Salary Negotiation

TheCutlery said:

You"ve got 2 recruitment offers and that"s your dilemma? That makes it easy.

You decide which one you want to work for, and you go tell the other one that you want bank. Big bank. If they tell you no, you"ve lost nothing, you"re working for the company you already decided to work for. If you get the cash, well then, you"ve got your cake and get to eat it too.

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Not offers, the final stages of interviews before a final offer. I don"t have any info on proposed salary. Also, being asked to disclose my current salary seems pretty mercenary, fairly certain I won"t supply that information unless they say it"s a deal breaker.

I"m trying to get that offer and contract in hand, and i am not sure if I should go for gold, or just feel privileged to be receiving interviews at all. So when semi realistic salaries could easily be 120k or more, I feel like I can"t really ask for that, since i feel greedy asking for more than cost of living plus a little extra. Who am I to try and not live hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck?

These places have a hiring budget and a sense of my skills, I don"t know why their asking me these questions. My answer is "the absolute highest and best you have available for this position." like selling a house.

Getting greedy and asking for alot and disqualifying myself is my fear here. I want what is fair and appropriate for the job.

edit: also, I should add - it IS a privledge to work at these places. It"s like getting paid a comfortable to go to graduate school and change your career path forever. That one line line your job history is something money can"t buy, and will forever increase your value regardless of what you were paid there.

Work where you like spending most of your waking time being. Any other choice or reason makes absolutely no sense to me.

Zeste said:

I have the skills for a 100k+ job or more. Bigger cities, nicer cities. Tech cities.
{snip}

Do I go for the gusto and try and cut a fat hog, jeopardizing by asking too much?

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I"m not sure that working for some big named company is really worth it on your resume. Google likes to underpay people because their name is fashionable. The cost of living near their HQ is very high, so either you"re going to spend 2 hours commuting each day, or you"ll pay almost all of your salary trying to afford someplace near the office. $100k here in Denver is about equal to $200k in NYC/Silicon Valley, or $125k in DC due to differences in cost of living and higher state taxes.

I"m 50, so I"m looking for money. I"ve got to make as much as possible (and sock away as much in 401ks and IRAs as possible) before age discrimination in software development makes it too hard to get hired. Based on the experiences of a couple of older developer friends, the brick wall appears to be age 55.

Having a sexy popular employer on your resume isn"t going to do jack shit when you go to get a mortgage for a house. It might impress some folks looking at your resume.

Tyreny said:

I understand that it is common practice for employers to ask for a salary history, but my question is more to the point of why is that considered acceptable? A company (should) knows what a position is worth and be willing to pay for that. If I had worked for crap pay before hand that should not affect their decision on what to pay me now, vice versa as well.

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They already know what your job is worth, but most companies don"t like to give anyone more than about 15% raise when moving. Also, if you worked for crap pay, it means that someone didn"t think you were worth paying market rates, so that means you suck (so they shouldn"t hire you) or you"re a doormat (so they"ll move you to the basement and take away your red stapler).

I missed this one last year:

Lyrical said:

As I said in my above post, I worked for a company where it was a written policy that comparing salary would result in discipline up to termination.

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It is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act to do so. Anyone fired for that reason would end up quite wealthy even after the lawyers were done with the company"s carcass. Your only survival mechanisms would be to hope you only hire idiots too stupid to know their legal rights, or to very well document that they violated company policy in some other justifiable area before firing them. Having such a policy, and a written record of disciplining employees for violating that illegal policy will make you wish you hired a better lawyer.

How many businesses have a policy like the one below?

Confidentiality of Salary and Benefit Information

Employees are prohibited from discussing their salary or wage levels and company benefits with other employees. Such information is confidential and may not be discussed in the workplace. Any employee violating this policy will be considered to have committed a breach of confidentiality and will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and possibly including termination of employment.

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Look familiar? Chances are good that most companies have either a formal policy similar to the one above, or else have a tradition or practice of responding to pay and benefit discussions with disciplinary action. Those same companies would likely be surprised to learn that such policies generally violate federal labor law. Indeed, the National Labor Relations Act contains a provision, Section 7 (29 U.S.C. ? 157), that gives all employees the right to "engage in concerted activities", including the right to discuss their terms and conditions of employment with each other. Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA (29 U.S.C. ? 158(a)(1 makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer to deny or limit the Section 7 rights of employees. Based upon those two provisions, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has taken the position for decades now that employers may not prohibit employees from discussing their pay and benefits, and that any attempts to do so actually violate the NLRA. Courts have basically uniformly supported that position. Moreover, those particular sections of the NLRA apply to both union and non-union employees, so there is no exception made for companies where the employees are non-unionized

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Salary and Benefit Discussions Among Employees(From Texas Workforce Commission).

Even if the employees have zero intention of starting a union, the policy against discussing wages and benefits is a violation of the law protecting union organizing activity.

