
Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations - andyjpb
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=eBetxc1Q
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jxm262
I think this was mentioned a few days ago. had a big discussion around it -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233831)

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kls
So this guy goes on to repeat the cycle on his new employee.

Me personally, I am a fan of the golden handcuffs approach to a limited pool
of talent. It allows a company to focus more on critical business efforts and
less on internal profits via penny pinching, wasting business cycles on
needless spends of time and energy. Optimizing every last dollar, over chasing
revenue, is best left to companies that are stagnant or in decline.

The problem is, with that employee that would never ask for a raise, is that
once he decides he wants more money, mentally he will already be out of your
company. Those are the kind that don't look back. When he looks he will be
serious about leaving.

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charlesdm
This sounds like a guy making idle threats. "I have an offer for $X !!!!!!" \-
but it doesn't really seem he's interested in leaving.

Honestly, for 5 years of raises, he didn't negotiate well. If he negotiated
more aggressively, he probably could've gotten up to 200k at this point, since
he was promoted to be one of the key technical people.

One key thing he didn't do was negotiate the new job offer well. If they offer
you $75k at a new job, you need to push them up to 85k-90k. Once you have
that, you go to your current boss and negotiate it up to $100-115k. By not
countering, he lost one of the major advantages of finding a secondary offer.

Yes, it's better than not having something to fall back on, but he left 50%
(or more) on the table.

It's like asking for a discount, and getting 2%. That's ridiculous. If they're
willing to give you 2%, they can give you 10-20% as well.

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erikb
Yeah, a lot of the money comes in by simply saying to many people "I'm worth
that money". And the key ingredients to bargaining are having another offer (=
being able to walk) and knowing the market a little (=talking to other
companies, reading texts like this one), and the third is to talk to your
manager. The worst thing that can happen is that he says no. But even then you
are better set up for the same talk the next time. Saying no a few times is
also hard for the manager.

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x5n1
You also actually have to be worth it.

~~~
erikb
Is anybody really worth >=$150k/year?

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cweagans
I won't speak for others, but at a previous company, I almost singlehandedly
carried a single project to completion that brought in over a million dollars
in a single calendar year. Some of that obviously goes to company overhead
(offices, administrative roles, etc), but let's be extremely generous and say
HALF of that is overhead. $150k/year is peanuts compared to the cost of having
a valuable person leave your company during a large project.

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aggieben
I, for one, would be upset as a manager to find out that I had been lied to
(and taken advantage of, really). I would have zero qualms about firing
someone for negotiating like this. It's fine to say "Hey, someone else over
here thinks I'm worth more, and I'm inclined to agree with them - are you?"
It's not fine to say it if it's not true. I'm also not super-impressed with
the leveraging of a tough moment in the company to extract more $$. It's not
dishonest, although if I were your manager in that situation, I'd be looking
for a replacement.

My take on this whole idea is this: instead of focusing on how big your balls
are, focus on how much value you can bring to the company. Your monetary
compensation will reflect that (and actual honest negotiating techniques are
recommended).

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byoung2
_It 's not fine to say it if it's not true_

How about the example where the hiring manager says "this is all we can afford
to pay for the position" when there are other employees at the company making
much more for the same job? Shouldn't the employee feel equally taken
advantage of? I was in this situation early in my career where I was told $55k
was the highest they could go for this position, that's all they had in the
budget, etc. This was a large publicly-traded tech company (at the time,
private now). I knew for a fact it was a lie, but I took the job because I
needed experience to put on my resume, so I wasn't totally naive. At my 1 year
review, I later found out that other developers on my team were making
$70-80k, so I used some of the techniques described in the pastebin post to
get another offer for $65k, get my employer to match, then I got the other
company to beat my employer's match with $70k. I stayed at that company for 3
months and then left to go to a better company for $80k. In this case I was
completely honest about my salary, but my company flat out lied about what
they could pay. After a year at $80k I switched companies and was able to jump
to $110k by exaggerating my salary. I didn't lie about it, but I reported my
$80k plus 20% bonus (that I had a good chance of getting), perks such as 401k
match, free concert tickets, etc as a "total compensation" of $100k.

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aggieben
If I'm reading you correctly, your argument basically boils down to "but
managers/companies lie too".

Well, both sides are wrong then. Deals negotiated in bad faith are bad deals,
regardless of whose bad faith it is.

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anoother
'Totally honest', as in, lie through your teeth, repeatedly?

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it_luddite
It's not lying if you're careful how you respond to their question on salary.
I always respond with my compensation is $X, where X is my previous year's
salary, bonus, and cash value of PTO and other benefits.

~~~
charlesdm
But he was lying. That's different. What you're making is irrelevant, and if
it is for them (i.e. the company you're interviewing at is making an actual
problem of not knowing), then you don't want to work there. What you're
looking to make is much more relevant.

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fiatjaf
It is below the human condition to ever work for a salary.

