4 ms·

There's a difference between giving someone extra work, likely "shit work" and treating someone like shit. More than one employee at excellent companies has be

by xiaoma 15y ago

There's a difference between giving someone extra work, likely "shit work" and treating someone like shit. More than one employee at excellent companies has been assigned more work due to having a higher salary than colleagues at the same grade. This is an easy, even somewhat logical rationalization for a manager to make. The "worst case" you put forward is still far from convincing. In work, black swans are generally positive. If a typical job has a value of x, most will be between .8x and 1.2x, but a few will be 10x or even 100x. Outside the military, where death is on the line, -100x jobs are very, very rare compared to +100x jobs. Wasting a year and a half in a ho-hum environment is not as big a price as missing a once in a lifetime opportunity due to over negotiation. In the opposite vein, the amazing opportunities often come at a reduced salary. How much less would Warren Buffet be worth today if he'd tried to negotiate a higher salary with Benjamin Graham instead of doing the exact opposite?

tptacek 15y ago
I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot: If your employer treats you more poorly because you negotiate a better comp package, you shouldn't be working for them; they are a bad employer. If negotiation costs you a "once in a lifetime" opportunity, the opportunity is "once in a lifetime" in the "boiler room pump and dump" sense, or the "late night infomercial" sense. A year of your life, however, is priceless.
- xiaoma 15y ago
  >I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot: Your previous comment was only four sentences, one of which was an exhortation to read the previous sentence twice! I'm sure your implication wasn't intentional, but I find the suggestion that you aren't speaking simply enough for me to understand your reasoning offensive. It's not that your explanation was too complex. I just don't agree with it. It's rational to demand more from someone who you pay more. If one employee of a certain job-title asks more money than his/her colleagues who have equivalent skills, then expecting that person to handle more work or less desirable work that comes to the team is rational. It may not be optimal in every case, but it certainly doesn't make the manager's entire company "a bad employer". There are many good opportunities in life that can come from not being maximally greedy. Some are once in a life time, some are more commonplace. One need only read biographies to find examples.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    No, it's not rational to demand more from someone who you pay more. Negotiations are two-sided. If, for your $5,000 pay bump†, the company decides they'd like you to be closing 35% more bugs than every other employer in your pay band, they can demand that in the negotiation. You can then make a decision about whether or not the bump is worth the concession. If it isn't, you can decline the job, or you can negotiate the concession, or you can decide to accept the previous offer. It is (word chosen carefully:) alarming how bad engineers are at negotiation. Beliefs like yours (aggressive negotiation entitles an employer to maltreat employees later on down the line) are alarmingly common. They're simply not true. The detail-shackled brains of nerds†† seem unable to get past something here: no matter what employers say the feel about negotiations, surely they can register the tenor of the negotiation in the back of their heads, and then ratchet their expectations appropriately. Surely, nerd engineers think, that must occasionally happen. Answer: yes, it does happen. AT BAD EMPLOYERS. Good employers understand how salary negotiations work and allow for it. The best employers even account for how bad engineers are at negotiations and go out of their way to help educate candidates (Fog Creek, for instance, once said they often "top up" the best offers some candidates receive --- that should function as a big red flashing light to those people that they didn't negotiate well enough). I am not telling you that employers won't do irrational things if you negotiate hard with them. I'm telling you that if they do, you should run run run away fast, because that's the canary in the coalmine. Those employers are also going to dilute the shit out of you, call you in to work on weekdays, swap your tolerable manager out with some douchebag they hire from a BigCo to increase productivity, lock you into a regimented COLA-based incentive comp plan, slash your health care benefits 8 months down the road, and never ever improve the hardware you're issued. Don't believe me? Think of it this way: the best engineers are disproportionately likely to negotiate aggressively. Employers that get vindictive about negotiation don't get to hire those people. Why are you interested in working at an employer that shuns the best talent? (Hiring manager, one of many at my company, speaking here.) There. You got a prolix response from me. Happy? :) † (about which Patrick is right: its a rounding error, and it's the kind of rounding error that --- unlike, say, a better- but- out- of- spec laptop, which might incur a huge companywide "new laptops for everyone" shitstorm --- is particularly easy to concede to a new hire.) †† (see my about:)
rmc 15y ago
missing a once in a lifetime opportunity due to over negotiation I doubt it can be a once in a lifetime type of company if they would not hire you over a requested 4½% pay increase. If they play hardball over the requested raise, then you should accept the $110k offer.

