Lol. This guy was involved in a massive scam in the online poker world years ago. not sure if he's completely changed. I don't know what he's doing in the SW world.
If you didn't see his previous posts he's clearly a pretty skilled self-teacher - negotiated up to 220K offers at Google and Airbnb despite going to a bootcamp.
I know people personally that worked their asses off learning systems programming, algorithms, and advanced mathematics at top-tier four-year colleges with absolutely fantastic technical CVs that got offers that aren't even half of that.
These are surely some of the smartest people in the world, too, but I suppose they don't play the "bluffing" game all too well (er, "negotation" -- call it whatever you want, ex-poker player).
I'm not sure what makes this guy who ostensibly got his hand held through a three-month "learn to copy and paste Ruby from StackOverflow" camp eligible for a salary that is higher than some surgeons make.
Without reading the article, sounds like he successfully bluffed to one company that another offered him some really high salary X, and then he went straight to the moon (or should I say, made out like a bandit) from there.
As much as we like to think our hiring process is meritocratic, when confronted with someone with just the right physical characteristics or the right charismatic charm, our human social biases still seem to have a lot more power over us than we'd like to admit.
I remember that one study that successfully correlated inches in height/stature to substantial dollar increases in salary.
He didn't get a 250k salary, that was total compensation, largely RSUs on a standard vesting schedule. He also donates 1/3rd of his pre-tax income to charity.
He wasn't just a graduate of a hacker bootcamp, he was hired on by App Academy after he finished and was quickly promoted up to Director of Product. He spent a lot of time teaching people how to pass whiteboard interviews. He was probably better prepared for an interview than your average Stanford CS grad, and already had prior experience as Director of Product and a portfolio of side projects.
He didn't bluff any company. He went through Triple Byte, the trendiest new tech recruitment startup. He got an offer from Triple Byte themselves even though he didn't even apply for them, got an offer from Google, and when word about the Google offer got out every other company started bidding for him.
He's also just a really smart guy in general. If you spend 15 minutes talking to him, he'll leave an impression. It's not a bluff or a con, he's just a really smart, really analytical guy.
Yes, I am less interested in the details of his specific case (I realize I might have made some rash judgments earlier on), and more interested in furthering the discussion behind the general trends underlying the Valley's hiring processes and brainstorming ways to possibly even improve them.
I wouldn't call it sad at all. It's all a game, and these are the people that are playing to win (by their definition of "winning", which is a lot of people's: maximizing monetary gains)
I agree with a lot of what you say (and in fact, I work at a company that doesn't allow negotiations at all and has an open salary calculator: http://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator ) but I wouldn't call it sad at all, I would call it playing the game.
I'm saying without any attempt at being rude: You're thinking way too much like a programmer.
Thanks for the calculator. It's good to get an idea what some companies are willing to pay (I have an offer from another company that merely matches my current salary (though they have better benefits), and I've been agonizing over it). There's a possibility I'm above market rate already -- I live in a low COL area and that calculator about matches my current salary if I'm a skill level '2'.
One thing that struck me, that location adjustment for high COL cities isn't nearly enough. If I was working for SO, I'd definitely want to be remote.
> I quickly rose to the top of my class, and after two months into the three-month bootcamp, I was asked to join the instructional team. Three months later, I was promoted to Director of Product.
That wouldn't have happened if he wasn't good at what he does. Clearly he is doing something that is more than just the right charm.
Also, letting go of whatever opinion you have about his technical skill, absolutely everyone should negotiate their salary. I never have though, for many of the reasons outlined in his first post. Thanks to his writing I will definitely negotiate whenever my next change happens and apply his techniques - his writing has provided a huge amount of value to engineers everywhere in the same position.
> That wouldn't have happened if he wasn't good at what he does.
Never underestimate the immense power of bullshit. I've seen people rise through the ranks fueled by nothing but it. I know senior software engineers who cannot write code, but can look great TALKING about code. I know engineering managers who cannot manage, but can self-promote and dazzle you in an interview. It's truly an art.
... many people are drawing the conclusion that I primarily got a job at Airbnb by being really good at negotiating, or gaming the system, or something like that.
If you have ever done a software engineering interview, you would know that this is completely absurd. There is no way to negotiate or charm someone into passing a software engineering interview. Much less 8 of them.
