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Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

420 points by Fiveplus 6y ago

Brushfire 6y ago
This is all generally very good advice but I’m equally amused at the ridiculous portrayal of “businessmen” throughout this post; most people do not see themselves this way and it’s sort of goofy to think they do. But that isn’t terribly important to the message. Oh, and one other thing, if you’re at a 10-person ish startup, definitely don’t act like a company that is 1000ish. You’ll lose. And so your hiring practices should generally not align with what is outlined here.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  The point of the post is that you should see yourself as a businessman, even if it feels goofy: you're not begging for crumbs, you're negotiating price with another business.
- TehShrike 6y ago
  When I first read this post over 7 years ago, it led to me negotiating an extra 6k/year on my next job, for an employer with <5 developers and <20 employees. The portrayal of "businessmen" was also valuable to me. You're correct that most people don't think of themselves this way – but they should. Reading this post was one of my first steps of many towards feeling like an active agent selling a service, rather than a passive agent looking for a corporation to glom on to. There are plenty of companies who want to hire active agents, and they don't correlate perfectly with employee count.
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
most of my bosses have made me feel petty when asking for an extra $10k/yr i've found that when working for corporations, it's all about the number you ask for up front. after that, it takes quite a bit to get more than the average 3-5% merit pay bump. how FANG companies work with the $500k/yr total comp for average engineers, i have no clue... i think from what i've seen from levels.fyi the most common salaries are $160k-$180k/yr. after that, you get your salary again in stock options apparently... not sure what the interview process or job workload must be like. how sustainable is programming? $75/hr to basically just write SQL tables and APIs that are advanced CRUD wrappers with light business logic on them? seems ripe for automation.
- dudul 6y ago
  I think programming is moving away from automation. We're no longer writing code or fancy algorithms. We are plumbers connecting systems and APIs. However, the true value of the engineer in 2020 is that they're the one trying to make sense of idiotic product requirements. They're the ones turning shiny, half assed mockups into real products. That cannot be automated. If the value was only in pissing lines of code there wouldn't be a single engineer left in the US. There is a reason massive outsourcing failed decades ago. But yeaj, if you're in there to build SQL tables its pretty boring.
  - MetallicCloud 6y ago
    I've read similar things about how most programming work is just plumbing together existing code fairly regularly on HN. Is that really what most people do? Is it a web development thing? That's not my experience at all, and it sounds mind numbingly awful.
    - pianoben 6y ago
      How often do you write hashtables? JSON serializers? Mutexes? HTTP clients? Transaction managers? Connection pools? In my last job as a mobile engineer I can claim that I wrote code all day, and that's true to a point, but most of that code is shepherding data from one format to another, using libraries that I didn't write, causing the UI (whose framework was written by someone else) to update. And you know what? It's still a hard and rewarding job! Having pieces to plumb together hasn't made our jobs easier or dumber, it's just raised the level of abstraction at which we work day-to-day.
      - braythwayt 6y ago
        There is a “Red Queen’s Race” between the accelerating productivity gains of abstractions, frameworks, libraries, and other stacks we can leverage, balanced against the fact that each one is a leaky abstraction, and the leaks interfere with each other in weird, mysterious ways. Programming with all these tools is wonderful. Debugging problems in such am environment, not-so-much. But net, it’s a massive win.
jaaron 6y ago
Speaking as a hiring manager for 10+ years: If I've done my job right, I've sourced engineers experienced, confident and smart enough to negotiate and ask good questions around compensation. I want to make sure that we have an open conversation so that both sides can move forward to the actual job at hand. Tip: California based firms are required to give you a salary range if you ask for it and they can't ask you for your salary history, just your comp expectations.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Is there anything to prevent that range from being given as "$30K to $999K/yr"?
  - jaaron 6y ago
    I am not an employment lawyer, but I suspect if the employer gives you a crazy range, it's a violation and could be reported. The law does clarify it's a range and doesn't need to include bonuses or equity estimates. And to be frank, if you're interviewing somewhere and they come back with that answer, I think that tells you most everything you need to know about whether you should work there or not.
  - refurb 6y ago
    This is a valid point. Some salary bands are very wide. For my former employer, it was $140k to $245k. The mid-point is a good starting point, but it’s such a wide band it doesn’t give you much to anchor to. And this is not just “HR told me this”. It’s the actual number in the compensation scheme visible to hiring managers. And there is significant overlap between levels. The next level up is something like $170k to $260k.
  - legulere 6y ago
    If they state 999K then that is what you should be asking for.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  Although most of the variation in comp for engineers is in equity, so a salary band will only do so much for you.
pnevares 6y ago
Previous conversation on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262732
quicklime 6y ago
> We’ve been talking about your employer as an abstraction, but in the instant case you’re talking to an actual person. Let’s call him Bob. It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but Bob is not super motivated to do so, because Bob is not spending Bob’s money to hire you. Bob is spending Bob’s budget. Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of his hiring budget: you get a new Macbook if you convince Bob to give you $5k extra, but Bob gets (if he is anomalously lucky) a dinner at TGIFridays if he convinces you to take $5k less. I've been saying this to people for years, and I'm glad to hear someone else say it. As a hiring manager, I'm not paying your salary out of my own pocket, so I don't give a shit if you want (and get) an extra $10k. My job is to fill the headcount that I've got, so as long as it fits within budget, whatever. I don't think anything less, or more, of people who ask for extra - I usually forget by the time the person starts the job. It's not my money. I don't care. And neither does "the company" - a corporation is an abstract legal entity that is incapable of human emotions. It's not going to get mad at you because it thinks you're greedy. Don't anthropomorphize it. At least at my company (and from what I understand, most companies) it's a lot easier to get a pay bump when you're negotiating the offer, than it is to get a raise/promotion. When you're getting a job offer, you're a one-off special case and there are a lot of unknowns. When it's performance review season, everyone is potentially getting a salary increase, so there are tighter budgets to stick to. My advice is to get what you can up front, and worry a bit less during the annual cycle.
