Yep, this is what you have to do. I know a guy, smart developer, not even a college graduate who had dropped out of community college, who clawed his way from 60k to 150 in less than 6 years using similar tactics. You need a decent safety net, brass balls, and willingness to actually walk away of it doesn't go your way.
No doubt. I actually stepped away, because the upward trajectory, means your performance has to match the pay. As said before in the thread, asking OVER the top - simply means HR finds your replacement faster. Appeasement is what started Hitler's demise. Those who do not learn from the past, will repeat the failures in the future. However, its like a skill of knowing the timing of things - how I got this far, myself.
I think the dirty secret is that the 150k jobs aren't really always harder than the 60k jobs, and sometimes they even treat you better because your social status is greater
This is an admirable display of tactics, but a poor general strategy. His repeated threats to leave, as well as lies about other offers, only worked because the company in question was already struggling and needed to hold onto him for fear of not finding a replacement. A more prominent and successful company would have jettisoned him as soon as it found a qualified and, in all probability, more loyal applicant.
However, the advice on initial negotiations is solid. Companies generally allow at least 15% headroom on their initial offer for negotiations, and potentially more for those with less industry recognition and thus less negotiating power. I've exploited this headroom in virtually every job I've gotten.
> A more prominent and successful company would have jettisoned him as soon as it found a qualified and, in all probability, more loyal applicant.
Even a successful company needs good engineers. They don't fire people just because they're "not loyal". Sure that medium sized company might want to replace you with a cheaper more "loyal" version, but what is their capability to do so? Beyond loyalty is dollars and cents.
I would say it's a solid tactic assuming the developer would actually go and work at those other companies. Worst case scenario of this tactic is that you tell them you've got a better offer and they tell you to go take it. Even then, you could likely backtrack and explain how in your heart of hearts you decided it wasn't the move you wanted to make. Unless you're underperforming in some other area, I've not met a software company that can afford to toss out good engineers.
"Loyalty" ... riiight - everyone wants chumps as employees. Clearly I disagree. Smart leaders pay above market for real talent, regardless of their 'loyalty'. The bottom line is, if you pay someone well and assist them in their career aspirations (promotions, etc), you know they will be loyal.
Loyalty just because your manager is a 'nice guy' is what weak engineers do who can't compete.
At least in this market, where talent can always find work. If the market ever turns and there is an oversupply, I agree you should probably STFU and do your job.
> His repeated threats to leave, as well as lies about other offers, only worked because the company in question was already struggling and needed to hold onto him for fear of not finding a replacement.
It's called leverage. Or a strong negotiating position. Or whatever else. Point being that he was valuable to them, knew it, and was willing to use that. This is how any and every negotiation plays out.
>A more prominent and successful company would have jettisoned him as soon as it found a qualified and, in all probability, more loyal applicant.
Notice the implicit assumption that employees should be loyal to companies, but companies are free to "jettison" an employee aggressively negotiating because that's not "loyal"?
The only reason engineers are not getting respect as an industry (and I've seen this get worse over the past 30 years) is because we sell ourselves short.
I've noticed that yes there is headroom, but 15%? This seems like alot, but honestly I'm probably undervaluing it myself (something I'm working on).
As I'm just now transitioning from being what I consider "mid" level to "senior" (relative titles I know), I'll try to keep your comment in mind for future jobs. It makes me a bit sad that this game has to be played so much in order to get the full value of your worth.
This article is about salary negotiations, not software-engineering negotiations.
I was hoping this would be about negotiating feature sets and timelines, which would actually be relevant to the set of people working on software (rather than being relevant to the set of people trying to make money; of course there is overlap).
The key difference is that software engineering negotiations aren't adversarial and no one wants you to overestimate or underestimate. There are numerous books on estimating software time, I recommend Fred Brook's The Mythical Man Month if you're looking for a classic.
Put 4 angry software developer men with wildly different opinions on The True Way Forward in a room and see how long it takes for the yelling and physical altercations to start.
It would be nice if we had actual software engineering negotiations instead of endless fighting over tiny architecture details.
But, the first rule of software engineer negotiations is — don't work with cowboy programmers who refuse to listen to others.
Once we've reached a formal "we need software negotiations" stage, it seems we've already lost. We only reached that stage because there's such an adversarial environment that regular discussions were fruitless.
Then it turns into a giant ego battle—the winner becomes whoever has the most political leverage, regardless of technical merit.
I would recommend a small variation of this technique in order to maintain good working relationships with your manager/employer.
Start with a conversation explaining why you believe you should be better compensated, highlighting the value you add to the company, rarity of your skills, market rates, etc.
If the request is rejected, or the increase offered is inadequate, then find an offer at another employer and use this to negotiate (or simply accept the offer and move on).
This approach shows good will, in that you gave your employer an opportunity to make things right before escalating to a threat of leaving.
Ultimatums can be useful both for cutting the negotiation process short (to avoid pain from inferior negotiation skills, for instance) or to show your business understanding. If you want executives to respect your business acumen, demonstrating your skills like this is one way to go about it.
Not necessarily. A salary negotiation initiated by an employee out of the blue raises a huge red flag. You've just alerted management that you're merely "possibly" not happy so they can start the ball rolling in finding your replacement well before you've even started the ball rolling in finding their replacement.
I work in Georgia, an at will state, meaning I can be fired at a moment's notice for anything. There's no notice period, my salary stops right then. If I quit I don't have to give notice either but I do it as a professional courtesy because I wanna seem like an adult, even if the places that force my hand are nowhere near that. That means to follow the given advice I have to navigate a minefield to just keep my job at neutral, at best get the raise I wanted and at worst be escorted out the door right then and there.
