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> 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

> 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
    The comment's language is totally unprofessional and the tone is toxic. And that's the second edit - of an even more toxic previous wording. One would call it Dunning–Kruger, but it's probably merely lack of self-awareness combined with arrogance.
braythwayt 6y ago
First, I think you and the OP are correct. It’s not Barbara’s money, and Barbara’s career is driven by hiring and developing productive people. If her group is shipping good product, nobody in a growth company is sitting down and asking why a group that ships 30% more product costs 10% more per head. That will come much later in the company’s trajectory. One small exception to this from my n=1 experience is that all other things being equal, when hiring Barbara would rather pay at the low end of the range and then be generous with a raise, than pay at the top end of the range and have to fight to get you a raise. That first performance review and raise set the tone for years to come, and good managers want it to be a happy experience for everyone. —- But that’s only if all other things are equal. Barbara doesn’t want to lose you to another employer by over-negotiating, so ask for what you want. Let her worry about fighting for your first raise. That’s the job she signed up for.
- quicklime 6y ago
  That’s a good point, and How to do this depends on the exact rules for handing out raises at the company. Where I work it’s better to hire someone at a lower level and promote them later - what I said earlier applies within a single pay grade and not between grades.
awinder 6y ago
The amounts of money never made any sense to me that some hiring managers will die on a hill over. In time I came to the realization that it’s very important for some people to have that “win” / upper hand in the new relationship, as like a tone setting sort of thing.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  That's an incredibly cynical take. As a hiring manager, I want to stack my team with the best employees we can convince to join our company. Obviously, throwing more money at the candidate is the easiest way to convince someone to come on board. However, the company doesn't have infinite money to pay candidates. Compensation comes out of our budgets. The more we pay each person, the fewer people we can hire overall. This is fine if you're really hiring someone with above-average productivity at above-average compensation, but it becomes a problem if you're paying above-average rates for average productivity. Higher compensation cuts both ways, though. If an average candidate is demanding above-average pay, why would I go through all the work of getting authorization for higher pay just to hire an average candidate? If I'm going through the trouble of getting approval to increase the pay for an open job position, you can bet I'm going to search for higher performing candidates to match that higher compensation. Usually, when a junior candidate starts requesting senior level compensation, I just give up and hire a senior candidate instead. Also, higher compensation comes with higher expectations. Businesses have ups and downs and layoffs are a fact of doing business. When budgets shrink and headcount must be reduced, the first people to go are those with relatively high compensation for their productivity/skill level. But no, it's not simply about having a "win" over the candidate or making power moves during the hiring process. You have to think of hiring as company vs. the entire candidate pool, not just yourself vs. the hiring manager.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - awinder 6y ago
    I think we are talking about vastly different things on re-reading your post. I’m keying in, along with the parent, on offers being negotiated at figures like less than 5% on base salary (sometimes far less. talking 5-10k range)
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> My job is to fill the headcount that I've got, so as long as it fits within budget, whatever. Exactly, but the budget isn't infinite. Assuming equal talent, I'd much rather hire 5 people at market rate rather than 4 people at 25% over market rate. The net cost is roughly the same, but we can get much more accomplished with 1 more person on the team. Even better, on-call demands are spread out over more people and vacations are easier to schedule. In my experience, compensation requests are only loosely coupled to a person's abilities. Usually, the person's prior salary history is the driving factor, even when they don't reveal it (I don't ask). If you have a large enough candidate pool, it can often make sense to let the most aggressive negotiators go to the FAANG companies rather than jumping through hoops to overpay them relative to the rest of the team. The most aggressive salary seekers usually end up leaving for FAANG anyway, because they want the resume prestige as leverage in future salary negotiations. Finally, handing out above market salaries isn’t without consequence for managers. When C-level execs look at compensation across the company and see a handful of managers with significantly higher compensation, they’re going to have higher expectations for that team. If a manager is constantly paying above-market rates but producing average or below average work, it’s going to draw attention. If I’m going out on a limb to give people above market compensation, the expectations are that much higher. I’m also going to be that much quicker to let highly compensated people go if they can’t live up to their compensation requests.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- etothepii 6y ago
  The issue is that the non-salary costs routinely make up an additional 50-100% of a head count and many of these are fixed. Thus to replace a team of 4 with a team of 5, you might need to negotiate their salary component down 30% not 20%. Thus the manager hiring the team of 4 appears to be paying 42% more.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  I'd much rather hire 4 above average people than 5 average people. Having more people adds its own cost and there is a Pareto law in people's contributions. Edit: Basically, IMHO, in terms of assembling the best team to deliver the best results it's better to keep things as small as possible. But in terms of internal company politics it's better to grow the team as much as possible.
Splognosticus 6y ago
> It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible... Strictly speaking, this is not necessarily the case (although it might be, but you probably won't make a career at such a company.) Bob's job is to make the company money. If one guy is asking $300k, it doesn't necessarily follow that Bob could hire five guys working for $30k and come out way ahead.
