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Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

Rex-Goliath posted:

this is fine but requires you to know what your actual market value is / have some idea of what the company is looking for. if this question was asked early in the process before the candidate had a clear picture of all the responsibilities of the job then it was absolutely correct for them to stand fast. if it was later in the process then they probably just didn't have a very good idea of what the market looked like and also were correct to stand fast. also they could have just been a stubborn rear end.

i'm gonna rule out the first option because of what you said about talking to so many other candidates in the same day. if your boss expects the candidates to be opening the negotiation then they need to wait until the end of the interviewing process- not open with it.

yeah it's the second option, we didn't spring it on these guys before they were ready. in fact we generally asked after the phone screen, on-site, and technical interviews and we asked via recruiter. these were senior devs too so idk why they wouldn't know the market at least a bit? everyone else seemed to know what they were worth.

one guy had his salary expectations in the resume that sent to us and we gave him a heads up so he could yell at his recruiter and take it out for future interviews with other companies lol

i personally have never had an employer budge on the "you gotta give us a number" questions when i was being interviewed so i'm unsure who this actually works for, guess i'm not leet enough or something

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Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
to clarify we didn't always ask via recruiter. if we found some random dev on our own, we'd ask them directly, but again after the bulk of the interviews. nobody ever said "let me get back to you" which may have even been acceptable to my boss, idk

i think he just uses it as a filter because if someone comes at us with our max budget + 25% we just tell them outright and thank them for their time

PIZZA.BAT
Nov 12, 2016


:cheers:


that's fair then. in my own experience i've always hard-refused anyone who's tried to bring salary negotiation into the picture too early and so far it's always turned out to have been the right decision in hindsight. once they're ready to make an offer and the number is the only unresolved issue i've been fine with going first. i think the article you quoted is mostly for beginners who don't know any better

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Cold on a Cob posted:

idk if i mentioned it in this thread but earlier this year we passed on someone because he wouldn't give us salary expectations. like, outright refused. i guess he read everyone's favourite salary negotiation article.

he would have been better off just firing off a nice high number tbh, at least then we would have countered with something

you and your boss are idiots

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
probably the best advice i ever received was always ask for more than you think you're worth, always state salary expectations NOT your current salary if at all possible, and if they don't counter you didn't ask for enough

the last point is only useful for future reference if you're gonna job hop though

also i eventually learned to ask my friends/former colleagues what they make, i used to be reluctant to do that and i'm sure i left a lot of cash on the table doing that over the years

also re-reading the article and maybe i should give it a bit more credit and give it a proper read:

quote:

This means that any discussion of compensation prior to hearing Yes-If is premature. If you’re still at the job interview and you’re talking price you are doing something wrong. (Read the room: it is entirely possible that you came for a job interview, finished it, and proceeded directly to a salary negotiation. That’s probably suboptimal, but it is OK. Just don’t give the employer the option of having the schedule be job interview, salary negotiation, and back to job interview if they discover that you have a spine.)

i have absolutely been pressed to give a number during the interview process so maybe i just lack a spine lol

i can say that the number applicants give does have swing with us i.e. we might consider a soft-pass candidate that we think may need some work if they have lower salary expectations, so not all candidates get to be "yes-if" candidates; some are "maybe-if" i guess


Pollyanna posted:

you and your boss are idiots

gently caress you, i'm not in charge and i said that multiple times

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
i mean if you're gonna call me out for being an idiot at least call me out for poo poo i have any control over

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Cold on a Cob posted:

i mean if you're gonna call me out for being an idiot at least call me out for poo poo i have any control over

fine: your boss is an idiot, and you're merely a stooge for defending his dumb rear end

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Cold on a Cob posted:

i have absolutely been pressed to give a number during the interview process so maybe i just lack a spine lol

learn to be comfortable with silence

if hr or recruiting is pressing you for a number, their most potent tool is to ask a question and just let dead air hang out there. they can't yell at you or slap you, you know? they're just hoping that discomfort will drive you to answer a question you have repeatedly deflected

that's a game two can play

sit still, be calm, and don't blurt out dumb poo poo.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
the dangerous thing is to give a number too early

when the interview is done and gone and it's just down to salary negotiations, it's perfectly fine for you to be the one giving the first number. that's ok. it shouldn't damage your negotiating ability unless you totally gently caress up your estimate of your own value

the danger is to say too high a number early in the process and get redlined by some moron in hr because it doesn't match the pay bracket they had in mind for job req #3644, salary grade 29

postpone, postpone, postpone

in a well actually
Jan 26, 2011

dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

Cold on a Cob posted:

i mean if you're gonna call me out for being an idiot at least call me out for poo poo i have any control over

you brought the anecdote up here without any qualifiers and then defended it with there were six other candidates who did lol, so you own it

throw a ‘this is was a bad idea’ in front and you’d have skated

tbh its not bad advice to read the room dont deviant urself with a big swinging dick never name your price if you don’t have options (limited market, etc)

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

fine: your boss is an idiot, and you're merely a stooge for defending his dumb rear end

i wasn't even defending, just relating what i have seen and what i have been told :colbert:

PCjr sidecar posted:

you brought the anecdote up here without any qualifiers and then defended it with there were six other candidates who did lol, so you own it

throw a ‘this is was a bad idea’ in front and you’d have skated

tbh its not bad advice to read the room dont deviant urself with a big swinging dick never name your price if you don’t have options (limited market, etc)

fair enough, but it'd be nice to have people actually read my responses before calling me a suck-up or idiot when i'm seriously wondering if this advice is actually applicable or not and posting about at least one case where i saw it torpedo a negotiation before it even started

literally everyone else we asked gave us a number, and not just that day

e: eh whatever, nice meltdown, etc etc. maybe i'm just too sensitive for sa or expecting too much from it. i'll see myself out.