Handicap vs NLRBThis is the precedent where the NLRB holds that discussion of wages is a protected activity under the NLRA.
Where Does NLRA Apply? - Compensation Today
Such policies were specifically outlawed in Colorado

Employers who have workplace rules that prohibit employees from discussing the terms and conditions of employment with other employees or that require management?s approval before employees may engage in protected concerted activity will violate Section 7. However, the NLRB has approved employer policies that broadly prohibit disclosure of private information about the employer?s business. A policy is acceptable if employees can reasonably understand from the wording of the policy that it is designed to protect the employer?s legitimate interest in maintaining the confidentiality of its private business information, rather than to prohibit discussion of wages or working conditions, or require pre-approval from management to engage in protected concerted activity. Even very broadly worded confidentiality policies such as: ?Company business and documents are confidential. Disclosure of such information is prohibited,? have been held to be lawful.

On the other hand, overly broad confidentiality policies have been found unlawful.

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Source

Tangurena said:

I"m not sure that working for some big named company is really worth it on your resume.

~

Having a sexy popular employer on your resume isn"t going to do jack shit when you go to get a mortgage for a house. It might impress some folks looking at your resume.

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You don"t think there is value when you are searching for new jobs? I don"t really agree, but I"m willing to hear more about what you"re saying.

You say you"re 50, and in software development. I have no idea what your work history is, or where you are at now. You think there"s no real value to having known, big names on your resume, as opposed to places people have never heard of?

I guess I don"t get it. If I was in software development, I think that "Senior Software Engineer - IBM" or "Director of Software Development - Oracle" or "Senior Software Engineer - Google" would be pretty damn valuable.

You say "it might impress some folks looking at your resume." Aren"t those folks future employers? Employers where you might be looking to advance your career with and go from "Software Engineer" to "Senior Software Engineer" to "Director of Software Development"?

TheCutlery said:

Look at the flip side of it. If you were a senior software engineer at IBM, why aren"t you now? Who"d you piss off there? Why couldn"t you hack it? In short, why are you now asking ME for a job?

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Well I"d think you"d be looking to move up, either through applying for the vertical job yourself, or by being recruited / headhunted.

Where I am at now, the President, VP"s and C-level (CTO specifically) were mostly recruited from other places. And probably 1/3rd of the Director/Manager level people were recruited/headhunted.

So to answer your question "Why aren"t you now?" I would hope that the answer is "I grew to a place in my career that advancement was required."

It seems like most of the time when you jump up in career position, it"s inter-company, not intra-company. You go from Senior Engineer at IBM to Development Director at Oracle.

You"re right, Zeste.

From my experience (I work at one of the places you named), it"s very difficult to move up in these massive companies. The best way to move up in a company like IBM or Oracle or MS is to actually work there, find another job for 1-2yrs-ish, come back and get rehired at a higher level. Lots of people do this.

Yea, like that at most large corps from what I understand.

I"ve worked at all sorts of companies over my working life. Of the companies I"ve worked for, you"ve probably only heard of GM, HP and the Department of Energy. At the larger (Fortune 500) companies that I"ve worked at, promotion from within was the norm (except at the VP and C-level). At the medium sized companies (50-1000 employees), recruiting from outside was more normal, but the medium sized companies rarely had people stay more than a couple years.

I"m not really interested in being in charge of developers - I"ve done it before, and I"d rather not do it again. If I were the sort of person who enjoyed it, I"d probably have joined the dark side a decade ago.

In software development, resumes get screened by HR for buzzword compliance (where the lazy fucks haven"t totally outsourced selecting IT workers to recruiting firms). I"ve never come across a resume where a fancy employer made up for a lack of skills. Yes, I know recruiting is like dating in high school - if you already have a job/girlfriend, then you are desirable and people want you; otherwise you have cooties and we don"t want that around here. And yes, I know that if the morons in HR say they want X amount of experience with version Y of [some technology] then having experience with the previous or subsequent versions isn"t enough for them (and that it isn"t possible to have X years of experience with that technology is something they are unable to see as a problem).

Tangurena said:

.
In software development, resumes get screened by HR for buzzword compliance (where the lazy fucks haven"t totally outsourced selecting IT workers to recruiting firms). I"ve never come across a resume where a fancy employer made up for a lack of skills. Yes, I know recruiting is like dating in high school - if you already have a job/girlfriend, then you are desirable and people want you; otherwise you have cooties and we don"t want that around here. And yes, I know that if the morons in HR say they want X amount of experience with version Y of [some technology] then having experience with the previous or subsequent versions isn"t enough for them (and that it isn"t possible to have X years of experience with that technology is something they are unable to see as a problem).

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Ahh my gawd, I fucking hate tech resumes. How many of us have a block at the top of our resume which is just verbal vomit of every technology / buzzword we are fluent in.