I feel like this puts me in a terrible spot and it's one of the reasons I'm making well well below what I'm worth. This negotiation also can be attributed to why I hate the interview process and tend to stick with a place well beyond my time. Once I'm in a spot I can prove without fail that I'm worth well more than I'm paid but no one believes that can come from such a shy introvert with few hobbies outside of video games. I feel like things are changing on all fronts but it's a glacial pace at best.
Save up an emergency fund, it'll do wonders for your confidence to negotiate knowing that if they fire you on the spot, you can float for a month or two until you find a job (though hopefully it would be much faster than that).
I went back to my original employer and said I had a new job offer for $70k, and I didn't want to negotiate, I just wanted their final, last ditch offer
That's an incredibly awesome way to have a huge target painted on your back. A lot of employers get really pissed at this tactic but won't say so to your face. They will gladly give you that new salary for just enough time to get a (cheaper) replacement on board. Then your salary is changed to $0.00.
I found a solid startup, _one_I_would_actually_work_at_, and tell them I make $100k (a lie, I added $20k to my current salary).
Welcome to the 2010s, where credit bureaus now run additional services for employers and HR departments. My company regularly uses The Work Number from Equifax. I pulled up my report and it has my salary history for the last 20 years on it. Perhaps working for small startups that can't afford this service will let you fly under the radar when it comes to bluffing about salary history (and don't get me wrong, I'm all for not letting your next employer know what you were making before), but you gotta tread lightly here.
My opinion is that one should tell the new employer what it would take to make you jump, and that's it. If they can't make that number then you have your answer. That, or they need to make up the delta in other ways.
Welcome to the 2010s, where credit unions now run additional services for employers and HR departments. My company regularly uses The Work Number from Experian.
Interesting. I've always suspected something like this existed and have argued with people against lying about salary history on the assumption that it does. This is the first confirmation I've seen. Thanks!
But, in this case, he wasn't lying about his salary history. He was inflating (lying about) a competing offer (that he had no intention of taking). That's a lot harder to disprove...
I've gotten the same advice from multiple sources. You don't have to lie to say what salary you're looking for. You also don't have to give your current salary.
In the information age, you better be extra careful about bluffing because it's easier every day to call those bluffs.
Thanks for the information, but Experian is a credit bureau or credit reporting company. A credit union is something else, more like a saving-and-loan association.
It's worth mentioning that in some parts of the world (for example Israel) people don't have credit scores and you can't pay a service to find out what their income is.
Of course, lying is still mostly unnecessary, especially if you interview a lot and actually do have offers to back up your claims. Personally I think the hit your reputation would take from lying just isn't worth it.
True, and let's quantify this a bit more. It's a lot easier to be upfront honest and give a take-it-or-leave-it number when you're currently employed and can afford to pass up the offer and move to the next company.
A lot of people are not in this position. Negotiation certainly becomes critical. A little bit of homework and diplomatic work can bump your salary by thousands or tens of thousands with a few hours of work. This is impossible to do once you start your employment.
I tried to look myself up, and indeed they don't have my current employer (a small startup). My guess is that only larger employers participate.
More importantly, this raises significant privacy issues. How can a current or former employer make sensitive data like salary information easily and publicly accessible, without permission? That ought to be illegal.
I agree that it's really wrong to lie about one's salary; the best answer is to not disclose that, and probably to point to available information like glassdoor, or just be honest about your expectations.
My take (as it was explained to me by HR) is that currently it's used as a way to let decisionmakers (landlords, bank loan officers, court systems, etc) get verification of employment and/or salary via mutual agreement. You, as the wage-earner, grant an access key to a landlord for example. He then can get quick verification of your application information without wasting HR's time.
But I trust the credit bureaus as far as I can throw them. This will certainly morph into other uses for the data, like this:
Hiring Company: "Did Joe Pastebin earn $100,000 last year?"
How is equinox getting the data? Is it from self reports? (EG: you apply for credit, say you work for XYZ and make $QWR -- that goes in your credit report.) Or are employers turning over this information to equifax? By what right can they do that? Seems a violation of the privacy act to me.
In the US the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives collection firms the ability to access this data. In other uses (like the landlord example) the access is granted by the employee.
I believe turning over this data by the employer without the employees consent is illegal, forbidden by the FCRA and privacy acts of 1974. I know the article you linked to claimed it was legal, but what this is telling me is that I should get employers to sign an NDA (not that they would, of course.)
So, yet another argument for starting a startup rather than being an employee.
Talk to someone that's in the public sector. Maybe a local public works employee or the teacher at your local high school.
Their salary is public record and has always been that way. It was just a lot more difficult to find it until recently.
As for private businesses, I've never been aware of a law that says they can't hand the information out. They tend not to do it because of internal reasons like not letting the competition see it or keeping everyone from arguing about each other's comp all day instead of working. The FCRA allowed debt collectors a way to tunnel through companies that resisted cooperating.
> How can a current or former employer make sensitive data like salary information easily and publicly accessible, without permission?
Presumably it's a condition of employment. I mean most people sign a couple dozen forms when starting a new job, all it takes is one sentence on one form that says the company may share your employment-related information.
