Salary negotiations for techies

There's one other huge factor at work here (for many programmers, anyway). I'm tempted to call it the "wimp factor", but that's too negative, so I'll just call it the "introvert factor". I'm a perfect example...<p>I was always small for my age and looked nerdy with my glasses and attraction to books, etc. I was always picked last for sports teams, drew little attention from girls, and was usually the first one to be bullied. It even happened in my own family, subconsciously I hope. It was always easier to pick on the little guy to get what you want.<p>Fast forward to adulthood, and not much has changed, especially with bosses. It seems like my boss was always a sales/business guy, extroverted, and bigger than me. His/her natural reaction was to "bully", probably because they knew they could get away with it. This was for almost everything: project management, discussions about work, and of course, money.<p>No more. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I decided not to take this shit any more. The more anyone picked on me, the harder I shot back, right between the eyes. Nothing pisses me off more than being bullied, especially about money.<p>This is not natural behavior for me. (I imagine if it was natural, I would have become a sales person or a lawyer.) I have to consciously work hard to stick up for myself. But as soon as I paint the other person, especially my boss, as a bully, I put myself on even ground. And as soon as they see that, they understand that they can no longer take advantage of me. Only then can I be treated like everyone else.

It is always easiest to get a big jump by moving to a new job. Your company, and future companies anchor on the salary you are paid now. When recruiters or hiring managers ask, don't give out that number at negotiation time.<p>Instead, here is my hack: when a recruiter first calls, be blunt with them. Ask "do you know the salary range for the position?" and if it isn't great, say "Sorry, I'm only looking at senior roles that can pay in the 115-125 range because I have n years and a strong background in x." Keep in mind that something around the lower number of the range you give is what the offer will come in at if you eventually get hired--the recruiter is taking notes. If the recruiter is not sure about the upper end of the employer's range, he or she may even call the company and confirm for you by feeling out what they would pay their "best candidate."<p>If your number is beyond the range for the position, move on. If not, you've set a price for yourself, in advance, set an expectation that you are worth that price, and sent the message through the recruiter without ever having to negotiate a thing.<p>If you're thinking "do I really want whoever is hiring me to have to pay a recruiter?" the answer should actually be yes. Why? People who pay recruiters 1-want someone badly enough to pay extra for them, 2-are spending their time on more important things, 3-have the money to pay a recruiter, and so are showing at least some budgetary strength and flexibility and 4-recruiters will sell you to the company, and act as a non-threatening channel to pass information like "I have another offer at 110 with work from home 2 days a week I'm considering."<p>edit: minor edits to clarify whose "range" I meant.<p>Also, if it was unclear, to get recruiters contacting you, put your resume on monster.com and make it public. Then sign in/update it every now and then as I think that bumps you to the top and shows you as recently active.

Some related advice I just gave a family member on this subject:<p>In most mature companies, you're reviewed on a cycle, and the bump you get is preprogrammed according to an HR spreadsheet. The conversation that results from this is not a real salary negotiation. Your goal needs to be to break out of the cycle.<p>What I think you should try is, let the review run, and get your HR-approved comp pellet. Then say,<p>"Thanks for increasing my comp. I appreciate it. I have a question. What were the factors that led you to raise my salary?"<p>They'll give a platitudinous answer. Let them. Then say,<p>"That makes sense. I have another question. Over the past year, I did XXX, YYY, and ZZZ. You didn't mention these things. That's fine! But I'd like to make sure I'm putting my energy into things that the business values here. Instead of XXX, YYY, and ZZZ, what should I do?"<p>Then have the conversation, in specific terms, and <i>follow up with an email recapping the conversation</i>.<p>I have a couple theories about this approach:<p>(1) (Extremely important and something I know to be valid:) Business isn't a meritocracy. The winners know how to market themselves. Coders look over each others shoulders on Github and developer a sense of who the bad-asses are. Successful business people always broadcast their wins. You need to seek out and seize opportunities to toot your horn on the record. This is something tangential to salary negotiation that introverted and meritocratic tech people also suck at.<p>(2) The "objectives" most people are given at salary reviews are inevitably vague. This serves the purpose of the business by making comp something out of the control of both the team member and the manager.<p>(3) Even if you don't want to push for a bigger bump (and most of you, if you think about it seriously, <i>don't</i>, or you'd already be making more money), it is still in your long term interests to establish a winning track record <i>on your terms</i>. If you leave it to the managers to decide what goes on the track record, you will lose out to every member of your team who is better at politics and marketing than you are.