jghn 6y ago
At my company I get headcount based on level, not raw dollars. Once I +1 a candidate at a level, it moves to HR and they are the ones doing the negotiation. At that point I become an advocate for them to get more compensation. It behooves me to have HR not play hardball and to max out their comp at the level I've specified as that makes it more likely the candidate signs. Once in a while HR will ask me "Are you sure?" and I always say "Yep, do it". It does get a bit tricky if they're comp demands wind up out of band and then I need to decide if it's worth a higher level head count, but otherwise go for it.
- ydlr 6y ago
  Just out of curiosity, if a candidate asks what the salary range is for the position, do you tell them?
  - jghn 6y ago
    Yes, but I also explain how our HR dept calculates target compensation within a level and that ultimately the comp decision is out of my hands. I have a good sense for where candidates are in a band and try to set expectations accordingly. If they're pushing for more than HR wants to give, like I said I'm an advocate but the final say isn't mine if they're pushing tooooooo far off the calculated target amount.
    - zerr 6y ago
      The premis of this article is that everyone should push more because it is assumed that the range (upper limit) is low bailed.
- TinyBig 6y ago
  Does this create a perverse incentive to not encourage promotions because it will mean a lower headcount going forward?
  - NhanH 6y ago
    Depending on the company, but yes if the company is not growing, the incentive would be to discourage promotion. At that point, if it is a good company, they would know it and will prioritize a different kind of employees.
hammock 6y ago
If what you describe is the case, and HR doesn't have veto power on your offers, why not hire at the top of the range, and take a kickback from the person you hired? (hypothetical) Don't downvote me for suggesting this, I'm trying to expose a weakness. I suspect more likely scenario is what @jghn shares, wherein HR is the one with the offer power, to avoid the hazard I suggested.
- prerok 6y ago
  Because doing this is illegal. Also, would you actually want to work at a company where people are bleeding the company for their own benefit? I cannot even imagine the toxicity. Even hearing the offer I would be so gone.
namdnay 6y ago
As with all advice of this sort, it really depends on the company culture. My current employer for example has a very hard salary policy (basically a fixed number depending on age and which engineering college you went to, with yearly raises negotiated with unions - a very common occurrence in France unfortunately). Unless you’re interviewing for a position with >100 reports they will never risk upsetting this mechanism (and opening the Pandora’s box of individual salary negotiation) however valuable the individual candidate
- rocqua 6y ago
  Would negotiating be harmful to your chances to work there though?
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Yes, it's harmful and if you appear a notch too aggressive they will probably dump you. (Reading articles about salary negotiation in the valley is possibly the most harmful thing a French person could do to themselves) Assume it's French cheap staffing companies (90% of the employment market there), akin to tata or infosys for foreign readers. There is a very narrow salary band for the position depending on university and age. They won't bulge for one euro. They'll simply keep looking for candidates to find a cheaper one. They are well aware that their salaries are low. They see their offers refused time and again. They see candidates leaving in droves for better positions/industries as soon as they can. Doesn't matter, it's just business, gotta stick to the salary grid.
    - mewpmewp2 6y ago
      Why would you want to work at such company with such poor philosophy then?
      - user5994461 6y ago
        Because that's all there are in a 50 miles radius. Thinking you're going to work for Google after reading English articles, is really harmful when the closest FAANG office is thousands of miles away in another country.
lealanko 6y ago
You (and the article) are ignoring smaller companies. In those, you often have the salary negotiations with the owner, or a partner. Your salary comes (effectively) out of their own pocket, and recruiting you is quite possibly a significant and risky investment for the entire company. In these sorts of situations, negotiation is much harder on a personal level, since the company is not a faceless entity. The company does have a face, that's the face you have to look into when you state your salary request. On the other hand, it's also harder to accept being underpaid, because if you don't get paid what you're worth, you know the extra profits will go (almost) directly into the pocket of a person you will see daily at work.
- edanm 6y ago
  That's kind of true, but you should probably ignore it for purposes of salary negotiation. It's not really that different from a bigger company in most cases- they have a budget in mind, and you can probably negotiate up to the limit of the budget. This will sometimes be a hard limit btw - e.g. if it's a Dev shop, they often know how much they're getting paid for a particular project, and can calculate the maximum salary they can profitably pay. Smaller companies are often more flexible on other terms though, which is worth knowing. Often they can give you eg work from home options, different configuration of vacation days, etc. This if useful to think any for negotiation purposes.
- delinquenz 6y ago
  Small companies with smart hiring managers or owners should know that if they pay candidates, especially highly skilled ones, not enough, they will probably jump ship after one or two years which is exactly the period after which employees reach a level of productivity that brings enough value for companies to justify the hiring.
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    In all the places I've worked, every engineer knew there was another place where they'd likely earn significantly more. Yet, they didn't jump ship. These were not high turnaround places. Either my experience is exceptional, or your implication that money is the only thing that matters about a job is wrong.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
> It's a lot easier to get a pay bump when you're negotiating the offer, than it is to get a raise/promotion That's absolutely key and always true. This is also compounded by the fact that companies often have salary bands and that annual salary increases are usually a percentage of the existing salary. So negotiating the best starting salary is very important and has effects years into the job.

