11 ms·

How to negotiate your salary package

362 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
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Noelia- 1y ago
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dtnewman 1y ago
For those who prefer reading, this is more or less an audio version of of his essay from years ago: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
- davidmurdoch 1y ago
  Tangential: What's with the disclaimer about reading on an "iDevice"? Do they struggle with lots of words on a single page?
  - tonfa 1y ago
    It's from 2012, mobile device screens were way smaller.
    - chgs 1y ago
      In 2013 I was buying books on kindle and reading them on my 4s just fine
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    This was written over 10 years ago, when such devices had much lower resolution.
Sytten 1y ago
That reads like something written pre LLM, pre mass layoffs and pre section 174. Reality is that engineers have way less bargaining power that they used to. Aside, as a small startup I am generally upfront with the salary since if you are not in the range we can afford it is not worth having a discussion.
- mgraczyk 1y ago
  If you have ~5+ years of experience and live in the US, things haven't changed. Regardless, negotiating matters more than ever. At startups you negotiate for equity instead of salary but a lot of the same advice applies.
  - ikiris 1y ago
    Startup equity is the equivalent to the old Foxworthy bit "You can't write me a check?" I said, "No, I -- a check? Hell yeah, I can write you a check! I thought you needed money. Tell you what, I'm just gonna pay the whole thing off right now! I'm gonna be a congressman when I grow up."
    - mgraczyk 1y ago
      It's not really, because it's finite. You don't generally dilute the options pool when you hire new employees, you give them some slice of a scarce options pool
      - achierius 1y ago
        Sure, but there's an extent to which the the board and its constitutive shareholders already expect to be giving away options for new employees, and as such will have allocated a pool for such purpose -- both for the "standard" package, and for "hard negotiators". For traditional tech startups (i.e. ones not so flush with cash as OpenAI), giving these away is far easier than giving away more real-world, honest-to-god cashflow, because that directly drains your runway, while all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse.
buttocks 1y ago
Life was good for engineers 15 years ago!
- grepLeigh 1y ago
  It still is! I think getting your foot in the door is much more difficult now compared to 5-6 years ago, similar to difficulty finding entry level work in 2008-2009 financial crisis. Market conditions aside, the points the OP blog post makes about asymmetrical value are evergreen.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  Ok, but also engineers in the US are much better paid now than 15 years ago. In 2010 the big story in engineer comp was that Google, Apple, and others were conspiring to avoid competing for talent (and thereby driving pay up) [1]. It was roughly Facebook not being part of this scheme that started driving salaries up. A few years ago the popular story was that people were switching jobs because their compensation had been inflated by massive share price increases (ie you are promised x shares vesting over 4 years at sign on with refresher grants, but the value of x shares goes up a bunch over those years) and they wanted to maintain their high realised comp even though shares were no longer rising as much. The only way for that to happen was engineers getting paid very well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Drblessing 1y ago
[flagged]
cornhole 1y ago
I just ask some stupid amount of money first because there is literally no cost or downsides.
- testfrequency 1y ago
  I can tell you that most hiring managers and recruiters find it offensive, and the conversation quickly shifts to how much do we care about playing games with this candidate who seems a bit reckless in suggesting a salary they know isn’t realistic.
  - baxuz 1y ago
    I find it offensive and playing games when they won't give me the ranges. I've been at companies which paid me 1/2 of what some my peers earned. I don't have time for these games. Give me your salary ranges for the position and I can negotiate. Otherwise I'm pulling numbers out of my ass. The recruiter wants to pay me as close to 0 as possible, and it's up to me to push back on that.
  - cornhole 1y ago
    hiring managers and recruiters are not people so its ok
    - k__ 1y ago
      Yeah. The only good jobs I got directly from CEOs.
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  - 9rx 1y ago
    > I can tell you that most hiring managers and recruiters find it offensive [...] suggesting a salary they know isn’t realistic. But how are you going to go know? In most lines of business, prices are public knowledge. In a retail setting, for example, you can look at the price tags on the shelf, in commodities we have price data published on a continual basis, etc. Anyone and everyone can just look if they want to see an effective range of what others are selling similar products for. This provides a decent mechanism for price discovery. But labor prices, in the US at least, tend to be hush-hush (slowly starting to change, but still early days). Even where you occasionally find people opening up, there isn't a consistent metric used (e.g. some talk base salary, others talk total compensation, no mention of inputs [like how many hours are required to fulfill the salary], etc.), if they are even telling you the truth. And where you have the full picture on exacting price, you aren't apt to know much about the person. Someone doing the same job might truly be worth half/double what you are. People are not commodities. Hiring managers and recruiters usually get to see term sheets across many people along with background on those people, so they have a reasonable idea of what is realistic for a person of similar stature, but that doesn't help the seller. And it is usually the seller's job to make the first price move, so all one can do is make a complete guess. Employers have long pushed for that secrecy exactly so they have the benefit of knowing what the seller doesn't. And fair enough. You can't blame them for wanting to leverage that advantage if they can get away with it. But, to then be offended when someone isn't aware? You can't have it both ways.
moralestapia 1y ago
How do you negotiate when the position already has a fixed number in there that was even published along the job description?
- sokoloff 1y ago
  If there's a single fixed number (rather than a range), there's probably a reason for that (might be a government, university, or institute role with a fixed pay schedule, for example) and as a hiring manager, I'm assuming you're applying for the job as published, including the comp number.
- throwaway219450 1y ago