- doopy1 6y ago
  I think companies under a certain size and it's a different story.
  - aiqq 6y ago
    in large companies companies incompetent individuals, such as this sample, occasionally slip through the net. but they get pruned out pretty soon, but no sooner than whoever hired this slacker.
    - coldtea 6y ago
castawayonaship 6y ago
I loved this article and it's honestly life changing. It takes a bit of time to realize how much you're in the driver seat as a candidate. Especially with competing offers, there's no way you should be accepting an offer with less (unless its a small startup) if you have another offering more. A 5 minute call that can increase net worth by large multipliers is probably worth preparing for. With the help of https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi and other salary tools out there, it's incredible how open a lot of this information is. You just need to put in a bit of time and effort.
- ry454 6y ago
  Without leverage these negotiating techniques are empty bluff. I mean, they could help to get a 5k/year pay bump, but they won't get you from 150k to 750k. The really important ingredient is stakes, insider knowledge, network of high rank friends who help you behind the scenes. But once you have that, the negotiating skills will come naturally: even if you aren't as fluent in business-talk like the author, even if what you say sounds clumsy, the fluent and experienced negotiator on the other side of the table will quickly notice that lazy tricks don't work on you, that you see his bluff and most importantly that you actually have other options. In my experience, in many times my firm negotiating position ended up with offer being withdrawn (from reputable, not FANG, but very well known firms).
- langitbiru 6y ago
  "other salary tools out there" -> I am developing one of them, called PredictSalary (https://predictsalary.com https://predictsalary.com). To put in a nutshell, I try to utilize Deep Learning to predict salary range from job opportunities.
zuhayeer 6y ago
Huge fan of this article. It gets a ton of credit for helping us incept and start Levels.fyi. Borrowing from Geico, internally we joke that 5 minutes can make you 15% or (way) more if you negotiate. And it's super true.
- travbrack 6y ago
  Thank you. edit: Any idea why levels.fyi numbers are so much higher than glassdoor? I haven't been able to find any explanation for this phenomenon. The glassdoor numbers I'm looking at are supposed to be total comp.
  - zuhayeer 6y ago
    I suspect it's a combination of several things. 1) Outdated data. For our aggregate salary values, whenever possible we try to ensure our data is from within the last trailing year of information. 2) Leveling. Our salaries are broken down more granularly by level, something that's a little more ambiguous on Glassdoor. Since levels aren't explicitly defined, salaries might get brought down by incorrect bucketing. 3) Stock compensation. Until recently, Glassdoor hasn't done a great job of capturing the stock component of total compensation. That has likely led to deflated aggregate values. I'm sure there's probably more to it than what meets the eye, but our focus has always been to make sure we have the most accurate information independent of other salary sites. Also why we collect offer letters / W-2s to corroborate our self reported data: https://levels.fyi/verified/ https://levels.fyi/verified/
  - throwaway250 6y ago
    Most salaries reported in Glassdoor are several years old as Zuhayeer said. However, Glassdoor doesn’t even adjust them for inflation. So any statistic based on them will be horribly inaccurate. From personal experience too I can tell you that levels.fyi is far more accurate than Glassdoor. P.S. I’d also like to thank Zuhayeer for building levels.fyi. It’s an awesome tool and helped me greatly in negotiating.
ddgcdgdfg 6y ago
Ot: I've been wondering... are lower taxes for lower salaries actually a good approach? If you imagine they are fines or punishments we should punish low salaries more. I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. It converts into productivity more efficiently like that. (Tax here in NL is 39% with a discount over the first 8k or so)
- jiofih 6y ago
  > I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. How would that work? The tax bands are progressive, so you will never get less money from a higher salary and tax rate. That would be pretty dumb.
  - grandmczeb 6y ago
    If you consider government benefits too, there are "cliffs"[1] at low incomes where an increase in income can result in less take home. But probably not at the salaries a typical developer would get. [1] http://i.imgur.com/kM6yxab.png http://i.imgur.com/kM6yxab.png
    - jiofih 6y ago
      Poster said NL. Not US.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      That's a fascinating chart. I would like to reference it in the future, but I cannot find a source for the data. Did you compile it yourself? Have you written your data and methodology somewhere?
      - grandmczeb 6y ago
        It's from this presentation[1], but you can find similar analysis for lots of different places if you Google around (e.g. this one[2] for Illinois or this one[3] for Georgia). [1] https://www.slideshare.net/kevinkmac/welfare-failure https://www.slideshare.net/kevinkmac/welfare-failure [2] http://nebula.wsimg.com/92d8ac7d5aaf3b2df9d4dfaaddcde435?AccessKeyId=EEB98E648E3097DCA50D&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/92d8ac7d5aaf3b2df9d4dfaaddcde435?Acc... [3] https://georgiaopportunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/GCO1611_White_Paper_Online.pdf https://georgiaopportunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/GC...
juped 6y ago
Not useful advice. I need a way to signal how little money I'm willing to take to make me more attractive to bottom-feeding companies, because I unfortunately need to eat.
- neverartful 6y ago
  In that case, you've lost on potentially higher salary (assuming you've got the qualifications to be attractive to the company for the specific position).
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Intentionally signalling that you are worth less is also a signal that you are a risky or bad hire (for example: that no competitor is interested in you), unless you are looking for a minimum wage job.
  - juped 6y ago
    Yeah, that's why it's tricky.
legerdemain 6y ago
