You obviously cannot give a range when they don't even know what level they have you slotted into, which is a great excuse for you to not give one. You don't have to tell them anything, and once they give you an offer you can negotiate it regardless.

Every day I want to quit my job more and more. And it's nothing on them it's actually a pretty fun job where I've gotten to learn a ton of AWS and pretty much run my own ship.

But I think I'm done. I've done this rodeo many times by now. I'm ready for a new adventure.

I'm ready to be semi-retired - which means I don't have to work right away but I probably can't coast until the sweet release of death - which I wouldn't necessarily want to do anyway. I like working, at least a lot more than doing nothing.

So It I might pick up work as a digital vagabond, adventure guide/driver, play some poker, maybe by some miracle my memoir of my trip that I'm writing makes money, etc.

The funniest part is I think about how companies are reluctant to hire a dev in their 50s and this could be one reason, and that actually holds me back a little. I don't want to ruin it for all of us. LOL

But as long as I stick it out one year from my employee hire date (3/25) it means about $12k extra in my 401k. So I gotta do it.

I'm soooo ready though to quit, sell my place and all my furniture, and get back on the road.

Yea that’s what I am thinking as well. The only reasoning why I might want to give a ballpark right now is because I have the illusion of leverage since I might possibly get an offer from a competitor. By giving a number that I know will sign, it will avoid them lowballing me if it turns out I didn’t land an offer with the competitor. On the flip side, my ballpark number is lower than the competitor’s expected salary for the L4 role that I am interviewing for.

But I’m pretty sure that they are going to slot me for L3. It’s unheard of to get L4 with my 2 years of experience unless I’m coming from FAANG.

What company would you rather work for? That’s a much bigger consideration IMO

Leaning towards company A.

This whole situation sucks since I’m not even sure I’ll be getting an offer from either of these companies yet.

Company A is notorious for low balling so I want to get ahead of them and set the anchor in case company B decides to pass on me.

You started March and you already want to quit? They will never hire any old guys now lol.

We had a guy who was probably in his 50s, have our company pay to relocate him to another office in a lower COL. After arriving, he gave his notice to retire.

I'm not so sure that a hire in their 50s really has a lower expectation of time with the company than someone younger, especially not early 50s.

I think I'll be more worried about having such a short stint on your resume.

I started in August. I was a contractor for 7 months.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you're negotiating against. If A is your only offer, they're negotiating against your current salary. If A and B give you offers, they're negotiating against each other. It might be possible to get A to negotiate against the possibility of B before B decides on you, but I don't know if that's something you want to rely on?

You said earlier you expected A to lowball you for under your current salary (I assume that's if they put you at L3?) - that still gives you a negotiating position. "Thanks for the offer - I'm still waiting to hear from Company B later this week, but some feedback I can give you on this immediately is that it's not particularly competitive with what I make right now, and given <make up some crap about why else you might not want to work for A - commute? idk>, I think this needs to be higher to make it compelling for me to leave." (though, actually, you're super eager to leave your job, they don't know that!)

btw, feel free to PM me companies/numbers/etc if you want to discuss in detail once offers come in.

I don't think Company B or his current salary have much to do with Company A's offer. If they have a reputation for lowballing it's because they can't afford to pay more and can't really compete with other companies on price alone. The best you can do there is ask for what you want and if they can afford it they will give it to you. If they can't afford it, it doesn't really matter what level you're in or what you make now or what other offers exist.

Thanks Goofy, I'll definitely PM you if and when the numbers roll in.

I was reading a little bit of Haseeb's negotiation and he does a good job covering this as well. I'll definitely push back based on a few things:

1. I don't know what level I'll be slotted at. (Which is a lie since I know I'll most likely get L3, which I think would be better anyways since it will set the expectations low?)
2. I'll suggest that they work out the details with compensation team and if things do not align, I give the "I'll trust that you (recruiter) and I will be able to work out a package that we both can approve on".
3. Last ditch effort, if the recruiter pushes too hard, I'll say something like "I know that the average software engineer makes around 150k base salary, we can start with that". This ignores the total comp question and while at the same time not really setting my expectations but merely stating an opinion on the current state of affairs.

I know that my current salary won't come into play as much. At least according to Blind.

Note: Company A is a megacorp and company B is one of the ride sharing company that just IPOed.

Company A is notorious for lowballing unless there is an existing competing offer. If I don't land company B's offer, there is a chance I might lose out on something like $50k+ in equity a year with Company A. That's how much there is at stake.

EDIT: This is also good for salary negotiations https://teamcandor.com/salary/guide/?ref=levels.fyi

There surely doesn't have to actually be a competing offer, and even if there is one how would they possibly verify. It's just a game of holding your nerve, and there actually being a better offer makes that a lot easier to do. But it is not necessary. Just like buying a car / house etc. - you've just got to be willing to walk away.