  Let's assume the amount is fixed. One approach is to ask to re-frame the position to be better value. Ask for working hours that effectively pays you more per day, like an 80% contract at the same comp. If they mumble HR and hours, offer to do 4x10 hour days. The magic phrase in corporate is "flexible working". This doesn't solve your comp going up, but you get a 3-day weekend and 52 more holidays a year. This one even works at intensely bureaucratic organisations like universities. With grants, the amount you can be paid is very fixed, but almost anything else can be approved if three people sign off on it.
- RickS 1y ago
  Did you read the post? The numbers are fake, is how. That's the whole point of this post. They're arbitrary, made up, totally subject to change. The idea that they're immutable is corpo-propaganda designed to worsen your performance in a subtly adversarial encounter where it benefits the company for you to think you have no leverage. Job offers use craigslist pricing. They don't describe the actual desired end state. They put down an anchor in a favorable direction with the expectation that it will get haggled on for a round or two.
ryandrake 1y ago
Patrick's "salary negotiation" piece has made the rounds here a number of times, and I always have the same reaction to it: It probably works, if you are already a software celebrity like Patrick, or some other highly sought after Captain of the software engineering industry. For us rank-and-file employee number 12887's, I just don't see it working--I've really never negotiated compensation significantly successfully in my 25+ year career. Here's how salary negotiation usually goes if you're not someone like John Carmack: Them: We'd love to have you join the team! Here's your compensation letter, please get back to us within the next 2 weeks and we'll move forward. You: Thank you, I believe my background and skills would suggest a compensation of $1.5X instead of $X. Is this possible with your hiring budget? Them: The offer is for $X and we believe it is appropriate for your level. You: Maybe my level should be higher then? Them: Ha Ha You: Looking at [website A, B, C] I see the average compensation for this role is $1.25X. Surely there is room to move this upward. Them: We don't agree with that data. The offer is for $X. Shall we move forward? You: What about equity or bonus, is there any flexibility with those numbers, or vacation time, or...? Them: The offer is for $X. If you don't want the job, we can move on to one of our other 20 candidates who are in the pipeline for the role. That's basically how salary negotiations went for almost the entirety of my career. If your results have been different, I'm kind of envious!
- sokoloff 1y ago
  If you don't have a strong BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), you're not going to get very far with just asking. "I received your offer for $X. I really enjoyed the interviews, meeting the team, and am intrigued by the problems I'd get to solve with them. Unfortunately, I have a competing offer for $1.25X from another company and I need to make sure my family is provided for. If you would match it, I'm excited to join, but if your offer is firm at $X, I'm afraid I won't be taking it." If they really just need someone to hold down a chair, they'll probably not budge. If they really want specifically you, they're more likely to bend if they believe that's their only move.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Basically correct. I guess my point is Patrick could have saved a lot of typing and simply wrote "Have one or more competing offers."
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whiplash451 1y ago
The main thing that changed since when this article was written is that companies are much less in a rush than they used to to hire people, which means that a lot of mechanics described in the article fall apart. In particular, companies don't really look at how much they spend to hire someone. They'll just wait for the hiring committee to be "really excited" about a candidate before making an offer.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  If the company is “really excited” to hire you then doesn’t this put you in a better position for negotiation?
deleted 1y ago
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andy99 1y ago
I regularly exchange currency at the bank. There is a posted rate that I can get online. If I go to the teller, they will propose that rate as well, at which point I say "can I have the premium rate" and they say, ok, I can give you x - something 1% better or so. Point is, I'm not negotiating with the bank teller, they have a flow chart they need to follow. For a lot of positions with big companies, it's going to be the same. There might be a path on the flowchart you can access, but you're not really negotiating. In some cases you may be able to break though this if there's a real person (not recruiter) that will push for you, but talking to recruiters / talent is like talking to the bank teller.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  So even if you’re just advancing down a flow chart, the ‘negotiation’ option is better, right?
  - paulcole 1y ago
    There’s a non-zero chance that you don’t end up with the job whether you accept or negotiate. If you can accept some of those non-zero values, then yes negotiation is better by some definitions of better. Personally if I get an offer I’m happy with, I accept it. If not, I either decline or negotiate. But if I was in a position where the worst possible outcome was me not getting the job at the current offer, I’d accept it.
    - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
      You have to play really, really hard ball to get an offer revoked because of negotiation. By the time a company has decided they're willing to hire you, they've sunk a non-trivial amount of resources into the process. Beyond just the interviews, there have been meetings, reports from the people in the interviews, etc. Everyone involved is pretty strongly motivated to get it over with. That friction translates to leverage. If you don't open up with "I wouldn't boot up my computer for any less than twice your offer", then there's negligible chances of the worst case scenario not being their initial offer. Personally, I like to try and use PTO as an opening point in negotiations. Companies hate giving out PTO, I don't know why, but it's seen as a soft-blocker. Something like "I've looked over your offer, and it's pretty compelling, but it's a bit below market rates. If you could add another week of PTO, or another 15% comp I could sign today". Every time I've done this I got the vast majority of the money (but never the PTO, which I would be just as happy for).
brunooliv 1y ago
In my experience this never worked for me for the simple fact that I never had the skill and time to even GET a second offer to bargain against. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad developer, but I’m definitely horrible at interviewing and having to jump through several different steps at different companies just to bargain for a higher end of the range makes me feel like either the market is the problem or the expectations from companies are way unrealistic