> Virtually any amount of money available to you personally is > mouse droppings to your prospective employer. > They will not feel offended if you ask for it. Two comments. (a) I interviewed with Wealthfront last year. They offered $160K, which was lower cash comp than any of my other offers. I tried to open the door to negotiation. The recruiter and the dev lead then got on the phone with me to awkwardly explain that no, they don't negotiate with candidates, and what makes me feel like their offer is inadequate? Would I really want to miss the opportunity to work for an exciting company over some marginal sum of money? Yes. (b) The money you ask for is a pittance on the company's balance sheet, but you're not negotiating with the company. You're negotiating with someone in recruiting. From hanging out with HR, they talk a lot of shit about candidates who they consider difficult, and have a lot of ways of making the experience less pleasant for the candidate, even if it's not clear what this means for the company's ability to attract talent.
- shuckles 6y ago
  In the case of Wealthfront, it may be a cultural matter as their CEO specifically believes that negotiating your offer is a negative indicator: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130708151000-56725-offer-collectors-don-t-get-good-jobs https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130708151000-56725-offer-co...
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Hilarious, a buyer telling sellers that the it’s in the seller’s best interest to not research their market price. In the finance sector nonetheless.
    - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
      That post really doesn’t make sense to me. It’s always in your interest to shop around. The author calls them “collectors”, sounds like he’s upset he loses good candidates over money and wants to rationalize his loss.
      - 6y ago
kuharich 6y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3501366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3501366
throwarayes 6y ago
I spent several years underpaid at a lifestyle company as a specialist. I didn't want the golden handcuffs, I didn't want the pressure. I've learned this was a big mistake If you're paid at market value for your particular set of skills, your employer is making a commitment to use them. When they underpay you, you won't get to do the awesome thing that you do as much. So by being paid more there's incentive for the employer to waste less of your time. This can include up to letting you go when they decide they don't want to do what's in your wheelhouse (a feature not a bug from my POV). And none of that's to mention the long term financial downside. And the fact that the "lifestyle company" really wasn't fewer hours at the end of the day
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  But most people's job isn't making money, it's making something that someone else monetizes. Profitability is extremely weakly correlated to the work. Adtech pays better than research despite being easier and boringer.
- throwawayincog 6y ago
  I've managed to feel like my career has spiraled down while my salary has spiraled up after leaving a more "lifestyle"(let's say heavily culture focused, yet still performance focused) startup. I'm not sure anyone has a solid understanding of my work history.. Company was just acquired and I'm stressed AF trying to figure out if I can even make it to my 1 year RSU cliff to start seeing my retention comp. Not super interested in being back at a big public company working this far down the hierarchy(been working directly for company founders/C-level most of the past 8 years). So, yeah.. I'm would tend to agree to an extent but certainly not absolutely true. I'll feel it's likely I'll end up back at a "lifestyle" business sooner or later.
- tome 6y ago
  What's a "lifestyle company"? Is it this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business
  - throwarayes 6y ago
SPBS 6y ago
Forget about letting employers come up with a number first, in Singapore it's a common practice for HR/Recruiters to directly ask for your last drawn salary (so that they can match it/bump it up by a fixed amount). It's not illegal to refuse to answer, but it's also not illegal for them to ask in the first place. Companies legitimately view last drawn salary as a way to assess a candidate's market value here.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  That's why you need a competing offer. Otherwise your previous job is your BATNA.
- TehShrike 6y ago
  I got my favorite response from https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03/kalzumeus-podcast-episode-12-salary-negotiation-with-josh-doody/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03/kalzumeus-podcast-episo... – variations on "It sounds like you’re trying to qualify me for a range, and if that’s the case, then I’m happy to let you know if your range is in the ballpark"
peteretep 6y ago
Related: https://careersjs.com/developers/how-to-get-paid-more/ https://careersjs.com/developers/how-to-get-paid-more/
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Patrick has done a lot of great work in his life, but thks blog post is one the most socially valuable, to help workers get more of the pie the billionaires hold.
GoodJokes 6y ago
Imagine a world where you don't have to put on a show to get paid fairly.
- cpach 6y ago
  Sure, I guess that would be convenient. I think the field of game theory can help us to explain why salaries and salary negotiations are the way they are. And who gets to define what is fair? For example, why do programmers get much much higher salaries than nurses or janitors? It might not be fair. But it’s simply supply and demand in action.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  These talks are the mechanism by how society figures out what is fair, because the world is too complex otherwise.
TA1337 6y ago
One thing that happened to me a few years ago that pretty surprised me, went something like this: I applied to 2 FAANGs, got offers from both. The recruiter from the first company to give me an offer, told me it is pretty much non negotiable, "we have a little wiggle room but don't expect much, it's an amazing offer". It was higher than my then salary, but not by a huge margin. Then company B got back to me with a significantly higher offer both in terms of RSUs (x2) and base salary. Well, turned out the non negotiable offer was very negotiable after all, and company A quickly upped their offer above company B's. At this stage it just became a back and forth bidding war, that ended after a couple of weeks with two almost identical offers, 50% higher than the initial TC.
- posedge 6y ago
  It amazes me that, under the right circumstances, the wiggle room can reach levels as high as 50%. I wonder what they were thinking when they made you the initial offer.
  - drpebcak 6y ago
    They were hoping to discourage him from asking for more. It’s always negotiable if the company wants to hire you, they just typically don’t want you to feel that way.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      It's only negotiable because he got an offer from the next FAANG. Recruiters are not going to assume that you can enter any FAANG at the highest possible level. It was incredibly lucky from the OP to get 2 offers and at the same time.
      - etothepii 6y ago
