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EDIT: Okay, I did some clicking around and yes, it seems like this guy has had more than a passing interest in con-artistry. If anyone reading this can't get pa

EDIT: Okay, I did some clicking around and yes, it seems like this guy has had more than a passing interest in con-artistry. If anyone reading this can't get past that, I highly recommend reading some books or listening to podcasts on negotiation in general. It's a great skill to learn. ---- I can't comment on the other posts as I haven't read them, but I thought the negotiation ones were rather good overall. They line up with very well with other content I have read/watched/listened to from professional negotiators. I know these articles highlighted several things I have personally done wrong in past job offer negotiations. It is important to note that most of this advice is mostly only applicable to white-collar seasoned professionals who are in the middle or later stages of their career. Essentially, people who have the luxury of taking their time to delay the hiring process as much as they can in order to maximize the number of concurrent offers. If you are young and/or just getting started and are hungry to start your career, or were laid off and have been unemployed for 6-12 months with a dwindling emergency fund, you may have to take the first sensible offer you get. Especially if the job market is tough (like it is right now) or if you need that paycheck to keep a roof over your head. You can (and should!) always work on leveling up your career as you go along. Other, better opportunities WILL come along if you are properly tending to your skills and social network.

steveBK123 3y ago
The idea that you can perform poorly if you are paid less is not really true. It's always best to earn the maximum. Expectations are set on you regardless of your compensation. Often your direct team lead / line manager who is doing your performance ranking isn't even completely in the loop on your total compensation. Performing poorly is what will trigger the PIP like process, compensation only comes up later. Further, it's rare for an org to truly let a manager slice up their compensation budget however the like (hey you can hire 2 juniors or 1 senior, your call).. so it often doesn't cost your direct line manager extra headcount just because you are on expensive end. Usually headcount is decided, and then the compensation required to fill that headcount is a secondary concern, as crazy as that seems. Further, it's a rare interview process that doesn't shake out that you are at a lower seniority level than you are representing. Interviews may fail to shake out exact level of technical proficiency but I think most interviews do place you on the junior->senior spectrum fairly well. Only once in my 20 year career have I almost gotten a job that in retrospect was way ahead of where I was at the time. 15 years later I ended up finally taking a similar job. But they didn't hire me!
- gampleman 3y ago
  It's not so much about performance. But especially in tiny companies, if you need to make redundancies, you are going to sort your spreadsheet of employees by cost descending. And if you look at the top spots and you're like "that guy really isn't our best employee" then you're going to be the first to go. Financially, this will likely still work out well for you in the long run. But it may not be a great way to get top job stability.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    You don't get top pay & top job stability, that's life. Job stability implies staying somewhere for a long period of time, and that's generally not how you maximize compensation. Compensation maximizing career management usually involves moving every ~5 years or so, depending on industry. But I'd rather make more money AND have more opportunities/experiences than to rely on the continued benevolence of my single long term employer. When they start sorting spreadsheets by compensation for layoff purposes, you are already in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being paid less for years and years so that you are lower down the spreadsheet isn't a career strategy.
    - suoduandao3 3y ago
      I agree... but it's important to recognize that the smaller the difference between one's pay and one's expenses, the more impact any kind of disruption has. 'don't go bankrupt' isn't a requirement with a lot of leeway - the leeway to take risks comes when losing a job wouldn't lead to immediate bankruptcy.
      - steveBK123 3y ago
        Savings is important no matter your income. However you'll find its a lot easier to save money as you make more money. My savings rate AND my absolute dollars saved have gone up as I progressed through 20s/30s/40s/etc. Increases in your rent or real estate taxes +/-5% don't matter as much when housing is a lower overall % of your income. This is a big hurdle in HCOL areas when you are starting out, so the faster you can move through that phase the better.
theptip 3y ago
> Essentially, people who have the luxury of taking their time to delay the hiring process as much as they can in order to maximize the number of concurrent offers. I think this isn't as clear-cut as you're making it; the advice also applies to earlier-stage engineers. The key observation for those cases is that there _is_ a big return from running as intense a process as you can manage. I think lots of folks apply for a few jobs at a time, and the point here is that you would likely be better off applying for 100 roles at once, rather than browsing and applying for a handful every week (and then tapering off if you get through the filter into a process that seems promising). It's true that more-junior engineers will have fewer options, but I think you can still directionally update on this advice. I would also advise more junior engineers to actually run the funnel calculations to get a feel for how many applications you need to send out per onsite, as the dropoff is quite grim and therefore you need to push way harder than you might hope.
elzbardico 3y ago
> or were laid off and have been unemployed for 6-12 months with a dwindling emergency fund, you may have to take the first sensible offer you get. Especially if the job market is tough (like it is right now) or if you need that paycheck to keep a roof over your head. Also, if you see yourself in such a situation and see yourself having to choose between competing offers, it may make sense to go for the offer that pay less money if this position will expand your long-term employability. It is better for your career to become a tech lead for an upcoming Y-Combinator using Rust, than making some 50k more to be a Senior Java Developer in a oil company from TX. EDIT: I meant 50k MORE
- yardie 3y ago
  This depends on what you want to do in your career. If you want to pursue a career in working in startups and early-stage tech companies, then working for a YC is better for you. A senior developer in TX is making way more than 50k. And working for an oil company in TX is good enough for your resume to get a serious look at 99% of the other traditional corporations. Texas isn't some backwater. It's the second largest state with a long history in deep tech.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    I meant 50k of difference between offers.
  - ckcheng 3y ago
    I hear working for oil and gas makes it hard to leave O&G because most companies have a hard time paying as well (aside from Big Tech, I guess), and maybe the ex-O&G engineer will go back to O&G for the higher pay sooner rather than later. I wonder if the same dynamics, if it exists at all, apply to Big Tech alum.
    - yardie 3y ago
      I've got a few colleagues around the industry. Layoffs are super common, but so are the hiring sprints. And they generally use the same tech as any industry with a few exceptions. A lot of them never bought into the cloud because they have their own datacenters and their own bespoke compute and storage.