This is all good advice. I recently had to negotiate a raise for myself, and I think the critical insight is that you need to be willing to walk. If you are comfortable being without work for a little while, great. Otherwise, go seek out other opportunities so you have the confidence to act when they don't give you what you want.<p>The most important thing you can do is to take a close look at what value you provide for the company. Your dev manager will definitely care about how difficult it will be to replace you, but once you leave the technical stratosphere, the only thing that matters is your effect on the bottom line. Consider what you've done to make a dent and be sure that those efforts are communicated up the chain of command, even if you have to do it yourself.<p>I asked for a raise, got half of what I wanted, and began the process of looking elsewhere. My managers wanted to keep me and noticed that I wasn't particularly happy with the result. A week later, they made the difference and then some with a bonus vesting at the end of the year. In the end, I got more than I asked for and the company was able to provide it in a way that made sense for them financially.<p>I love my job so it took me many more months to act than it should have for fear of losing it. But, like jacquesmattheij said, you've got to realize that neither party has a long-term obligation to each other- this is a business relationship, first and foremost.

My Rules for Negotiation:<p>1. Always be willing to walk away.<p>2. Never, ever, take the first offer.<p>3. Never take an offer immediately. Always sleep on it.<p>4. Never base your worth on "comps" aka. comparable salaries. You are an individual with your own "value add" to put it in marketing/sales/management speak.<p>5. Always remember that you always, always work for yourself. Your current employer just happens to be paying for your time now. Most everyone I meet when asked "who do you work for?" will say so and so company. But in reality they have no more commitment to you than you do to the stranger on the street. Always know that everything you do you do to extend your knowledge, your power and your influence. I always say "I work for myself. So and so just happens to be paying me right now."

Just throwing a crazy idea out in the wild here: Have a service where a professional negotiates salary on your behalf.<p>1. Is there interest in this? 2. Would this be feasible?<p>Employers sure as hell wouldn't like it, but I wonder if they'd tolerate it.

The fastest and easiest way to raise your salary is to change jobs. Here's some very unorthodox advice that actually works quite well in practice.<p>1. Call a good headhunter, let them negotiate salary for you. Finding a <i>good</i> headhunter can be hard. And be prepared to refuse high paying positions you don't think would work for you. Expect the headhunter to push you a bit but know that eventually they will get the message and look for something which both pays a lot AND is what you want.<p>2. Interview for another company and do one of the biggest "don'ts" there is - Tell them what you are making now and that's you're not looking to leave unless they offer a lot more.<p>The above two things are strongly discouraged, but in practice both work remarkably well.<p>Getting a big raise form the company you are already working for, is always going to be much harder. And unless you really, really don't want to leave your current company, it is much easier to find another job.

I think salary history is usually the strongest card you have. If I make X at my current job you will need to make me a comparable offer or you don't get me. It takes awhile to get there but if you make sure you get yearly raises it won't take long. I would usually quit without a yearly raise or a very good explanation.<p>The market is in your favor as a programmer. If you have even the hint of a clue it's even better. I remember 4-5 years ago being on a phone screen and was asked what if any books I was reading and when I listed them he said "The job is yours' if you want it." I didn't but it was enlightening. I walked into my bosses office the next day and said I want a 20k raise and got it.

Businesses pay for value, not for work successfully completed as requested. Want to hack something? Either hack the org chart and get assigned to where you provably make money, or hack your job duties such that you can measure how much money each project translates into.<p>The first thing I do for new clients is get metrics (or set up systems to do so), because you can best believe that when they move in the right direction I'm charging more next time.

&#62; Typically, in a mature company the salaries of the dev team are a rounding error on the total operation.<p>Depends on the company. For a mature software development company the engineers' salaries are likely to be quite a large line item. This is especially the case since sales are generally paid on commission and carry quotas, so there's no reason to assume that in a company with a decent focus on R&#38;D this statement will be true.

Great article, although there are a couple of things that probably should be mentioned:<p>(1) Part of the reason programmers are bad negotiators are because they don't usually have highly cultivated social skills. If by some chance a programmer is a budding socialite, there is a good chance he/she isn't that great of a programmer.<p>(2) Trying to get compensation derived from worth to company is not a bad idea except -- and this is a big except -- it can create additional pressures on the person delivering. If you are the best member of a team and also being compensated more than the other members of the team, your management is going to consistently want more value from you and they are going to likely want that in the form of tangible and immediate value, not a refactoring of this or that or some cool experimental project. Which is to say, the more highly compensated you are, the less likely that you will actually be able to enjoy the work you are doing. As far as I'm concerned that is a very good reason to either (1) accept a lower salary on the basis of the factors mentioned or (2) work as a consultant at a high hourly rate and spend your free time on other more interesting projects.<p>(3) This is related to (2), but people don't work as well when they are thinking about compensation (e.g. the surprising truth about what motivates us short film <a href="http://ow.ly/1s8Y9r" rel="nofollow">http://ow.ly/1s8Y9r</a>). Definitely consultants in general are much worse programmers than hobbyists (I've worked with both), although hobbyists may not be the best people to rely on when you are facing a hard deadline. What can you do about it? For me, I think the simple answer is simply do what you love doing and make sure you have enough money to keep on doing it -- which is to say, don't worry about money all that much.<p>But maybe I'm still in that typical programmer paradigm...