        It's only negotiable because she said she had an offer from another FAANG. It would be odd to "ask for proof" though it could happen.
      - 6y ago
etothepii 6y ago
The rand(40000, 120000) estimates for current job titles is why we built peerwyse.com
diminish 6y ago
> At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice. Bookmark it and come back late what's wrong about idevices? i'm reading this one on android.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I just read it on mine. It’s not even that long…
- break_the_bank 6y ago
  Guess that in 2012 the experience was poor. Maybe this website wasn’t responsive.
hyko 6y ago
At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice Wait, what? For most people, their iDevice will be the best reading experience they have access to.
- war1025 6y ago
  > For most people, their iDevice will be the best reading experience they have access to. The article is from 2012. iDevices were a lot less impressive back then.
  - hyko 6y ago
    Reading on an iDevice in 2012 was light years ahead of almost everything else, owing to their displays.
chrisbennet 6y ago
You need to view this transaction for what it really is: a "value for value exchange". They aren't "giving you a job" they are exchanging (mostly) money for your precious time. If you have a lot of relevant experience and the interviewer is also very experienced, you might try this: I once told a client who was trying to negotiate a lower rate "I am not a commodity engineer (1) and judging from your experience, neither are you. There will be some jobs for which we will just not be cost effective." [The we is important.] (1) commodity engineer: an engineer that can easily out be swapped for another engineer
treerunner 6y ago
Yes, but what are you making?
reedf1 6y ago
As a UK based engineer these FAANG salaries seem huge. In some cases these salaries are 10x my own salary and I'm considered to be paid well. My UK cohort seem to think this is due to some difference in the cost of living but I don't think it adds up. I'm interested to know what you guys would do if the main thing limiting your salary was geography. Would you start your own company? Move to the US? I'm early on in my career and I can make big changes.
- swyx 6y ago
  entrepreneurship comes with its own risks and uncertainties. do it if you have a compelling reason, not if you just want more money. many just don't make it but ofc some do extremely well. by far the higher expected value move for you is to come to the US. however I'd also point out that you'd be giving up a lot of the things you take for granted in the UK, in exchange for the higher pay and likely more lively career prospects. you prob already know this but just in case, levels.fyi has realistic levels for faang
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    Also take into account that it's not a right to emigrate to the US. Most people won't be legally allowed to. You need to get lucky, and in most cases accept an unstable visa situation.
- user5994461 6y ago
  >>> Move to the US? Moving to the US is almost never an option, because of VISA. Even if you manage to get a VISA and find work there, you won't have the same career prospects as a local (culture, network, education, visa issues, etc...). Few companies sponsor VISA and when they do they know they got you by the balls because you can't change jobs without losing the VISA.
  - literallycancer 6y ago
    What's with the upper case?
  - 6y ago
fastlight 6y ago
This is a fantastic article, I really enjoyed reading it. A lot of stuff that I "knew", but have found hard to put together into a cohesive thought. For those of us who are happy where we work, and enjoy our colleagues, work, and have satisfied with our compensation, does anybody have any recommendations for articles on how to work on our next salary negotiation opportunity? I know the jump will likely be below one that could be received if I jumped to somewhere else.
swyx 6y ago
I don't have proof but have a sneaking suspicion that there's a certain amount of gaslighting in the negotiation advice genre - all of them read like the sky is the limit if you were just good enough at negotiation, but they mix in anecdata of people who actually got high 5-6 figure improvements, vs the more likely outcome of a <20k/yr improvement. don't get me wrong, this is still GREAT, and if all these pieces get you to do is negotiate at all, then that's a win. but I found myself being unhappy not managing to reach a 320k total comp recently (up from initial 210) and I realized my dissatisfaction with an otherwise great comp was due to the misleveled expectations from reading a lot of these pieces (which are better fit for extreme domain experts and independent consultants, than regular SWE employees that have to fit within a salary band)
- sinsterizme 6y ago
  And imagine how readers from other countries feel! Even in Canada, the salaries people throw around in this forum are almost not believable
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    I fought my last employer to go from $17/hr to $18/hr starting, and they wouldn't budge. I'm 30, I have a degree, I had 2 years at the company (transferring to a different division) and another 4 years experience in a similar role. I've never in my life made more than $40k in a year. People on this site have a completely bonkers perspective on what's normal.
    - sinsterizme 6y ago
      This forum does select for particularly passionate engineers, that seem to be mostly in the US (assumption). The US happens to have the highest paying software jobs. Even still I feel like this forum selects for higher paid engineers through selection bias, and those willing to discuss salary are likely those on the higher end. I always forget this and feel a bit disappointed with myself when reading these discussions. I checked indeed and it tells me the average US software engineer salary is $110k, and Cali being $136k. Indeed isn’t a perfect source but that seems more realistic than the idea you can get from here where people talk about $300k total comp
jgalt212 6y ago
Whenever I look at staff that is not doing a good job, rightly or wrongly, I tend to focus first on the ones whom I feel are overpaid. In short, there is some value in not squeezing every last dollar out of your employer. Don't be underpaid, but don't make the other size of the negotiation feel like he/she got a bad deal.
- xtracto 6y ago
  Companies will never overpay in my experience. The weight of the "budget", the HR limits and the CEO policy is just impossible to skip. These all set the upper salary range.
  - afterburner 6y ago
    You're not thinking of when "being overpayed" actually stands out: layoffs.
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    You work in fintech and you've never come across a grossly overpaid trader or salesperson?
tyingq 6y ago
I believe California banned it, but there are services where companies can pull the current salary for prospective employees. That puts you at a serious disadvantage. Those services should offer something to employees to spit out low, high, and median salaries for a specific job title at a company.
doonesbury 6y ago
Wanna know what? Pretty good advice