If you don’t know the ins and outs of object-oriented programming, database design, asymptotic analysis, binary search trees, or how to improve the cache efficiency of an algorithm, then you’re not going to pass a computer science-heavy interview at a top company. You don’t even have a shot at it.
The moral of my story is not “get really good at negotiating and you’ll get a great job.” Negotiating is important, and I certainly encourage everyone to negotiate!
But first, get good at the thing you’re doing. Then worry about negotiating.
I moved to San Francisco from Austin, Texas about a year ago because I decided I was going to earn-to-give. Since then I’ve been relentlessly trying to build a new career for myself, so I could earn more and donate more to charity.
Entering into App Academy, barely knowing the basics of Ruby, I came into the office and grinded every day, spending 80+ hour weeks just coding and studying. I’d come in at 9AM in the morning and leave around midnight, 7 days a week, sleeping in a bunk bed in SOMA in a 200 square feet shared room.
It’s certainly true that I probably have a mind that’s well-suited for coding. But it’s also true that I outworked almost everyone who was in my cohort. And when I was hired by App Academy to help teach the course, I continued working as hard as I could to get good at this.
I still stayed late in the evenings, I still came into the office on weekends alongside the students just to continue coding and learning more. I started an algorithms study group in the evenings where I taught students new algorithms that I had read about, and wrote specs and instructions to guide them through the implementation. I took over our entire algorithms curriculum and taught well over 100 students the basics of data structures and algorithms.
And of course, I was scared that none of this would matter. That having been an English major, having a non-traditional background, being 26 and too old to transition into tech, competing against 20 year olds who’d been coding since they were 10, I thought I must have no chance.
Thankfully, I was wrong. And I’m very, very lucky that I was wrong, because I was almost right.
> If you have ever done a software engineering interview, you would know that this is completely absurd. There is no way to negotiate or charm someone into passing a software engineering interview.
I'm sure the author is sufficiently qualified to pass such an interview (or 8), but I find this statement pretty bizarre. "Charm" might not be the right word, but under-qualified candidates pass software engineering interviews all the time.
I have come to believe that getting a job is either luck or accident.
Qualification is just the other half of the whole story. And by qualification I mean not just the scale/standard by which I would be measured during the interview but also formal educational endorsements.
Am I qualified to get a job ? Maybe. Am I lucky ? I'll find out. Same holds for any job seeker out there as well. Will I do anything meaningful at work or release more bugs than anybody else out there... Time will tell.
Ugh. This is a good example of how self-promoters operate. Biz Stone makes it sound like it's "him & Ev". But since this came out there have been more revelations about the early days of Twitter. Biz Stone lobbied Ev to get his title inflated to co-founder but the equity stake tells all: 3% (versus Jack Dorsey's 20% and Ev's 70%). "Stone's co-founder title didn't get him a ton of equity, but it did afford him the ability to say he was co-founder of Twitter. That became priceless later on..."[1]
In the linked post, he mentions that the flood gates opened after he got the offer from Google.
So, does one keep the recruiter waiting and apply for other companies telling everyone that you have an offer with Google? How long of a leeway does one have in such negotiations? How long can you keep the recruiter waiting before they close the gates? Is it a good job search strategy?
>I know people personally that worked their asses off learning systems programming, algorithms, and advanced mathematics at top-tier four-year colleges with absolutely fantastic technical CVs that got offers that aren't even half of that.
Hold up, by this logic does this mean that people who don't have these things (no advanced math, no top-tier 4 year school) should receive salaries that are even less than half of that?
You don't understand how supply and demand works, or that job offers are for how smart you are and what you can do, not how hard you worked in school. In fact, people who work harder to learn something are usually less talented than people who learned it quickly.
The computer details aren't the hard part of software jobs.
I'm dubious of the guy's background and claims. I'm concerned he's smurfing here on HN.
Here's why I'm concerned:
1. The grandparent links to two articles as "sources." One's a guest blog by the subject. The other's a self-quote of the subject extracted from a full interview, which is linked but both the site and the link are dead. And the grandparent's only comments on the account are in this thread, supplying the "sources." Here's a 2013 non-HN thread accusing him of smurfing accounts for publicity [0].
2. His publicity and claims seem intentionally difficult to prove.[1] (Note: another low-credibility source.)
3. His LinkedIn profile lists 99th percentile standardized test scores (LSAT and GRE). Normally, this isn't notable, but my "BS" pattern-matching is flagging this within the context of #1 and #2.