As a interviewer (I assist in technical QA/QE interviews; I am a Dev) I fucking lawl when people put stuff down on their resume I know they don"t have. I always scan through the words looking for something out of place to ask them about. It"s usually not points off, but it at least lets me verify how they act in an awkward stressed situation.

As to the latter point, this isn"t always the HR departments fault. Most job reqs are not made by HR. They are just posted by them. Would you really want to work for a Hiring Manager who doesn"t know the age of the technology he/she works with?

K, sorry to hi-jack. I have a interesting scenario, I wanted to get some opinions on.

I was recently recruiter for some IT work and had to relocation. I had received a raise from my previous employer, based on the fact I was getting several interviews, and told them I was considering leaving. I told the one place I was interested in about the new raise, thinking tell them a big amount and they will go away.

No way, they came within a reasonable amount of my offer(2k less) but offered me 2K relo assistance. However, now one of the other companies I told a huge amount to, has come back and is now asking me to fly out for a in person interview.

Problem is, I started my new job about a month ago, and don"t have PTO off as of yet. I think I might like both places, however one is half way across the country for about a 45% raise.....

What would you do? Just tell them you needed time off for a personal day and go, if it goes well, relo again, or ?.... However, at the new place I"ve been complimented several times that I"m already so much better then the last guy, and a good fit for our team.

Long term benefit vs. Short term convenience.

Take some unpaid days off and check it out. Prioritize your career goals and what will help you in the long run.

For me, right now its: 1. International name recognition of employer 2. Experience I need 3. Salary 4. Location.

The big name recognition bump you get is the first company that people have heard of on your resume...at least it was for me. My offers and offer amounts noticeable increased after I had Citigroup on my resume, since it gave me enterprise IT experience in a high stress, 5+ 9"s uptime environment.

If you"re getting established in a new job market/area, you"ll also see a bump from your first big firm in that area. Google doesn"t underpay nearly as much now after their salary boost, and they also aren"t the golden child of Silicon Valley anymore, so they have to compete harder (and therefore compensate better) for talent.

Kilivek said:

You"re right, Zeste.

From my experience (I work at one of the places you named), it"s very difficult to move up in these massive companies. The best way to move up in a company like IBM or Oracle or MS is to actually work there, find another job for 1-2yrs-ish, come back and get rehired at a higher level. Lots of people do this.

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I guess it depends but when I was with a company of 100k employees they had an intranet portal type place where people could go for current events, links to 401k, HR, forms, etc. etc. etc. They also had a job section where you could locate internal job listings by location. I"ve had a few friends who were able to move up within the company by using this method.

Evelys said:

The big name recognition bump you get is the first company that people have heard of on your resume...at least it was for me. My offers and offer amounts noticeable increased after I had Citigroup on my resume, since it gave me enterprise IT experience in a high stress, 5+ 9"s uptime environment.

If you"re getting established in a new job market/area, you"ll also see a bump from your first big firm in that area. Google doesn"t underpay nearly as much now after their salary boost, and they also aren"t the golden child of Silicon Valley anymore, so they have to compete harder (and therefore compensate better) for talent.

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Interesting observation, you may have just given me the final impetus I needed to apply for a company I have been on the fence about.

You guys wanting to work for large companies are crazy.

Working in a corporate environment is just... eww

Small companies in the tech industry are a lot more fun (Mine has ~70). They also give you a much better chance to prove your worth when you are on a first name basis with the CEO, CTO, etc.

I started at my current job making just shy of 70k/year. Less than a year later I am sitting at just shy of 100k/year. This is not including the numerous bonuses I got over the past year (totally above 10k). This was purely as a result of me proving my worth to the company.

Now if I only knew my job title...

Vinen said:

You guys wanting to work for large companies are crazy.

Working in a corporate environment is just... eww

Small companies in the tech industry are a lot more fun (Mine has ~70). They also give you a much better chance to prove your worth when you are on a first name basis with the CEO, CTO, etc.

I started at my current job making just shy of 70k/year. Less than a year later I am sitting at just shy of 100k/year. This is not including the numerous bonuses I got over the past year (totally above 10k). This was purely as a result of me proving my worth to the company.

Now if I only knew my job title...

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This. a thousand times this.

I"ll NEVER work for another big company again.

You didn"t include the intangibles - basically making your own hours because people trust you to put the work in, not having to follow some archaic stupid set of rules because someone whose job it is to write policy will be upset if you check a box incorrectly on a form no one cares about.

Etoille said:

This. a thousand times this.

I"ll NEVER work for another big company again.

You didn"t include the intangibles - basically making your own hours because people trust you to put the work in, not having to follow some archaic stupid set of rules because someone whose job it is to write policy will be upset if you check a box incorrectly on a form no one cares about.

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So you"d go back and not work for any big-name corporations?

Not just big, but big-name. Recognition that will be with you for decades.