420 points by Fiveplus 6y ago

This is all generally very good advice but I’m equally amused at the ridiculous portrayal of “businessmen” throughout this post; most people do not see themselves this way and it’s sort of goofy to think they do. But that isn’t terribly important to the message. Oh, and one other thing, if you’re at a 10-person ish startup, definitely don’t act like a company that is 1000ish. You’ll lose. And so your hiring practices should generally not align with what is outlined here.

howlgarnish 6y ago
The point of the post is that you should see yourself as a businessman, even if it feels goofy: you're not begging for crumbs, you're negotiating price with another business.
TehShrike 6y ago
When I first read this post over 7 years ago, it led to me negotiating an extra 6k/year on my next job, for an employer with <5 developers and <20 employees. The portrayal of "businessmen" was also valuable to me. You're correct that most people don't think of themselves this way – but they should. Reading this post was one of my first steps of many towards feeling like an active agent selling a service, rather than a passive agent looking for a corporation to glom on to. There are plenty of companies who want to hire active agents, and they don't correlate perfectly with employee count.

MuffinFlavored 6y ago

most of my bosses have made me feel petty when asking for an extra $10k/yr i've found that when working for corporations, it's all about the number you ask for up front. after that, it takes quite a bit to get more than the average 3-5% merit pay bump. how FANG companies work with the $500k/yr total comp for average engineers, i have no clue... i think from what i've seen from levels.fyi the most common salaries are $160k-$180k/yr. after that, you get your salary again in stock options apparently... not sure what the interview process or job workload must be like. how sustainable is programming? $75/hr to basically just write SQL tables and APIs that are advanced CRUD wrappers with light business logic on them? seems ripe for automation.

dudul 6y ago
I think programming is moving away from automation. We're no longer writing code or fancy algorithms. We are plumbers connecting systems and APIs. However, the true value of the engineer in 2020 is that they're the one trying to make sense of idiotic product requirements. They're the ones turning shiny, half assed mockups into real products. That cannot be automated. If the value was only in pissing lines of code there wouldn't be a single engineer left in the US. There is a reason massive outsourcing failed decades ago. But yeaj, if you're in there to build SQL tables its pretty boring.
- MetallicCloud 6y ago
  I've read similar things about how most programming work is just plumbing together existing code fairly regularly on HN. Is that really what most people do? Is it a web development thing? That's not my experience at all, and it sounds mind numbingly awful.
  - pianoben 6y ago
    How often do you write hashtables? JSON serializers? Mutexes? HTTP clients? Transaction managers? Connection pools? In my last job as a mobile engineer I can claim that I wrote code all day, and that's true to a point, but most of that code is shepherding data from one format to another, using libraries that I didn't write, causing the UI (whose framework was written by someone else) to update. And you know what? It's still a hard and rewarding job! Having pieces to plumb together hasn't made our jobs easier or dumber, it's just raised the level of abstraction at which we work day-to-day.
    - braythwayt 6y ago
      There is a “Red Queen’s Race” between the accelerating productivity gains of abstractions, frameworks, libraries, and other stacks we can leverage, balanced against the fact that each one is a leaky abstraction, and the leaks interfere with each other in weird, mysterious ways. Programming with all these tools is wonderful. Debugging problems in such am environment, not-so-much. But net, it’s a massive win.

jaaron 6y ago

Speaking as a hiring manager for 10+ years: If I've done my job right, I've sourced engineers experienced, confident and smart enough to negotiate and ask good questions around compensation. I want to make sure that we have an open conversation so that both sides can move forward to the actual job at hand. Tip: California based firms are required to give you a salary range if you ask for it and they can't ask you for your salary history, just your comp expectations.

sokoloff 6y ago
Is there anything to prevent that range from being given as "$30K to $999K/yr"?
- jaaron 6y ago
  I am not an employment lawyer, but I suspect if the employer gives you a crazy range, it's a violation and could be reported. The law does clarify it's a range and doesn't need to include bonuses or equity estimates. And to be frank, if you're interviewing somewhere and they come back with that answer, I think that tells you most everything you need to know about whether you should work there or not.
- refurb 6y ago
  This is a valid point. Some salary bands are very wide. For my former employer, it was $140k to $245k. The mid-point is a good starting point, but it’s such a wide band it doesn’t give you much to anchor to. And this is not just “HR told me this”. It’s the actual number in the compensation scheme visible to hiring managers. And there is significant overlap between levels. The next level up is something like $170k to $260k.
- legulere 6y ago
  If they state 999K then that is what you should be asking for.
shajznnckfke 6y ago
Although most of the variation in comp for engineers is in equity, so a salary band will only do so much for you.

pnevares 6y ago

Previous conversation on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19262732

quicklime 6y ago

> We’ve been talking about your employer as an abstraction, but in the instant case you’re talking to an actual person. Let’s call him Bob. It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but Bob is not super motivated to do so, because Bob is not spending Bob’s money to hire you. Bob is spending Bob’s budget. Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of his hiring budget: you get a new Macbook if you convince Bob to give you $5k extra, but Bob gets (if he is anomalously lucky) a dinner at TGIFridays if he convinces you to take $5k less. I've been saying this to people for years, and I'm glad to hear someone else say it. As a hiring manager, I'm not paying your salary out of my own pocket, so I don't give a shit if you want (and get) an extra $10k. My job is to fill the headcount that I've got, so as long as it fits within budget, whatever. I don't think anything less, or more, of people who ask for extra - I usually forget by the time the person starts the job. It's not my money. I don't care. And neither does "the company" - a corporation is an abstract legal entity that is incapable of human emotions. It's not going to get mad at you because it thinks you're greedy. Don't anthropomorphize it. At least at my company (and from what I understand, most companies) it's a lot easier to get a pay bump when you're negotiating the offer, than it is to get a raise/promotion. When you're getting a job offer, you're a one-off special case and there are a lot of unknowns. When it's performance review season, everyone is potentially getting a salary increase, so there are tighter budgets to stick to. My advice is to get what you can up front, and worry a bit less during the annual cycle.