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
  The comment's language is totally unprofessional and the tone is toxic. And that's the second edit - of an even more toxic previous wording. One would call it Dunning–Kruger, but it's probably merely lack of self-awareness combined with arrogance.

braythwayt 6y ago

First, I think you and the OP are correct. It’s not Barbara’s money, and Barbara’s career is driven by hiring and developing productive people. If her group is shipping good product, nobody in a growth company is sitting down and asking why a group that ships 30% more product costs 10% more per head. That will come much later in the company’s trajectory. One small exception to this from my n=1 experience is that all other things being equal, when hiring Barbara would rather pay at the low end of the range and then be generous with a raise, than pay at the top end of the range and have to fight to get you a raise. That first performance review and raise set the tone for years to come, and good managers want it to be a happy experience for everyone. —- But that’s only if all other things are equal. Barbara doesn’t want to lose you to another employer by over-negotiating, so ask for what you want. Let her worry about fighting for your first raise. That’s the job she signed up for.

quicklime 6y ago
That’s a good point, and How to do this depends on the exact rules for handing out raises at the company. Where I work it’s better to hire someone at a lower level and promote them later - what I said earlier applies within a single pay grade and not between grades.

awinder 6y ago

The amounts of money never made any sense to me that some hiring managers will die on a hill over. In time I came to the realization that it’s very important for some people to have that “win” / upper hand in the new relationship, as like a tone setting sort of thing.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
That's an incredibly cynical take. As a hiring manager, I want to stack my team with the best employees we can convince to join our company. Obviously, throwing more money at the candidate is the easiest way to convince someone to come on board. However, the company doesn't have infinite money to pay candidates. Compensation comes out of our budgets. The more we pay each person, the fewer people we can hire overall. This is fine if you're really hiring someone with above-average productivity at above-average compensation, but it becomes a problem if you're paying above-average rates for average productivity. Higher compensation cuts both ways, though. If an average candidate is demanding above-average pay, why would I go through all the work of getting authorization for higher pay just to hire an average candidate? If I'm going through the trouble of getting approval to increase the pay for an open job position, you can bet I'm going to search for higher performing candidates to match that higher compensation. Usually, when a junior candidate starts requesting senior level compensation, I just give up and hire a senior candidate instead. Also, higher compensation comes with higher expectations. Businesses have ups and downs and layoffs are a fact of doing business. When budgets shrink and headcount must be reduced, the first people to go are those with relatively high compensation for their productivity/skill level. But no, it's not simply about having a "win" over the candidate or making power moves during the hiring process. You have to think of hiring as company vs. the entire candidate pool, not just yourself vs. the hiring manager.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- awinder 6y ago
  I think we are talking about vastly different things on re-reading your post. I’m keying in, along with the parent, on offers being negotiated at figures like less than 5% on base salary (sometimes far less. talking 5-10k range)

