I had an employer that believed its pay policy was market-competitive, and therefore did not entertain requests for pay rises without proof that you were not being paid a market rate. In practice, that meant interviewing for another job elsewhere and getting an offer at the higher salary.
I did that, and got my 1.5x offer. My employer dutifully offered to match it, but by that point I liked the idea of the new job better anyway. They panicked and made further offers and desperate manoeuvres to keep me, but it was too late.
I am certain they still have that policy in place.
In another display of “most internal communication is just PR”, our company embarked on a “market rate” campaign making out they’ve done loads of really hard, balanced research to ensure we’re being paid well etc. Any response to salary complaints, your manager tell you the same line that you’re already being paid “in line with the market”. You can’t argue with them because /they/ have done /their/ research.
I swear HR have access to a website with playbooks with whole exercises like this
And when you point out a couple of offers with higher pay, they say “there will always be companies that pay more on the higher end, your pay is consistent with the average or slightly above average” and then we set OKRs to try and figure out why we haven’t hired any experienced people in 3+ years
Agreed. Get a better offer and leave, never accept a counter offer intended to keep you.
Accepting a counter-offer in that situation is bad for several reasons. One is that the employer will be left with a sense of extortion and lack of loyalty from you. Another that you should realize that this employer was underpaying you and is either blissfully unaware of the market rates and thus incompetent or worse, malicious. In both cases you are better off working for someone who knows (or has HR who knows) and values your contributions properly.
If you accept the counter offer it should be for other reasons on your part such as that the current job has other benefits for you, such as physical proximity or CV boosting properties.
I've seen colleagues stay for years with golden handcuffs and it has never paid off. It leaves them with psychological misery and have made it much harder for them to get the next job.
I once used a job offer to 1.2x my current salary. I had no intention to pick the other job, as they had a pretty poor work culture, and I liked where I was. I stayed another 1.5 years and there was no bitterness from my employer’s side. My boss’es comment was “I guess we started you on a too low salary, our mistake.”
Your bosses comment is hilarious. They got you for a discount, it was not a mistake and I doubt the raise covered the difference of giving you full pay from the start.
I can see a scenario where you do accept the golden handcuffs during a critical period of your life. Of course provided that it really is a very high salary. I.e.: simply doing it for the money for a couple of years to move the personal finances along.
Ie my original plan to stay in BigTech for four years and go back to my comfortable life of working for smaller companies.
But I will see if the pay/bullshit ratio is high enough to be worthwhile after my four year anniversary next year and all of my initial stock vest is completed.
But at 49 years old, my shit tolerance level is very low.
Once they know you were REALLY serious about jumping ship, they will start preparing a replacement in case they didn't have one before. And if they think the lower paid replacement can replace you, they will let you go.
My company had a similar policy. The rate of people leaving went up and up. Eventually a new senior leader go HR to do their maths properly, and the “ranges” for many salaries increased by 30-70%. And everyone got increases to match. We’re still nowhere near the US mega-salaries, but the company is entirely unique, which is good enough for a lot of us.
Don’t let the HN bubble fool you. Most of the 2.7 million developers in the US are making between $80K-$170K in most major cities outside of the west coast.
Tbf in EU tech salaries are...underwhelming. And before you mention it, no, my insurance costs (which are minimal) do not justify the $90000 or so pay gap in similar position in the similar branch of the company between Spain or US that I was being offered.
When I was interviewing post-graduation in Uk and Germany I consistently got offers between 27 and 50k Euros/Quid. That imho, was too low compared to what companies in US were willing to pay me.
Sometimes no, sometimes yes. 6 weeks of paid vacation, [p|m]aternity leave and heavily subsidized kindergartens etc can weigh heavier than extra pay, depending on your priorities in life.
Not your parent but for me you take what they give you. You might be able to get 5% more but that's about it. In a lot of places yearly raises are uncommon or slow. My first company would go beyond 10% for juniors but it would plateau eventually, usually you take 2-5% and that's it, to get 10%+ you need to change jobs and you cannot do that every year without being categorized as unstable in your next jobs.
The biggest raise I ever got was by accident. I was making $105k and knew I was underpaid but no raise was coming so I started looking around. I told a recruiter I was looking for "upwards of 120" and got the response "that's pretty steep
... The max for this position is $90/hr, can we make that work?" I said I'd consider it. I got that position at that rate.