doopy1 6y ago
I think companies under a certain size and it's a different story.
- aiqq 6y ago
  in large companies companies incompetent individuals, such as this sample, occasionally slip through the net. but they get pruned out pretty soon, but no sooner than whoever hired this slacker.
  - coldtea 6y ago

castawayonaship 6y ago

I loved this article and it's honestly life changing. It takes a bit of time to realize how much you're in the driver seat as a candidate. Especially with competing offers, there's no way you should be accepting an offer with less (unless its a small startup) if you have another offering more. A 5 minute call that can increase net worth by large multipliers is probably worth preparing for. With the help of https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi and other salary tools out there, it's incredible how open a lot of this information is. You just need to put in a bit of time and effort.

ry454 6y ago
Without leverage these negotiating techniques are empty bluff. I mean, they could help to get a 5k/year pay bump, but they won't get you from 150k to 750k. The really important ingredient is stakes, insider knowledge, network of high rank friends who help you behind the scenes. But once you have that, the negotiating skills will come naturally: even if you aren't as fluent in business-talk like the author, even if what you say sounds clumsy, the fluent and experienced negotiator on the other side of the table will quickly notice that lazy tricks don't work on you, that you see his bluff and most importantly that you actually have other options. In my experience, in many times my firm negotiating position ended up with offer being withdrawn (from reputable, not FANG, but very well known firms).
langitbiru 6y ago
"other salary tools out there" -> I am developing one of them, called PredictSalary (https://predictsalary.com https://predictsalary.com). To put in a nutshell, I try to utilize Deep Learning to predict salary range from job opportunities.

zuhayeer 6y ago

Huge fan of this article. It gets a ton of credit for helping us incept and start Levels.fyi. Borrowing from Geico, internally we joke that 5 minutes can make you 15% or (way) more if you negotiate. And it's super true.

travbrack 6y ago
Thank you. edit: Any idea why levels.fyi numbers are so much higher than glassdoor? I haven't been able to find any explanation for this phenomenon. The glassdoor numbers I'm looking at are supposed to be total comp.
- zuhayeer 6y ago
  I suspect it's a combination of several things. 1) Outdated data. For our aggregate salary values, whenever possible we try to ensure our data is from within the last trailing year of information. 2) Leveling. Our salaries are broken down more granularly by level, something that's a little more ambiguous on Glassdoor. Since levels aren't explicitly defined, salaries might get brought down by incorrect bucketing. 3) Stock compensation. Until recently, Glassdoor hasn't done a great job of capturing the stock component of total compensation. That has likely led to deflated aggregate values. I'm sure there's probably more to it than what meets the eye, but our focus has always been to make sure we have the most accurate information independent of other salary sites. Also why we collect offer letters / W-2s to corroborate our self reported data: https://levels.fyi/verified/ https://levels.fyi/verified/
- throwaway250 6y ago
  Most salaries reported in Glassdoor are several years old as Zuhayeer said. However, Glassdoor doesn’t even adjust them for inflation. So any statistic based on them will be horribly inaccurate. From personal experience too I can tell you that levels.fyi is far more accurate than Glassdoor. P.S. I’d also like to thank Zuhayeer for building levels.fyi. It’s an awesome tool and helped me greatly in negotiating.

ddgcdgdfg 6y ago

Ot: I've been wondering... are lower taxes for lower salaries actually a good approach? If you imagine they are fines or punishments we should punish low salaries more. I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. It converts into productivity more efficiently like that. (Tax here in NL is 39% with a discount over the first 8k or so)

jiofih 6y ago
> I"ve seen a lot of employers minimize wages and hours to get as much of their budget into workers pockets as possible. How would that work? The tax bands are progressive, so you will never get less money from a higher salary and tax rate. That would be pretty dumb.
- grandmczeb 6y ago
  If you consider government benefits too, there are "cliffs"[1] at low incomes where an increase in income can result in less take home. But probably not at the salaries a typical developer would get. [1] http://i.imgur.com/kM6yxab.png http://i.imgur.com/kM6yxab.png
  - jiofih 6y ago
    Poster said NL. Not US.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    That's a fascinating chart. I would like to reference it in the future, but I cannot find a source for the data. Did you compile it yourself? Have you written your data and methodology somewhere?
    - grandmczeb 6y ago
      It's from this presentation[1], but you can find similar analysis for lots of different places if you Google around (e.g. this one[2] for Illinois or this one[3] for Georgia). [1] https://www.slideshare.net/kevinkmac/welfare-failure https://www.slideshare.net/kevinkmac/welfare-failure [2] http://nebula.wsimg.com/92d8ac7d5aaf3b2df9d4dfaaddcde435?AccessKeyId=EEB98E648E3097DCA50D&disposition=0&alloworigin=1 http://nebula.wsimg.com/92d8ac7d5aaf3b2df9d4dfaaddcde435?Acc... [3] https://georgiaopportunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/GCO1611_White_Paper_Online.pdf https://georgiaopportunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/GC...

juped 6y ago

Not useful advice. I need a way to signal how little money I'm willing to take to make me more attractive to bottom-feeding companies, because I unfortunately need to eat.

neverartful 6y ago
In that case, you've lost on potentially higher salary (assuming you've got the qualifications to be attractive to the company for the specific position).
throwaway2245 6y ago
Intentionally signalling that you are worth less is also a signal that you are a risky or bad hire (for example: that no competitor is interested in you), unless you are looking for a minimum wage job.
- juped 6y ago
  Yeah, that's why it's tricky.

