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I always recommend this article: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ I think this

I always recommend this article: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ I think this topic is super important and I’m really glad I didn’t follow advice of saying your “expected salary or expected +20%”. Here my anecdotal SWE salary history: Worked at a startup for a bunch of years making 90k by the end Got offered a place at FAANG. Recruiter pushed me a little bit on expected salary but I didn’t give one using all the approached from the linked article. They offered me 250k. I would have never ever assumed that I can be payed this much. Instead of accepting I again followed the advice and asked for time to think. I had no counter offers but spoke to the recruiter thanked them for the offer and asked if there’s room for improvement. And they were nice and reasonable, they said yes if there are counter offers or you are leaving unvested stock behind. I was leaving unvested stock in an unprofitable startup, but I wrote the amount and vesting schedule and got offer bumped by 25k. After working there I considered going to trading shop. Used the same approach and they offered 400k. Again this number seemed insane at the time. So I asked for more, this time I had much lower counter offer. But I could use it as some form of leverage. They upped the offer by 150k by the end (this is sign on+ salary+guaranteed first year bonus). I am writing this not to show off the numbers, but to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong. Let the employer give information first and don’t back yourself into the corner by revealing your ignorance of market or minimum comp you are willing to take.

chamomeal 2y ago
That is absolutely bonkers. The range of developer salaries is so huge. Congrats on moving far above 90k!! What kind of work experience would you say was most valuable in climbing that ladder? Open source stuff? Anything you could show off?
- goldeneye13_ 2y ago
  I think what made the difference in both places is that I had good projects I could talk about and the tell a good story of this is the business problem, this is what we did, this is how I contributed, this is the result. I know this is not super helpful and sounds like standard STAR stuff. I was lucky because I was given a chance to deliver large and important projects and I think this is what they liked. This comp is high but once you get into l7 and above or get senior roles in trading firms numbers become even more crazy.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I think the main thing his experience showed is that if you want to make a lot of money, you need to position yourself to move into industries that can pay a lot. For software engineers that means 3 major options: 1. The US tech giants (the "FAANGs"). These companies are so insanely profitable and they can afford to pay a lot, though they all have become more cost conscious in the past couple years. 2. Finance. Again, they've got a lot of money, and especially for trading firms it's usually more straightforward to assign value to individual developers than in other areas. 3. Currently there is a big desire for AI talent, so if that's your industry one of the big startups (OpenAI, Anthropic) or one of the smaller well-funded ones should be able to pay you well. So I would say this person didn't so much "climb the ladder" as opposed to position themselves well to get hired at other companies that would pay them a lot more. And I think this person did it in perfect order, i.e. it's been said a lot on HN how "the startup deal" (i.e lower salary but more equity) is hardly ever worth it for IC software developers these days if you can also get a FAANG job, but it can be a great stepping stone to getting experience that leads to a better paying job at companies that can afford to do so.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    For a real world anecdote: I was leading enterprise app dev + AWS projects at a small startup making $x. I got a remote job working at AWS (Professional Services) as a mid level (full time direct hire) consultant making $x + 65K working remotely. I got Amazoned and a year later, now I’m a “staff” consultant (full time) at a smaller consulting company making the same as I made as a mid level consultant at AWS. If I were to work at GCP as a “senior” (one level down) I would be making $150k - $200K more than I am making now. But even that department has a return to office mandate. Maybe I would try it after getting a few more years under my belt working at this level
johnnyanmac 2y ago
> to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong. Defintiely could be. But not in this economy. I'll take what I can get. But in general, it really is a matter of knowing your worth and what they could pay. IF you have a certain noteriety in a community of a domain and you get an offer, understand how much leverage you have vs. yet another front end web dev. Let alone 99% of students out of college.
- goldeneye13_ 2y ago
  Notice I’m not suggesting that people go for “hard” negotiation. You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early. Worst case you will get offer that’s too low. But best case you get offered above what you expected.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    > You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early. The benefit is, if they can't pay you enough to join them, you don't have to waste your time going through some six-interview multiday gauntlet.
    - zemvpferreira 2y ago
      I don't mean to point fingers but it's telling that OP talks about maximising salary, while you talk about minimising effort. I'm not interested in going through the gauntlet either, but these things are surely related.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I think another factor I didn't talk about was pay transparency. My state has it and it's slowly expanding so outside of like, Netflix's "100-600k" range you don't really have to play many games here. Know your worth and pick in that range internally. Go above if you really feel you can. I do want to emphasize being careful with current times, though. I've heard of very mild negotiations (were talking a 5k counter offer or an extra week of vacation time) leading to rescindings in 2023. Which is unheard of from 2022 or before. They'd at least hold firm in the worst case. But we're still in the middle of this circus that is probably going well into 2025.
ewuhic 2y ago
Ah, the United States of America, this is hardly possible in Europe, especially Germany.
- goldeneye13_ 2y ago
  This is UK
  - 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
    ouch ... that hurt
  - 2024user 2y ago
    ...are you hiring? :)
    - goldeneye13_ 2y ago
      If you are serious then I think trading firms are actively hiring. There’s a bunch of them in London jump, Jane etc. comp will be very high there. I think faang hiring is slower now, but not sure
      - 2024user 2y ago
        I was mostly joking but might start looking in the new year. I'll keep trading firms on my radar, cheers!
- petters 2y ago
  This is why we Europeans like working at American companies (in Europe)
  - ewuhic 2y ago
    Now the question is where to find American companies willing to do B2B/freelance contract without location-adjusted bs.
x2tyfi 2y ago
I’ve had similar excited experiences. On one FAANG offer in 2020, I asked for time to think, as you mention. I already had awareness of pay bands and an idea of the range for this particular role from levels.fyi. When I came back to the recruiter, I asked how much room she had to negotiate, and asked if she could put me “in the middle of the band”. She immediately said yes and it resulted in a bump of $75k/yr or so. The thing to remember is that recruiters key metrics are about hires. They desperately want to get people in the door, especially after going through all of the effort to schedule interviews. They will happily help you out within reason.
ryandrake 2y ago
This just seems incredible to me, to the point where I almost can't believe it. Throughout my 25+ year career, I've 1. never been positively surprised by the number I got, and 2. never had a company increase from their starting offer. It's always very close (within ~10-20%) to what I'm already expecting, plus "Take it or leave it. There's a line of 50 behind you willing to take that compensation." What are the exact mystical words you are saying to get these kind of results? Not that it really matters at this point. I'm pretty much at the tail end of my career and making a small fraction of the numbers you're posting.
- goldeneye13_ 2y ago
  You can check levels.fyi large faang l6 and above get those numbers. I think there is a massive gap between faang and similar and smaller places. When I got the recent crazy offer I interviewed in what I thought were good smaller companies and several offered me below my current salary. And a couple were in 110k range with absolutely no room for negotiation.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    To be fair, FAANG L6 and above are what, 10% of each FAANG? Maybe 5%? Probably 0.1% of the tech workforce. you're not talking about a normal job ere.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      L6 for Amazon is Senior, L4 is mid and L4 is junior. Below that are the non “blue badge” employees - factory workers, drivers, etc. I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”. I worked at AWS for 3.5 years until last year. I would assume the distribution is about the same thing for most other tech companies. Doing a quick bit of research, you’re not to far off. My back of the envelop math is about 7.5% work at FAANG + Microsoft. Maybe 10% if you include other companies that pay in that range
      - chipdart 2y ago
throwaway123467 2y ago
Similar: My first job out of college was ~a year after the Great Recession, so everything I looked at said to expect ~$35k starting salary. Maybe I could've asked for $40k if I'd followed salary negotiation advice. Instead I didn't volunteer anything and the first offer I got was $50k.
- khedoros1 2y ago
  I started my first job in 2008. I had a friend who got a job doing software development for a city government at $60k. I interviewed at a big tech company. I don't remember even being asked about my salary expectation. The offer came at $75k. I'd been expecting 40-50, based on what the career center at school was telling me.
btwitch 2y ago
I wish we had dates to tie to these numbers; inflation is hard to contextualize.

