Demystifying Salary Information

Arun Jacob points us to an article in the NYTimes about online tools that can help in salary negotiations. The article concentrates on two websites — Salary.com and Payscale.com — that use different approaches to provide information on standard compensation packages for particular positions and roles. The theory is that, armed with information that was once available only to corporate HR departments, you could have an easier time negotiating your pay using a fact-based rather than a feelings-based approach.

Comments

They'll just fire you

[hyrdra]

I don't know about you, but many corporate companies don't like people like that...people that research what they should but paid. Many HR managers think that the job market in IT (and many other fields) is so good they would rather replace you and hire someone in that will feel like they are lucky to do the job at or under your current rate. It's largely because the attitude in many companies these days is a sense of "you should be lucky you're here" or "you should be lucky we only make you work 40 hours a week". At my job, I was told when they changed our benefits structure that "you should feel lucky the company deems you important enough to give ANY benefits at all".

I have found companies would rather hire someone who is utterly incompetent but willing to do the job for pennies and doesn't complain when they get bait switched to shitty health insurance. The types of people who have these lay down and take it attitudes are naturally people who are just morons and really don't know what they are doing. My theory is they are quiet and don't stir the pot too often because they are in constant fear of getting found out. The company doesn't care that half the work is getting done because that is harder for HR to measure than a raw starting price and capability is highly subjective. If I complain about a recent HR drone hire, the finger will often get pointed at me, with such remarks as "Don't be so hard on him..." "Have you ever considered it might be you or your department??" "What are you doing to correct the situation?". I'm sorry, I am not here to teach someone 4 years of CS that they should already know. To make it worse, the HR people saying this have no idea about anything technical, they don't understand anything that we do so going to them with a valid logical argument of why the guy they just hired is a dumbass falls on deaf ears. Try to bring any of this up to higher level management and all they can see are the good numbers from HR and how much money they are saving. Meanwhile, my shit is suffering, more work is put on me, and no one understands or let alone cares.

If you think many companies are not run this way, think again. You can usually tell a company like this from job postings. Our HR department shops for people like you would shop for a vacuum cleaner at Walmart -- they try to get the most for less. They look for whizbang things on resumes for stuff we would never need experience in or stuff that isn't relevant to what we are doing. I don't really care if someone has a masters if all they have been doing with it is designing VB forms. I really don't understand who came up with the concept for an HR department anyway, because it sucks. I would rather all hiring decisions go through the person that actually manages a team and produces a product, not some "HR Technical Specialist", which is really some moron with an HR degree who has worked for a tech company before.

So before you go up to your boss with salary figures in hand you should understand that a lot of times we don't have the capability to change anything. In the large corporations I've worked for, the manager never controls the salary and HR would always rather you quit or be miserable than risk having everyone pull those same figures and come to them, taking their precious monthly how-much-can-you-save bonus away. Many HR departments are running on the principal of separation of markets, where you don't know how much the market pays. If I was an HR manager I'd be scared shirtless of someone who quotes salary figures and can suddenly make my only bargaining point go away, I'd rather hire the no nothing guy that passes all the rudimentary hoops that will sit down and shut up and make me look good.

Ways to avoid having to mention a number, politely

[patio11]

* You're in a much better position to evaluate my worth to the company than I am. (I *love* this one.)
* I am sure we can come to something mutually satisfactory. What would you suggest?
* I will entertain any offer commesurate with my skills and experience. (I don't like this one -- concentrate on them, not you.)

Ways to counteroffer:

* That figure could be workable with a few minor modifications to the contract. Lets table it for a moment and discuss...
* I have a comparable offer in hand from another firm but would much rather work for $YOU. Does $YOU have any money in the budget to increase that offer so we can make this happen? (Note the phrasing: HR Man has an ego just like you do, and doesn't want to say "Oh no, we're poor" to justify paying you less. He works for a big, strong company for which an extra $X,000 is a drop in the bucket! Hah, take that, applicant who doubted our financial health!)
* I could quite possibly be pleased with that number, depending on the other specifics of the offer. Where does this fit into the big picture?
* I notice you have offered me a $PERK. That is not that important to me. Could we perhaps eliminate $PERK in favor of increasing my base compensation?
* I notice that you have not offered me $PERK. I am rather more interested in it than I am in my base compensation number. What level of $PERK do you think would be appropriate? (listen) That is almost what I had in mind, but keeping in mind that I am accepting a lower base compensation in return for $PERK, perhaps we could do a little better. I know $PERK is cheaper for you than increasing my base compensation because $PERK doesn't cause my total cost of employment, for example taxes, future raises, and overhead, to increase linearly like base compensation does (listen). Sounds great.

These assume that the initial offer was roughly in line with your expectations. I once got offered $30,000 and poor benefits when I was expecting a package in the neighborhood of $55,000. That calls for a firm handshake and a "Thank you for your time, we'll be in touch."

Re:my two cents

[SocialWorm]

Tip #2: whoever mentions a number first, loses

I've heard this a lot, and I'm genuinely curious: has anyone ever actually done a study to figure out how going first affects negotiations and haggling? It shouldn't be too hard, at a minimum, to set up a small experiment in which person A has something that's worth about $5, person B actually has $5, tell them to trade, and then observe how going first or second affects the average result.

You can't always trust folk wisdom, and such an experiment, or carefully conducting a survey, seems so straightforward that I find it hard to believe no one's done it before.