So What? As long as his content is living up to the hype, I have no problem. I actually regret people who have so much to give and add value, do not promote themselves so much and morons and fillers take up the space.
At least for me, the dude is insightful and his long form articles about tactics are worth his "self-promotion".
It might be important to keep in mind that there is a large difference between negotiating to buy a car and negotiating to work some place.
A lot of the stuff you read seems to be geared toward "buying a car" -- used top 10 tricks, outsmart somehow the dealer, maybe act like an asshole a bit, and you're leaving and never seeing them again.
I don't see it always working too well in job negotiations. Approaching it that way may backfire. So you "tricked" your future manager to give you a $50k more. In the end though, if they feel they didn't get a good deal because you oversold yourself, you won't have a good time eventually. The last thing you want to do is end up starting work and already having a target on your back, because the owner / manager feels a bit swindled by your "tactics".
Surely you can end up in a large organization, maybe slip through the cracks, but in the end, you better be sure you can deliver according to what you are paid.
One where it is a one off deal and you will probably never work with the person again.
The other is where you are entering into a business arrangement that requires ongoing cooperation.
The same techniques cannot be applied to both. Unfortunately a lot of negotiation advice doesn't specify which situation it is better applied to but it's worth keeping in mind.
I have observed differently: Salary negotiations seem to happen in a different reality than the rest of a company's operation.
Businesses will "underpay" if possible, but also readily "overpay" if the person brings in certain skills and if makes sense from a business perspective in that very moment.
I have not noticed underpaid people getting more respect or better opportunities than the others.
Most companies employing programmers do not want employees to know each other salary. This means that if you are an individual contributor applying to such a company then your manager is not going to know your salary at all. The salary is going to be negotiated with somebody higher up, whose reports are other managers and not ICs. I would not worry about this.
I've never had a salary negotiation with a future direct manager. And I've worked/interviewed in quite a few game companies as well as some non-gamie ones like Google and Microsoft.
I didn't interview with my current boss, but he definitely knows my total comp down to the dollar and stock/bonus/salary split - I've seen it on his screen during annual performance & bonus reviews. This is at a big 5 company.
There are very few companies that keep salaries secret from managers. My manager knows exactly how much I make and how much everyone under me makes. His manager has the same visibility a level higher. What he doesn't know is how much his peers make or how much anyone in his peers' orgs make.
Salary secrecy can't really extend to managers unless you want your managers to do a poor job rewarding people. How's it supposed to work when someone comes to their manager and asks for a raise? "I think I'm underpaid and want a 10% raise." "Well, I don't know what you or anyone else makes so I have no idea if you're underpaid. Deal with it I guess."
I am not sure what are you arguing here. If you have people reporting to you then you are a manager and your manager, who manages managers might know your and your reports salaries. All I said that the first level manager, whose reports do not have reports of their own is unlikely to know anyone salary but his own.
>How's it supposed to work when someone comes to their manager and asks for a raise
Every where I worked, you (as an individual contributor)go to the higher up, who knows your salary with the recommendation from your manager, saying that you're doing excellent job or whatever.
> All I said that the first level manager, whose reports do not have reports of their own is unlikely to know anyone salary but his own.
I'm saying that you're wrong. I know what my direct reports make. So does every other manager at my company and every manager I know who works at any other company.
> Every where I worked, you (as an individual contributor)go to the higher up, who knows your salary with the recommendation from your manager, saying that you're doing excellent job or whatever.
That sounds really dysfunctional and bureaucratic. Now you're asking the manager to stick his neck out and ask for a raise for one of his reports when he doesn't even know what his reports make.
Hmm interesting. I am poster higher up which started this chain. I worked in 4 places. In all cases my manager knew how much I make.
I imagine in some large companies depending on how top down there, they don't do it. But I wouldn't present it as a rule.
So how does asking for a raise work. You work with you manager all year. Then all of the sudden you go over his head at the end and talk to his boss about wanting a raise? I have never seen that. Sounds a bit strange.
Anyway, original point still stands. The lowest level boss which does know what you do and sees that you have a $50k higher salary and yet do work that not really $50k extra worth will put a target on your back.