I actually went back to the first company a year later but negotiated properly and got a good bump from even that. Realizing that jobs outside the Bay pay people with my skills that well was a game changer.
Edit: I should clarify this was a W2 contract position. I was an employee of a contracting company that "loaned" me to the client.
Hah; I had the flip side of the same conversation. I was looking for jobs, had a call with a recruiter. Went something like this (paraphrased and inexact numbers):
Recruiter: So what are you looking to make?
Me: Well I'm making 55 now, so more than that.
R: That's $55/hour?
M: No, I make $55k/year.
R: ...
M: And now you understand why I'm looking for a new job.
Never tell how much you’re paid because your first negotiating mistake will carry on throughout your career. Instead state how much you want without basing it on your current comp. Hopefully you know that by now.
The point the commenter is making is that they asked for $120,000/year, but the recruiter thought that was too much hearing "120" as a per-hour rate, so countered with $90/hour. Hilarity ensues. The OP got more than they were asking for because of the ambiguity.
For anyone trying to do this math, in the US, you need to reduce the equivalent pay by about 10-15% for self-employment tax if you're 1099. It's more useful to start with 1500 hours a year, as well, if you're truly contracting (not "full time paid as a contractor for one client") since you'll need to find new contracts and that will take up a surprising amount of your time.
I sometimes joke that, when contracting, I spend 80% of my time billing work for client projects and the other 80% (unpaid) getting new projects, leaving me only 80% (unpaid) of my time to spend managing relationships with clients and collaborators, doing taxes, and maintaining the existing business.
Insurance is another cost you'll have to pay yourself. I don't really know what's available for contractors, but consider health insurance, life insurance, accidental disability insurance, etc. (Dental insurance isn't really a thing. Budget $400 for your two checkups and don't get any cavities.)
Also consider your retirement savings and what you're missing out on from employer 401k matches.
Finally, keep an eye on cost of living and adjust your rate accordingly. The dollar is worth at least 20% less than it was 3 years ago. Charge 20% more.
It this is not employment, this is somewhat low. Years ago in Europe I learnt the rule of thumb to double the amount if you work as a consultant. Companies also use this rule to consider additional expenses to salary: taxes, health insurance, office space, vacancies, unbillable hours and so on.
- 240 hours (6 weeks) to find another job or contract.
But this was also considering both a w2 contract job working through an agency and my wife worked part time in the school system for benefits. If it was a 1099 contract, I would have to consider self employment tax.
I had a great network of recruiters between 2012-2018 when I was going back and forth between contract and permanent positions and the local development market was hot for your standard enterprise DEVs with experience.
Here's a rule of thumb to figure out the annual pay at a given wage (for a standard 40-hour workweek): Take your hourly wage in dollars per hour (e.g. $40), then double it (e.g. $80), then convert it to thousands (e.g. $80k). That's about what you make in a year at a given wage.
e.g. $31/hr ≈ $62k/yr
To turn things the other way, take the annual wage in thousands (e.g. $80k), divide it by 2 (e.g. $40k) and chop off the thousands (e.g. $40).
e.g. $72k/yr ≈ $36/hr
So in the story, OP was making ~$52.50/hr and wanted to make ~$60/hr, but the recruiter thought they wanted ~$120/hr but could only get them ~$90/hr. Not too shabby.
There's no perfect way to compare. The hourly job was a contract so no PTO, holidays, benefits, ect but also zero overtime. The way I laid it out valued the offer at a $165k equivalent salary at the job I was leaving.
That’s horrible math. You at a minimum get 10 federal holidays and who accepts only two weeks PTO?
That’s not taking into account W2 vs 1099 and if it’s a contract the lack of health care, 401K matching, company paid unemployment funding, time between contracts, etc.
This isn't the worst advice, but my personal opinion is that candidates would get the most leverage around drilling down into point 2 around loss. BATNA is the most powerful negotiating tactic there is, because it's rooted in reality. The only thing worse than the fear of a bidding war is an actual bidding war. If you're a savvy candidate and you understand the correlation of offer negotiation to sales, this makes intuitive sense and it will help you get to another critical data point -- how does your counterparty treat you in the negotiation process when you have multiple real offers on the table?