legerdemain 6y ago

> Virtually any amount of money available to you personally is > mouse droppings to your prospective employer. > They will not feel offended if you ask for it. Two comments. (a) I interviewed with Wealthfront last year. They offered $160K, which was lower cash comp than any of my other offers. I tried to open the door to negotiation. The recruiter and the dev lead then got on the phone with me to awkwardly explain that no, they don't negotiate with candidates, and what makes me feel like their offer is inadequate? Would I really want to miss the opportunity to work for an exciting company over some marginal sum of money? Yes. (b) The money you ask for is a pittance on the company's balance sheet, but you're not negotiating with the company. You're negotiating with someone in recruiting. From hanging out with HR, they talk a lot of shit about candidates who they consider difficult, and have a lot of ways of making the experience less pleasant for the candidate, even if it's not clear what this means for the company's ability to attract talent.

shuckles 6y ago
In the case of Wealthfront, it may be a cultural matter as their CEO specifically believes that negotiating your offer is a negative indicator: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130708151000-56725-offer-collectors-don-t-get-good-jobs https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130708151000-56725-offer-co...
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Hilarious, a buyer telling sellers that the it’s in the seller’s best interest to not research their market price. In the finance sector nonetheless.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    That post really doesn’t make sense to me. It’s always in your interest to shop around. The author calls them “collectors”, sounds like he’s upset he loses good candidates over money and wants to rationalize his loss.
    - 6y ago

kuharich 6y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3501366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3501366

throwarayes 6y ago

I spent several years underpaid at a lifestyle company as a specialist. I didn't want the golden handcuffs, I didn't want the pressure. I've learned this was a big mistake If you're paid at market value for your particular set of skills, your employer is making a commitment to use them. When they underpay you, you won't get to do the awesome thing that you do as much. So by being paid more there's incentive for the employer to waste less of your time. This can include up to letting you go when they decide they don't want to do what's in your wheelhouse (a feature not a bug from my POV). And none of that's to mention the long term financial downside. And the fact that the "lifestyle company" really wasn't fewer hours at the end of the day

srtjstjsj 6y ago
But most people's job isn't making money, it's making something that someone else monetizes. Profitability is extremely weakly correlated to the work. Adtech pays better than research despite being easier and boringer.
throwawayincog 6y ago
I've managed to feel like my career has spiraled down while my salary has spiraled up after leaving a more "lifestyle"(let's say heavily culture focused, yet still performance focused) startup. I'm not sure anyone has a solid understanding of my work history.. Company was just acquired and I'm stressed AF trying to figure out if I can even make it to my 1 year RSU cliff to start seeing my retention comp. Not super interested in being back at a big public company working this far down the hierarchy(been working directly for company founders/C-level most of the past 8 years). So, yeah.. I'm would tend to agree to an extent but certainly not absolutely true. I'll feel it's likely I'll end up back at a "lifestyle" business sooner or later.
tome 6y ago
What's a "lifestyle company"? Is it this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business
- throwarayes 6y ago

SPBS 6y ago

Forget about letting employers come up with a number first, in Singapore it's a common practice for HR/Recruiters to directly ask for your last drawn salary (so that they can match it/bump it up by a fixed amount). It's not illegal to refuse to answer, but it's also not illegal for them to ask in the first place. Companies legitimately view last drawn salary as a way to assess a candidate's market value here.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
That's why you need a competing offer. Otherwise your previous job is your BATNA.
TehShrike 6y ago
I got my favorite response from https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03/kalzumeus-podcast-episode-12-salary-negotiation-with-josh-doody/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/06/03/kalzumeus-podcast-episo... – variations on "It sounds like you’re trying to qualify me for a range, and if that’s the case, then I’m happy to let you know if your range is in the ballpark"

peteretep 6y ago

Related: https://careersjs.com/developers/how-to-get-paid-more/ https://careersjs.com/developers/how-to-get-paid-more/

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Patrick has done a lot of great work in his life, but thks blog post is one the most socially valuable, to help workers get more of the pie the billionaires hold.

GoodJokes 6y ago

Imagine a world where you don't have to put on a show to get paid fairly.

cpach 6y ago
Sure, I guess that would be convenient. I think the field of game theory can help us to explain why salaries and salary negotiations are the way they are. And who gets to define what is fair? For example, why do programmers get much much higher salaries than nurses or janitors? It might not be fair. But it’s simply supply and demand in action.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
These talks are the mechanism by how society figures out what is fair, because the world is too complex otherwise.

TA1337 6y ago

One thing that happened to me a few years ago that pretty surprised me, went something like this: I applied to 2 FAANGs, got offers from both. The recruiter from the first company to give me an offer, told me it is pretty much non negotiable, "we have a little wiggle room but don't expect much, it's an amazing offer". It was higher than my then salary, but not by a huge margin. Then company B got back to me with a significantly higher offer both in terms of RSUs (x2) and base salary. Well, turned out the non negotiable offer was very negotiable after all, and company A quickly upped their offer above company B's. At this stage it just became a back and forth bidding war, that ended after a couple of weeks with two almost identical offers, 50% higher than the initial TC.

posedge 6y ago
It amazes me that, under the right circumstances, the wiggle room can reach levels as high as 50%. I wonder what they were thinking when they made you the initial offer.
- drpebcak 6y ago
  They were hoping to discourage him from asking for more. It’s always negotiable if the company wants to hire you, they just typically don’t want you to feel that way.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    It's only negotiable because he got an offer from the next FAANG. Recruiters are not going to assume that you can enter any FAANG at the highest possible level. It was incredibly lucky from the OP to get 2 offers and at the same time.
    - etothepii 6y ago
      It's only negotiable because she said she had an offer from another FAANG. It would be odd to "ask for proof" though it could happen.
    - 6y ago

etothepii 6y ago

The rand(40000, 120000) estimates for current job titles is why we built peerwyse.com

diminish 6y ago

> At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice. Bookmark it and come back late what's wrong about idevices? i'm reading this one on android.