(Applies to anything of moderate value really, but I get the impression Americans are generally quite reluctant to haggle)

Barrin's experience sounds similar to what I went through with DBAM:
- first offer from them was somewhat disappointing, was similar to what I already was making
- when I told them it was not competitive with another company's offer, they increased it by 25%
- when I finally told them what the #s on my other offer were, they increased it by another 25% to match

At some point (can't remember if it was the second 25% match, or another small raise later on) they did ask to see proof of my other offer.

Now, rationally, you could say that holding your nerve versus having a competing offer should appear the same to company A - the important thing to them should simply be that you don't want to sign their existing offer, the reason why shouldn't be particularly important. That said, idk if we can assume everyone involved is a rational actor? I could see a large company looking down their HR-approved offer flowchart and saying "welp, no other offers, this is our standard offer, take it or leave it". I could be wrong though.

I took his post as a desire to change his lifestyle as opposed to dissatisfaction with his current employment situation.

I think you’re right. I’ve been pondering this for a bit because really alternative offers should have little relevance on the process except for showing that the candidate has another opportunity. But if a candidate were willing to just hold out and actually reject a low ball offer then that should end in the same place. But I don’t think it usually does.

I guess there’s also some BS signalling. If other company X thinks you’re valuable then that makes it more likely that you actually are. But I don’t really believe that given how most companies use basically the same relatively low signal hiring processes.

Pretty happy I’ve been able to avoid the current ****show of job hunting.

Did you actually end up showing them the physical offer letter?

All these big companies sound like a pain in the ass, but I guess the benefits are worth it.

I think I'm shooting for small and remote next

While we're on topic, I gave my notice last week. I had found about 2 weeks ago I was getting Principal promo this quarter but it doesn't change much for me. Management giving the standard "you can work on anything you want!". Well I asked to lead the new ML based team like 4 months ago since that team had no senior people, but my manager kinda blocked the move.

.

I got "meets expectations" on all categories from my boss - supposedly because that's what she always does her first year. Which I don't believe.

But I still *might* get a 3% raise starting July 1st, despite only being an employee since March 25th because lol state of California. I think that's what my boss said but I have to wait until I see my July paycheck it know for sure.

My last raise at hyper-global-mega-corp was .75% - and most of my coworkers told me that was more than they got. Also they slashed our bonuses that we were getting from mega-corp before it was acquired by HGMC. So we all were actually getting a 5-7% pay cut. Unless we got the mysterious legendary megabonus (cue NewsRadio fans) which i knew there was no way in hell I was getting since I literally did nothing for 2 years.

What do FAANG employees expect annual raise percentages to be? Anyone know ?

It seems companies are willing to stretch a bit for the initial offer knowing they are competing more directly with others. Then once you're onboard they slow the raises way down forcing employees to switch jobs if they want a market competitive salary.

Raises are generally harder to get, that's why you need to fight for increases when you change jobs, and probably need to change jobs fairly often (every 3ish years). It sucks but it's sort of just the way it is.

I've been doing this for a long time. In the early days, I would get 10% raises every year - but this is probably a sign that I was underpaid to start. I've never gotten a raise under 3%, except that there have been a few cases where no one got raises.

Bonuses are bull**** and I hate them. My current job did zero bonus, all salary, and just paid more. Now that AT&T bought us we have bonuses again. Fortunately my base salary carried over so I guess I don't really care if they shaft us on bonuses, which I expect them to do regularly.

Most places I've worked, getting anything less than 90% of the possibly bonus was equivalent to "you're fired" unless, of course, they just didn't give out bonus at all. This is why bonus is dumb - if my company decided to not pay me for a month out of the year I would quit and probably sue. But they can just say "oh, that 10% bonus we promised you just won't happen this year lol" and there's not much anyone can do.

My .75% raise was because I was already getting paid really well by mega-corp (as I mentioned here before - $180k with bonus, "pension", and 401k matching).

We busted HGMC's salary ranges and they had no problem letting us know that. Basically anyone still sticking around is just milking the situation either until retirement or they get laid off. IE - one of my high-performer ex-coworkers lives way out in the boonies but he only has to come in one day a week. He'll never get that opportunity elsewhere so he sticks around.

Ive gotten about 3.5% raise every year but no largish increase despite 2 promotions. Bonus has doubled though and is a large portion of salary. and they are transparent throughout the year on bonus money. Will be 20-30% of salary again.

Incidentally a recruiter reached out to me and put 100-125k plus bonus in the pitch along with react, docker, aws (usually I see garbage outdated tech stacks in these) so decided to talk to him but he loled at my salary demands, which were from his email. Like dude I'm not gonna leave a nice situation for a 5% increase.