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  I think expectations are often realistic in the sense that companies are generally able to hire sufficiently many people at acceptable prices. But I think it’s also the case that there are fashions in interviewing such that companies are mostly all trying to hire the same subset of candidates that do well at the current thing. So if you’re bad at the current style of interviewing it’s going to be more work than someone fortunate enough to do well at the current fad.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
  I too have never been in situation where the timing would possibly work out to get companies to compete. Some employers take months from start to finish while others can wrap things up within two weeks. Then you get an offer that requires a decision within two-three days. Sure, make an ask for more money, but I have never had any leverage.
  - ashdksnndck 1y ago
    I found that behavior would change a lot once I had an offer from a decent company. Suddenly all the scheduling/matching delays and processes that supposedly were delaying me would be resolved when I revealed that. It was even worth emailing recruiters that ghosted me because they would respond again. Also, offer deadlines are usually just pressure tactics and would go away if there actually was a risk of me not signing. Caveat that I haven’t interviewed in the last couple years and this may not be the case anymore.
- hellisothers 1y ago
beefnugs 1y ago
The whole definition of a regular joe employee is that they are working under a coercion hierarchy. There are no negotiations, either you got luck shifted into a shitrole or they go onto the next 20 options. The only way this will ever move in the direction of the employee is if some drastic change happens where more independence and negotiation is an ongoing part of employment. Unless things are so open to negotiation that someone can go "hey i am a little burned out, but I don't want to hurt the company how about this year i work 50% for 60% compensation" And there is meaningful negotiation without immediate threats of replacement.
- pie_flavor 1y ago
  As carefully described in the article, this is totally not true, and the employer works double-time to create the perception that it is true, because it means they can get away with underpaying the gullible. They make a face like you don't have leverage because they don't want you to know about the leverage you actually do have; the sunk cost is opaque to you and they have no reason to make it any less so.
giantg2 1y ago
I might lose my job very soon. I assume I won't be able to negotiate salary at my new job... if I get a new job. I assume I will end up with a big pay cut in this market.
- devnullbrain 1y ago
  It's bad, but it's not impossible. I got an improved offer from one company when I told them I was going to accept another company's offer. And then I accepted the other company's offer, because it was the best move in my career. I've ended up with some surprisingly rare skills that end up being desirable to some niche companies. So I won the negotiation game with the first company by truly not wanting the job. And I got the rational desired outcome of negotation with the second, by having the right skills and right luck at the right time. None of us would be feeling pessimistic about our career prospects if we had OpenAI experience.
snowwrestler 1y ago
Is this out of date in a few little ways now? He says the hiring market for engineers is hot… is it? Maybe for certain rare species of AI specialists, but for anyone else the going looks a good bit tougher now than it did even a couple years ago. Also, he spends a fair bit of time encouraging people not to reveal their former salary, but in all but a few rare cases your former salary is available to your new employer via data sharing service providers. The HR team at my employer now asks applicants for their former salary strictly as a test of their honesty. And yes, have kicked competitive candidates out for giving a false number. Declining to give the number is fine, but does not create any negotiating advantage.
- ashdksnndck 1y ago
  They can find out your salary, but they won’t know your stock, which has much higher variance for software engineers.
Joel_Mckay 1y ago
Best method: 1. Get another job someplace more progressive 2. Make sure they phone your employer for a reference 3. Explain to current employer salary package is insufficient, and you are cutting back your available hours 4. Leave if they argue over something as silly as heavily taxed income By the time people have to have this conversation, there is already a serious problem in the corporate culture. Tech people usually must eventually leave if they want a better position. =3
RickS 1y ago
I am a somewhat unremarkable product designer. I'm great at my job, but still just a guy in a chair doing the thing. And I've been using this advice for years. It has made an absolutely mind boggling impact on my life. I recently took a few years off (achievable in part thanks to the OG version of this post), and was worried about returning to the cooled-off job market thanks to all the doomers on here talking about firing hundreds of applications into the empty void. Very little has changed. The market is a bit tighter but still fine. Please do not let the other crabs convince you that the bucket is too greased to be worth clawing at. Patio11 has probably made me 1M+ over my career with his blog post. And it is not because I'm some mega genius. I am merely good enough at my job to be worth wanting on a normal team. If you aren't that, fix that. But 20-50% lift on the majority of offers is super, super, super achievable if you're able to recognize what employers value, and communicate your ability to meet those needs. Seriously. So frustrating to see how many people are here telling others this is BS and not to try. Fuck that. At least *try*.
- hackitup7 1y ago
  Thank you for writing this. I am an employer and see versions of the advice / similar techniques to patio11's post put into practice by candidates (ie used against us) with some regularity. It doesn't always work, and we try to be disciplined, but it helps fairly often and at worst does no harm as long as you're polite. I strongly encourage people to read the post and not give up because of the unrelenting cynicism in these comments.
  - goodcanadian 1y ago
    Yes, I have declined two job offers because they were unwilling to move on salary (among other things), but I have never had a job offer rescinded for bringing the issue up.
- patio11 1y ago
  Internet fist bump.
- jiveturkey 1y ago
  > The market is a bit tighter but still fine. You're wrong. You got lucky, that's all. You're also a product designer, not a SWE which most of us are.
roland35 1y ago
Like a lot of things in life, the battle is won before it begins. Having alternative offers, doing well on your career and interviews, these are all things that will grow your salary.
some_furry 1y ago
