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The real problem with these guides is that they always assume the hiring manager is 100% adversarial and will be using everything in their power to minimize you

The real problem with these guides is that they always assume the hiring manager is 100% adversarial and will be using everything in their power to minimize your salary. Some companies definitely operate that way, but as a hiring manager I have a lot of incentives to hire and retain good employees. If I'm constantly low-balling every candidate and squeezing the lowest possible salary out of them, I'm also going to be constantly losing my best people when they realize they're underpaid in 6 months. Then I have to go out and recruit, hire, and re-train someone else. It depends on the company, of course, but many hiring managers are more than happy to carve out as much compensation as they can get away with for new hires. It improves team morale, decreases team turnover, and gives the hiring manager additional leverage over highly paid employees who know they can't just walk out the door into a higher salary somewhere else. Unfortunately, most candidates these days have been taught (by guides like this and other internet wisdom) that salary negotiation must be played like an ultra-competitive game where the first move is to always force the company to name their price first. Hiring managers aren't dumb and we do this all the time, so whenever a candidate starts reciting hardball negotiation playbooks I just start with an offer that's 5-10% lower than what I think we'll end up with. The candidate then comes back and demands something 5-10% higher and we settle back at the number I had in mind anyway. In the odd event that the candidate doesn't negotiate back up after forcing me to go first, I just throw the extra money into the offer anyway. Employees are even happier to see that I've come up on my initial offer, which is a great way to start the relationship. On the other hand, when some candidates come in demanding multiple months of delays while they collect competing offers and want to go through endless rounds of re-negotiation even after we've agreed on a number, I just cut them loose and wish them luck on their career search. Unless you're a FAANG hiring many people at once, it doesn't make sense to play endless games with candidates who are going to end up at a FAANG anyway.

tyingq 5y ago
True, though there's lots of different experiences. Some companies don't even allow the hiring manager to see/know the offer until after it's accepted. All delegated to some HR "compensation" group that is definitely adversarial. Candidates can't really reliably know who's pulling the strings.
- dgfitz 5y ago
  This is my experience as well. I interview people fairly regularly, and I have very little say in their compensation. our HR dept. manages that.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    This has been my experience across multiple companies. My speculation is that it's the norm in companies bigger than ~100 engineers or so.
sokoloff 5y ago
Agree. Further, if I bring you in too low and you do stay, you’re going to be consuming more of next year’s raise pool to bring you up to where I think you should be comp-wise. I’m neither trying to over nor under pay incoming employees. On balance, underpaying slightly seems to have worse effects than overpaying slightly.
- waterhouse 5y ago
  > raise pool Is that actually how it works? If everyone in a group does a good job, or if everyone does a great job, they'll get the same raises either way? Furthermore, if management is convinced that one person did a bad job, then that increases the amount available to the rest? The incentives are fascinating. How many people are in the group to which the raise pool applies?
  - kqr 5y ago
    The way it ought to work is the entire team gets a communal raise depending on how well the company is doing. That way, the incentive is to collaborate and solve problems together for the better of the company, as it should be. It's very unusual that an individual performs significantly (three sigma) above or below the team performance, but in the case of that happening, they could be withheld from the main pool or split a side pot. But not without first either getting the assistance they need to catch up with the team, or teaching the team in their superior methods.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    We don’t have to solve the pool to the last hundred dollars, but this is how it works to a very strong first-order approx, and is definitely how the tooling is setup (we use an SAP module to do it, so I seriously doubt we’re alone here). In terms of how concentrated the problem is, the overall pool covers 1000+ people, but we use the same general formula to break it down to cover groups of 15-50. That’s enough that if you have one outlier low, you’re probably okay (including just explaining why you propose granting raises over the pool because of this). But if you strategically “hire low”, your whole group suffers. (Which is another reason to not bias your offers low-leading is hard enough, so don’t start out to do it on hard mode.) To the “if everyone did a great job” concern. If everyone did a great job, the business does better and the share-based comp becomes more valuable automatically; we would also likely make the raise pool and SBC pool larger because the company was out-performing because everyone did a great job.
Apocryphon 5y ago
> Hiring managers aren't dumb and we do this all the time Just as with technical interviews, it’s a perpetual cat and mouse game between employers and the prospective employees. It’s what happens when there’s a power asymmetry, a lot of money on the table, and a lot of prospects. So expect that internet guides will eventually catch on to your tactics and devise counter-strategies of their own, forcing you to come up with new counter-counter-strategies, and so on. > Unless you're a FAANG hiring many people at once Yeah, this state of affairs is also caused by an industry dominated by omni-resourced companies as well as a secondary tier of cutthroat former startups such as as Uber.
vaporary 5y ago
> Unfortunately, most candidates these days have been taught (by guides like this and other internet wisdom) that salary negotiation must be played like an ultra-competitive game where the first move is to always force the company to name their price first I have to say, it hardly seems to me like an applicant asking a potential employer to name a figure first is an ultra-competitive hard-core tactic. May I ask if you're located in California? If so, how do you deal with AB 168, which requires companies to disclose salary ranges upon request?
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> whenever a candidate starts reciting hardball negotiation playbooks I just start with an offer that's 5-10% lower than what I think we'll end up with. The candidate then comes back and demands something 5-10% higher and we settle back at the number I had in mind anyway That's not the way it has worked out for me. When I have made the hiring manager give a number first, the number has been 2x of the number I would have given. Maybe I just undervalue myself. 2x + 5-10% is a pretty good outcome. Most profitable uncomfortable moments of my life.