Well, since I haven't seen what you described other than in small firms, where the first level manager was also the last or the one before last, let me ask you this: does the lowest level manager have the authority to give raises? If not, then does not the raise come from over his head anyways? And if yes, then why is not he or she negotiating your salary from the start? Or is he? If he is then, again, there shouldn't be a problem since you both agreed that your compensation is fair for both sides.
Not sure if he has authority. Not all time. Yes for a small company he did. For a large company I discuss it with him because he is the one who knows what I did last year best. If I got to higher ups and say "give me more money", they'll say something like "I think I've seen you in the kitchen, or the conference room". Well, in reality they'll read a performance review probably from my manager. And then probably talk to the manager anyway...
But what happens is I talk to my manager and they they'll go find out and make a case for me if they are not authorized to do it themselves.
> If he is then, again, there shouldn't be a problem since you both agreed that your compensation is fair for both sides.
Well that was the original premise of the post. If negotiating like one negotiates buying a car, showing counter offers and so on. They might feel like you tricked them, if you then don't do the job to the level of your salary.
>They might feel like you tricked them, if you then don't do the job to the level of your salary.
This will also be a problem if you do worse job than expected and your manager does not know your salary. Simple solution - don't do a bad job if you don't want to be fired.
> So you "tricked" your future manager to give you a $50k more
In big companies, the managers don't have too much input, and no skin in the game. Plus, it isn't a "trick" and negotiating isn't unprofessional - it's just business.
My main technique in negotiation is to make sure I've framed my own boundaries. I always know at what point I walk away, what's simply non-negotiable. Everything else is on the table, and it helps me frame the conversation. If I find whoever I'm negotiating with simply won't meet the walk-away limit, I walk away. No hard feelings, no regret – all of those what-if feelings were dealt with as I set the minimum limit before going into the conversation.
As well, I make sure that minimum level is a level I am genuinely comfortable with. It's not a cop-out, it's a level where I will sign and feel happy about it. Anything more than that is a bonus, but if I don't get that I'm perfectly happy.
I've found since I started doing this, and staying true to actually walking away if things aren't working out, the whole conversation has been much more professional and easy. Key to this though is that walk away means walk away, no childish "give me this or else I walk" nonsense. If you walk, you walk, that's it. Non-negotiable means just that.
EDIT: Probably worth mentioning as well that I do plenty of research before setting that walk-away level. There's one aspect which is what I instinctively want, but then there's other things that come in to play as well of course, relocation if applicable, cost of living etc.
It's this kind of personality that I look for in my organisations, mainly to isolate and slowly get rid of. The focus on "me" is so toxic. No amount of brilliance makes up for circles of damage to other, modest, hard working people.
Having a bunch of people who think the same, leads to group think. Having someone who like attention isn't necessary bad. Just like having someone who complains a lot isn't bad. (in fact if you look at team dynamics they'll end up being the most important type of person to have on a team to create a high performing team.) It's how the team and management react to a team member that creates toxic environments. If you have someone who points out valid issues and you choose to ignore them then of course they're complaining is going to become an issue. However if you fix the majority of major issues said person comes out with your team morale will go up because their product is better.
As they say there is no I in team, so acting like a single person can ruin a team feels rather stupid. It's a team that ruins a team.
Oh, I'm a great fan of diverse thinking in a group. Trouble with dominant individuals is they wipe that out, since most people will accept someone's contradictory opinion if it's backed up by force and charisma. And yes, such people can absolutely ruin a team, I've seen it happen many, many times. That is why I treat them as problems to solve.
Slightly-related: has anyone interviewing with Airbnb used the author's public starting offer of $220k total compensation to negotiate their own starting offer? Genuinely curious.
Really sad to know he didn't get a good offer in Airbnb and you both think it's a good offer. But this looks totally like a new grad offer.
I have my friends who just got offers in Airbnb who are getting paid 180k in salary and ~600K in stocks which is basically $330k/year.
My other friend who is senior engineer with 5 year experience is compensated around 500k/year.
I have similar experience and i recently did a job switch with around 11 competing offers and negotiated well more than the previous number. I negotiated with every offer except snapchat whom didn't move their needle but their offer was good not the best.
If you're really good, you can easily negotiate up to 400k/year real money(cash + stocks).
- Googler/Fb employee with 4 year work experience here.
O.o These numbers are surprisingly high, to the point of almost being unbelievable.