In my opinion, this is the true value you get from negotiation; just as useful as the extra salary itself. If you end up winning the negotiation but you see resentment and a lack of respect in the process, it should give you some information about the kind of party that you are dealing with. Additionally, it should mean you can get all of your offers up to the max reasonable range you'd expect, and then you have the option of going with the one that feels the best, where you're most convinced you'll be working with good people.
That's the critical part. You want to max your salary but not compromise integrity in the process -- if you make another 2% in first year salary but you end paying much more in sanity, poor fit, burnout, or lack of growth opportunities, you won't end out ahead. Get what you're worth in the short term, but be greediest about the long-term.
I just quit a company that was unable to negotiate.
I had an offer from a Silicon Valley company that would have paid a lot better, but it wasn't full remote (or even hybrid) and I would have had to relocate. So I went into the less well paid no-name with full remote. I tried to negotiate at the beginning with the very real argument of a better paid offer, but they denied. Well, whatever I guess, I tried and full remote was more important to me (still is).
1.5 years later, I realized the environment was a bit too dysfunctional and toxic for my liking and I learned all I wanted there. Fished a new job quite easily a couple weeks ago (several offers), with a bit better pay and a nicer project where I think I can make a better impact and have a nicer environment.
Before I quit I talked with some people and tried to see if they may offer me a better salary. They wanted to keep me and were not happy about me quitting at all, but they were absolutely unable to offer me even just 10k more. What was a bit shocking to me is that HR tried to blame the workers and pointed to a "broken market" for SWEs. I was so taken aback by this delusion that I had no regrets quitting after and I will care even less about "doing it for the team" and I will certainly consider hopping more often again.
So, it highly depends on the company if you can negotiate. However, if you cannot even get the smallest of gestures towards your direction, then that's a pretty big red flag. I don't have regrets. With just 2 years of experience, I'm happy I learn these lessons early on.
My ultimate goal is to start my own company and I'm actively working on that on the side, so hopefully this farce of pretending to care making profits for other people will end soon.
I tripled my salary in two years by starting off woefully underpaid, getting a mediocre first offer at the next place, then completely ignoring any guidance about comp the next time around because I knew no one would bat an eye at the figure. Didn’t even have to negotiate it, just let my manager do it for me.
In hindsight this should be a “how I quadrupled my salary” story. But I’m sharing it in case anyone who feels anxious about negotiating is selling themselves way too short. Go get more money. Relax about it unless you don’t want to. You’re gonna get more money regardless.
> I tripled my salary in two years by starting off woefully underpaid,
Unfortunately, this is how most "I tripled my salary in X years" stories look when you dig into the details.
I've spent a lot of time coaching people on interviewing and negotiating. With some people, half the battle is detaching them from their original compensation anchor point and re-centering on real market data.
On the other hand, I've also had to gently convince a lot of eager students that they can't expect $300K full-remote FAANG offers right out of college, despite whatever they heard on Reddit and Blind.
> Unfortunately, this is how most "I tripled my salary in X years" stories look when you dig into the details.
The only unfortunate thing is how many people don’t find their way to the same story. That’s why I shared it the way I did. I thought I was asking a lot, and many people will too. When I just… got it… I realized my negotiating position.
Could you have done it yourself though? Pretty curious what the unique insight here is. Some wiggle room is generally a given, and rest is up to unique circumstances.
You most definitely could have. The important thing here is the competing offers. Without those, no compensation negotiator in the world could’ve done anything. Anyway, the other person is happy so whatever.
I find it very difficult to get competing offers in such a way that they care to outbid each other. Usually it’s just a nominally similar but differently structured offer.
Yeah, consultant at this stage seems a bit unnecessary. But it's also a business with high success rate and customer satisfaction. Kind of like placebo. Pretty good deal from the consultant's pov.
I also used levels.fyi they most certainly helped.
The consultant previously worked at both Amazon and Facebook. I was working at Amazon at the time, and got competing offers from Facebook and Google.
Even with the competing offers I’m very happy I spent $3k for the consultant. Lots of good drafts of emails ( I did still need to carry the email ), but lots of great advice about strategy, and about what buzzwords to say and to avoid, which company to talk to first and what number to ask for that would be very easy for them to hit.
We ended up pushing FBs offer up to the limit before triggering an escalation then sent that to Google to beat. I would NOT have done as well without them.