Cold on a Cob fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Dec 31, 2018

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
y'all disqualified a candidate for not being stupid enough lol

SardonicTyrant
Feb 26, 2016

BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&



I'll admit to not negotiating my salary, but in my defense what they offered was 30k more than I was prepared to work for.

Also i really really really wanted to get out of my parent's house so.

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord
just adding another datapoint, I'm pretty sure I hosed up a super long interviewing process this year because I asked too much money at the end of the process and that really pissed off the russian HR ladies

it wasn't really my intention to ask too much, I didn't have any reference so I tried coming up with something. next time in a similar situation, even if they ask, I guess I'll just wait for an offer

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
lovely, they didn't even counter? that must be a hell of a spread if they just gave up. or maybe their expectations on salary are just extremely hosed up. did they at least tell you? i went too high once and i was at least told this. then i walked because no way i'm taking a 40k haircut when someone else was offering ... a 10k haircut :sigh:

but i'd been laid off and just bought a new house in a small canadian city so i took what i could at the time instead of holding out

now that i'm home and a bit calmer i can see how my first post on this topic was misconstrued. in the post when i wrote "we" i meant it in the colloquial "this organization that employs me" sense of the word, even though i know better than doing that (both in this forum and in general). i hope this is a satisfying end to my meltdown for y'all

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord

Cold on a Cob posted:

or maybe their expectations on salary are just extremely hosed up.

if I'm correct it was probably more around this, I'm brazilian so I guess they just expected they could hire me for super cheap

Cold on a Cob posted:

did they at least tell you?

lol of course not, but right after I emailed them my salary expectation the person who referred me to the company emailed me all panicky "what the gently caress, what did you say to them? did you offend them?" lmao

he tried his best to salvage the process but my number really put a stake on the whole thing

Symbolic Butt fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Jan 1, 2019

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
i'm still loling at the idea of all these HR/management people offended by your salary demands

"don't take it personally if we lay you off or whatever, it's just business. unless it's your salary, in which case show some decorum and restraint!!"

AWWNAW
Dec 30, 2008

whenever a recruiter asks me for a number I just say 225

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
i say 420.69 (per hour obvs)

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

just show them your alpha nerd chops by saying 42 over and over

and then follow up with some monty python quotes

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost

Cold on a Cob posted:

i'm still loling at the idea of all these HR/management people offended by your salary demands

"don't take it personally if we lay you off or whatever, it's just business. unless it's your salary, in which case show some decorum and restraint!!"

:decorum:

ShadowHawk
Jun 25, 2000

CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Cold on a Cob posted:

i wasn't even defending, just relating what i have seen and what i have been told :colbert:
I appreciated the anecdote.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Symbolic Butt posted:

just adding another datapoint, I'm pretty sure I hosed up a super long interviewing process this year because I asked too much money at the end of the process and that really pissed off the russian HR ladies

yeah, well, that happens. there's no way around it really. it's human nature.

you don't really know how much you are willing to pay until after you evaluate the product. just like when you walk into a car dealer expecting to spend $25k, and they talk you into $30k after you play around with the higher trim package.

you walk in trying to sell a product for $N dollars, and you don't know whether they'll bite until you've done the dog and pony show

if you tell them $N up front, a lot of people who might have actually been willing to pay just say "no" up front. (this is why hr spends so much time trying to extract the value for $N -- they get rewarded for filtering candidates out, on any basis, so it doesn't matter whether they passed over a good hire)

VikingofRock
Aug 24, 2008




I have an on-site technical interview at Google in a week as a software engineer. I'm coming to this straight out of academia (physics doctorate), so I'm not totally sure what to expect. I feel pretty confident about algorithms, code style, and unit testing, I did well on the practice problems that they gave me, and I'm comfortable at a whiteboard. To prepare, I'm working through Cracking the Coding Interview as a refresher, and also one of my friends from the industry is giving me a practice interview. Should I be doing anything else to prepare?