And I go around telling my friends that software engineers can make 120k right out of college, and I'M getting laughed at by my friends at how apparently unbelievable ridiculously high this is.
I've got 3 years experience and I'm making not much more than that working at a midsized startup (I went to a top tech school and everything!).
And then I go on Hacker News and learn that the fair salary for people working at big companies, with around my experience is 330k!?! Man what am I doing wrong.
Is this what it is like being the mythical, 10x developer unicorn that I hear so much about?
Sorry, but this is real. It's very normal for a new grad googler to make $185k total comp in first year.
Offers i had got,
Uber,
Airbnb,
Snapchat,
Google,
Robinhood,
Netflix,
Salesforce,
Affirm,
An investment bank in NYC,
Two stealth startup in SF.
In Facebook, it's very common for one high perfoming engineer getting discretionary equity of 1M+ if you do re-defines or create a meaningful impact.
I'm sorry i'm not going for any startup soon as it's hard for employees to make money now. People join startups thinking they are going to do 10X. But investors give equity to startup engineers at 4X inflated valuation. So outcome is probably 2.5x with very high risk.
You do exceptional performance at google/facebook/uber and get noticed by your director and he throws 1M worth RSUS on you in next review cycle. Do it twice and there goes `rest and vest`.
The worst part is if you think this is the best offer for the years of experience, then you're totally mistaken :D
Thank you, anonymous person on the internet. You are talking about outlier people at outlier companies. The majority of software engineers not in top roles inside top companies are not making even close to that.
Every compensation discussion on HN invariably brings out of the woodwork That One Guy Who Knows That One Guy Who Makes $400K at Google. The take-away from reading these threads should NOT be that this is an ordinary compensation.
> Outliers never come out and talk about their compensation to be frank.
My experience is that only outliers ever come out and talk about their compensation, leaving the audience with the impression that most everyone is either a $400k/year Googlecorn or a $40k/year code slave.
I don't need to see your W-2. I'm not replying to you to accuse you of lying--you're probably not. I'm replying for the benefit of other readers who read comments like yours and start believing that $300K, $400K, $500K etc. are normal salaries for software engineers, only to be confused and frustrated at what they actually see out there in the real world. All of those salaries are likely at least 3 standard deviations from the mean. I don't know what your definition of "outlier" is, but those are extreme outlier salaries. Congratulations on being so fortunate!
Your aim to "increase awareness" does nothing for a normal or even above average software engineer negotiating their offer at a non-outlier company. How does this help them? "I think $200K is reasonable because somebody on the Internet told me that some people at Google make $400K?" Is that really going to fly, basically anywhere?
He's not joking. This is the talking style of all those people from IIT and IIM bragging about their "pay packets" to "freshers" about to be ragged. I wonder if he is going to copy/paste that directly into his matrimonial.
Thanks for sharing an above average scenario and congrats. Genuinely curious, where did the offers initially start out (I'm assuming based on your previous comp) and how much were you able to negotiate up? And were the offers from startups like Robinhood/Affirm and the I-bank competitive with the big tech cos?
I had negotiated 2-2.5X with most of the companies on stocks. Shocked? Well, if you ask for 10% more and accepted the offer, it's a party in next recruiting meetings in the company. Always flinch, start with 3X and make the recruiters feel bad. They should do atleast 5-10 calls just in negotiating the numbers. Imagine as a software engineer, how many tasks you had to complete for a project and how many times you have to meet/dial-in the customer/other teams during/after the project. You are the project for the recruiter for this month. Let him/her work for you this month.
> And then I go on Hacker News and learn that the fair salary for people working at big companies, with around my experience is 330k!?! Man what am I doing wrong.
Early stage startups are making a joke out of engineers by pitching the bro-culture and talking about freedom and 10X- 100X.
And yeah, with a big hype from VCs and investors tweeting about startupX, Y, Z, engineers get fooled and join a startup and work for 4 years and later figure out it was a bad idea.
It's a very bad idea to join a startup for money unless you know the founders really well who have a track record of selling themselves to Google/Facebook/Oracle/MSFT.
It's a not a joke. You work in consultancy which is a service company where margins are not high as goog/fb/msft.
I work in product company with high profits in billions. It's common for new grad engineers who join as L3 and become L5 in 3-5 years in all the above companies.
That's not what I said, but thanks for your contribution all the same.
