch jobs.

hessenwolf 16y ago
Aaarrgghhhhh... I raise my coffee to you. I just got a 2.6% increase after two years - despite that I am a one-guy centre of competence. However, they are paying for me to emigrate (shipping + language courses + letter of guarantee for apartment deposit), replacing the inappropriate job-title-suffix 'assistant' with the awesome prefix 'research', and it is an awesome job.
- danssig 16y ago
  If you look around you might find you can have all that plus more money. You only live one time, I wouldn't sell myself short if I were you.
  - farout 16y ago
    well said. Time != money Money can be made. Time is much hard to make if at all.

bruce511 16y ago

Understand the following restrictions from the manager's point of view; a) everyone thinks they're smarter / better / faster etc than the folk around them. b) everyone thinks they deserve "above average" pay. c) there is always someone else at the company making more. There's always some company down the road paying more. given these constraints there are always going to be people who think they deserve, or indeed want, more. No matter what he does a bunch of people are gonna be upset. Reminds me of the time I was managing 3 developers, and all 3 independently came to see me to complain they weren't being paid more than the other 2, when in fact they worked harder than the other 2 and were more valuable. Of course they measured "worth" differently to me, but whichever way it turned out 2 were gonna be unhappy.

gsk 16y ago
I understand. Isn't that what a manager's job is? Manage constraints? I have worked with some great managers and have a lot of respect for the good ones. However, we can't get our appreciation for our manager get in the way of our compensation. As a non-manager I care more about maximising my compensation than the manager's point of view.
- bruce511 16y ago
  Fair enough, as long as you recognize it's a zero-sum game. Indeed regardless of what he does it's probably at least two thirds of the people will be unhappy with the outcome. You're obviously welcome to (and should) push for your own cause. My point is that a) you cannot make all the people happy all the time b) chances are, at least some of the time you'll be in the unhappy group. c) if you change jobs every time you're not happy (in this context) you're gonna have a lot of jobs because every manager is working under these same constraints. Or put another way - the rules of the game are not set by the manager - therefore changing jobs to find a better manager (generally speaking - and in this context) is not a fruitful solution. I'm _not_ saying all managers are the same, or you should work for a moronic manager who is bad at their job. I am saying that in order to play the game it's helpful to understand what the rules are. The running-back can blame the quarter-back all day long, but if what he's asking for is unachievable, then no amount of quarter-back-changing will help.

gyardley 16y ago

Since a lot of the comments here are about strategy when negotiating salaries - everyone really should buy a book about negotiation and then find opportunities to practice. (You might not be hopping jobs at the moment, but you can negotiate a lot more than your salary.) I like Roger Dawson's 'Secrets of Power Negotiating' myself.

eru 16y ago
> (You might not be hopping jobs at the moment, but you can negotiate a lot more than your salary.) Play boardgames, if you have no other opportunity. (Diplomacy is good, and can be played by email.) Or start haggling in shops.

Unosolo 16y ago

> 5) A developer’s best chance at achieving a maximum salary increase is to negotiate during the hiring process. Once you are on board, you are at the company’s mercy unless you bail. This is true indeed for a worse than average developer: after a year or so the employer learns that they are not really worth the money; at this point it will be hard for employer to cut back the salary. Any developer (good or bad) stands a better chance to get hired by agreeing to lower compensation. Best developers have a good chance of successfully negotiating a significant salary raise after a year or so once they've proven their worth. At this stage they have much more leverage over the employer because it's quite costly to let a good developer go. Overall I feel the author could have negotiated a much better deal.

petervandijck 16y ago
That's how it should work, but not how it works.

daniel_iversen 16y ago

The author seems to feel a bit envious/jealous of the other peoples salaries and thinks it's the boss' fault (and by the way the boss is just making up stuff to tell him). My advise would have been to get over it! Salary is not black and white. Was he "happy" with his salary before he learned what others earned? If so who cares what the others make. When starting out "many" years ago I knew with certainty that I was almost paid the lowest of everyone, funnily enough it made me think intellectually about what makes the salary beyond just skill and contribution; your context, past history, current market demand (dot com hire vs post do com hire) etc. I never felt bad for even a second.. Never used it in a netotiation. Chase the passion and strive for excellence and solid dedicated work in a "good" organisation working for great people and the money will usually follow I think (or at least you will feel good and happy). (sent from phone)

Hisoka 16y ago

While salary is certainly important, I can't help but think that it's wiser to work harder on yourself than on your job. In the end, the stress/time that you spend worrying about salary increases and getting underpaid should be spent improving yourself and finding alternative ways of income besides making a living

atacrawl 16y ago

I recently interviewed for a job at a web agency that I was perfect for; literally, the job listing described my resume. Consequently, I nailed the interview. He asked me what my salary requirements were and I told him; he said he'd run it by the powers that be. It was clear they would offer me the job, the only question was the salary offer. So he gets back to me and says they want me but my salary requirement is a bit high. Hmm, okay, what do you have in mind? He throws out a number that is $30-40k lower than my salary requirement. I laughed out loud and said good luck finding the right candidate. I found the same job listing on Craigslist the other day. They lowered the years of experience from 5-7 to TWO, and made a bunch of required experience optional. Good luck with that!

genbattle 16y ago

I sort of feel mixed on this one. I myself took a very low starting wage because the company I work at does gaming technology, and it's in a fairly small town, so my costs are very low. This wouldn't be a problem except that the technology the company uses is so specialized that it can't be applied anywhere else in the world (they have their own programming language and game engine technology which is used exclusively internally). Now, 2 years in, I have the experience out of uni to be able to move to other jobs, but i'm still on a pathetic salary, with no additional benefits or anything, even during crunch times. Since coming to this realization, I have made a plan to do something about it, so I have started learning new programming languages and tools, generating a portfolio of project euler problems, brushing up my CV, etc. Articles like this serve as good motivation/reminder that I need to keep doing this and aim for something better.

mhartl 16y ago

you are at the company’s mercy Only if you have no better options. This guy was building a house and probably had limited savings. His manager knew it. If you want a higher salary, improve your negotiating position—for example, by having enough savings to live for a year at your current lifestyle. Focus on accumulating that cash reserve before building a house or otherwise overextending your finances and you'll suddenly find yourself less of a pushover when performance review time comes along.