3 ms·

Do you always tell the people you're interviewing what the maximum budgeted salary is for the position? If the answer is no, then withholding their previous sa

by brlewis 18y ago

Do you always tell the people you're interviewing what the maximum budgeted salary is for the position? If the answer is no, then withholding their previous salary isn't hardball negotiation, it's simply negotiating on the same terms you are.

ghshephard 18y ago
"maximum budgeted salary" is probably a more relevant concept to large 1000+ employee company. I typically only know what the _minimum_ budgeted salary is - that is, the lowest skilled employee I can justify bringing into a position. At the top end, sky is the limit - if you can justify $200K/year based on contribution, we'll be lucky to bring you on board. And yes, I immediately tell all applicants at the conclusion of the interview process precisely what I think they can command in the peninsula economy, and at our company (65th percentile), based on what I know about their experience, the listed (and back door references), the local economy, and what our needs are. I don't negotiate salary - that's the number we offer them, and they can either take it or leave it. The information they provide on their salary, and the reason they are leaving their last position, just happen to be two pieces of information that feed into that final number. The difference, of course, being that I know very little about how smart they are, and how much they can get things done, whereas the candidate knows almost _everything_ about themselves. And having the candidate hold back that information just makes my job more difficult, rather than easier. Certainly not what I'm looking for in an employee. They should be able to walk into the interview and tell me to within $5K precisely what they should be making. Remember - I'm a hiring manager, not an HR staffer. I see my job in life to maximize my employee's compensation, ensure that they are making more at my company than they would anywhere else. Every single day consists of me trying to increase what my employees make by giving them more training, more tools, more projects, more guidance, more time to focus on what interests them. Also remember - it hurts an employee just as much to be overcompensated as it does to be undercompensated.
- prakash 18y ago
  Also remember - it hurts an employee just as much to be overcompensated as it does to be undercompensated. Why? Can you expand on that?
  - ghshephard 18y ago
    As a manager, when we do both our employee reviews as well as rankings, we always take into account what an employee is making. Ideally, an employee is performing slightly above their pay grade at all times, so their is a consistent track record of pay increases, punctuated every so often by significant changes in job responsibilities. On a technical track, the typical valley growth pattern is from a low level helper, to a developer/technician, to an engineer/sysadmin, to an architect/Sr.Sysadmin. But, from time to time, something gets out of whack, and either an employee was poorly interviewed, lied about their previous salary, or was grossly overpaid, and they come into a job with far higher expectations than they are going to be capable of delivering on. Let's say that a solid Jr. Sysadmin, who's comfortable working around DNS zone files, configuring startup scripts, placing IP addresses on interfaces, and writing rudimentary scripts to automate all of this, should be making around $80K/year in the valley right now. Now, let's say they got hired into a Sr. Sysadmin role, at $120K/year and, in their first couple months, were expected to architect/engineer/deploy a global loadbalancing DNS architecture, complete with performance and redundancy capability, documentation, etc... This isn't unreasonable to expect of a $120K/year performer, so, when the individual failed to accomplish this, they are placed on a performance improvement plan, seen as an underperformer, and are taking up a valuable head count where someone else could have been performing those functions. They are mostly likely the first people to be laid off, and will be very unlikely to see a repeat of that salary, and will need to adjust to that fact. In a worst case scenario, it takes them 9-12 months to adjust to the fact that their next job will include a $40k/year pay decrease. On the flip side, if they had come in as an $80K/year Sysadmin, and performed well, they would have been seen as an asset to the team, and would have continued to have enjoyed both career as well as salary growth. Ideally they manage to dodge layoffs, and then, 3-4 years later, they are making $120K/year based on merit.
    - shiranaihito 18y ago
- time_management 18y ago
  based on what I know about their experience, the listed (and back door references) If by "back door references", you mean that you check references that the applicant doesn't give, then you, sir, are a scumbag, and that'll be $25 for this consultation.
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    Why would googling a potential hire make him a scumbag? I've never hired anyone I didn't already know, but it seems to me that I wouldn't be willing to hire someone without actually doing a little research on them. Candidate-supplied eferences are supposed to be about character, but all they can really tell you is if the candidate was smart enough to only give references who would say good things about him, it would seem.
    - time_management 18y ago
      To have any component of the decision-making process that the candidate is not aware of is unethical, because it denies him the opportunity to improve his application in the future and successfully seek employment elsewhere.
      - ghshephard 18y ago
        Right. :-) The _best_ references I can get for a candidate are the dozen or so people that worked with him/her for the last five years. If I read you correctly, you are suggesting I roll the dice and not contact them. More specifically, you are almost _never_ working for your current employer in Silicon Valley - your contributions and abilities are typically intended to impress your executive team, manager, and colleagues to position you better in the _next_ company - which is where you really see a strong stock and compensation package. No Sr. candidates are hired without a strong combination of listed and back door references. And, the valley is strong enough that no candidate who has worked in the valley for 8-10 years won't have at least half a dozen colleagues in common with me.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  "They should be able to walk into the interview and tell me to within $5K precisely what they should be making." I think this only works for average hires. People who are more competent than average often don't understand that they are; to them, it just seems like they've had the bad luck to work with incompetents so far. If you're actively looking for average people to fill up a roster, that's fine, then, but if you really want the most competent people you can find (as evidenced by your "if you can justify $200K/yr" comment), you're either going to have to pay what they're really worth independently of what they think they're worth, or risk losing them to the first hirer that is willing to do so.

