4 ms·

Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. Here's how I evaluate this if I was evaluating you: 1. I already have a salary budget already allocated for this role based on industry

Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. Here's how I evaluate this if I was evaluating you: 1. I already have a salary budget already allocated for this role based on industry average for position and location (but location _could_ be irrelevant depending on skill mostly). 2. I look at your skillset and put you at the bucket for the position where you are at: low-med-high 3. I make my offer based on my evaluation. 4. If you are "worth it", meaning in the high bucket, then I would go out of my way to give you a good offer, up to max of my budget or to match how much you are asking. Else, I would say the offer is where it stands and either you take it or don't. But to answer your question, it doesn't hurt to push back as long as you are confident in your skills and know your value is worth more. That one you have to make up for yourself by evaluating yourself with peers and other factors. Oh. And if you do push back, make sure to give a good reason why it is so. For example, if I happened to put you in the low bucket, I might have evaluated you wrong or the tests did not show much of your skill, then make sure to outline why you deserve that salary increase with good reason. As a quick example, if the industry average in where you are is $50,000 and you are offered $30,000 which is the starting for a junior, you can say that you've been developing for awhile with at least 5 years experience and that $50,000 would be a fair salary etc etc.

schoolornot 5y ago
You’re a CTO so I imagine you’re hiring mostly directors and VPs and it comes down to whether you like the candidate or not. At a lot of companies you just have to be noticeably better than everyone else because after 5+ employees interviewing 5+ candidates, most managers have had enough with the time the team has sunk into that process. As a candidate, if you can find out how long the role has been open, you can really play ball.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Mary-Jane 5y ago
  FYI, CTOs at startups often directly interview and hire technical candidates...
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    While I don't know about this specific person, more likely on HN "CTO" is just a self-appointed "fake it til you make it" title. The amount of times I've casually poked at a "CTO" profile here only to find them to be a recent bootcamp grad working at a company of 2 with no funding...
    - bradlys 5y ago
      The fun part of this exercise is that some people on HN give their real name or a way to find out their real name like the commenter did. They’re part of a pretty small company as far as I can tell. Closer to 25 people.
  - Zvez 5y ago
    even in medium-sized companies cto often participates in hiring process for high-level engineers. Basically the rule is if you are hiring person you are gonna interact often, you want to evaluate him yourself
- warwizard 5y ago
  Depends on company size. I am in a <100 employee company that is not a software organization. I lead the IT group (12 including myself). I report to the COO. He participates in interviews for candidates who would be in my group -- even those that report to one of my supervisors. Even in larger groups, I wouldn't be surprised if the CTO participated deeper than you might at first assume.
crazypython 5y ago
What "tests" do you mention? How do you evaluate people? Given the following information, how would you determine someone's skillset? - hobby projects on the same technology stack - open-source contributions (library with 15,000 monthly downloads) - hobby projects on a different technology stack - hobby projects on a different technology stack that made it into production with thousands of users - previous companies
- westoque 5y ago
  In our company, our interview process goes like: 1. Paper screening the candidate. Looking at resume to see if they have skills for the job on paper. If so go to Personality Screening. 2. Personality Screening is done by talking to them and seeing if there's a cultural fit and also throw in some programming questions or feature discussions to see how they think. 3. Technical Screening by way of pair programming on a problem set that is based on the position that should show a mix of skills, tracing bugs or implementing features. If Frontend, mostly JavaScript and a Frontend Framework like React if needed. As far as your questions go, we put weight on hobby projects but just so that we can see their code writing and some logic up front. As an example, I have seen one candidate with a recent Ruby on Rails project that had all their spaces and newlines everywhere, and I'm not talking about spaces or tabs here, think one chunk of code has 2 spaces, next had 3, another had 5, just everywhere that made the code super hard to read together with the messy logic/abstractions, from this, I assumed that they are still junior. On the contrary, I've seen a candidate that has really good code on a similar Ruby on Rails hobby project that reflected well on their work.
mcnamaratw 5y ago
I'm curious, what industry is offering roughly minimum wage (30k) to programmers in the US?
- servercobra 5y ago
  FWIW, that's double the federal minimum wage. I'm mostly pointing out how absolutely absurd our minimum wage is.
  - mcnamaratw 5y ago
    California minimum wage. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm
  - grumpitron 5y ago
    I believe the US federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage
- andi999 5y ago
  Gaming? (at least here)
- senko 5y ago
  $30k is far beyond minimum wage in most of the world.
  - lordkrandel 5y ago
    30k Euros is what I got with 5 years experience as a developer in Italy, and it's quite normal here.
  - woodpanel 5y ago
    Yup. German minimun wage is 19.968 € (~ 24.353 $) Interestingly a couple of high-wage countries that come to mind don't have a minimum wage at all: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden.
OJFord 5y ago
'disclaimer', pet peeve coming up. > Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. That's not a disclaimer, it's.. a claim. It's not even a 'disclosure' (which is what people saying 'disclaimer' often mean) really, it's more like a 'source', or just.. remove the word?: > I'm a CTO, here's how I evaluate [...] Sorry, just bugs me.
- westoque 5y ago
  No worries, valid point. I have ESL (English as Second Language) but noted.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Ah, then no hard feelings I hope; you just picked it up from so many others getting it wrong! It is a common error for sure, just a pet peeve of mine for some reason, so I call it out occasionally.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Seems like "full disclosure" is a perfectly good way to say what they were trying to say. Your version is ok too, but does not have the same implication of "I have a particular bias here, so I am disclosing that so that you read my comment through that lens".
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Yes that's fine, disclosure is usually the word 'offenders' are looking for, for sure. I just thought that here the tone was more 'here's why I can give you a good answer' than 'I'm aware my answer may be biased'. Basically, the three things that are conflated into 'disclosure' are (all 'for example'): 1. (Disclosure) I have a vested interest in this because I work at the company being discussed [but I really think everything's fine and this isn't an issue]; 2. (Actual disclaimer) I left the companh being discussed years ago so I have no knowledge of this issue [but my opinion is..]; 3. (Source/background/listen to me!) I work at the company being discussed [so I'll pass on your feedback] For me this is more a 3 than a 1, because there's no 'but' I suppose is the simple way to put it. You disclose a relationship because it might put what you're saying in a different (worse) light; here it's just why it's worth listening to. (If they'd said 'Company X is the best for negotiating salary IMO', 'I am CTO there though' would be a good disclosure!)
sanderjd 5y ago
I think the problem with your last point is that while you, as a CTO whose job it is to know this, know the market salary, the person you're hiring probably does not. Like, I am more experienced than the OP, and my sense of what market salaries are in different places for different skillsets is incredibly hazy. So in light of this, it probably makes more sense for a candidate to, as a rule, push back even without specific knowledge of "$50,000 would be a fair salary" (to use your example), in case it's true. It would be a lot easier of course if there were more salary transparency, but employers don't want that.