Wrong! There was no cheaper option and this engineer/negotiator knew it. (70k? Seriously? Even in 2010...) Everything he said was dead on and I recommend everyone to follow his lead. Admittedly, you should have a firm grasp of the market, and the way he got it by aggressively pursuing alternative offers is absolutely the right way to do it. Also, he was dead on when he said you should always have an alternative that you'd seriously go to. Asking for a raise without serious alternative in hand is dumb dumb dumb.
That all being said, ideally you'd work for a company that didn't force you to do these sorts of shenanigans. Such companies are more rare than they should be.
> That's an incredibly awesome way to have a huge target painted on your back. A lot of employers get really pissed at this tactic but won't say so to your face. They will gladly give you that new salary for just enough time to get a (cheaper) replacement on board. Then your salary is changed to $0.00.
I believe the op was in the NE where there are limited choices for employers when it comes to hiring (unlike in SV, they're dime a dozen).
Don't give a company you're interviewing with your social security number. You only have to give it up if you accept their offer and become an employee. Generally this happens on the first day of work or when doing the on boarding paperwork...not during the interview process.
Also, I find it amusing the tacit assumption that its somehow moral for companies to look up salary histories via credit reports but that interviewees don't have a right to know the salaries the company has given to other employees.
The information asymmetry is part of the reason that this guy lied-- and to be honest, in 25+ years, I've never had a salary negotiation where the company didn't lie to me "oh, we can't afford that!" (when in reality they are just trying to lowball by pretending they don't have the money. It's a lie no worse than his.)
Companies that pull credit reports on candidates are a completely different form of scum, and they should be called out more often for this.
Yes, there are exceptions where credit difficulties could indicate an unstable employment situation (like having a security clearance or working in finance), but otherwise your personal finances should be completely independent of your employment.
Oh, there are so many ways around something like that. Say your total compensation was that plus equity/bonus, etc. Plus you could just flat-out claim the thing is wrong. Still though, I agree that lying is a dangerous strategy and can backfire.
There's a wide range of oppinions regarding the counter offer. It's interesting to read some of them if you search on google. One thing many people are not aware of is that as part of your counter offer acceptance you can demand a mandatory severance agreement. This is a contract that says that the company has to pay you if they lay you off shortly after making the counter offer. It's worth asking for, especially if you're concerned about having a huge target painted on your back.
No, then you use your savings, which should be higher because you were paid more, and you go get another job, which should offer a higher starting salary because most starting salaries are based off of what you were making previously.
So employers now share salaries between each other in an effort to depress wages while telling workers they can't possibly discuss their compensation with coworkers?
The american worker is hilarious. Gotta keep fighting those unions!
Or they just fax your current company as part of a credit check, requesting salary. I had that happen, during the process a few years ago at a place I decided to stay at after they made a counter offer (that I didn't request). A couple days after I told them I would stay, I got a call from HR asking me what I thought they should do with the fax asking for my current salary (AKA if it was a legitimate request for a lone approval or something).
Management, negotiations, and money are only for the Gordon Gekkos' of the world. Mind you, I'm humpin on 40 and have had my own stint as an IT manager at a start-up (VERY successful one, actually) and stepped up to bat as a Director of IT several years back - feeling cocky just as you have in your ability to rise to the challenge. However, leadership rarely burdens the young and I mean <30, because of a discrepency of this thing called life-experience and human relationships. Writing software is fine, and becoming top technical dog is another - and you _can_ and _will_ eventually make the money to match it. HOWEVER, be weary of young management as the company grows - people follow leaders, not managers into stressful output periods. Start-ups as time goes on want to grow - namely 5 million to 10, 10-50, 50-100. What that brings, are folks from OUTSIDE the company who come DOWN from those next tiers to weed out folks who do this kind of thing. I respect your efforts, and thanks for sharing.
My next thought is around the belief that money / drive combinations can lead to happiness. Ya, ya .. lil bit softer end of the stick, but drive to go from $46-150K in a short period is one thing, but having a family / life / opposite experience of work is less about how much you make, but making the balance.
I do well, and I live in a depressed market of the US (rust-belt city), and I have a high-earning wife w/ no kids. Needless to say, my life is fantastic. I am not going to die at 45 from stress, either.
So balance will be the longevity, and understanding how you want to "grow" in your field is the other. It's great being ambitious, but just remember - the higher you go, the lonelier it gets.
Great comment. I find it slightly off-putting that he would put everything else on hold for professional development. In this industry, there is an undeniable need for working very hard (new languages, softwares, frameworks, design patterns etc. not to mention the amazing output that comes from Academic research) but balance is so important. I speak anecdotally, of course, but it feels amazing to work really hard during the week and have the weekends off to spend time and build friendships and relationships. And to be honest, the industry pays well enough that not to take advantage of it would be a bigger fallacy.
This all seems pretty straightforward to me, though I don't pull the "I'm leaving" tactic, I just leave. Overall I agree, engineers are too timid about this and you have to grow some balls.
It would be worth expounding a bit on the manager who was a skilled negotiator. What did that person do, how did you end up being glad with just an offer? I've read a lot about this subject but maybe others have not.
Is this in the Bay Area? (Edit: guessing Boston or that region based on the New England college)
How do you guys estimate your market value? For example, if you go to salary.com there are many levels of software engineering (I, II, III, IV, etc). The description for each is quite vague and the difference between them is very small (or hard to notice) while the pay rate delta can be big.
The simplest advice is this: Interview, A LOT, take some time every week/month and schedule several interviews. After the 10th interview you'll have a very good valuation of your worth.
This is what I believe OP's biggest mistake is - had he interviewed more earlier, he could have gotten to $120K within a year most likely. He _was_ the guy making $75K back then.