I do not love when salary negotiation comes up on message boards, because it attracts in roughly equal parts: people with impostor syndrome, LARPers, extroverted neurotypicals who think it's "obvious", and nervous junior developers that might need real advice but end up being misled by some or all of the above. The advice you'll find online for salary negotiation is predicated on you already deciding that you want to do it. If you're worried about being "employee 12887" and having no leverage for negotiation, sorry to say, you've already talked yourself out of it. Come back to this idea when you've decided that the offers on the table are "decent, but I can do better". Nobody can make that choice for you. You have to do it yourself. And if you don't, yes, you are almost certainly leaving money on the table by not negotiating. However, the money you're leaving very likely won't be the difference between "can I make my rent/mortgage payment?" or not. If it is, maybe you're applying for the wrong positions. TL;DR - If you're telling yourself a story about why it won't work for you, you're absolutely right.
wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
This is bad advice. Employers expect you to have a target salary. If you hold out with "you tell me first" then they'll just not proceed. Not saying your target salary does not get you the highest salary.
- pie_flavor 1y ago
  This is false information. They present as expecting you to tell them first so that they have a chance to screw you, and will never let you know if you name a number lower than what they would have offered. Every single thing in the post is something employers know, and are hoping you don't know; guessing 'well this seems weird so I won't do it' is essentially deliberately making a mistake, for all the reasons outlined in the article.
  - wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
    It's sad to see people with a baseline assumption that employers want to screw you. My experience is they want a fair deal for all. Of course there are exceptions but broadly it is true.
- mberning 1y ago
  I agree. You should do your best to know what a realistic comp profile is for the role you are applying for BEFORE you apply. This is much easier nowadays with all the information available online. Assuming you know the rough range for the position you can simply ask for the high end of the range. I recommend even asking for 5-10% above the top of range. They may balk. They may try to sniff around what your current comp is. How Machiavellian you want to get at that point is up to you. In my experience companies generally don't blink at high base compensation as long as it is close to their defined range. If you are asking for a big signing bonus or for the hiring company to cover the bonus you would miss out on by leaving, or for them to cover your retention agreement, then they may ask for some evidence of that.
VincentEvans 1y ago
Did Patrick write anything about negotiating a raise? Or maybe someone came across any actionable advice they’d like to share?
- sneak 1y ago
  Get a job offer from somewhere else that pays more. Redact it for source information and provide it during the negotiation. Explain that they can’t just match it, they need to beat it, or you switch jobs.
  - thom 1y ago
    For whatever it’s worth, I’ve worked at places that have a policy that if someone starts looking elsewhere, they’re unhappy and are going to end up moving anyway, so they’ll just assume you’re handing in your notice. I don’t like this mindset at all, but I assume it’s fairly common.
    - sneak 1y ago
      …then you just end up switching jobs and taking the lesser of two raises.
neilv 1y ago
> Patrick notes: As an aside, 10 years later, people say, would I change the advice in this essay given the current hiring market for engineers? I would not change a word. So I'm saying that explicitly. I think he has a little nest egg saved up, and hasn't had to job-hunt lately.
- fuzztester 1y ago
  >I think he has a little nest egg saved up, and hasn't had to job-hunt lately. Yes. Good insight. But I'd guess it's somewhat more than a little; apart from other things, he's also an angel investor. See the last paragraph here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/about/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/about/ It starts like this; >Obligatory disclaimers: I'm a (tiny) angel investor. I previously worked at, and am still an advisor to, Stripe.
ErigmolCt 1y ago
Sometimes the flexibility you want isn't even about money
js8 1y ago
Or just join the unions. They will help with negotiations, give you salary ranges, etc. IT people need to look at SAG AFTRA.
stevoski 1y ago
As an employer, I’m always slightly disappointed when a job candidate doesn’t try to negotiate the salary I offer. I find myself wanting to say, “Haven’t you read Patrick’s essay? Please go read it and come back!” But of course, as a self-interested business owner I keep that advice to myself.
tiniuclx 1y ago
The advice in here is really good, and it's helped me personally quite a lot. One thing to bear in mind is that the negotiation process _does not start at the offer stage_. It starts as soon as a recruiter/hiring manager gets in touch with you. Really, do not be the first one to name a number. I did that to a recruiter once & it came back to bite me at the offer stage as there was wiggle room in the budget that I could not really ask for as I'd already compromised my negotiation position. Thankfully I got another offer a few days after which I _did_ negotiate properly - and it was a step up in all the ways that matter.
mamonster 1y ago
By far the biggest value-add in terms of salary over my career has been, and this is probably very finance specific but still, having a very good relationship with a recruiter. A recruiter with a good network has massive incentives to repeatedly place you over the course of your career, and if he knows that you are a good employee then he will usually give you the context on the positions that allows you to safely negotiate raises. You also get to learn what specific recruiter/job description lingo means, for example "position with a lot of opportunities to develop" = "the senior employee doing this job quit/convinced the management to hire a junior for this".
Elaris 1y ago
I think the most reliable negotiation mindset is actually very simple: take what you are worth. It doesn’t depend on how many years you have worked or how confident you are, but on what value you actually bring.
nlawalker 1y ago
> Salary negotiations are very asymmetrical. Companies know this and routinely exploit it. Job seekers don't, perhaps because they think doing so would be unfair, and the word exploit makes them acutely uncomfortable. This assertion seems to be a keystone of the article and the way it's positioned, and it doesn't make any logical sense to me. Job seekers don't exploit it because there's nothing to exploit, the whole problem is that the negotiation is asymmetrical, and the asymmetry is rarely in their favor. I'm also not at all convinced that most any job seeker would refuse to negotiate salary because they feel it would be exploitative or unfair. If the situation was that hundreds of companies were submitting their resumes to me to try to hire me and I got to pare the list down by seeing who was willing to be strung along through an interview process, you'd see me looking like the people in the old NYSE trading floor pictures with multiple phones held up to their ears.