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> My job is to fill the headcount that I've got, so as long as it fits within budget, whatever. Exactly, but the budget isn't infinite. Assuming equal talent, I'd much rather hire 5 people at market rate rather than 4 people at 25% over market rate. The net cost is roughly the same, but we can get much more accomplished with 1 more person on the team. Even better, on-call demands are spread out over more people and vacations are easier to schedule. In my experience, compensation requests are only loosely coupled to a person's abilities. Usually, the person's prior salary history is the driving factor, even when they don't reveal it (I don't ask). If you have a large enough candidate pool, it can often make sense to let the most aggressive negotiators go to the FAANG companies rather than jumping through hoops to overpay them relative to the rest of the team. The most aggressive salary seekers usually end up leaving for FAANG anyway, because they want the resume prestige as leverage in future salary negotiations. Finally, handing out above market salaries isn’t without consequence for managers. When C-level execs look at compensation across the company and see a handful of managers with significantly higher compensation, they’re going to have higher expectations for that team. If a manager is constantly paying above-market rates but producing average or below average work, it’s going to draw attention. If I’m going out on a limb to give people above market compensation, the expectations are that much higher. I’m also going to be that much quicker to let highly compensated people go if they can’t live up to their compensation requests.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
etothepii 6y ago
The issue is that the non-salary costs routinely make up an additional 50-100% of a head count and many of these are fixed. Thus to replace a team of 4 with a team of 5, you might need to negotiate their salary component down 30% not 20%. Thus the manager hiring the team of 4 appears to be paying 42% more.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
I'd much rather hire 4 above average people than 5 average people. Having more people adds its own cost and there is a Pareto law in people's contributions. Edit: Basically, IMHO, in terms of assembling the best team to deliver the best results it's better to keep things as small as possible. But in terms of internal company politics it's better to grow the team as much as possible.

Splognosticus 6y ago

> It is Bob’s job to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible... Strictly speaking, this is not necessarily the case (although it might be, but you probably won't make a career at such a company.) Bob's job is to make the company money. If one guy is asking $300k, it doesn't necessarily follow that Bob could hire five guys working for $30k and come out way ahead.

jghn 6y ago

At my company I get headcount based on level, not raw dollars. Once I +1 a candidate at a level, it moves to HR and they are the ones doing the negotiation. At that point I become an advocate for them to get more compensation. It behooves me to have HR not play hardball and to max out their comp at the level I've specified as that makes it more likely the candidate signs. Once in a while HR will ask me "Are you sure?" and I always say "Yep, do it". It does get a bit tricky if they're comp demands wind up out of band and then I need to decide if it's worth a higher level head count, but otherwise go for it.

ydlr 6y ago
Just out of curiosity, if a candidate asks what the salary range is for the position, do you tell them?
- jghn 6y ago
  Yes, but I also explain how our HR dept calculates target compensation within a level and that ultimately the comp decision is out of my hands. I have a good sense for where candidates are in a band and try to set expectations accordingly. If they're pushing for more than HR wants to give, like I said I'm an advocate but the final say isn't mine if they're pushing tooooooo far off the calculated target amount.
  - zerr 6y ago
    The premis of this article is that everyone should push more because it is assumed that the range (upper limit) is low bailed.
TinyBig 6y ago
Does this create a perverse incentive to not encourage promotions because it will mean a lower headcount going forward?
- NhanH 6y ago
  Depending on the company, but yes if the company is not growing, the incentive would be to discourage promotion. At that point, if it is a good company, they would know it and will prioritize a different kind of employees.