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

VikingofRock posted:

I have an on-site technical interview at Google in a week as a software engineer. I'm coming to this straight out of academia (physics doctorate), so I'm not totally sure what to expect. I feel pretty confident about algorithms, code style, and unit testing, I did well on the practice problems that they gave me, and I'm comfortable at a whiteboard. To prepare, I'm working through Cracking the Coding Interview as a refresher, and also one of my friends from the industry is giving me a practice interview. Should I be doing anything else to prepare?

practice solving whiteboard problems on a whiteboard or a blank piece of paper and specifically exercise explaining your thoughts as you go - what you're thinking of doing and why, and what tradeoffs or alternate routes you may have considered. you should also ask clarifying questions of the interviewer for anything that is vague or open to interpretation. ideally, this should effectively be a back and forth conversation between you and the interviewer, and most of it should occur BEFORE your marker has even touched the board to start writing a solution, to the point that writing it down is largely just a formality after you've already worked it out in the preceding conversation

besides making you look good, explaining your strategy also gives the interviewer a window to intervene if you're going too far off track. the whole game is to demonstrate to them that you are methodical at solving problems in a way that even some bay area shithead could understand

they generally like problems that can be answered in an hour and that don't have too much domain specific knowledge. the problems will therefore often revolve around data structures and related algorithms. for example a problem that involves applying a hash map or a tree to solve. the best problems are ones that don't require some stupid "trick" to figure out but they often end up that way regardless, particularly if the interviewer is bad at giving (this kind of) interviews. good problems will also have follow-up additions which add complexity to the solution you had provided to the original problem theyd asked. other times the problem may even have been intentionally presented in a vague way to see if you are able to ask follow-up questions (which would be done in the discussion described above)

however you may also find yourself being asked some truly crazy things out of left field like "hey what's this thing on your resume about"

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Progressive JPEG posted:

however you may also find yourself being asked some truly crazy things out of left field like "hey what's this thing on your resume about"

oh gently caress

qhat
Jul 6, 2015


Fyi unless you are entry level, you, the candidate, hold a lot of cards. Rejecting someone because they refused to give out salary info is dumb and is basically a giant admission that you are in the business of ripping your employees off, at least that's how it would look. At the end of the day you want the best guy for the job, and throwing that resume in the bin probably hurt your company in the long run because he's now going to go to your competitors for a job.

At any rate, the whole thing about not saying salary upfront is not just about showing your hand, it's about keeping the door open with the employer to explore the true value you could provide to them and getting compensated fairly for it. Neither you nor the candidate want to be locking in expectations right at the start when you have no idea what either one of you can truly provide.

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

qhat posted:

Fyi unless you are entry level, you, the candidate, hold a lot of cards. Rejecting someone because they refused to give out salary info is dumb and is basically a giant admission that you are in the business of ripping your employees off

accurate and why i can't wait to put this employer contract behind me

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...


VikingofRock posted:

I'm coming to this straight out of academia (physics doctorate), so I'm not totally sure what to expect.

make everything an analogy to physics, they love that poo poo

Symbolic Butt posted:

he tried his best to savage the process

Symbolic Butt
Mar 22, 2009

(_!_)
Buglord
oops typo!

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


Gazpacho posted:

it was my understanding that for japanese professionals there are no "next places"

demographics are such that a japanese professional is an increasingly rare thing, thus the companies are having to adjust to this reality as well

Tatsujin posted:

given the standard japanese advice of 'dont make a fuss', but at the same time being a foreigner they probably think that you don't know you're expected to just shut up and sign

it’s funny though, the company was founded mostly by foreigners so they should know that there uhh might be a cultural difference

of course if you’ve done your phd and all professional experience in japan then chances are good you brainwashed yourself into a weeaboo

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


ngl I feel like living and working in japan would be a bad idea, at least for me

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Pollyanna posted:

ngl I feel like living and working in japan would be a bad idea, at least for me

as far as i can tell from the china/asia thread in the grey forum being a foreigner in japan is second class citizen at best

expect also: regressive views on women

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
might be a cool place for a working holiday of sorts, just do a few years then leave, but i can't imagine trying to make it there long term as a foreigner

fritz
Jul 26, 2003

fritz posted:

im deep in the pipeline at a place, to the point where theyve contacted references, and i wish they would just hurry up and make up their minds one way or the other because yowza i want out

update: i know its been the holidays but two weeks later and no updates i think maybe i should take the hint, oh well

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Boiled Water posted:

as far as i can tell from the china/asia thread in the grey forum being a foreigner in japan is second class citizen at best

expect also: regressive views on women

Cold on a Cob posted:

might be a cool place for a working holiday of sorts, just do a few years then leave, but i can't imagine trying to make it there long term as a foreigner

I’m still amazed that the us is on average more liberal than japan

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene

Pollyanna posted:

I’m still amazed that the us is on average more liberal than japan

japan conceives of itself as a nation-state

the united states is not, and never has been. it's literally right in the fuckin name.

Notorious b.s.d.
Jan 25, 2003

by Reene
see also: race riots blanketing europe

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


ethnostate

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Infinotize
Sep 5, 2003

Many places in Europe are extremely isolated and insular and that often overlaps with xenophobia and racism. Japan and a lot or most of east and southeast asia are super conservative and xenophobic and racist. Japan and Korea are 2 of the most misogynistic countries on earth and are suspicious of any dark skinned people. To a degree that's because the populations are ethnically homogenous. So while they may be more liberal or progressive in other ways they have large blind spots.

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