362 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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Noelia- 1y ago

[dead]

dtnewman 1y ago

For those who prefer reading, this is more or less an audio version of of his essay from years ago: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

davidmurdoch 1y ago
Tangential: What's with the disclaimer about reading on an "iDevice"? Do they struggle with lots of words on a single page?
- tonfa 1y ago
  It's from 2012, mobile device screens were way smaller.
  - chgs 1y ago
    In 2013 I was buying books on kindle and reading them on my 4s just fine
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  This was written over 10 years ago, when such devices had much lower resolution.

Sytten 1y ago

That reads like something written pre LLM, pre mass layoffs and pre section 174. Reality is that engineers have way less bargaining power that they used to. Aside, as a small startup I am generally upfront with the salary since if you are not in the range we can afford it is not worth having a discussion.

mgraczyk 1y ago
If you have ~5+ years of experience and live in the US, things haven't changed. Regardless, negotiating matters more than ever. At startups you negotiate for equity instead of salary but a lot of the same advice applies.
- ikiris 1y ago
  Startup equity is the equivalent to the old Foxworthy bit "You can't write me a check?" I said, "No, I -- a check? Hell yeah, I can write you a check! I thought you needed money. Tell you what, I'm just gonna pay the whole thing off right now! I'm gonna be a congressman when I grow up."
  - mgraczyk 1y ago
    It's not really, because it's finite. You don't generally dilute the options pool when you hire new employees, you give them some slice of a scarce options pool
    - achierius 1y ago
      Sure, but there's an extent to which the the board and its constitutive shareholders already expect to be giving away options for new employees, and as such will have allocated a pool for such purpose -- both for the "standard" package, and for "hard negotiators". For traditional tech startups (i.e. ones not so flush with cash as OpenAI), giving these away is far easier than giving away more real-world, honest-to-god cashflow, because that directly drains your runway, while all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse.

buttocks 1y ago

Life was good for engineers 15 years ago!

grepLeigh 1y ago
It still is! I think getting your foot in the door is much more difficult now compared to 5-6 years ago, similar to difficulty finding entry level work in 2008-2009 financial crisis. Market conditions aside, the points the OP blog post makes about asymmetrical value are evergreen.
dan-robertson 1y ago
Ok, but also engineers in the US are much better paid now than 15 years ago. In 2010 the big story in engineer comp was that Google, Apple, and others were conspiring to avoid competing for talent (and thereby driving pay up) [1]. It was roughly Facebook not being part of this scheme that started driving salaries up. A few years ago the popular story was that people were switching jobs because their compensation had been inflated by massive share price increases (ie you are promised x shares vesting over 4 years at sign on with refresher grants, but the value of x shares goes up a bunch over those years) and they wanted to maintain their high realised comp even though shares were no longer rising as much. The only way for that to happen was engineers getting paid very well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Drblessing 1y ago

[flagged]

cornhole 1y ago

I just ask some stupid amount of money first because there is literally no cost or downsides.

testfrequency 1y ago
I can tell you that most hiring managers and recruiters find it offensive, and the conversation quickly shifts to how much do we care about playing games with this candidate who seems a bit reckless in suggesting a salary they know isn’t realistic.
- baxuz 1y ago
  I find it offensive and playing games when they won't give me the ranges. I've been at companies which paid me 1/2 of what some my peers earned. I don't have time for these games. Give me your salary ranges for the position and I can negotiate. Otherwise I'm pulling numbers out of my ass. The recruiter wants to pay me as close to 0 as possible, and it's up to me to push back on that.
- cornhole 1y ago
  hiring managers and recruiters are not people so its ok
  - k__ 1y ago
    Yeah. The only good jobs I got directly from CEOs.
- deleted 1y ago
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- 9rx 1y ago
  > I can tell you that most hiring managers and recruiters find it offensive [...] suggesting a salary they know isn’t realistic. But how are you going to go know? In most lines of business, prices are public knowledge. In a retail setting, for example, you can look at the price tags on the shelf, in commodities we have price data published on a continual basis, etc. Anyone and everyone can just look if they want to see an effective range of what others are selling similar products for. This provides a decent mechanism for price discovery. But labor prices, in the US at least, tend to be hush-hush (slowly starting to change, but still early days). Even where you occasionally find people opening up, there isn't a consistent metric used (e.g. some talk base salary, others talk total compensation, no mention of inputs [like how many hours are required to fulfill the salary], etc.), if they are even telling you the truth. And where you have the full picture on exacting price, you aren't apt to know much about the person. Someone doing the same job might truly be worth half/double what you are. People are not commodities. Hiring managers and recruiters usually get to see term sheets across many people along with background on those people, so they have a reasonable idea of what is realistic for a person of similar stature, but that doesn't help the seller. And it is usually the seller's job to make the first price move, so all one can do is make a complete guess. Employers have long pushed for that secrecy exactly so they have the benefit of knowing what the seller doesn't. And fair enough. You can't blame them for wanting to leverage that advantage if they can get away with it. But, to then be offended when someone isn't aware? You can't have it both ways.

moralestapia 1y ago

How do you negotiate when the position already has a fixed number in there that was even published along the job description?

