[Gllug] Vacancy: MySQL DBA (London)

[Vidar Hokstad]

On 10 Jul 2008, at 10:28, Jose Luis Martinez wrote:
> Lets say somebody is offering £30K, if I can push it up to £45K
> (seriously? A company meddling so much with a salary offer are  acting
> in bad faith, have no control of their budget or have no idea about
> the market rates for a given set of skills)

A company advertising a position at £30k might very well decide when  
faced with a great candidate that they'd rather spend the extra cash  
and get someone more senior than they originally planned. There's  
nothing wrong with that. I've certainly had positions open where after  
seeing a particularly impressive CV have  found ways to fit it into  
our budgets because I believe the person would be the best value for  
money.

I believe you assumed I was saying I negotiated an _offer_ up 50%, but  
that's not what I wrote. I've negotiated offers up substantially too,  
and it's not usually because the first offer was made in bad faith but  
simply that it is based on assumptions made based on very little  
information (CV + an interview), and the negotiation process is where  
you figure out what basis an offer was made on and whether you can  
convince them their reasons are wrong. Often it's as simple as them  
not realizing the level of responsibility you've handled, or that  
they've not picked up on a specific skill you've got. Sometimes it's a  
matter of clearing up simple misunderstandings.

Frankly, I think a fairly large percentage of people are underpaid  
because they are bad at negotiating. As I stated, I've stopped taking  
the first offer. I haven't done that for the last 10 years, and I  
never will again unless I'm desperate. Being on the hiring side, I've  
_never_ given an offer I wouldn't consider raising if the candidate  
gives me a good enough justification. That is NOT to say I'll come  
back with a better offer to everyone that asks, but I certainly always  
ensure I have the budget to negotiate. Obviously the room for  
negotiation goes up the more senior a role is and the better the  
market is - you won't get that flexibility for all types of roles.

> it is still way below what senior positions in some specific  
> industries will offer. So knowing a
> range of the money on offer is extremely helpful.

Of course. I've only rarely applied for a position without a clear  
indication. But generally I find that the job description is a more  
reliable indicator of what people are actually prepared to pay.

> An "offering" that is too vague is not  an offering, it is a fishing
> expedition and should be treated as such.

I agree that this is usually the case when posting ads to a mailing  
list such as this, especially when coming from recruiters, but it  
certainly doesn't have to be.

I've worked in several companies where we at some point or other knew  
we needed more resources, but didn't want to pin down exact skill-set  
or salary range simply because it was considered more important to get  
the right kind of person, and the teams were large enough that people  
could be reallocated between tasks to accommodate the right candidate.  
We were hiring people, not specific skills.

> It doesn't, or should not have. A serious company has a budget,
> investigates the market and offers a salary based on those
> considerations. The candidate's previous salary should have no bearing
> in how much they are willing to pay.

Directly, no. Indirectly, of course it does. If you ask for 40k, and  
your current employer pays you 20k, for example, it raises a few big  
questions:

If you're worth 40k, why are you currently working for a company only  
paying you 20k? Why haven't you left before? It makes the hiring  
manager wonder whether there's something they've missed and whether  
you're over-representing your skills. But if you're able to pass off  
as someone worth 40k in an interview, why have you not managed to  
negotiate higher raises? Why have you not moved on before? etc.

The budget and market rates have no relevance. You may be asking for  
more than they want to pay or less. That's not what it's about. What  
it is about is giving the hiring manager confidence about what _you_  
personally are worth, and in any negotiation over money knowing what  
someone has previously been prepared to pay for the same thing is yet  
another data point to try to establish that value.

All negotiation is about giving the other party confidence that what  
you are offering them is worth what they will be giving in return, and  
that's what people are looking for when they ask about current salary.

>> Q. Why do you think you're worth so much more?
> A. Because my skills are x,y,z and my expertise industry is this, this
> and that and I am certified in this, this and this.

Q. In which case, why didn't you demonstrate all of this in the  
interview? (+ lots of follow up questions about the additional skills  
you're claiming)

> Q. And how come you were unable to convince your current manager to
> give you a raise if  it's really what you're worth?
> A. Because the budgetary constraints of my company did not allow him
> to do so, in spite of him wanting to.

Q: So why didn't you leave earlier? Clearly, if you are asking for  
this large an increase now, you should have been able to find a job  
giving a smaller raise a long time ago.

Besides, this is a big warning sign: A good company will recognize  
which employees are worth most, and will be willing to spend money to  
keep them, simply because the cost of hiring a new person are enormous  
(anything from 10%-30% of yearly salary just in fees to recruiters;  
dead time during training; dead time for the manager during training  
etc.), and a high turnover of staff is bad for the organization (it  
makes it hard to build a cohesive team and nurture a company culture).

I worked at Yahoo! 2003-2005, well before their recent implosion  
started, and HR at Yahoo! had a stated policy of offering raises in  
the 10% a year range for top performers + larger than average options  
grants, while offering _nothing_ to the poorest performers. The  
thought was that losing the poorest performers was a net gain because  
it would allow hiring better people, and giving the top performers  
larger increases _saved money_ because it reduced staff turnover among  
the people who performed well.

"Budgetary constraints" is usually a bogus reason for not giving  
raises to someone who is worth it: They will eventually lose you, have  
to hire someone new at market value, and have to cover all the costs  
of recruiting someone. The exception is if the company is doing really  
poorly.

If someone told me "budgetary constraints" it would worry me  
instantly. What I would be looking for would be for you to explain to  
me how and why you have developed so that your skills now  
significantly exceed what your current employer needs, and a good  
reason why they haven't then promoted you out of the position (such as  
there not actually being any openings...). And why you didn't give me  
those reasons during the interview.

> Go on, it is not difficult to play this game, I personally always say
> how much I want, not how much I am earning, because in reality such
> information is nobody else's business.

Fair enough, but then you should expect to come across hiring managers  
who'll think it means you're hiding something, and who'll be less  
likely to extend an offer on that basis, or who'll adjust their offer  
down because they're assuming you're asking for a huge raise.

Vidar

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