by xiaoma 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot: If your employer treats you more poorly because you negotiate a better comp package, you shouldn't be working for them; they are a bad employer. If negotiation costs you a "once in a lifetime" opportunity, the opportunity is "once in a lifetime" in the "boiler room pump and dump" sense, or the "late night infomercial" sense. A year of your life, however, is priceless.

xiaoma 15y ago
>I don't know how much more simply I could have said it, but I'll take a shot: Your previous comment was only four sentences, one of which was an exhortation to read the previous sentence twice! I'm sure your implication wasn't intentional, but I find the suggestion that you aren't speaking simply enough for me to understand your reasoning offensive. It's not that your explanation was too complex. I just don't agree with it. It's rational to demand more from someone who you pay more. If one employee of a certain job-title asks more money than his/her colleagues who have equivalent skills, then expecting that person to handle more work or less desirable work that comes to the team is rational. It may not be optimal in every case, but it certainly doesn't make the manager's entire company "a bad employer". There are many good opportunities in life that can come from not being maximally greedy. Some are once in a life time, some are more commonplace. One need only read biographies to find examples.
- tptacek 15y ago
  No, it's not rational to demand more from someone who you pay more. Negotiations are two-sided. If, for your $5,000 pay bump†, the company decides they'd like you to be closing 35% more bugs than every other employer in your pay band, they can demand that in the negotiation. You can then make a decision about whether or not the bump is worth the concession. If it isn't, you can decline the job, or you can negotiate the concession, or you can decide to accept the previous offer. It is (word chosen carefully:) alarming how bad engineers are at negotiation. Beliefs like yours (aggressive negotiation entitles an employer to maltreat employees later on down the line) are alarmingly common. They're simply not true. The detail-shackled brains of nerds†† seem unable to get past something here: no matter what employers say the feel about negotiations, surely they can register the tenor of the negotiation in the back of their heads, and then ratchet their expectations appropriately. Surely, nerd engineers think, that must occasionally happen. Answer: yes, it does happen. AT BAD EMPLOYERS. Good employers understand how salary negotiations work and allow for it. The best employers even account for how bad engineers are at negotiations and go out of their way to help educate candidates (Fog Creek, for instance, once said they often "top up" the best offers some candidates receive --- that should function as a big red flashing light to those people that they didn't negotiate well enough). I am not telling you that employers won't do irrational things if you negotiate hard with them. I'm telling you that if they do, you should run run run away fast, because that's the canary in the coalmine. Those employers are also going to dilute the shit out of you, call you in to work on weekdays, swap your tolerable manager out with some douchebag they hire from a BigCo to increase productivity, lock you into a regimented COLA-based incentive comp plan, slash your health care benefits 8 months down the road, and never ever improve the hardware you're issued. Don't believe me? Think of it this way: the best engineers are disproportionately likely to negotiate aggressively. Employers that get vindictive about negotiation don't get to hire those people. Why are you interested in working at an employer that shuns the best talent? (Hiring manager, one of many at my company, speaking here.) There. You got a prolix response from me. Happy? :) † (about which Patrick is right: its a rounding error, and it's the kind of rounding error that --- unlike, say, a better- but- out- of- spec laptop, which might incur a huge companywide "new laptops for everyone" shitstorm --- is particularly easy to concede to a new hire.) †† (see my about:)

rmc 15y ago

missing a once in a lifetime opportunity due to over negotiation I doubt it can be a once in a lifetime type of company if they would not hire you over a requested 4½% pay increase. If they play hardball over the requested raise, then you should accept the $110k offer.