hammock 6y ago

If what you describe is the case, and HR doesn't have veto power on your offers, why not hire at the top of the range, and take a kickback from the person you hired? (hypothetical) Don't downvote me for suggesting this, I'm trying to expose a weakness. I suspect more likely scenario is what @jghn shares, wherein HR is the one with the offer power, to avoid the hazard I suggested.

prerok 6y ago
Because doing this is illegal. Also, would you actually want to work at a company where people are bleeding the company for their own benefit? I cannot even imagine the toxicity. Even hearing the offer I would be so gone.

namdnay 6y ago

As with all advice of this sort, it really depends on the company culture. My current employer for example has a very hard salary policy (basically a fixed number depending on age and which engineering college you went to, with yearly raises negotiated with unions - a very common occurrence in France unfortunately). Unless you’re interviewing for a position with >100 reports they will never risk upsetting this mechanism (and opening the Pandora’s box of individual salary negotiation) however valuable the individual candidate

rocqua 6y ago
Would negotiating be harmful to your chances to work there though?
- user5994461 6y ago
  Yes, it's harmful and if you appear a notch too aggressive they will probably dump you. (Reading articles about salary negotiation in the valley is possibly the most harmful thing a French person could do to themselves) Assume it's French cheap staffing companies (90% of the employment market there), akin to tata or infosys for foreign readers. There is a very narrow salary band for the position depending on university and age. They won't bulge for one euro. They'll simply keep looking for candidates to find a cheaper one. They are well aware that their salaries are low. They see their offers refused time and again. They see candidates leaving in droves for better positions/industries as soon as they can. Doesn't matter, it's just business, gotta stick to the salary grid.
  - mewpmewp2 6y ago
    Why would you want to work at such company with such poor philosophy then?
    - user5994461 6y ago
      Because that's all there are in a 50 miles radius. Thinking you're going to work for Google after reading English articles, is really harmful when the closest FAANG office is thousands of miles away in another country.

lealanko 6y ago

You (and the article) are ignoring smaller companies. In those, you often have the salary negotiations with the owner, or a partner. Your salary comes (effectively) out of their own pocket, and recruiting you is quite possibly a significant and risky investment for the entire company. In these sorts of situations, negotiation is much harder on a personal level, since the company is not a faceless entity. The company does have a face, that's the face you have to look into when you state your salary request. On the other hand, it's also harder to accept being underpaid, because if you don't get paid what you're worth, you know the extra profits will go (almost) directly into the pocket of a person you will see daily at work.

edanm 6y ago
That's kind of true, but you should probably ignore it for purposes of salary negotiation. It's not really that different from a bigger company in most cases- they have a budget in mind, and you can probably negotiate up to the limit of the budget. This will sometimes be a hard limit btw - e.g. if it's a Dev shop, they often know how much they're getting paid for a particular project, and can calculate the maximum salary they can profitably pay. Smaller companies are often more flexible on other terms though, which is worth knowing. Often they can give you eg work from home options, different configuration of vacation days, etc. This if useful to think any for negotiation purposes.
delinquenz 6y ago
Small companies with smart hiring managers or owners should know that if they pay candidates, especially highly skilled ones, not enough, they will probably jump ship after one or two years which is exactly the period after which employees reach a level of productivity that brings enough value for companies to justify the hiring.
- skrebbel 6y ago
  In all the places I've worked, every engineer knew there was another place where they'd likely earn significantly more. Yet, they didn't jump ship. These were not high turnaround places. Either my experience is exceptional, or your implication that money is the only thing that matters about a job is wrong.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

> It's a lot easier to get a pay bump when you're negotiating the offer, than it is to get a raise/promotion That's absolutely key and always true. This is also compounded by the fact that companies often have salary bands and that annual salary increases are usually a percentage of the existing salary. So negotiating the best starting salary is very important and has effects years into the job.