tyingq 5y ago

True, though there's lots of different experiences. Some companies don't even allow the hiring manager to see/know the offer until after it's accepted. All delegated to some HR "compensation" group that is definitely adversarial. Candidates can't really reliably know who's pulling the strings.

dgfitz 5y ago
This is my experience as well. I interview people fairly regularly, and I have very little say in their compensation. our HR dept. manages that.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  This has been my experience across multiple companies. My speculation is that it's the norm in companies bigger than ~100 engineers or so.

sokoloff 5y ago

Agree. Further, if I bring you in too low and you do stay, you’re going to be consuming more of next year’s raise pool to bring you up to where I think you should be comp-wise. I’m neither trying to over nor under pay incoming employees. On balance, underpaying slightly seems to have worse effects than overpaying slightly.

waterhouse 5y ago
> raise pool Is that actually how it works? If everyone in a group does a good job, or if everyone does a great job, they'll get the same raises either way? Furthermore, if management is convinced that one person did a bad job, then that increases the amount available to the rest? The incentives are fascinating. How many people are in the group to which the raise pool applies?
- kqr 5y ago
  The way it ought to work is the entire team gets a communal raise depending on how well the company is doing. That way, the incentive is to collaborate and solve problems together for the better of the company, as it should be. It's very unusual that an individual performs significantly (three sigma) above or below the team performance, but in the case of that happening, they could be withheld from the main pool or split a side pot. But not without first either getting the assistance they need to catch up with the team, or teaching the team in their superior methods.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 5y ago
  We don’t have to solve the pool to the last hundred dollars, but this is how it works to a very strong first-order approx, and is definitely how the tooling is setup (we use an SAP module to do it, so I seriously doubt we’re alone here). In terms of how concentrated the problem is, the overall pool covers 1000+ people, but we use the same general formula to break it down to cover groups of 15-50. That’s enough that if you have one outlier low, you’re probably okay (including just explaining why you propose granting raises over the pool because of this). But if you strategically “hire low”, your whole group suffers. (Which is another reason to not bias your offers low-leading is hard enough, so don’t start out to do it on hard mode.) To the “if everyone did a great job” concern. If everyone did a great job, the business does better and the share-based comp becomes more valuable automatically; we would also likely make the raise pool and SBC pool larger because the company was out-performing because everyone did a great job.

Apocryphon 5y ago

> Hiring managers aren't dumb and we do this all the time Just as with technical interviews, it’s a perpetual cat and mouse game between employers and the prospective employees. It’s what happens when there’s a power asymmetry, a lot of money on the table, and a lot of prospects. So expect that internet guides will eventually catch on to your tactics and devise counter-strategies of their own, forcing you to come up with new counter-counter-strategies, and so on. > Unless you're a FAANG hiring many people at once Yeah, this state of affairs is also caused by an industry dominated by omni-resourced companies as well as a secondary tier of cutthroat former startups such as as Uber.

vaporary 5y ago

> Unfortunately, most candidates these days have been taught (by guides like this and other internet wisdom) that salary negotiation must be played like an ultra-competitive game where the first move is to always force the company to name their price first I have to say, it hardly seems to me like an applicant asking a potential employer to name a figure first is an ultra-competitive hard-core tactic. May I ask if you're located in California? If so, how do you deal with AB 168, which requires companies to disclose salary ranges upon request?

rufus_foreman 5y ago

>> whenever a candidate starts reciting hardball negotiation playbooks I just start with an offer that's 5-10% lower than what I think we'll end up with. The candidate then comes back and demands something 5-10% higher and we settle back at the number I had in mind anyway That's not the way it has worked out for me. When I have made the hiring manager give a number first, the number has been 2x of the number I would have given. Maybe I just undervalue myself. 2x + 5-10% is a pretty good outcome. Most profitable uncomfortable moments of my life.