Use this site. http://data.jobsintech.io/
It's based on public data required for H1B/employer-sponsored visa. So typically will include not very senior engineers.
Consider using http://www.PayScale.com to find out what you should be paid. You can put in details about your specific job (skills, education, city, title, etc) and it will give you an accurate range of what the market is paying.
Note I work at PayScale BUT this is exactly one of the types of problems we're solving.
I dislike this greatly, and it doesn't seem like a sustainable path - if the market crashes, and his/her skills don't match the compensation level, then it will backfire greatly & catch up to him/her.
I was able to boost my salary to $160k in 2 1/2 years from a starting salary of $50k, but through tireless improvement of my craft (self-studying, experimentation, and contributions to major open source libraries, including taking over leading development on one 10k+ starred project on GitHub), smart job searching, and being unafraid to walk away from offers that are too low. I never lied about competing offers, and about compensation, although I rarely will disclose my compensation in negotiations - if I do disclose it, then I am not afraid of walking away if the offer does not meet my criteria. The plus side is that this shields you more from engineering employment downturns, lets you do good work to genuinely improve the state of engineering, and opens up doors that are not available to most people - I get emailed about some unique opportunities that most don't get to see. And this is not to say that I could not have gotten more - I have turned down $300k+ positions already (took less $ for better work-life balance & more vacation).
One friend of mine mentioned he turned down large offers in favor of 35 (!) vacation days & a solid salary in a low cost of living area.
One does not need to be dishonest to get the salary & benefits combination one wants - one just needs to be steadfast at attempts to deflect you from those aims (i.e. "But you only make xxxxxx amount" or "We cannot afford to pay that").
I'm with you that the tactics used here seem a little bit scummy (though I've seen plenty of bullshit from the other side of the table more consistently), but the author does at least claim to also be working hard to improve their craft as well, so I'm not sure your initial concern is really relevant.
The OP didn't feel it was important enough to note strongly as part of negotiating tactics of putting yourself in a strong position to command more, and mainly talked about value he/she generated for his/her employer. My point was about the importance it has on generating value to the market at large in hireability.
I was making it clear that it is an important part of preparing for negotiations by mentioning it to the extent I did.
If the market crashes, yes, it could be hard. But I would argue that the decision to fire people won't be based on loyalty but rather on 'what have you done for me lately'.
You realize that "We cannot afford to pay that" is also being dishonest, because they can afford to pay. Basically lying is standard procedure for employers, yet why should it be a moral smear for employees in negotiations?
Its better to make the extra cash in the meantime and then have to take a pay cut than to not have the money at all.
I will say that by the third time he's demanding more money with another offer; they should have said, "good luck." Matching once makes sense, matching twice, maybe. But the third time, you should just let him go.
See... it's hard to be "totally honest" in sales, even of your own time, because of the red queen effect.
This was an integral step in the process of raising your salary. If you volunteer all information honestly, I am pretty sure that most players in the system will not have an obvious path to increasing your salary. Otherwise it would represent an arbitrage opportunity for everyone.
This. 100% this. You are selling the only resource that you have a limited supply of - your time. Asking for more money in exchange is a GOOD THING.
I have NEVER had a raise offered to me. I've been a software engineer for 15 years now. I have always received raises though, because I asked for them, with leverage.
I have climbed my way from getting hired to a 120 person company with a below median salary to making probably more than anyone in 6 months, by being good at what I do and asking or more in return.
Employee/employer relations are always a fight for survival. Be the lion.
OP's first mistake is only interviewing at 2 companies, which apparently both sucked.
OP's second mistake is staying at the same company for so long despite the fact that (a) they have to fight for decent raises (b) the company sucks. Seriously, at the point where there are "serious problems in sales, engineers are leaving en masse", OP doubles down. They are now a highly paid manager in a sucky company.
OP's third and worst mistake is equivocating: "there's no harm in lying about salary". That's delusional. Yes there is harm, they repeatedly lied, and now who knows what else they would lie about. That proves they have no sense of ethics. It's true other people do it. It's true the company will lay you off the second they decide to restructure. None of that accounts for an ounce of lost personal or professional integrity. In our world as developers, we regularly have access to intensely personal or valuable information. What harm could come if we fudge a little bit about how good is our security implementation? What harm could possibly come if someone happened to offer us, say, $100k for a little tidbit of info about user102532@gmail.com? No one will ever know, right?
LOL! Gimme a break. He had the balls to stick it out at the company and make manager, which sounds like where he wants his career to go. If everyone just bailed when times were tough, nothing would ever get done. All I can say is hats off to this guy. Our economy is built on this sort of drive.
The simple fact is that 90%+ of startups fail. The economy is certainly not built on failure but rather on knowing when to redirect effort to where it will actually make a difference. Recognizing when a ship is sinking is critical to one's own career and economic situation.
I think the biggest problem with equivocating or lying in general is that you're not truly owning up to your actual situation. OP didn't get offer 70k; he got offered 65k. Maybe that's what he's better worth or maybe he did a poor job interviewing for that job.
Regardless, he got offered 65k and that was his reality. Now instead of owning up to it, he changed it to a nicer sounding number -- 70k. This is where things get interesting. Why not 75k? What's the harm if you're lying anyway? Perhap he didn't think it would be believable because he didn't think he was worth that much. If the employer actually checked his facts, they would have known he was lying and got annoyed. Yet it's fascinating to me that he went for 70k -- a mere 5k more.