chamomeal 2y ago

That is absolutely bonkers. The range of developer salaries is so huge. Congrats on moving far above 90k!! What kind of work experience would you say was most valuable in climbing that ladder? Open source stuff? Anything you could show off?

goldeneye13_ 2y ago
I think what made the difference in both places is that I had good projects I could talk about and the tell a good story of this is the business problem, this is what we did, this is how I contributed, this is the result. I know this is not super helpful and sounds like standard STAR stuff. I was lucky because I was given a chance to deliver large and important projects and I think this is what they liked. This comp is high but once you get into l7 and above or get senior roles in trading firms numbers become even more crazy.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I think the main thing his experience showed is that if you want to make a lot of money, you need to position yourself to move into industries that can pay a lot. For software engineers that means 3 major options: 1. The US tech giants (the "FAANGs"). These companies are so insanely profitable and they can afford to pay a lot, though they all have become more cost conscious in the past couple years. 2. Finance. Again, they've got a lot of money, and especially for trading firms it's usually more straightforward to assign value to individual developers than in other areas. 3. Currently there is a big desire for AI talent, so if that's your industry one of the big startups (OpenAI, Anthropic) or one of the smaller well-funded ones should be able to pay you well. So I would say this person didn't so much "climb the ladder" as opposed to position themselves well to get hired at other companies that would pay them a lot more. And I think this person did it in perfect order, i.e. it's been said a lot on HN how "the startup deal" (i.e lower salary but more equity) is hardly ever worth it for IC software developers these days if you can also get a FAANG job, but it can be a great stepping stone to getting experience that leads to a better paying job at companies that can afford to do so.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  For a real world anecdote: I was leading enterprise app dev + AWS projects at a small startup making $x. I got a remote job working at AWS (Professional Services) as a mid level (full time direct hire) consultant making $x + 65K working remotely. I got Amazoned and a year later, now I’m a “staff” consultant (full time) at a smaller consulting company making the same as I made as a mid level consultant at AWS. If I were to work at GCP as a “senior” (one level down) I would be making $150k - $200K more than I am making now. But even that department has a return to office mandate. Maybe I would try it after getting a few more years under my belt working at this level

johnnyanmac 2y ago

> to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong. Defintiely could be. But not in this economy. I'll take what I can get. But in general, it really is a matter of knowing your worth and what they could pay. IF you have a certain noteriety in a community of a domain and you get an offer, understand how much leverage you have vs. yet another front end web dev. Let alone 99% of students out of college.