sokoloff 1y ago
If there's a single fixed number (rather than a range), there's probably a reason for that (might be a government, university, or institute role with a fixed pay schedule, for example) and as a hiring manager, I'm assuming you're applying for the job as published, including the comp number.
throwaway219450 1y ago
Let's assume the amount is fixed. One approach is to ask to re-frame the position to be better value. Ask for working hours that effectively pays you more per day, like an 80% contract at the same comp. If they mumble HR and hours, offer to do 4x10 hour days. The magic phrase in corporate is "flexible working". This doesn't solve your comp going up, but you get a 3-day weekend and 52 more holidays a year. This one even works at intensely bureaucratic organisations like universities. With grants, the amount you can be paid is very fixed, but almost anything else can be approved if three people sign off on it.
RickS 1y ago
Did you read the post? The numbers are fake, is how. That's the whole point of this post. They're arbitrary, made up, totally subject to change. The idea that they're immutable is corpo-propaganda designed to worsen your performance in a subtly adversarial encounter where it benefits the company for you to think you have no leverage. Job offers use craigslist pricing. They don't describe the actual desired end state. They put down an anchor in a favorable direction with the expectation that it will get haggled on for a round or two.

ryandrake 1y ago

Patrick's "salary negotiation" piece has made the rounds here a number of times, and I always have the same reaction to it: It probably works, if you are already a software celebrity like Patrick, or some other highly sought after Captain of the software engineering industry. For us rank-and-file employee number 12887's, I just don't see it working--I've really never negotiated compensation significantly successfully in my 25+ year career. Here's how salary negotiation usually goes if you're not someone like John Carmack: Them: We'd love to have you join the team! Here's your compensation letter, please get back to us within the next 2 weeks and we'll move forward. You: Thank you, I believe my background and skills would suggest a compensation of $1.5X instead of $X. Is this possible with your hiring budget? Them: The offer is for $X and we believe it is appropriate for your level. You: Maybe my level should be higher then? Them: Ha Ha You: Looking at [website A, B, C] I see the average compensation for this role is $1.25X. Surely there is room to move this upward. Them: We don't agree with that data. The offer is for $X. Shall we move forward? You: What about equity or bonus, is there any flexibility with those numbers, or vacation time, or...? Them: The offer is for $X. If you don't want the job, we can move on to one of our other 20 candidates who are in the pipeline for the role. That's basically how salary negotiations went for almost the entirety of my career. If your results have been different, I'm kind of envious!

sokoloff 1y ago
If you don't have a strong BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), you're not going to get very far with just asking. "I received your offer for $X. I really enjoyed the interviews, meeting the team, and am intrigued by the problems I'd get to solve with them. Unfortunately, I have a competing offer for $1.25X from another company and I need to make sure my family is provided for. If you would match it, I'm excited to join, but if your offer is firm at $X, I'm afraid I won't be taking it." If they really just need someone to hold down a chair, they'll probably not budge. If they really want specifically you, they're more likely to bend if they believe that's their only move.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Basically correct. I guess my point is Patrick could have saved a lot of typing and simply wrote "Have one or more competing offers."

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whiplash451 1y ago

The main thing that changed since when this article was written is that companies are much less in a rush than they used to to hire people, which means that a lot of mechanics described in the article fall apart. In particular, companies don't really look at how much they spend to hire someone. They'll just wait for the hiring committee to be "really excited" about a candidate before making an offer.

dan-robertson 1y ago
If the company is “really excited” to hire you then doesn’t this put you in a better position for negotiation?

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andy99 1y ago

I regularly exchange currency at the bank. There is a posted rate that I can get online. If I go to the teller, they will propose that rate as well, at which point I say "can I have the premium rate" and they say, ok, I can give you x - something 1% better or so. Point is, I'm not negotiating with the bank teller, they have a flow chart they need to follow. For a lot of positions with big companies, it's going to be the same. There might be a path on the flowchart you can access, but you're not really negotiating. In some cases you may be able to break though this if there's a real person (not recruiter) that will push for you, but talking to recruiters / talent is like talking to the bank teller.

dan-robertson 1y ago
So even if you’re just advancing down a flow chart, the ‘negotiation’ option is better, right?
- paulcole 1y ago
  There’s a non-zero chance that you don’t end up with the job whether you accept or negotiate. If you can accept some of those non-zero values, then yes negotiation is better by some definitions of better. Personally if I get an offer I’m happy with, I accept it. If not, I either decline or negotiate. But if I was in a position where the worst possible outcome was me not getting the job at the current offer, I’d accept it.
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    You have to play really, really hard ball to get an offer revoked because of negotiation. By the time a company has decided they're willing to hire you, they've sunk a non-trivial amount of resources into the process. Beyond just the interviews, there have been meetings, reports from the people in the interviews, etc. Everyone involved is pretty strongly motivated to get it over with. That friction translates to leverage. If you don't open up with "I wouldn't boot up my computer for any less than twice your offer", then there's negligible chances of the worst case scenario not being their initial offer. Personally, I like to try and use PTO as an opening point in negotiations. Companies hate giving out PTO, I don't know why, but it's seen as a soft-blocker. Something like "I've looked over your offer, and it's pretty compelling, but it's a bit below market rates. If you could add another week of PTO, or another 15% comp I could sign today". Every time I've done this I got the vast majority of the money (but never the PTO, which I would be just as happy for).