steveBK123 3y ago

The idea that you can perform poorly if you are paid less is not really true. It's always best to earn the maximum. Expectations are set on you regardless of your compensation. Often your direct team lead / line manager who is doing your performance ranking isn't even completely in the loop on your total compensation. Performing poorly is what will trigger the PIP like process, compensation only comes up later. Further, it's rare for an org to truly let a manager slice up their compensation budget however the like (hey you can hire 2 juniors or 1 senior, your call).. so it often doesn't cost your direct line manager extra headcount just because you are on expensive end. Usually headcount is decided, and then the compensation required to fill that headcount is a secondary concern, as crazy as that seems. Further, it's a rare interview process that doesn't shake out that you are at a lower seniority level than you are representing. Interviews may fail to shake out exact level of technical proficiency but I think most interviews do place you on the junior->senior spectrum fairly well. Only once in my 20 year career have I almost gotten a job that in retrospect was way ahead of where I was at the time. 15 years later I ended up finally taking a similar job. But they didn't hire me!

gampleman 3y ago
It's not so much about performance. But especially in tiny companies, if you need to make redundancies, you are going to sort your spreadsheet of employees by cost descending. And if you look at the top spots and you're like "that guy really isn't our best employee" then you're going to be the first to go. Financially, this will likely still work out well for you in the long run. But it may not be a great way to get top job stability.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  You don't get top pay & top job stability, that's life. Job stability implies staying somewhere for a long period of time, and that's generally not how you maximize compensation. Compensation maximizing career management usually involves moving every ~5 years or so, depending on industry. But I'd rather make more money AND have more opportunities/experiences than to rely on the continued benevolence of my single long term employer. When they start sorting spreadsheets by compensation for layoff purposes, you are already in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being paid less for years and years so that you are lower down the spreadsheet isn't a career strategy.
  - suoduandao3 3y ago
    I agree... but it's important to recognize that the smaller the difference between one's pay and one's expenses, the more impact any kind of disruption has. 'don't go bankrupt' isn't a requirement with a lot of leeway - the leeway to take risks comes when losing a job wouldn't lead to immediate bankruptcy.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Savings is important no matter your income. However you'll find its a lot easier to save money as you make more money. My savings rate AND my absolute dollars saved have gone up as I progressed through 20s/30s/40s/etc. Increases in your rent or real estate taxes +/-5% don't matter as much when housing is a lower overall % of your income. This is a big hurdle in HCOL areas when you are starting out, so the faster you can move through that phase the better.

theptip 3y ago

> Essentially, people who have the luxury of taking their time to delay the hiring process as much as they can in order to maximize the number of concurrent offers. I think this isn't as clear-cut as you're making it; the advice also applies to earlier-stage engineers. The key observation for those cases is that there _is_ a big return from running as intense a process as you can manage. I think lots of folks apply for a few jobs at a time, and the point here is that you would likely be better off applying for 100 roles at once, rather than browsing and applying for a handful every week (and then tapering off if you get through the filter into a process that seems promising). It's true that more-junior engineers will have fewer options, but I think you can still directionally update on this advice. I would also advise more junior engineers to actually run the funnel calculations to get a feel for how many applications you need to send out per onsite, as the dropoff is quite grim and therefore you need to push way harder than you might hope.

elzbardico 3y ago

> or were laid off and have been unemployed for 6-12 months with a dwindling emergency fund, you may have to take the first sensible offer you get. Especially if the job market is tough (like it is right now) or if you need that paycheck to keep a roof over your head. Also, if you see yourself in such a situation and see yourself having to choose between competing offers, it may make sense to go for the offer that pay less money if this position will expand your long-term employability. It is better for your career to become a tech lead for an upcoming Y-Combinator using Rust, than making some 50k more to be a Senior Java Developer in a oil company from TX. EDIT: I meant 50k MORE

yardie 3y ago
This depends on what you want to do in your career. If you want to pursue a career in working in startups and early-stage tech companies, then working for a YC is better for you. A senior developer in TX is making way more than 50k. And working for an oil company in TX is good enough for your resume to get a serious look at 99% of the other traditional corporations. Texas isn't some backwater. It's the second largest state with a long history in deep tech.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  I meant 50k of difference between offers.
- ckcheng 3y ago
  I hear working for oil and gas makes it hard to leave O&G because most companies have a hard time paying as well (aside from Big Tech, I guess), and maybe the ex-O&G engineer will go back to O&G for the higher pay sooner rather than later. I wonder if the same dynamics, if it exists at all, apply to Big Tech alum.
  - yardie 3y ago
    I've got a few colleagues around the industry. Layoffs are super common, but so are the hiring sprints. And they generally use the same tech as any industry with a few exceptions. A lot of them never bought into the cloud because they have their own datacenters and their own bespoke compute and storage.