>Statistically, you’re probably not a special snowflake. Everyone thinks that they are and deserve way above what the local market is paying. You probably don’t.
This is a very fiscal conservative thing to say (smacks of "know your place, cog"), so here's what I believe the fiscal conservative answer to be:
"Is the market bearing it? Yes? Then you deserve it."
Bearing in mind "market average" is not what a company is going to quote you off the bat. You should ask for more for that reason.
Bearing in mind that if you ask for more, you'll probably get more. That's just raw dumb game theory, so you should ask for more.
Also, what is this "don't deserve?" Don't deserve? I'm getting an emotional reaction to this! Don't deserve, because we should keep our head down? Chug along, dare not ask for more? What kind of dystopic corporate hell? We talk morals we should talk profit margins corporations pull in and disperse to upper management or CEO. Thank goodness many founders have realized they have to share the pie with equity to get the goods out of the best engineers. But since we're talking about bigger companies, soulless entities that will actually sell your 401k out from under you for a profit, I believe the "right" and "moral" thing to do is to suck every penny out of them as possible, because they'll fuck you in the end if it's profitable.
Also, what is this "don't deserve?" Don't deserve? I'm getting an emotional reaction to this! Don't deserve, because we should keep our head down? Chug along, dare not ask
(All numbers are based on salary surveys in my local market).
If the salary range is between $130K - $145K for a full stack developer that knows C# and React and all of the other buzz worthy front end stack and I only know .Net Asp.Net MVC and jquery (which is true), why would they hire me at $150K when they could hire someone who already knows the required tech?
On the other hand, if $135K is my minimum, and they were willing to hire me at that, why wouldn’t I take it? Spend the next year or two learning on the job and when they inevitably give me a 3% raise for the next two years, jump ship to a new job?
A job can offer me two things - immediate compensation and experience that makes me more valuable in the future.
When I did leave the job I had been at for way too long, I only had three skills that the market cared about - C/C++, database, and a little C#.
I had two offers - one paying 20K more and I could have negotiated $25K more than I was making as a C++ developer and one only paying $7K more with no room for negotiation as an entry level C# developer. If I had taken the higher paying job, I would have been worth less in 3 years - hardly any jobs wanted C++ developers. Instead, I took the job as a C# developer. Three years later, I was making what the first job offered and I was more marketable for the next 6 years. Nine years later, there are plenty of jobs paying $60-70K more than I was making back then for C# developers. For C++ developers, not so much.
About a year ago I was in a similar position. I was a “software architect” over a small development shop at a large company. It was time to look for another job. I had two offers, one paying $15K more that I was perfectly qualified for - .Net Framework, ASP.Net MVC, Sql Server, Windows platform and I would have been over a team of 10.
I would have made more at the above job, but using technology that was the opposite of where the industry is going.
The other job was a “senior developer” position that needed some exposure to AWS (I had a little but not enough to be an expert),JavaScript, NodeJS, React, .Net, and Python was a nice to have. It only paid $2K more than I was making, I asked for another $7K just because.
Guess which one I took? By taking the lesser paying job, I already have companies taking me out to lunch, talks with CxOs, etc. trying to recruit me directly at thier company paying $35K - $40K more than I’m making now as a full time billable consultant. It would require travel and I want to wait for my son to graduate before I entertain the offers.
But since we're talking about bigger companies, soulless entities that will actually sell your 401k out from under you for a profit, I believe the "right" and "moral" thing to do is to suck every penny out of them as possible, because they'll fuck you in the end if it's profitable.
Companies have no control over your 401K. They can’t “take money” out of your 401K account.
Thank goodness many founders have realized they have to share the pie with equity to get the goods out of the best engineers.
Statistically, equity is worthless at most startups. They either fail, don’t have an exit event that makes it valuable, or it gets diluted. I would rather have the guarantee of a salary.
> Companies have no control over your 401K. They can’t “take money” out of your 401K account.
They control who your 401k trustee is and therefore the range of investment products available to you. Companies get kickbacks from their 401k trustees and the difference comes from fees charged to you from the investment products you buy. Obviously the company with the higher fees can pay the most in kickbacks.