goldeneye13_ 2y ago
Notice I’m not suggesting that people go for “hard” negotiation. You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early. Worst case you will get offer that’s too low. But best case you get offered above what you expected.
- michaelt 2y ago
  > You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early. The benefit is, if they can't pay you enough to join them, you don't have to waste your time going through some six-interview multiday gauntlet.
  - zemvpferreira 2y ago
    I don't mean to point fingers but it's telling that OP talks about maximising salary, while you talk about minimising effort. I'm not interested in going through the gauntlet either, but these things are surely related.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I think another factor I didn't talk about was pay transparency. My state has it and it's slowly expanding so outside of like, Netflix's "100-600k" range you don't really have to play many games here. Know your worth and pick in that range internally. Go above if you really feel you can. I do want to emphasize being careful with current times, though. I've heard of very mild negotiations (were talking a 5k counter offer or an extra week of vacation time) leading to rescindings in 2023. Which is unheard of from 2022 or before. They'd at least hold firm in the worst case. But we're still in the middle of this circus that is probably going well into 2025.

ewuhic 2y ago

Ah, the United States of America, this is hardly possible in Europe, especially Germany.

goldeneye13_ 2y ago
This is UK
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
  ouch ... that hurt
- 2024user 2y ago
  ...are you hiring? :)
  - goldeneye13_ 2y ago
    If you are serious then I think trading firms are actively hiring. There’s a bunch of them in London jump, Jane etc. comp will be very high there. I think faang hiring is slower now, but not sure
    - 2024user 2y ago
      I was mostly joking but might start looking in the new year. I'll keep trading firms on my radar, cheers!
petters 2y ago
This is why we Europeans like working at American companies (in Europe)
- ewuhic 2y ago
  Now the question is where to find American companies willing to do B2B/freelance contract without location-adjusted bs.

x2tyfi 2y ago

I’ve had similar excited experiences. On one FAANG offer in 2020, I asked for time to think, as you mention. I already had awareness of pay bands and an idea of the range for this particular role from levels.fyi. When I came back to the recruiter, I asked how much room she had to negotiate, and asked if she could put me “in the middle of the band”. She immediately said yes and it resulted in a bump of $75k/yr or so. The thing to remember is that recruiters key metrics are about hires. They desperately want to get people in the door, especially after going through all of the effort to schedule interviews. They will happily help you out within reason.

ryandrake 2y ago

This just seems incredible to me, to the point where I almost can't believe it. Throughout my 25+ year career, I've 1. never been positively surprised by the number I got, and 2. never had a company increase from their starting offer. It's always very close (within ~10-20%) to what I'm already expecting, plus "Take it or leave it. There's a line of 50 behind you willing to take that compensation." What are the exact mystical words you are saying to get these kind of results? Not that it really matters at this point. I'm pretty much at the tail end of my career and making a small fraction of the numbers you're posting.

goldeneye13_ 2y ago
You can check levels.fyi large faang l6 and above get those numbers. I think there is a massive gap between faang and similar and smaller places. When I got the recent crazy offer I interviewed in what I thought were good smaller companies and several offered me below my current salary. And a couple were in 110k range with absolutely no room for negotiation.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  To be fair, FAANG L6 and above are what, 10% of each FAANG? Maybe 5%? Probably 0.1% of the tech workforce. you're not talking about a normal job ere.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    L6 for Amazon is Senior, L4 is mid and L4 is junior. Below that are the non “blue badge” employees - factory workers, drivers, etc. I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”. I worked at AWS for 3.5 years until last year. I would assume the distribution is about the same thing for most other tech companies. Doing a quick bit of research, you’re not to far off. My back of the envelop math is about 7.5% work at FAANG + Microsoft. Maybe 10% if you include other companies that pay in that range
    - chipdart 2y ago

throwaway123467 2y ago

Similar: My first job out of college was ~a year after the Great Recession, so everything I looked at said to expect ~$35k starting salary. Maybe I could've asked for $40k if I'd followed salary negotiation advice. Instead I didn't volunteer anything and the first offer I got was $50k.

khedoros1 2y ago
I started my first job in 2008. I had a friend who got a job doing software development for a city government at $60k. I interviewed at a big tech company. I don't remember even being asked about my salary expectation. The offer came at $75k. I'd been expecting 40-50, based on what the career center at school was telling me.

btwitch 2y ago

I wish we had dates to tie to these numbers; inflation is hard to contextualize.