Airbnb offered him less to start. So I'm curious if someone in similar shoes (say, similar level of experience) used his expanded offer as a point of negotiation.
Did you miss the part where the guy had been coding for less than 1 year? 250k might not be the pinnacle of software engineer compensation, but it's as good as it gets for his level of (in)experience.
> Now say you end up turning down their offer. They’ve spent over $24,000 just extending this single offer to you (to say nothing of opportunity costs), and now they’ll essentially have to start over from scratch.
Most of that is to hire someone, not just 'you'. And they aren't even close to having to start from scratch if you don't accept.
True. But they really do want you if they made an offer. I have never heard of someone asking for 5k more get their offer yanked, but I know people afraid to ask for that reason.
The exact # they lose if you say no isn't the point. You are the top choice. Doesn't mean they will double your offer but they do like you.
Try speaking to more non engineers. Not being snarky, but this is only applicable to professions that are in hot demand. But that should go without saying.
Is the median salary for the position a valid reason for an increase? For example 93000 is the median for software engineers in US according to the government.
I wouldn't specify 'median' exactly. That sounds too technical - it doesn't have the same innocence and emotional appeal. I'd mention what other local companies are hiring for the same position at, and mention being surprised they aren't offering at least that. Or mention having friends that got hired for the same position at a salary that's 10k more than you're being offered. If you do it smoothly, I think the worst case scenario should be that they say they can't go any higher, or that they come back with a higher offer that's only 1/2 or 1/4 more than what you mentioned. Like Sun Tzu said, don't corner the enemy.
Replace median with typical and you're set. The only way to weasel out of that is to show you're below average. Now then, any kind of negotiation is risky for obvious reasons.
There are definitely some good points here. As someone who has done a decent amount of negotiating on both sides, I will say that while it's true that even in a startup your boss won't much care if you negotiate... they might care if you mercilessly try to squeeze out every. last. drop. as described here - even if you do it unfailingly politely. In a situation where there only a handful of employees and you're reporting to the founder, they may actually care about that last 10k you squeezed out at the deadline. Probably not enough to withdraw the offer, but perhaps enough to put a bit of a damper on the future relationship. I'm not saying it's not something that could be overcome. If you really are a 'rockstar', it would probably be quickly forgotten. But still, there is some value to leaving a small amount on the table. Especially since you can always negotiate a raise if your performance is indeed excellent. (Although admittedly your current salary does always anchor that somewhat, so I'm certainly not recommending giving up a lot initially.)
As a side note I've found that negotiation room in EU is so tiny if not negligible.
Maybe it is just me but I suspect it's a mix between a different culture and a - generally - more unionized and segmented job market.
I agree. Don't think it's because it's a "more unionized and segmented job market" though - no techie I know is in a union. I think it's a different attitude - most places don't want guys working 80 hours/week and burning out (actually illegal in some countries), just somebody who'll come in and deliver with a team. So a x10 dev, why would you pay for that? Hence, saner salaries (maybe, this is just a theory).
Coming back to negotiation room, often, basic benefits are already included (e.g. healthcare, although this seems to be true in the US, too). But 35 hour weeks, more holiday, longer lunch break to go to the gym, working from home twice a week, these are all things I've negotiated.
I'm sure you can negociate if you have offers from Google, Facebook and Palantir in London. Negociating only works in hot markets, and there are very few of them for tech in the EU.
Maybe, but the compensation range for developers in London is much narrower than you might think. From what I've seen, most startups offer in the range £30k-70k per year, probably with some mostly useless stock option deal. I've seen salaries out of Amazon and Facebook starting at £50k, and even at investment banks, for more junior positions. These are all basically suckers, given the cost of living in London, among other things.
Anything below £70k isn't worth consideration, unless you really want to be in London I guess. There will be better offers elsewhere.
Above £70k the range is basically £70k-100k, for a number of reasons. At £100k you end up in a different tax bracket, to the point where you may want to start considering taking other perks other than salary, to keep your tax cost down. Also, if you're being offered that kind of money, you're likely accepting a director-level offer, so really for engineers the meaningful range is about £70k-100k. Since you mentioned Palantir, I'll mention that I met with a recruiter of theirs who mentioned in our first (and only) meeting that their salaries were in this specific range.
For contract work, you can quite easily break the £100k barrier, but obviously now you're running your own shop with all of the issues that brings. Or possibilities, depending on your perspective!
