All profit is based on exploitation. Surplus value is extracted in absolute and relative terms. Absolute surplus value is increasing the amount of time worked per worker. Relative surplus value is extracted by reducing wages or increasing productivity and intensity.
With that orientation explicitly stated, I work in tech and I find discussing salary extremely difficult. Recruiters and hiring managers ask: "What is your salary expectation?" I have no idea how to respond and because I am desperate for a job, respond with what my friends later tell me is "a low ball". It is a wild wild west, with ignorant HR people looking for buzzwords, unrealistic tech stacks, and a lot of bait and switch.
How to approach salary questions? Should I give them a number first? My neoliberal friends tell me "how much value you think you generate", and I respond "enough so I don't have to work anymore".
Just give an HR filled answer. "I expect my salary will fairly compensate me for the value I'm bringing to this company." Something like that. The person who folds on salary first loses. String them along until they have to tell you their salary band.
I was asked this mid-interview with the hiring manager. Was caught off guard because we were discussing something tangential like taste in books and music, then wham , "what's your salary expectation?" Was caught off guard and lulled into a sense of friendship before feeling I had to give a hard number for the talk to proceed.
Classic HR move right there. They love doing that shit.
Yeah, you think you're connecting with some Boomer based on a mutual love of Sun Ra and then the icy fist of economic calculation appears.
go into every interview, even with engineers, expecting this question to drop at an unexpected time. they stand a lot to gain by making you uncomfortable enough to answer low. whether you should answer a little high or defer to let them set the band is mostly about how confident you feel in your skills / their perception of your skills / your ability to get other offers / your own knowledge of what band they're going to offer you.
Alternatively, you're giving them the opportunity to set the acceptable range. If they ask, they want an answer, and you should give them a high one.
Agreed, but I like making them give me the band themselves, because if the band itself that they're envisioning is way too low, it's not a place you want to be working at even if you can negotiate up because they're going to fuck you on raises every chance they can get. This is from a labour aristocracy/tech worker viewpoint, however, since obviously this is not how you can approach negotiation for most jobs.
Actually yeah that's a good point. Just choose a little bit above the band you're assuming they're using and you're good.
This is the right answer. Figure out comparable rates for similar jobs, use stuff like Glassdoor for research, and then add like 5-10k on top of that and judge how they react. If they act like it's impossible/a big deal to ask that much, just run for the hills
Problem is, a term like full-stack developer has a lot of variance. On Glassdoor, full-stack developer has a low of 72,000 and a high of 145,000. The average is 105,813.
You gotta look for either the salaries for similar jobs at that company, or salaries for companies like that company in the same general geographic area. If you live in, for example, New York City and say you want $85k for a full-stack developer salary they'll hire you on the spot because you're waaaaaay underselling yourself. Geography is key here.
Yeah it varies a lot, Glassdoor is good if you can find things specific to a company you're interviewing with. Like if you're lucky a few former full stack devs will have left reviews and if they were making 120k then you shouldn't start off at the 72k level. Dev pay is harder to nail down though, there's a lot of variables in those salaries
A couple of other websites I have found useful is h1b salary database. companies have to disclose what they paid for h1b roles https://h1bdata.info/ . Another interesting website, Blind, allows anonymous gossip for tech companies. you can only register if you have a verified corporate email account: https://www.teamblind.com/
Yeah, techbros at big companies are mostly sociopaths. The anonymous nature of the Blind website makes it like 4chan for tech.
depends on the company and how much experience you have within the band. if they like you, they'll start at average and happily go up to the top of the range. if they think you're a stretch, they'll start at the bottom of the range and begrudgingly work up to average.
I usually ask them what their range is for the position. Sometimes they'll fuck up and tell me. Pretty sure I low balled myself for a job last week though. I told them a range and they said the job miraculously pays right in the middle of it!
I fucking hate job interviews. I fucking hate recruiters. I fucking hate salary negotiations.
This has always done me right. Start with “is there a band for this position” and go from there.