OP - I went from making ~100k/yr to 175k/yr because I knew I had the power in the relationship and was probably not tricked by same things you were. I built value in myself and in the work I was doing, and therefore when it came time to negotiate, I shot for the stars and never backed down. I sound about your same age and never had to do it by lying or equivocating or any of these silly games. I did it by building value in myself. This is all you can truly do at the end of the day and then it's about staying firm in what your value is worth. Games will always be games and they are sprinkled with the fairy dust of "5k more" here and another small lie there, but they will never be able to match someone who is truly genuine through and through. These are the types where if they're not worth 70k, they work to make themselves worth 70k (whether thru negotiation or value-building or both). That's the difference and that's why some people don't like to lie.
So they finally got back at you by making you a manager?
Seriously, though, the pay curve you experienced isn't that atypical for young developers entering the market. Someone just out of college can always be had cheaply (except in a few unusual circumstances). For the most part they are an unknown quantity. If they come in and excel for a year they are suddenly worth a lot more, and that's just the way it works. My own pay curve looked very similar in the first three or four years of professional work... but it was twenty years ago. :)
Also thanks for your kind words about senior engineers in their 50's. We agree!
So, his strategy basically boils down to "My way or the highway".
Well buddy, not all managers are spineless like the ones you have in that startup and if you tried to pull this trick on them and to strongarm them into submission, they'd kick you out the door in a heartbeat esp. when you're a lousy junior dev who's learning on the job according to your statement.
I've been very critic of employers and business owners when they describe that some employees have a mercenary attitude when it comes to the workplace and I'd always feel offended by that but when you read an account like this where certain jerks boast about their ability to bluff people and fleece them of their money in that disgusting manner, you come to realize that they might have a valid reason behind their worries and reservations.
From what he's said, it's less that the managers were spineless and more that he made himself very valuable.
Personally, I don't see a problem with a mercenary attitude. It's simple, it's clear, and you always know where you stand with a mercenary. It's easy to work with, if you're willing to meet them on their terms. It brings the clarity of a transaction to what is ultimately a transaction anyway.
Nothing wrong with putting you and your family or loved ones first and foremost before anything and I don't believe in loyalty for the company either esp. when it's a one way street where the employee is expected to fawn and suck up to his superiors to show his love and loyalty for the company to get ahead but to adopt a mercenary attitude at the expense of everything else no matter what is very questionable ethically and harmful to the morale of the company or the culture esp. when the place becomes full of those egomaniacs and ruthless selfish individuals.
Being mercenary is not even slightly the same as being an egomaniac. Or even being ruthless or selfish. Why are you conflating a series of different traits into one?
What attributes or traits do you ascribe to these people who only care about themselves and want to have things their way at the expense of the team, the organization and everything else?
The common definition of being mercenary is not the same as wanting to have only your way at the expense of the team, the organization, and everything else.
You may be operating under a different understanding. How do you define being mercenary?
He's right, this post isn't about gloating. It's a story a manager tells himself to justify screwing over his employees. He says that's what he's doing: "I have an engineer working for me who makes $75k, who is absolutely critical to our company". But it's okay because the employee should just swindle him right back, that's what he did right? And if he doesn't then it's kind of his own fault that I'm underpaying him right? Right?
You're not the underdog. You're the guy screwing over the underdogs. If that makes you feel bad then that's good, it should. Maybe that's a voice you should listen to?
Agreed. This is more about seeing the perspective of the employer than the employee. Managers who claw their way up expect employees to do the same.
Also, it'd be interesting to see his manager's perspective in this all as he claws his way up. I'm betting there were points where, just as he thinks he's getting what he wants all along by lying (why are his lies always in parentheses?), management is thinking they had this planned all along as well.
Yeah, OP is reading the wrong lesson into this. If his employees aren't bold enough to lie/negotiate a raise, that doesn't mean he gets to pay them less. It means some day they will just walk out and take a higher offer elsewhere rather than experience the pain of playing hardball.
Guess what? Finding new people and training them is expensive. Pay good people what they're worth, work for companies that know what you're worth, and stop playing games for stupid short-term gain.
I want to offer another point of view: What if the guy simply doesn't want money. There are people who refuse a raise. Especially in IT I know many people who want recognition more than money. $75k is also a decent income in most places of this planet, even in most first world countries. You can pay for a house and send your children to university with that. But being appreciated by your boss for the work you do, or simply spending more time with your family at home instead of overtime in the office, that's worth a lot as well. I think with $75k, 32h/week and a boss that appreciates me being there, that would be an awesome life. And I already have more drive for money than most of my software developing peers.
If the engineer doesn't want to play the negotiating game, they won't ever ask for a raise they'll just up and leave when somebody else in their network offers them 50k increase salary. Should proactively compensate them instead of swindling and expecting them to haggle.
Exactly this, it's a shame most managers don't know how to do this. It's also a shame that CS schools don't have a required course on negotiation and economics.
A thing that I always wondered: What gains a manager by being cheap about his subordinates' salaries? Do they like to feel power over the hopeless guys? is there another thing?
> A thing that I always wondered: What gains a manager by being cheap about his subordinates' salaries?
A manager's job is to manage resources to provide the firm with the maximum benefit for the least cost, and salary is one of the more obvious non-fuzzy components on either the cost or benefit side of that equation.
I understand that, but how the company organize itself to reward managers with that kind of goals ? What kind of mechanisms sets in place to force managers to minimize expenses happily?