Both Facebook and Google pay about £80k for new grads (£60k salary + £20k in stock and bonus). Seniors earn about double that. Palantir pays interns £5k / month plus free rent.
Sounds about right. No one mentioned the free rent thing to me, but I guess that's in corporate housing where you don't want to stay anyway. May I ask how you know?
I've lived in corporate housing and it's all but sweet. Sure, the first period is all fun and well, but you can't live there. It's kind of like living in a drab hotel, or fancier dorm rooms. It's not home, and never will be. At least that's my experience, mileage varies of course.
About £70k is what I see for senior devs (I'm fine with your definition) at well paying startups, but you can definitely get more in the city or the wharf at one of the financial institutions. For startups though, my experience says £70k is about what well paying startups are willing to dish out. There are outliers though, obviously. (Case in point: I know at least one startup that pay some of their engineers up and potentially even beyond the £100k mark.)
I don't know what Facebook, Amazon, Google etc. pay, but from what I've heard I'm guessing it's about in the same £70k-£100k bracket as the financial firms.
In the mainland EU M&P (manergerial and professional ) jobs in the IT securer arn't unionized in the same way workers in BMW are.
In the UK there are unions (Prospect and the FDA) that specialize in the M&P area and do have highly paid members I know an Ex CTO at Motorola was a member and the CEO of Hull communications was an activist in his early career.
I highly recommend reading Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss. The book offers a different take to negotiation, written by a former FBI negotiator.
In his words, he could never split the difference in a hostage negotiation. When you enter the process understanding this, you do things differently.
This would be true if your offer was negotiated with a distant bureaucratic committee (or board), but most of the time, regardless of who they represent, you're just dealing with people.
Many companies, particularly the larger organizations, have pretty strict boundaries though. Case in point: in a large corporation we tried recruiting an incredibly talented developer, but because of company rules, we couldn't offer him what he asked for despite us thinking he was definitely worth it (and really, it wasn't outlandish in any way) but HR would never let it fly because rules. His problem then, I think, was that he mentioned what he'd earned elsewhere, so some policy dictated we couldn't offer more than 20% than that, or whatever. Stupid, silly policy, and just goes to show you should never divulge information the other party just isn't privy to. (I've never told recruiters what I earned before, that's not their business.)
> His problem then, I think, was that he mentioned what he'd earned elsewhere, so some policy dictated we couldn't offer more than 20% than that, or whatever. Stupid, silly policy, and just goes to show you should never divulge information the other party just isn't privy to. (I've never told recruiters what I earned before, that's not their business.)
Actually, that sounds like a great reason to volunteer my current salary. As long as I'm not desperate I don't want to work for a company that maintains such an idiotic policy, because it tells me something about how they view and value their employees.
If I didn't know better, I'd agree with you. Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department – for reasons I guess – and they just seem to throw spanners around for a living, especially into works. HR acts largely as their own separate entity, which isn't uncommon with these kinds of organizations, and play more or less by their own rules. What they do isn't indicative of the rest of the organization. It bugs me a lot that we couldn't offer him what he wanted, and for no good reason either.
> Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department
If HR is that bad, and the organization gives HR that kind of power, how can you say the organization is "quite good"?
1. Communicate your BATNA but be subtle. When I was looking for a job two years ago and spoke with recruiters, I heard from a few that it would be "hard" to get $21K more than I was making at the time. I told them that I was happy with my current job at a major well known company (I wasn't) and that's what it would take to get me to leave.
2. Salary was the main reason I was leaving, but like he said, it's much easier to negotiate one time signing bonuses and things that don't cost the company money -- like more work from home days.
3. Know your worth - it's hard to negotiate more than your market value. When I was interviewing I had 10 prospects that were in various stages of the interview process. I was able to confidently cut the process short for some knowing I had others and I had outside recruiters negotiating on behalf so they could get their commissions.
Can't emphasize this enough. This kind of mistake is common in our industry, though. I wish more software developers understood that when they say "human resources" they aren't lying: we are resources, like paper, electricity, and IT infrastructure. We are not their "colleagues," they don't see us as "colleagues," and it is damn obvious we aren't treated like colleagues.
Source: https://www.highstakesdb.com/2375-haseeb-qureshi-admits-to-c...
http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/internetpokers/the-girah-sca...