schoolornot 5y ago

You’re a CTO so I imagine you’re hiring mostly directors and VPs and it comes down to whether you like the candidate or not. At a lot of companies you just have to be noticeably better than everyone else because after 5+ employees interviewing 5+ candidates, most managers have had enough with the time the team has sunk into that process. As a candidate, if you can find out how long the role has been open, you can really play ball.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Mary-Jane 5y ago
FYI, CTOs at startups often directly interview and hire technical candidates...
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  While I don't know about this specific person, more likely on HN "CTO" is just a self-appointed "fake it til you make it" title. The amount of times I've casually poked at a "CTO" profile here only to find them to be a recent bootcamp grad working at a company of 2 with no funding...
  - bradlys 5y ago
    The fun part of this exercise is that some people on HN give their real name or a way to find out their real name like the commenter did. They’re part of a pretty small company as far as I can tell. Closer to 25 people.
- Zvez 5y ago
  even in medium-sized companies cto often participates in hiring process for high-level engineers. Basically the rule is if you are hiring person you are gonna interact often, you want to evaluate him yourself
warwizard 5y ago
Depends on company size. I am in a <100 employee company that is not a software organization. I lead the IT group (12 including myself). I report to the COO. He participates in interviews for candidates who would be in my group -- even those that report to one of my supervisors. Even in larger groups, I wouldn't be surprised if the CTO participated deeper than you might at first assume.