So the author now knows only one software product, after 5 years in the field, and has a 150K salary and stock. Sounds like he worked his way into golden handcuffs at a very young age.
I'm always blown away by how people lowball themselves. See how much you're worth, then ask for more. The worst they can say is no, the best they can say is yes, and somewhere in the middle is still pretty good.
The "see how much you're worth" part is the tricky one. Unless you are directly generating revenue (e.g. in sales), it's hard to quantify what you're worth is to a company, or in the broader market. There doesn't appear to be a credible, accessible source of data out there. However your employer knows what everyone is making, and knows where you stand vs. the average. Employers obviously have a huge advantage from this information asymmetry.
Every time I read someone talking about their salary on HN, it seems astronomically high, but then again it's obviously biased, as the people who are not making as much are not going to brag about it. The same is likely true for crowdsourced sites like Glassdoor where people self-report.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadEither you need more knowledge of history, or more caffeine this morning.
However, the advice on initial negotiations is solid. Companies generally allow at least 15% headroom on their initial offer for negotiations, and potentially more for those with less industry recognition and thus less negotiating power. I've exploited this headroom in virtually every job I've gotten.
Even a successful company needs good engineers. They don't fire people just because they're "not loyal". Sure that medium sized company might want to replace you with a cheaper more "loyal" version, but what is their capability to do so? Beyond loyalty is dollars and cents.
I would say it's a solid tactic assuming the developer would actually go and work at those other companies. Worst case scenario of this tactic is that you tell them you've got a better offer and they tell you to go take it. Even then, you could likely backtrack and explain how in your heart of hearts you decided it wasn't the move you wanted to make. Unless you're underperforming in some other area, I've not met a software company that can afford to toss out good engineers.
Successful companies can still have a few crappy managers in them.
Loyalty just because your manager is a 'nice guy' is what weak engineers do who can't compete.
At least in this market, where talent can always find work. If the market ever turns and there is an oversupply, I agree you should probably STFU and do your job.
It's called leverage. Or a strong negotiating position. Or whatever else. Point being that he was valuable to them, knew it, and was willing to use that. This is how any and every negotiation plays out.
Notice the implicit assumption that employees should be loyal to companies, but companies are free to "jettison" an employee aggressively negotiating because that's not "loyal"?
The only reason engineers are not getting respect as an industry (and I've seen this get worse over the past 30 years) is because we sell ourselves short.
As I'm just now transitioning from being what I consider "mid" level to "senior" (relative titles I know), I'll try to keep your comment in mind for future jobs. It makes me a bit sad that this game has to be played so much in order to get the full value of your worth.
I was hoping this would be about negotiating feature sets and timelines, which would actually be relevant to the set of people working on software (rather than being relevant to the set of people trying to make money; of course there is overlap).
Put 4 angry software developer men with wildly different opinions on The True Way Forward in a room and see how long it takes for the yelling and physical altercations to start.
There's a certain book you should go and read... I think the fact that it does exist is proof itself of how adversarial relationships can get in Software Engineering: http://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Edition-Edward-Yourdon/dp/...
Metaphorically speaking, the only way a negotiation does not end up in a fight is when one side sucker-punches the other.
But, the first rule of software engineer negotiations is — don't work with cowboy programmers who refuse to listen to others.
Once we've reached a formal "we need software negotiations" stage, it seems we've already lost. We only reached that stage because there's such an adversarial environment that regular discussions were fruitless.
Then it turns into a giant ego battle—the winner becomes whoever has the most political leverage, regardless of technical merit.
Start with a conversation explaining why you believe you should be better compensated, highlighting the value you add to the company, rarity of your skills, market rates, etc.
If the request is rejected, or the increase offered is inadequate, then find an offer at another employer and use this to negotiate (or simply accept the offer and move on).
This approach shows good will, in that you gave your employer an opportunity to make things right before escalating to a threat of leaving.
Just say you're "unhappy". Keep it vague. See what they do. It's tough finding good people in this market.
I work in Georgia, an at will state, meaning I can be fired at a moment's notice for anything. There's no notice period, my salary stops right then. If I quit I don't have to give notice either but I do it as a professional courtesy because I wanna seem like an adult, even if the places that force my hand are nowhere near that. That means to follow the given advice I have to navigate a minefield to just keep my job at neutral, at best get the raise I wanted and at worst be escorted out the door right then and there.
I feel like this puts me in a terrible spot and it's one of the reasons I'm making well well below what I'm worth. This negotiation also can be attributed to why I hate the interview process and tend to stick with a place well beyond my time. Once I'm in a spot I can prove without fail that I'm worth well more than I'm paid but no one believes that can come from such a shy introvert with few hobbies outside of video games. I feel like things are changing on all fronts but it's a glacial pace at best.
I went back to my original employer and said I had a new job offer for $70k, and I didn't want to negotiate, I just wanted their final, last ditch offer
That's an incredibly awesome way to have a huge target painted on your back. A lot of employers get really pissed at this tactic but won't say so to your face. They will gladly give you that new salary for just enough time to get a (cheaper) replacement on board. Then your salary is changed to $0.00.
I found a solid startup, _one_I_would_actually_work_at_, and tell them I make $100k (a lie, I added $20k to my current salary).
Welcome to the 2010s, where credit bureaus now run additional services for employers and HR departments. My company regularly uses The Work Number from Equifax. I pulled up my report and it has my salary history for the last 20 years on it. Perhaps working for small startups that can't afford this service will let you fly under the radar when it comes to bluffing about salary history (and don't get me wrong, I'm all for not letting your next employer know what you were making before), but you gotta tread lightly here.
https://www.theworknumber.com/
My opinion is that one should tell the new employer what it would take to make you jump, and that's it. If they can't make that number then you have your answer. That, or they need to make up the delta in other ways.