They even told me “FB is gonna try and pressure you with a time limited offer. The time limit is not real. Don’t feel the pressure.” Stupid info like this was itself worth the money.
I think having been walked through the process once I'd be able to do it myself. It's not too complicated but you do need to know a few things.
1. Each level has a range of salary/stock that they can't go above and you can infer the range by looking at the reported info on levels.fyi. For my company you have no possibility of negotiating into a higher level.
2. If you haven't been offered a signing bonus just say the words and 10s of thousands of dollars will magically appear.
3. You can push back on their offers many times.
Previously I'd only ever made one negotiation move but I think there were 3 rounds of back-and-forth for my current job.
Are these a long term boost though? I think the compensation bands are eventually going to be based off performance and level after the signing bonus wears off.
* No US country so 300k+ TC is as rare as hens teeth
* Paid probably top 5% ile local comp I guess
* Equates to about $130kUS TC
* Don’t want to relocate
* A tiny chance of getting one of those coveted “remote” jobs (instead of remote-but jobs where the “but” is being in the US with rights to work there)
How can I go about getting an extra 25% or more from current employer? Remember I wont get a local offer higher than what I am on now unless I time travel and make
myself a HFT C++ person, or a senior manager of 1000+ indirect reports.
Well, I live in Eastern Europe so even $120k+ ($10k per month) is rare as hens teeth. Actually the market rate for my skill, seniority and all is half of that so $5000 per month gross.
Now I do get $120k on occasion, as long as it lasts (doesn't always last for long). But how I do it is my competitive advantage, like trading strategies there's not zero but negative incentive for me to generously share it with "everyone". In this area it's everyone for themselves :P
As someone living in the EU, you won’t. I‘d suggest to look into freelancing as there‘s different budgets for those people usually, and this also trims some of the costs for the employer, which you get to pocket. You might also be able to acquire customers from regions with higher salaries.
Start applying for remote jobs outside of your area. When you have a better offer, go to your employer with it. If they don't want to keep you, then you can just move on to the new job.
The fact that this blog post can coach people about how to get to 200k yearly comp shows that you can multiply your salary by a lot more than 1.5 by moving from almost anywhere in the world to the US.
Not necessarily. I have been working fully remotely for a USA organization, although being a non profit the compensation is nowhere near FANG or anything from tech.
I have some ex-coworkers and acquaintances working remotely from Europe for Bay area companies and they definitely have way higher compensations even without taking in account stock options.
That to me is the true American dream, work for an American company without living in an America. I just hope for that to happen one day, although for now I am happy where I am.
Somehow millions of us live here without living in the type of world that our mainstream media portrays. We have our issues for sure, but you’re kidding yourself if you think the USA is not an amazing place to live with incredible diversity of cultures and geographies.
The U.S. is a gigantic heterogeneous place. I think your comment is perhaps a _little_ harsh.
This may not be the case for you, but I think most people's only experience with the United States (or any faraway foreign country, really) is from the news and / or temporarily visiting 1-2 major metros, making them woefully ignorant of what living there is actually like.
The United States has it's issues, for sure, but there are plenty of cities that provide ample conditions to live a "good life".
The food is... whatever you buy or make. If you buy garbage food, you'll eat garbage food. If you buy healthy food, you'll get healthy food. Simple as.
Urban planning is garbage.
Agreed. Every city in the United States that developed after the highway system was built in the 1950s has a long way to go to correct decades of poor urban design. Most cities are
actively taking steps to correct this, but we still have many decades to go. There are plenty of solid places to live, with human centric urban design, in the United States, however, you're just going to to pay a premium. Otherwise you get used to driving, which really isn't all that bad given how focused all of the infrastructure is on making it convenient, hah. I'd still take walkable communities any day, though.
Healthcare
Anyone with an average professional job will have good health insurance through their employer.
Anyone retired will have ok health insurance through Medicare.
The above cover the majority of the population. Anyone else definitely suffers, for sure. Obamacare is very expensive. I would gladly take a single payer system over the existing system, but if you're working professional, what we have is fine.
Guns
Gun violence is just not a lived reality for basically all Americans outside of the news and outside of certain economically depressed areas, like south Chicago. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have stricter gun control, though.