saagarjha 6y ago
I just read it on mine. It’s not even that long…
break_the_bank 6y ago
Guess that in 2012 the experience was poor. Maybe this website wasn’t responsive.

hyko 6y ago

At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice Wait, what? For most people, their iDevice will be the best reading experience they have access to.

war1025 6y ago
> For most people, their iDevice will be the best reading experience they have access to. The article is from 2012. iDevices were a lot less impressive back then.
- hyko 6y ago
  Reading on an iDevice in 2012 was light years ahead of almost everything else, owing to their displays.

chrisbennet 6y ago

You need to view this transaction for what it really is: a "value for value exchange". They aren't "giving you a job" they are exchanging (mostly) money for your precious time. If you have a lot of relevant experience and the interviewer is also very experienced, you might try this: I once told a client who was trying to negotiate a lower rate "I am not a commodity engineer (1) and judging from your experience, neither are you. There will be some jobs for which we will just not be cost effective." [The we is important.] (1) commodity engineer: an engineer that can easily out be swapped for another engineer

treerunner 6y ago

Yes, but what are you making?

reedf1 6y ago

As a UK based engineer these FAANG salaries seem huge. In some cases these salaries are 10x my own salary and I'm considered to be paid well. My UK cohort seem to think this is due to some difference in the cost of living but I don't think it adds up. I'm interested to know what you guys would do if the main thing limiting your salary was geography. Would you start your own company? Move to the US? I'm early on in my career and I can make big changes.

swyx 6y ago
entrepreneurship comes with its own risks and uncertainties. do it if you have a compelling reason, not if you just want more money. many just don't make it but ofc some do extremely well. by far the higher expected value move for you is to come to the US. however I'd also point out that you'd be giving up a lot of the things you take for granted in the UK, in exchange for the higher pay and likely more lively career prospects. you prob already know this but just in case, levels.fyi has realistic levels for faang
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  Also take into account that it's not a right to emigrate to the US. Most people won't be legally allowed to. You need to get lucky, and in most cases accept an unstable visa situation.
user5994461 6y ago
>>> Move to the US? Moving to the US is almost never an option, because of VISA. Even if you manage to get a VISA and find work there, you won't have the same career prospects as a local (culture, network, education, visa issues, etc...). Few companies sponsor VISA and when they do they know they got you by the balls because you can't change jobs without losing the VISA.
- literallycancer 6y ago
  What's with the upper case?
- 6y ago

fastlight 6y ago

This is a fantastic article, I really enjoyed reading it. A lot of stuff that I "knew", but have found hard to put together into a cohesive thought. For those of us who are happy where we work, and enjoy our colleagues, work, and have satisfied with our compensation, does anybody have any recommendations for articles on how to work on our next salary negotiation opportunity? I know the jump will likely be below one that could be received if I jumped to somewhere else.

swyx 6y ago

I don't have proof but have a sneaking suspicion that there's a certain amount of gaslighting in the negotiation advice genre - all of them read like the sky is the limit if you were just good enough at negotiation, but they mix in anecdata of people who actually got high 5-6 figure improvements, vs the more likely outcome of a <20k/yr improvement. don't get me wrong, this is still GREAT, and if all these pieces get you to do is negotiate at all, then that's a win. but I found myself being unhappy not managing to reach a 320k total comp recently (up from initial 210) and I realized my dissatisfaction with an otherwise great comp was due to the misleveled expectations from reading a lot of these pieces (which are better fit for extreme domain experts and independent consultants, than regular SWE employees that have to fit within a salary band)

sinsterizme 6y ago
And imagine how readers from other countries feel! Even in Canada, the salaries people throw around in this forum are almost not believable
- bsanr2 6y ago
  I fought my last employer to go from $17/hr to $18/hr starting, and they wouldn't budge. I'm 30, I have a degree, I had 2 years at the company (transferring to a different division) and another 4 years experience in a similar role. I've never in my life made more than $40k in a year. People on this site have a completely bonkers perspective on what's normal.
  - sinsterizme 6y ago
    This forum does select for particularly passionate engineers, that seem to be mostly in the US (assumption). The US happens to have the highest paying software jobs. Even still I feel like this forum selects for higher paid engineers through selection bias, and those willing to discuss salary are likely those on the higher end. I always forget this and feel a bit disappointed with myself when reading these discussions. I checked indeed and it tells me the average US software engineer salary is $110k, and Cali being $136k. Indeed isn’t a perfect source but that seems more realistic than the idea you can get from here where people talk about $300k total comp

jgalt212 6y ago

Whenever I look at staff that is not doing a good job, rightly or wrongly, I tend to focus first on the ones whom I feel are overpaid. In short, there is some value in not squeezing every last dollar out of your employer. Don't be underpaid, but don't make the other size of the negotiation feel like he/she got a bad deal.

xtracto 6y ago
Companies will never overpay in my experience. The weight of the "budget", the HR limits and the CEO policy is just impossible to skip. These all set the upper salary range.
- afterburner 6y ago
  You're not thinking of when "being overpayed" actually stands out: layoffs.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  You work in fintech and you've never come across a grossly overpaid trader or salesperson?

tyingq 6y ago

I believe California banned it, but there are services where companies can pull the current salary for prospective employees. That puts you at a serious disadvantage. Those services should offer something to employees to spit out low, high, and median salaries for a specific job title at a company.

doonesbury 6y ago

Wanna know what? Pretty good advice