Interesting. I've always suspected something like this existed and have argued with people against lying about salary history on the assumption that it does. This is the first confirmation I've seen. Thanks!
It's right in the text.
TWN includes base -- which is what banks care about.
In the information age, you better be extra careful about bluffing because it's easier every day to call those bluffs.
I also attributed The Work Number to Experian, but it's owned by Equifax.
Of course, lying is still mostly unnecessary, especially if you interview a lot and actually do have offers to back up your claims. Personally I think the hit your reputation would take from lying just isn't worth it.
A lot of people are not in this position. Negotiation certainly becomes critical. A little bit of homework and diplomatic work can bump your salary by thousands or tens of thousands with a few hours of work. This is impossible to do once you start your employment.
More importantly, this raises significant privacy issues. How can a current or former employer make sensitive data like salary information easily and publicly accessible, without permission? That ought to be illegal.
I agree that it's really wrong to lie about one's salary; the best answer is to not disclose that, and probably to point to available information like glassdoor, or just be honest about your expectations.
But I trust the credit bureaus as far as I can throw them. This will certainly morph into other uses for the data, like this:
Hiring Company: "Did Joe Pastebin earn $100,000 last year?"
Equifax: "Nope."
And out goes the bong letter.
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/exclusive-your-employer-ma...
In the US the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives collection firms the ability to access this data. In other uses (like the landlord example) the access is granted by the employee.
So, yet another argument for starting a startup rather than being an employee.
Their salary is public record and has always been that way. It was just a lot more difficult to find it until recently.
As for private businesses, I've never been aware of a law that says they can't hand the information out. They tend not to do it because of internal reasons like not letting the competition see it or keeping everyone from arguing about each other's comp all day instead of working. The FCRA allowed debt collectors a way to tunnel through companies that resisted cooperating.
What shocks me is that Work Number is legally allowed to publish data without the individual's authorization
Presumably it's a condition of employment. I mean most people sign a couple dozen forms when starting a new job, all it takes is one sentence on one form that says the company may share your employment-related information.
That all being said, ideally you'd work for a company that didn't force you to do these sorts of shenanigans. Such companies are more rare than they should be.
I believe the op was in the NE where there are limited choices for employers when it comes to hiring (unlike in SV, they're dime a dozen).
Also, I find it amusing the tacit assumption that its somehow moral for companies to look up salary histories via credit reports but that interviewees don't have a right to know the salaries the company has given to other employees.
The information asymmetry is part of the reason that this guy lied-- and to be honest, in 25+ years, I've never had a salary negotiation where the company didn't lie to me "oh, we can't afford that!" (when in reality they are just trying to lowball by pretending they don't have the money. It's a lie no worse than his.)
Yes, there are exceptions where credit difficulties could indicate an unstable employment situation (like having a security clearance or working in finance), but otherwise your personal finances should be completely independent of your employment.
No, then you use your savings, which should be higher because you were paid more, and you go get another job, which should offer a higher starting salary because most starting salaries are based off of what you were making previously.
The american worker is hilarious. Gotta keep fighting those unions!
"(a lie, I added $14k to the original offer)"
"(a lie, I added $20k to my current salary)"
My next thought is around the belief that money / drive combinations can lead to happiness. Ya, ya .. lil bit softer end of the stick, but drive to go from $46-150K in a short period is one thing, but having a family / life / opposite experience of work is less about how much you make, but making the balance.
I do well, and I live in a depressed market of the US (rust-belt city), and I have a high-earning wife w/ no kids. Needless to say, my life is fantastic. I am not going to die at 45 from stress, either.
So balance will be the longevity, and understanding how you want to "grow" in your field is the other. It's great being ambitious, but just remember - the higher you go, the lonelier it gets.
It would be worth expounding a bit on the manager who was a skilled negotiator. What did that person do, how did you end up being glad with just an offer? I've read a lot about this subject but maybe others have not.
Is this in the Bay Area? (Edit: guessing Boston or that region based on the New England college)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icuSn3k9Euk
This is what I believe OP's biggest mistake is - had he interviewed more earlier, he could have gotten to $120K within a year most likely. He _was_ the guy making $75K back then.
Note I work at PayScale BUT this is exactly one of the types of problems we're solving.
Alternatively you could simply join a company where they value your expertise and progress :) We're hiring in Boulder and Amsterdam: angel.co/stream
I was able to boost my salary to $160k in 2 1/2 years from a starting salary of $50k, but through tireless improvement of my craft (self-studying, experimentation, and contributions to major open source libraries, including taking over leading development on one 10k+ starred project on GitHub), smart job searching, and being unafraid to walk away from offers that are too low. I never lied about competing offers, and about compensation, although I rarely will disclose my compensation in negotiations - if I do disclose it, then I am not afraid of walking away if the offer does not meet my criteria. The plus side is that this shields you more from engineering employment downturns, lets you do good work to genuinely improve the state of engineering, and opens up doors that are not available to most people - I get emailed about some unique opportunities that most don't get to see. And this is not to say that I could not have gotten more - I have turned down $300k+ positions already (took less $ for better work-life balance & more vacation).
One friend of mine mentioned he turned down large offers in favor of 35 (!) vacation days & a solid salary in a low cost of living area.