Politics
Populism is definitely a real bummer, but the United States is not unique in this trend.
Every state also has its own unique political environment. Federal politics is only a small part of the lived political reality for Americans. Local state politics are far more impactful, and there are plenty of liberal states enacting policies Europeans would be proud of.
Why would I pick this over anything in Europe?
America is a pretty sweet place to live along a significant number of important dimensions, but by no means is perfect, for sure.
No European country is perfect either, even if many of them have a leg up on the United States along important dimensions like urban design.
Live wherever you want to live, but be careful of basing your life off angry social media posts and the news. They're not going to be very representative of reality.
I don’t know about exceeding the range. If they give me a range and I tiptoe into a higher than the top range, I kinda expect to have crappy wages going forward as Im likely an outlier on the team. Unless im some rock star and they promote me right away, but for a stingy company that seems like long shot.
If you’re paid above market, you shouldn’t worry about small raises. If you’re paid below market, your biggest raise will always come from changing jobs.
Who cares? You should be planning on jumping ship every 2-3 years anyway. So the year over raises staying at a firm are meaningless compared to the outsized bumps going to a new shop.
Why? Why can't we effort to find companies to work for where we can grow and stay for the long haul? Places where we can gain experience from, for example, seeing our solutions and theories stand the test of time? Iterate on them, watch others grow meaningfully over several years, watch ourselves grow meaningfully over years.
I want to find a company and encourage the sort of company that pays all its employees fairly, well and with regular cost of living adjustments along with promotions (or raises), that I can remain with and see through it.
As employees, we should be encouraging companies to grow a culture of employee retention; and employers should be efforting toward the same.
This race to the bottom needs to stop; and, "Hacker News" wants to be a place full of startups. That is, a place full of companies that can make those decisions for their whole staff early and cultivate that style, themselves.
You can’t have that because those places do not exist at scale. Smaller companies do not have the resources for growth and large companies simply do not care about you. You’ll cap out at the small shop, and you’ll become a predictable line item in a spreadsheet at the big shop.
It’s fine to stay where you are. Stick around, know the place inside out, embrace the culture, be the culture!
But, if the goal is to maximize take home pay, the answer is to regularly find a new workplace. That’s the only way to maintain an annualized compensation growth rate that exceeds inflation.
If Bob from Accounting convinces Dave the VP your number is suboptimal or worse, counterproductive, you're gone, after 20 years of loyal and probably underpaid service.
Should is a bit strong. You lose a lot of context and relational influence when you switch companies. This is bad for both you and the teams you leave/join. If you care about the work/product, it’s definitely not a “should”.
Remote work options are something I often hear people refer to as a negotiable thing these days. But how does that work?
Successful remote work is a function of company culture. Assuming you are allowed to work remote more than your peer how are you going to create a successful culture?
I have never met somebody paid 50% above market price here in Paris, France. The only way to get 6 figure salaries seem to be going the management route, and to go beyond that implies reaching C-level at a reasonably sized group. Other than that there is only freelancing.
Usually from the discussions I gather, is that anything above 60k is a pain point from the recruiter perspective, even if it means having 2-3x the xp (say, 10y vs 3y) and somebody productive within the first month versus 6+ months of training.
Sigh. Seldom on HN do I see terrible advice, but this is certainly one of them. Here is a summary of the article:
> Hi HN! You really like if-else statements, right? Let me frame a humane conversation like salary negotiation as a bunch of conditionals so that it is within your comfort zone. If they say X, then repeat after me: "..."
Then HN follows the advice and comes back and complains about being stuck in a soulless job that they just learned to "remove their feelings from it". Just look at these comments as a tiny example.
About me: I have the final say in all of our hirings at a stable startup that many people have told me would be their dream job.
I will not hire a person who follows this process. Sure, against a recruiter you may be able to negotiate to push the number up. That's because they are looking for their bonus and only care if you finish your probation. Against me, you are trading off your image, because I try to see your role 2 to 5 years down the road. That's when a position truly pays off for us.
Basically, I am trying to understand if I can make you happy now, and keep you happy in the coming years. For that, you have to help me see you as a person WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT.
Now, let's follow this article's advice on salary negotiation, and see where that lands us:
1. I ask you for your salary expectation.
2. You return the question back to me. (“Yeah, I have some thoughts around it but I was actually wondering what the salary range for the position is?”)