by brlewis 18y ago

ghshephard 18y ago

"maximum budgeted salary" is probably a more relevant concept to large 1000+ employee company. I typically only know what the _minimum_ budgeted salary is - that is, the lowest skilled employee I can justify bringing into a position. At the top end, sky is the limit - if you can justify $200K/year based on contribution, we'll be lucky to bring you on board. And yes, I immediately tell all applicants at the conclusion of the interview process precisely what I think they can command in the peninsula economy, and at our company (65th percentile), based on what I know about their experience, the listed (and back door references), the local economy, and what our needs are. I don't negotiate salary - that's the number we offer them, and they can either take it or leave it. The information they provide on their salary, and the reason they are leaving their last position, just happen to be two pieces of information that feed into that final number. The difference, of course, being that I know very little about how smart they are, and how much they can get things done, whereas the candidate knows almost _everything_ about themselves. And having the candidate hold back that information just makes my job more difficult, rather than easier. Certainly not what I'm looking for in an employee. They should be able to walk into the interview and tell me to within $5K precisely what they should be making. Remember - I'm a hiring manager, not an HR staffer. I see my job in life to maximize my employee's compensation, ensure that they are making more at my company than they would anywhere else. Every single day consists of me trying to increase what my employees make by giving them more training, more tools, more projects, more guidance, more time to focus on what interests them. Also remember - it hurts an employee just as much to be overcompensated as it does to be undercompensated.

prakash 18y ago
Also remember - it hurts an employee just as much to be overcompensated as it does to be undercompensated. Why? Can you expand on that?
- ghshephard 18y ago
  As a manager, when we do both our employee reviews as well as rankings, we always take into account what an employee is making. Ideally, an employee is performing slightly above their pay grade at all times, so their is a consistent track record of pay increases, punctuated every so often by significant changes in job responsibilities. On a technical track, the typical valley growth pattern is from a low level helper, to a developer/technician, to an engineer/sysadmin, to an architect/Sr.Sysadmin. But, from time to time, something gets out of whack, and either an employee was poorly interviewed, lied about their previous salary, or was grossly overpaid, and they come into a job with far higher expectations than they are going to be capable of delivering on. Let's say that a solid Jr. Sysadmin, who's comfortable working around DNS zone files, configuring startup scripts, placing IP addresses on interfaces, and writing rudimentary scripts to automate all of this, should be making around $80K/year in the valley right now. Now, let's say they got hired into a Sr. Sysadmin role, at $120K/year and, in their first couple months, were expected to architect/engineer/deploy a global loadbalancing DNS architecture, complete with performance and redundancy capability, documentation, etc... This isn't unreasonable to expect of a $120K/year performer, so, when the individual failed to accomplish this, they are placed on a performance improvement plan, seen as an underperformer, and are taking up a valuable head count where someone else could have been performing those functions. They are mostly likely the first people to be laid off, and will be very unlikely to see a repeat of that salary, and will need to adjust to that fact. In a worst case scenario, it takes them 9-12 months to adjust to the fact that their next job will include a $40k/year pay decrease. On the flip side, if they had come in as an $80K/year Sysadmin, and performed well, they would have been seen as an asset to the team, and would have continued to have enjoyed both career as well as salary growth. Ideally they manage to dodge layoffs, and then, 3-4 years later, they are making $120K/year based on merit.
  - shiranaihito 18y ago
time_management 18y ago
based on what I know about their experience, the listed (and back door references) If by "back door references", you mean that you check references that the applicant doesn't give, then you, sir, are a scumbag, and that'll be $25 for this consultation.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  Why would googling a potential hire make him a scumbag? I've never hired anyone I didn't already know, but it seems to me that I wouldn't be willing to hire someone without actually doing a little research on them. Candidate-supplied eferences are supposed to be about character, but all they can really tell you is if the candidate was smart enough to only give references who would say good things about him, it would seem.
  - time_management 18y ago
    To have any component of the decision-making process that the candidate is not aware of is unethical, because it denies him the opportunity to improve his application in the future and successfully seek employment elsewhere.
    - ghshephard 18y ago
      Right. :-) The _best_ references I can get for a candidate are the dozen or so people that worked with him/her for the last five years. If I read you correctly, you are suggesting I roll the dice and not contact them. More specifically, you are almost _never_ working for your current employer in Silicon Valley - your contributions and abilities are typically intended to impress your executive team, manager, and colleagues to position you better in the _next_ company - which is where you really see a strong stock and compensation package. No Sr. candidates are hired without a strong combination of listed and back door references. And, the valley is strong enough that no candidate who has worked in the valley for 8-10 years won't have at least half a dozen colleagues in common with me.
randallsquared 18y ago
"They should be able to walk into the interview and tell me to within $5K precisely what they should be making." I think this only works for average hires. People who are more competent than average often don't understand that they are; to them, it just seems like they've had the bad luck to work with incompetents so far. If you're actively looking for average people to fill up a roster, that's fine, then, but if you really want the most competent people you can find (as evidenced by your "if you can justify $200K/yr" comment), you're either going to have to pay what they're really worth independently of what they think they're worth, or risk losing them to the first hirer that is willing to do so.