This is good. Also, if you're willing to walk away from an offer, even better. That pisses off recruiters, which is a nice bonus
I read a study once that said the person that provides a number first in a negotiation ends up with a result closer to that number than the number provided second.
By this logic you should put your expectation on the table (well beyond what you think is reasonable) and then have them rein it in with their number.
In reality a lot of these companies already know what number they're willing to pay when they sit down and they won't go over that but will go under it if the person they want to employ lets them. While they won't go over it they will however put other benefits on the table or offer to raise the pay if a certain target is met within x time frame.
One tip to keep in mind is that if you reach an impasse on salary, you can ask for things like additional PTO which the HR person may have a bit more leeway on (or a smaller company would be better able to "afford")
the correct answer is totally whatever weird game you have to play to get the most they are willing to fork over.
however, something that helped me navigate the non-profit world, which i think could help anyone starting out, is to honestly figure out how much money it would take for you to have all of your needs met, plus make savings and retirement contributions at a level that eases your mind/sense of precarity. ask yourself, "what is the minimum i could get paid and not worry about money for the lifestyle i want? what could someone pay me to alleviate concerns about my personal goals and keep me focused on their organization?" what would you need to make to pay your bills, pay for repairs/maintenance, not be a hermit, pay off debt, build an emergency fund, save a down payment, and contribute to retirement? this, to me, is marxian logic.
this sounds like negotiating against yourself and maybe it is, but i am not saying you need to give this information away during negotiations. it's a healthy exercise, to think of what you need to feel secure and make that your absolute lower limit. the non profit sector can be super exploitative towards workers and having an absolute minimum hard-coded into your mind is a good way to avoid having your idealism for the mission or the boom-bust cycle of philanthropic funding used against you.
i know that it helped me when i was negotiating with people that have been brain-wormed with austerity for 30 years.
it's also nice to have those numbers in your mind in general, because it makes budgeting smoother once you get the job. i didn't start doing shit like this til my 30s (currently in my 40s) as my jobs up until that point were all shit pay and my idea of budgeting was to spend less than i made in any given month.
As a former CEO of a tech company this is what I would suggest as an answer:
Average pay for the position you are hiring for is X but since I know and have done XY and Z, I expect 10-40% more. What is the company paying devs at the company now? It would be awkward if my pay was too different from others.
You can be sure that when a company is hiring that they have their current team working at their limit and as they have shortage of devs the current devs would be able to have increased their pay and benefits as much as possible. Because recruiting processes are costly and time consuming, the first thing you should do when you land a job is to learn what others are being paid. If they make less than you, encourage them to reach your pay level and if they make more than you, you ask for that pay within a year. The sooner they finished a hiring round the less interested are they to start a new one.
Pretty good advice here so far but I'll add on. Don't say the first number. That's called anchoring, and all talks after that will be based on that number. Make them name a number. Then tell them you want more pto, pto is important to you. Companies never want to offer more pto, they'll say no. This no answer is important, now this hr idiot feels subconsciously like they owe you one. So then you can ask them to improve the offer, don't name a number, make them bid against themselves. This advice is from the book 'never split the difference' a total chud book but it's got good advice and it's like 100 pages. It's worked every time for me but it depends on thr position and your leverage and shit.
I have no idea what sort of tier of company you're looking at or location, but if none of that is changing and you've been at the same place for a while generally speaking ask for 30% more than you're making now.
One thing to point out in the context of surplus value extraction in the tech industry is that, the professional workers are often still getting a boosted salary from the extraction of labor of the frontline and lower skilled workers. But this is capitalism so there's not much to do other than just look out for yourself.
Three important rules:
- Never say a number first
- Never say a number first
- Never say a number first
I'd also add, having successfully negotiated my salary with an org that claimed there was "no room to increase," there is ALWAYS room
Look through Glassdoor and check company background, see other salaries in the area.
I tell them something probably just above what I'm actually worth (in the non-Marxist sense).
Tech salaries are all over the internet. Check out Reddit's /r/cscareerquestions, Glassdoor, levels.fyi, or do a search for H1-B visas granted to companies that you're interested in. Often, you can tell pretty closely what a job should pay you before you even apply to it.