3. I either answer you or re-return the question back to you.
4. You give me the answer to question #1 anyways.
You are not negotiating. You are running a subroutine. You are also telling me that you are not an open nor a direct person. There is no "money on the table" that you can get from me by just asking the right order of questions. I want to know what satisfies you based on your lifestyle, what you heard from your friends, and what you saw online. I don't want to play mind tricks or be played. In the era of ChatGPT, I have seen it all. You hiding behind intricate words does no favor.
Same goes with what the article suggesting about leverage. In our previous posting, we got 500+ applicants. If I give you an offer, it is not for bargaining. I think I am a fair person and I try my best to meet your need. If you come back to me and ask for more because Adobe is offering you something interesting, I realize you don't really care about us vs Adobe, you are going for the best bid. Again, I want you to think about that 2-5 year timeframe, would I be in the right mind to count on you? Probably not. So I suggest that you take Adobe's offer and we move on to a candidate that we feel sees something special in us.
That being said, I get why people may try these tactics. people are worried that they are giving too low of a number and if they had said something higher, it would have been fine anyways. Well, you can ask me how do I ensure that people get their fair share and what policies we have to keep salaries competitive through promotion.
The ego here is palpable. Asking candidates to trust the first offer from a hiring manager is equally terrible advice.
> I realize you don't really care about us vs Adobe, you are going for the best bid.
Er yeah. It's a job. Unless you're OpenAI right now, you'd be hard pressed to find a candidate who means it when they say they love your company vision. It's all theatrics and gate keeping by ego massaging. It's a rite of passage for junior devs to believe words like yours until they find fresh grads earning double their pay, and getting dumped onto the streets during layoffs.
To the junior devs: Passion and enthusiasm are positive attributes for a team's productivity, but they are equally fantastic traits for hiring managers to exploit. Never forget that. From: A very jaded senior engineer who has seen a lot from startups to tech shops to big tech.
I agree and I would add : you wouldn't know in advance how great a job actually is, when you only know its description. You don't (really) know who you're going to work with, what pain points the company have internally or with their clients, because nobody in their right mind would tell you about it from a recruiting perspective. And obviously you wouldn't know much about the company's future, even funding isn't really a predictor for success.
So yeah salary is the most important common denominator, simply because at the end of the day, it's a written number and you know you're going to get it.
No one cares about your company. The only reason anyone works at your company is because they have an addiction to food and shelter and think that trading labor for money is the best way to support their addiction.
Unless you’re profitable, there is no such thing as a “stable” startup and not even then.
Of course now you’re going to talk about “equity” which in a non public company is statistically meaningless.
Unless they are a non profit, their only goal is to make their owners happy.
If they are VC backed, all of the talk about caring is meaningless. Even if the founders are Mother Theresa reincarnated, the only thing that the VCs care about is an exit.
> I realize you don't really care about us vs Adobe, you are going for the best bid.
But do you (at least a bit) care about candidate? Why candidate should care about you and your company if on the first sign of any troubles (that completely unrelated to candidate) you will just fire him immediately?
And tell me that you will not fire him and work with loss. Tell me please.
We really do and we try to reflect that in the offer. Our vesting packages are orders of magnitude larger than what's typical, with long exercise times. Our finances are also pretty stable (no VC, cash flow positive, long term licenses) so we can invest in them upfront and go over asking.
Your vesting package is also meaningless unless I can trade my options for cash when they vest and then exchange that cash for goods and services. I value equity in a non public company at $0
I understand why you, as someone who's hiring, do not like the article.
> There is no "money on the table" that you can get from me by just asking the right order of questions. I want to know what satisfies you based on your lifestyle, what you heard from your friends, and what you saw online. I don't want to play mind tricks or be played.
Asking people to give their number first is you very much playing mind tricks. I don't want to play mind tricks, I just want you to pay me fairly.
As a hiring manager, you have more of an insight into fair compensation than I do based on my lifestyle or what I heard from my friends. And you also want me to compromise my negotiating position by telling you a number first?
I did that, and got my 1.5x offer. My employer dutifully offered to match it, but by that point I liked the idea of the new job better anyway. They panicked and made further offers and desperate manoeuvres to keep me, but it was too late.
I am certain they still have that policy in place.