I wonder if "good negotiator" and "good engineer" is correlated or anti-correlated?<p>I want good engineers, so I don't want to punish people for being bad negotiators. We just pay the best we can.

I once had an internship in University where I was solely responsible for a $250k contract (which took 3 months to complete). Furthermore, that contract was a gating feature to a larger ($4M) contract for the company. The only way to appreciate the value you bring to the company is to involve yourself with the business operations, talk to your PM and sales/marketing people (this has the bonus of helping you understand what they do, a perspective sadly absent on most devs). Keep track of everything.

I have found the salary.com Web site to be a helpful tool in setting expectations: if you actually cough up money for their report, you can fill in your location, job category, years of experience, company size, etc., and get back a report showing the range of salaries people like you are earning.<p>The one thing I am uncertain about is how I would place myself on that range: should I be asking for a 75th-percentile salary and settle for 50th, or ask for 90th and settle for 75th?

I'm having my review today and I am not making enough to live on. Every month, after mortgage on the house, modest car payment, and insurance for wife and two kids, I dip into savings to pay the bills.<p>It's already too late to "plant the seeds" for a big raise, so I'm anticipating some little 1% raise today at my review.<p>I had my chance a few weeks ago, when I stayed late to confirm and fix a bug that would have cost us a $2M contract, and everybody knows what I did and how important it was. Still, without me actually pushing for a big raise, I know it won't happen. It's a small company and money is not wasted. To pay me a big raise I didn't ask for would be throwing money away.<p>So why didn't I ask? I think because I don't want the commitment a big raise would impose on me to stay indefinitely, and I don't want to be comfortable. I like feeling the pinch of money, as it keeps me motivated to work on my startup ideas. If I allowed myself to get too comfortable, I fear it might not be the best for me, long term.

My dad spent over forty slaving away for one employer through about half a dozen office moves and two mergers. After the most recent merger, they outsourced his entire IT staff and asked him as IT manager to take the role of scapegoat for their lousy decision and accept a pay cut as well. He turned them down. This was the first time I ever saw my father stand up for himself.<p>We all have to start understanding that the only way to be sure you're working for an employer who values your work is to work for someone who is willing to hear your constructive criticism and wage requests without googling "outsourcing" or "recruiters". It's possible your employer turns you down and gets rid of you. In the worst case, they keep you and move you downstairs into Storage B.

Have you ever had a situation where you had to negotiate multiple offers? How did you negotiate to get the highest possible offer from each?

One thing that I believe in myself, and that I coach my team on, is that there are three currencies that you can accept as payment: money (including stock, bonuses, etc); title; and training.<p>To me, it may be worth staying (temporarily) at a job where you feel that you are underpaid in money, if you are getting lots of opportunities to learn new skills, or you are managing a larger team or scope of work than you would have at another company. Think of it as similar to the time spent in an MBA or other post-graduate training program.<p>The hard part is to discern when you are being given a growth opportunity, and when you are just being used.

I always say, "if you don't ask then you never get."<p>What's the worst that can happen if you ask - boss says no, you feel stupid for a while or a loss of a job. The later means you are working for the wrong man so it may be easier to find out now rather then later.<p>Regret is harder to cope with. So don't regret and speak your mind!<p>I also came across this good article which basically stated that our behavior at work has to do with the environment we grow up in. <a href="http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/yes-rich-kids-already-won-the-career-game-heres-why/" rel="nofollow">http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/yes-rich-kids...</a><p>"Middle-class kids generally fuck up their first few years of the career game in one of two ways... fear authority tremendously... or show an open distaste for managerial authority." ... "The rich kid, on the other hand, relates even to the highest-ranking executives as equals, because he knows that they are his social equals. He’ll answer to them, but with an understanding that his subordination is limited and offered in exchange for mentoring and protection. He views them as partners and colleagues, not judges or potential adversaries."<p>Food for thought.

There are currently 3 blog posts from this guy on Hacker News' front page. Is something fishy going on?<p>Don't mean to be a cynic, this article is okay and all, but who is this guy (and what's his secret!)?

Now I'm convinced that Jaques left HN for good.

Ask for a win-win proposition.