crazypython 5y ago

What "tests" do you mention? How do you evaluate people? Given the following information, how would you determine someone's skillset? - hobby projects on the same technology stack - open-source contributions (library with 15,000 monthly downloads) - hobby projects on a different technology stack - hobby projects on a different technology stack that made it into production with thousands of users - previous companies

westoque 5y ago
In our company, our interview process goes like: 1. Paper screening the candidate. Looking at resume to see if they have skills for the job on paper. If so go to Personality Screening. 2. Personality Screening is done by talking to them and seeing if there's a cultural fit and also throw in some programming questions or feature discussions to see how they think. 3. Technical Screening by way of pair programming on a problem set that is based on the position that should show a mix of skills, tracing bugs or implementing features. If Frontend, mostly JavaScript and a Frontend Framework like React if needed. As far as your questions go, we put weight on hobby projects but just so that we can see their code writing and some logic up front. As an example, I have seen one candidate with a recent Ruby on Rails project that had all their spaces and newlines everywhere, and I'm not talking about spaces or tabs here, think one chunk of code has 2 spaces, next had 3, another had 5, just everywhere that made the code super hard to read together with the messy logic/abstractions, from this, I assumed that they are still junior. On the contrary, I've seen a candidate that has really good code on a similar Ruby on Rails hobby project that reflected well on their work.

mcnamaratw 5y ago

I'm curious, what industry is offering roughly minimum wage (30k) to programmers in the US?

servercobra 5y ago
FWIW, that's double the federal minimum wage. I'm mostly pointing out how absolutely absurd our minimum wage is.
- mcnamaratw 5y ago
  California minimum wage. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm
- grumpitron 5y ago
  I believe the US federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage
andi999 5y ago
Gaming? (at least here)
senko 5y ago
$30k is far beyond minimum wage in most of the world.
- lordkrandel 5y ago
  30k Euros is what I got with 5 years experience as a developer in Italy, and it's quite normal here.
- woodpanel 5y ago
  Yup. German minimun wage is 19.968 € (~ 24.353 $) Interestingly a couple of high-wage countries that come to mind don't have a minimum wage at all: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden.

OJFord 5y ago

'disclaimer', pet peeve coming up. > Disclaimer, I'm a CTO. That's not a disclaimer, it's.. a claim. It's not even a 'disclosure' (which is what people saying 'disclaimer' often mean) really, it's more like a 'source', or just.. remove the word?: > I'm a CTO, here's how I evaluate [...] Sorry, just bugs me.

westoque 5y ago
No worries, valid point. I have ESL (English as Second Language) but noted.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Ah, then no hard feelings I hope; you just picked it up from so many others getting it wrong! It is a common error for sure, just a pet peeve of mine for some reason, so I call it out occasionally.
sanderjd 5y ago
Seems like "full disclosure" is a perfectly good way to say what they were trying to say. Your version is ok too, but does not have the same implication of "I have a particular bias here, so I am disclosing that so that you read my comment through that lens".
- OJFord 5y ago
  Yes that's fine, disclosure is usually the word 'offenders' are looking for, for sure. I just thought that here the tone was more 'here's why I can give you a good answer' than 'I'm aware my answer may be biased'. Basically, the three things that are conflated into 'disclosure' are (all 'for example'): 1. (Disclosure) I have a vested interest in this because I work at the company being discussed [but I really think everything's fine and this isn't an issue]; 2. (Actual disclaimer) I left the companh being discussed years ago so I have no knowledge of this issue [but my opinion is..]; 3. (Source/background/listen to me!) I work at the company being discussed [so I'll pass on your feedback] For me this is more a 3 than a 1, because there's no 'but' I suppose is the simple way to put it. You disclose a relationship because it might put what you're saying in a different (worse) light; here it's just why it's worth listening to. (If they'd said 'Company X is the best for negotiating salary IMO', 'I am CTO there though' would be a good disclosure!)

sanderjd 5y ago

I think the problem with your last point is that while you, as a CTO whose job it is to know this, know the market salary, the person you're hiring probably does not. Like, I am more experienced than the OP, and my sense of what market salaries are in different places for different skillsets is incredibly hazy. So in light of this, it probably makes more sense for a candidate to, as a rule, push back even without specific knowledge of "$50,000 would be a fair salary" (to use your example), in case it's true. It would be a lot easier of course if there were more salary transparency, but employers don't want that.