3 ms·

> devs have a lot of bargaining power Employees don't seem to have enough bargaining power to meaningfully control working conditions, though. Maybe these are

> devs have a lot of bargaining power Employees don't seem to have enough bargaining power to meaningfully control working conditions, though. Maybe these are worth a ton of money to the company, or such desires are an outlier. But here is my experience: I'm a professor of computer science, and frequently get recruiters trying to get me to jump ship to industry. I'm open to it in principle. I'm reasonably happy in my job, but there are certainly things I don't like about academia, and the pay is not industry-level. But it's generally a rewarding job, and has various perks, like private offices and considerable control over your own schedule. A question I ask recruiters: I have a private office... could you match that? So far, the answer has always been no. They can double or occasionally triple my salary, but they can't offer me a private office. I am not sure what to make of that. They are willing to offer me $100k+ over my current salary, but are absolutely unable to offer me an office with a door.

chris11 5y ago
> They can double or occasionally triple my salary, but they can't offer me a private office. You might have more luck if instead you asked about working remotely full-time. It's not the same if you want to go into an office, but companies are seriously thinking about their post-covid office plans.
- _delirium 5y ago
  True, that's an interesting possibility with the current trend towards remote work. With enough of a pay raise, I could solve the private office problem by just renting the office myself out-of-pocket...
0xB31B1B 5y ago
The hiring managers don't have that power. Not sure if you have done an interview loop but I assume that as a tenure track/tenured professor you're going to be L6+ individual contributor in a research group. In that interview loop you're probably going to have a decent amount of face time with a director level or VP. IMO if you're actually interested in making the jump the right play is to get the job, and then negotiate the office with the director/vp that you'd be reporting to, they will 99% of the time not let office access be something that stops them from hiring a staff+ engineer. Feel free to ping me directly if you want to ask more questions.
gyulai 5y ago
I've had similar experiences with desks, even though desks are a much easier problem to solve than 4 walls that make an office. $200 at IKEA would do it. And yet it's still an unsolvable problem to many companies. Desks have been the main reason I quit two of my past ten jobs. One was at a euro stoxx 50 telco. They had a desk with a single plate that 10 people sat at. I had to sit with the project team I was working with who, unfortunately, weren't all the same height. But the plate could only be adjusted to one height for everyone which was way too low for me. Every day at the office, it felt like working at a coffee table and my back and knees hurt like crazy. I was fighting the corporate system for half a year, including making a fool of myself in front of the global director of human resources and company medical officer. This was ultimately unsuccessful as I was a freelancer, not an employee, and earned me the scorn of my direct manager. The whole experience was so undignified and humiliating that it was ultimately one of the main reasons I quit that gig. After all I was just trying not to have to endure physical pain. The other occasion was at a well-known Wall Street investment bank back in 2010. They put the computers in the space under the desk that should normally be legroom and every day at the office felt like a long haul flight in economy class. My boss's boss, a partner at that firm, privately owned a floor in a highrise residential building in Tribeca. Yet, during the work week, he still basically never got to see daylight. Our business unit wasn't high enough in status to be able to swing a work area on the outside of the building that had daylight. He had an office but still no privacy. One of the walls of his office, facing his underlings' open plan space, was made of glass. Glass walls is something that these firms do these days even for very high-ranking executives to create witnesses in cases of allegations around what may or may not be happening behind those walls between colleagues of opposite gender (or preempt those kinds of goings-on or allegations).

chris11 5y ago

> They can double or occasionally triple my salary, but they can't offer me a private office. You might have more luck if instead you asked about working remotely full-time. It's not the same if you want to go into an office, but companies are seriously thinking about their post-covid office plans.

_delirium 5y ago
True, that's an interesting possibility with the current trend towards remote work. With enough of a pay raise, I could solve the private office problem by just renting the office myself out-of-pocket...

0xB31B1B 5y ago

The hiring managers don't have that power. Not sure if you have done an interview loop but I assume that as a tenure track/tenured professor you're going to be L6+ individual contributor in a research group. In that interview loop you're probably going to have a decent amount of face time with a director level or VP. IMO if you're actually interested in making the jump the right play is to get the job, and then negotiate the office with the director/vp that you'd be reporting to, they will 99% of the time not let office access be something that stops them from hiring a staff+ engineer. Feel free to ping me directly if you want to ask more questions.

gyulai 5y ago

I've had similar experiences with desks, even though desks are a much easier problem to solve than 4 walls that make an office. $200 at IKEA would do it. And yet it's still an unsolvable problem to many companies. Desks have been the main reason I quit two of my past ten jobs. One was at a euro stoxx 50 telco. They had a desk with a single plate that 10 people sat at. I had to sit with the project team I was working with who, unfortunately, weren't all the same height. But the plate could only be adjusted to one height for everyone which was way too low for me. Every day at the office, it felt like working at a coffee table and my back and knees hurt like crazy. I was fighting the corporate system for half a year, including making a fool of myself in front of the global director of human resources and company medical officer. This was ultimately unsuccessful as I was a freelancer, not an employee, and earned me the scorn of my direct manager. The whole experience was so undignified and humiliating that it was ultimately one of the main reasons I quit that gig. After all I was just trying not to have to endure physical pain. The other occasion was at a well-known Wall Street investment bank back in 2010. They put the computers in the space under the desk that should normally be legroom and every day at the office felt like a long haul flight in economy class. My boss's boss, a partner at that firm, privately owned a floor in a highrise residential building in Tribeca. Yet, during the work week, he still basically never got to see daylight. Our business unit wasn't high enough in status to be able to swing a work area on the outside of the building that had daylight. He had an office but still no privacy. One of the walls of his office, facing his underlings' open plan space, was made of glass. Glass walls is something that these firms do these days even for very high-ranking executives to create witnesses in cases of allegations around what may or may not be happening behind those walls between colleagues of opposite gender (or preempt those kinds of goings-on or allegations).