One does not need to be dishonest to get the salary & benefits combination one wants - one just needs to be steadfast at attempts to deflect you from those aims (i.e. "But you only make xxxxxx amount" or "We cannot afford to pay that").
I was making it clear that it is an important part of preparing for negotiations by mentioning it to the extent I did.
I will say that by the third time he's demanding more money with another offer; they should have said, "good luck." Matching once makes sense, matching twice, maybe. But the third time, you should just let him go.
(a lie, I added $14k to the original offer)
See... it's hard to be "totally honest" in sales, even of your own time, because of the red queen effect.
This was an integral step in the process of raising your salary. If you volunteer all information honestly, I am pretty sure that most players in the system will not have an obvious path to increasing your salary. Otherwise it would represent an arbitrage opportunity for everyone.
I have NEVER had a raise offered to me. I've been a software engineer for 15 years now. I have always received raises though, because I asked for them, with leverage. I have climbed my way from getting hired to a 120 person company with a below median salary to making probably more than anyone in 6 months, by being good at what I do and asking or more in return.
Employee/employer relations are always a fight for survival. Be the lion.
OP's second mistake is staying at the same company for so long despite the fact that (a) they have to fight for decent raises (b) the company sucks. Seriously, at the point where there are "serious problems in sales, engineers are leaving en masse", OP doubles down. They are now a highly paid manager in a sucky company.
OP's third and worst mistake is equivocating: "there's no harm in lying about salary". That's delusional. Yes there is harm, they repeatedly lied, and now who knows what else they would lie about. That proves they have no sense of ethics. It's true other people do it. It's true the company will lay you off the second they decide to restructure. None of that accounts for an ounce of lost personal or professional integrity. In our world as developers, we regularly have access to intensely personal or valuable information. What harm could come if we fudge a little bit about how good is our security implementation? What harm could possibly come if someone happened to offer us, say, $100k for a little tidbit of info about user102532@gmail.com? No one will ever know, right?
Do you really think claiming I make $70k in an interview, when I really make $65k, is the same as selling a user's information?!
Every man whose wife asks 'Does this dress make me look fat?' is going to lie.
No one is perfect; to use this to say they have no sense of ethics is poor reasoning.
Regardless, he got offered 65k and that was his reality. Now instead of owning up to it, he changed it to a nicer sounding number -- 70k. This is where things get interesting. Why not 75k? What's the harm if you're lying anyway? Perhap he didn't think it would be believable because he didn't think he was worth that much. If the employer actually checked his facts, they would have known he was lying and got annoyed. Yet it's fascinating to me that he went for 70k -- a mere 5k more.
OP - I went from making ~100k/yr to 175k/yr because I knew I had the power in the relationship and was probably not tricked by same things you were. I built value in myself and in the work I was doing, and therefore when it came time to negotiate, I shot for the stars and never backed down. I sound about your same age and never had to do it by lying or equivocating or any of these silly games. I did it by building value in myself. This is all you can truly do at the end of the day and then it's about staying firm in what your value is worth. Games will always be games and they are sprinkled with the fairy dust of "5k more" here and another small lie there, but they will never be able to match someone who is truly genuine through and through. These are the types where if they're not worth 70k, they work to make themselves worth 70k (whether thru negotiation or value-building or both). That's the difference and that's why some people don't like to lie.
More details of how you built value in yourself would be great.
Seriously, though, the pay curve you experienced isn't that atypical for young developers entering the market. Someone just out of college can always be had cheaply (except in a few unusual circumstances). For the most part they are an unknown quantity. If they come in and excel for a year they are suddenly worth a lot more, and that's just the way it works. My own pay curve looked very similar in the first three or four years of professional work... but it was twenty years ago. :)
Also thanks for your kind words about senior engineers in their 50's. We agree!
Well buddy, not all managers are spineless like the ones you have in that startup and if you tried to pull this trick on them and to strongarm them into submission, they'd kick you out the door in a heartbeat esp. when you're a lousy junior dev who's learning on the job according to your statement.
I've been very critic of employers and business owners when they describe that some employees have a mercenary attitude when it comes to the workplace and I'd always feel offended by that but when you read an account like this where certain jerks boast about their ability to bluff people and fleece them of their money in that disgusting manner, you come to realize that they might have a valid reason behind their worries and reservations.
Personally, I don't see a problem with a mercenary attitude. It's simple, it's clear, and you always know where you stand with a mercenary. It's easy to work with, if you're willing to meet them on their terms. It brings the clarity of a transaction to what is ultimately a transaction anyway.
You may be operating under a different understanding. How do you define being mercenary?
You're not the underdog. You're the guy screwing over the underdogs. If that makes you feel bad then that's good, it should. Maybe that's a voice you should listen to?
Also, it'd be interesting to see his manager's perspective in this all as he claws his way up. I'm betting there were points where, just as he thinks he's getting what he wants all along by lying (why are his lies always in parentheses?), management is thinking they had this planned all along as well.
Guess what? Finding new people and training them is expensive. Pay good people what they're worth, work for companies that know what you're worth, and stop playing games for stupid short-term gain.
A manager's job is to manage resources to provide the firm with the maximum benefit for the least cost, and salary is one of the more obvious non-fuzzy components on either the cost or benefit side of that equation.
Which an alarming majority does, but still.
Every time I read someone talking about their salary on HN, it seems astronomically high, but then again it's obviously biased, as the people who are not making as much are not going to brag about it. The same is likely true for crowdsourced sites like Glassdoor where people self-report.