brunooliv 1y ago

In my experience this never worked for me for the simple fact that I never had the skill and time to even GET a second offer to bargain against. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad developer, but I’m definitely horrible at interviewing and having to jump through several different steps at different companies just to bargain for a higher end of the range makes me feel like either the market is the problem or the expectations from companies are way unrealistic

dan-robertson 1y ago
I think expectations are often realistic in the sense that companies are generally able to hire sufficiently many people at acceptable prices. But I think it’s also the case that there are fashions in interviewing such that companies are mostly all trying to hire the same subset of candidates that do well at the current thing. So if you’re bad at the current style of interviewing it’s going to be more work than someone fortunate enough to do well at the current fad.
3eb7988a1663 1y ago
I too have never been in situation where the timing would possibly work out to get companies to compete. Some employers take months from start to finish while others can wrap things up within two weeks. Then you get an offer that requires a decision within two-three days. Sure, make an ask for more money, but I have never had any leverage.
- ashdksnndck 1y ago
  I found that behavior would change a lot once I had an offer from a decent company. Suddenly all the scheduling/matching delays and processes that supposedly were delaying me would be resolved when I revealed that. It was even worth emailing recruiters that ghosted me because they would respond again. Also, offer deadlines are usually just pressure tactics and would go away if there actually was a risk of me not signing. Caveat that I haven’t interviewed in the last couple years and this may not be the case anymore.
hellisothers 1y ago

beefnugs 1y ago

The whole definition of a regular joe employee is that they are working under a coercion hierarchy. There are no negotiations, either you got luck shifted into a shitrole or they go onto the next 20 options. The only way this will ever move in the direction of the employee is if some drastic change happens where more independence and negotiation is an ongoing part of employment. Unless things are so open to negotiation that someone can go "hey i am a little burned out, but I don't want to hurt the company how about this year i work 50% for 60% compensation" And there is meaningful negotiation without immediate threats of replacement.

pie_flavor 1y ago
As carefully described in the article, this is totally not true, and the employer works double-time to create the perception that it is true, because it means they can get away with underpaying the gullible. They make a face like you don't have leverage because they don't want you to know about the leverage you actually do have; the sunk cost is opaque to you and they have no reason to make it any less so.

giantg2 1y ago

I might lose my job very soon. I assume I won't be able to negotiate salary at my new job... if I get a new job. I assume I will end up with a big pay cut in this market.

devnullbrain 1y ago
It's bad, but it's not impossible. I got an improved offer from one company when I told them I was going to accept another company's offer. And then I accepted the other company's offer, because it was the best move in my career. I've ended up with some surprisingly rare skills that end up being desirable to some niche companies. So I won the negotiation game with the first company by truly not wanting the job. And I got the rational desired outcome of negotation with the second, by having the right skills and right luck at the right time. None of us would be feeling pessimistic about our career prospects if we had OpenAI experience.

snowwrestler 1y ago

Is this out of date in a few little ways now? He says the hiring market for engineers is hot… is it? Maybe for certain rare species of AI specialists, but for anyone else the going looks a good bit tougher now than it did even a couple years ago. Also, he spends a fair bit of time encouraging people not to reveal their former salary, but in all but a few rare cases your former salary is available to your new employer via data sharing service providers. The HR team at my employer now asks applicants for their former salary strictly as a test of their honesty. And yes, have kicked competitive candidates out for giving a false number. Declining to give the number is fine, but does not create any negotiating advantage.

ashdksnndck 1y ago
They can find out your salary, but they won’t know your stock, which has much higher variance for software engineers.

Joel_Mckay 1y ago

Best method: 1. Get another job someplace more progressive 2. Make sure they phone your employer for a reference 3. Explain to current employer salary package is insufficient, and you are cutting back your available hours 4. Leave if they argue over something as silly as heavily taxed income By the time people have to have this conversation, there is already a serious problem in the corporate culture. Tech people usually must eventually leave if they want a better position. =3

RickS 1y ago

I am a somewhat unremarkable product designer. I'm great at my job, but still just a guy in a chair doing the thing. And I've been using this advice for years. It has made an absolutely mind boggling impact on my life. I recently took a few years off (achievable in part thanks to the OG version of this post), and was worried about returning to the cooled-off job market thanks to all the doomers on here talking about firing hundreds of applications into the empty void. Very little has changed. The market is a bit tighter but still fine. Please do not let the other crabs convince you that the bucket is too greased to be worth clawing at. Patio11 has probably made me 1M+ over my career with his blog post. And it is not because I'm some mega genius. I am merely good enough at my job to be worth wanting on a normal team. If you aren't that, fix that. But 20-50% lift on the majority of offers is super, super, super achievable if you're able to recognize what employers value, and communicate your ability to meet those needs. Seriously. So frustrating to see how many people are here telling others this is BS and not to try. Fuck that. At least *try*.

hackitup7 1y ago
Thank you for writing this. I am an employer and see versions of the advice / similar techniques to patio11's post put into practice by candidates (ie used against us) with some regularity. It doesn't always work, and we try to be disciplined, but it helps fairly often and at worst does no harm as long as you're polite. I strongly encourage people to read the post and not give up because of the unrelenting cynicism in these comments.
- goodcanadian 1y ago
  Yes, I have declined two job offers because they were unwilling to move on salary (among other things), but I have never had a job offer rescinded for bringing the issue up.
patio11 1y ago
Internet fist bump.
jiveturkey 1y ago
> The market is a bit tighter but still fine. You're wrong. You got lucky, that's all. You're also a product designer, not a SWE which most of us are.

roland35 1y ago

Like a lot of things in life, the battle is won before it begins. Having alternative offers, doing well on your career and interviews, these are all things that will grow your salary.