But its all very transparent you see. The inflated fees are clearly marked in the prospectus you didn't read, and if you don't like them you can get a job somewhere else. All very above board.
Seeing that my tenure at a job is usually only three years, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t make a big difference. I can transfer the money to an IRA of my choice with lower fees - like Vanguard.
Your examples are very detailed, I appreciate that. But I don't get it, it just serves to help my argument - at each of those individual companies, you can ask for more money and probably get it, even if it puts you above market value. So why wouldn't you?
As for 401k, my friend's company was recently purchased, and in the deal the 401ks were wiped out, instead of transferred. It's probably not legal but a bunch of employees have to get together to form a lawsuit to sort it now. Basically, I feel it's important to remember that laws don't actually create boundaries for companies, companies have far more "legal worth" (money) so therefore they have more power.
Your examples are very detailed, I appreciate that. But I don't get it, it just serves to help my argument - at each of those individual companies, you can ask for more money and probably get it, even if it puts you above market value. So why wouldn't you?
Your market value is determined by supply and demand. Why would a company pay me as a “Senior .Net Developer” back in 2008 when I had less than 6 months experience with .Net at the same salary that they would hire someone with 5 years of experience?
Why would someone, hypothetically pay me a year ago as a “Senior Cloud Architect” who had only watched a PluralSight video and had done one small project on the side for the same amount as someone with 5 years of experience?
If you are actually asking why wouldn’t I ask for a larger raise after I gained the requisite experience, that’s just not the way the industry works. For some reason they would rather not give raises to existing employees but are more than willing to hire replacements at the prevailing market rates - that is the well known phenomena of salary compression and inversion.
Well I dunno, why did my company hire me as a mid-level frontend engineer straight out of a coding bootcamp? A lot of people didn't want to, I just went and found a company willing to... Is the market not as robust for .net?
If they called you “mid level” straight out of boot camp what exactly is a “junior”? Could it have possible been yet another case of title inflation?
They also put a title of “lead developer” on business cards in 1996, straight out of college - I was the only developer - when this little small company was trying to seem bigger than it was when they were trying to get a government contract.
> a full stack developer that knows C# and React and all of the other buzz worthy front end stack and I only know .Net Asp.Net MVC and jquery (which is true)
Possibly Microsoft-land has moved on since I’ve last paid attention to it, but if you ‘know .NET’, surely you more or less have to know C#?
But .Net is not popular among the cool kids and the small companies. The ones that I prefer working for and will pay more for “adult supervision”/architect types.
Even if you do find a .Net/Windows type of company, they aren’t going to be using server side rendering with razor pages and ASP.Net MVC. They are going to want to use a front end framework.
Then if you are in a cloud environment or any environment for that matter, you really don’t want to tie your horse to Windows/.Net Framework or Sql Server. You want to be using .Net Core and one of the open source or open source compatible databases.
You don’t want to be using jquery in 2018.
Of course you can find jobs using Asp.Net MVC/Jquery/IIS/SQL Server, etc. but that’s not what you want to hang your horse on.
I would much rather stay with .Net than to move to Node, but the market has spoken.
There was blame from both the Enron and the employees. The employees voluntarily put thier retirement savings in Enron stock - you never put your retirement contributions in the company stock. But the company locking them out and putting thier match in company stock was inexcusable.
This is a very fiscal conservative thing to say (smacks of "know your place, cog"), so here's what I believe the fiscal conservative answer to be:
"Is the market bearing it? Yes? Then you deserve it."
Bearing in mind "market average" is not what a company is going to quote you off the bat. You should ask for more for that reason.
Bearing in mind that if you ask for more, you'll probably get more. That's just raw dumb game theory, so you should ask for more.
Also, what is this "don't deserve?" Don't deserve? I'm getting an emotional reaction to this! Don't deserve, because we should keep our head down? Chug along, dare not ask for more? What kind of dystopic corporate hell? We talk morals we should talk profit margins corporations pull in and disperse to upper management or CEO. Thank goodness many founders have realized they have to share the pie with equity to get the goods out of the best engineers. But since we're talking about bigger companies, soulless entities that will actually sell your 401k out from under you for a profit, I believe the "right" and "moral" thing to do is to suck every penny out of them as possible, because they'll fuck you in the end if it's profitable.