some_furry 1y ago

I do not love when salary negotiation comes up on message boards, because it attracts in roughly equal parts: people with impostor syndrome, LARPers, extroverted neurotypicals who think it's "obvious", and nervous junior developers that might need real advice but end up being misled by some or all of the above. The advice you'll find online for salary negotiation is predicated on you already deciding that you want to do it. If you're worried about being "employee 12887" and having no leverage for negotiation, sorry to say, you've already talked yourself out of it. Come back to this idea when you've decided that the offers on the table are "decent, but I can do better". Nobody can make that choice for you. You have to do it yourself. And if you don't, yes, you are almost certainly leaving money on the table by not negotiating. However, the money you're leaving very likely won't be the difference between "can I make my rent/mortgage payment?" or not. If it is, maybe you're applying for the wrong positions. TL;DR - If you're telling yourself a story about why it won't work for you, you're absolutely right.

wewewedxfgdf 1y ago

This is bad advice. Employers expect you to have a target salary. If you hold out with "you tell me first" then they'll just not proceed. Not saying your target salary does not get you the highest salary.

pie_flavor 1y ago
This is false information. They present as expecting you to tell them first so that they have a chance to screw you, and will never let you know if you name a number lower than what they would have offered. Every single thing in the post is something employers know, and are hoping you don't know; guessing 'well this seems weird so I won't do it' is essentially deliberately making a mistake, for all the reasons outlined in the article.
- wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
  It's sad to see people with a baseline assumption that employers want to screw you. My experience is they want a fair deal for all. Of course there are exceptions but broadly it is true.
mberning 1y ago
I agree. You should do your best to know what a realistic comp profile is for the role you are applying for BEFORE you apply. This is much easier nowadays with all the information available online. Assuming you know the rough range for the position you can simply ask for the high end of the range. I recommend even asking for 5-10% above the top of range. They may balk. They may try to sniff around what your current comp is. How Machiavellian you want to get at that point is up to you. In my experience companies generally don't blink at high base compensation as long as it is close to their defined range. If you are asking for a big signing bonus or for the hiring company to cover the bonus you would miss out on by leaving, or for them to cover your retention agreement, then they may ask for some evidence of that.

VincentEvans 1y ago

Did Patrick write anything about negotiating a raise? Or maybe someone came across any actionable advice they’d like to share?

sneak 1y ago
Get a job offer from somewhere else that pays more. Redact it for source information and provide it during the negotiation. Explain that they can’t just match it, they need to beat it, or you switch jobs.
- thom 1y ago
  For whatever it’s worth, I’ve worked at places that have a policy that if someone starts looking elsewhere, they’re unhappy and are going to end up moving anyway, so they’ll just assume you’re handing in your notice. I don’t like this mindset at all, but I assume it’s fairly common.
  - sneak 1y ago
    …then you just end up switching jobs and taking the lesser of two raises.

neilv 1y ago

> Patrick notes: As an aside, 10 years later, people say, would I change the advice in this essay given the current hiring market for engineers? I would not change a word. So I'm saying that explicitly. I think he has a little nest egg saved up, and hasn't had to job-hunt lately.

fuzztester 1y ago
>I think he has a little nest egg saved up, and hasn't had to job-hunt lately. Yes. Good insight. But I'd guess it's somewhat more than a little; apart from other things, he's also an angel investor. See the last paragraph here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/about/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/about/ It starts like this; >Obligatory disclaimers: I'm a (tiny) angel investor. I previously worked at, and am still an advisor to, Stripe.

ErigmolCt 1y ago

Sometimes the flexibility you want isn't even about money

js8 1y ago

Or just join the unions. They will help with negotiations, give you salary ranges, etc. IT people need to look at SAG AFTRA.

stevoski 1y ago

As an employer, I’m always slightly disappointed when a job candidate doesn’t try to negotiate the salary I offer. I find myself wanting to say, “Haven’t you read Patrick’s essay? Please go read it and come back!” But of course, as a self-interested business owner I keep that advice to myself.

tiniuclx 1y ago

The advice in here is really good, and it's helped me personally quite a lot. One thing to bear in mind is that the negotiation process _does not start at the offer stage_. It starts as soon as a recruiter/hiring manager gets in touch with you. Really, do not be the first one to name a number. I did that to a recruiter once & it came back to bite me at the offer stage as there was wiggle room in the budget that I could not really ask for as I'd already compromised my negotiation position. Thankfully I got another offer a few days after which I _did_ negotiate properly - and it was a step up in all the ways that matter.

mamonster 1y ago

By far the biggest value-add in terms of salary over my career has been, and this is probably very finance specific but still, having a very good relationship with a recruiter. A recruiter with a good network has massive incentives to repeatedly place you over the course of your career, and if he knows that you are a good employee then he will usually give you the context on the positions that allows you to safely negotiate raises. You also get to learn what specific recruiter/job description lingo means, for example "position with a lot of opportunities to develop" = "the senior employee doing this job quit/convinced the management to hire a junior for this".

Elaris 1y ago

I think the most reliable negotiation mindset is actually very simple: take what you are worth. It doesn’t depend on how many years you have worked or how confident you are, but on what value you actually bring.

nlawalker 1y ago

> Salary negotiations are very asymmetrical. Companies know this and routinely exploit it. Job seekers don't, perhaps because they think doing so would be unfair, and the word exploit makes them acutely uncomfortable. This assertion seems to be a keystone of the article and the way it's positioned, and it doesn't make any logical sense to me. Job seekers don't exploit it because there's nothing to exploit, the whole problem is that the negotiation is asymmetrical, and the asymmetry is rarely in their favor. I'm also not at all convinced that most any job seeker would refuse to negotiate salary because they feel it would be exploitative or unfair. If the situation was that hundreds of companies were submitting their resumes to me to try to hire me and I got to pare the list down by seeing who was willing to be strung along through an interview process, you'd see me looking like the people in the old NYSE trading floor pictures with multiple phones held up to their ears.