"An applicant would be forced to interview with more than three to six people for up to six months."
Forced? Don't be absurd.
"After the culmination of an arduous, emotionally draining interview process, an offer could be made that is far below the expectations of the eager candidate."
There's nothing whatsoever preventing the candidate from, at the beginning, saying: "hey, before we spend a lot of time on this, what kind of salaries are we talking?"
And at the end, if the candidate gets a lowball offer, there's nothing whatsoever preventing him making a counteroffer.
Those of us who work in tech operate with a lot of privileges compared to many many other workers.
All of these options technically exist, but make a lot of assumptions that aren't true for my non techie friends who are looking for work. It's not unusual in a lot of industries for companies to not continue to interview someone who doesn't let them decide everything about the process.
> It's not unusual in a lot of industries for companies to not continue to interview someone who doesn't let them decide everything about the process.
To put this into perspective, some companies and agencies do group interviews, where there are a few dozen applicants for a role in a large room that are whittled down and told to go home if they don't fit some criteria. Then whoever is left is hired. There's no room for negotiation, literally or figuratively.
Many candidates interview with multiple companies. Then they whittle the list down, and break off negotiations with companies that don't fit some criteria. Then they accept the offer from whoever is left.
I don't know any employee that has company owners show up to their auditorium and then raise their hands, respond or leave in response to the requirements the employee starts listing. I also don't know any employer that will starve, become homeless or be unable to see a doctor if they don't hire someone at the employer's desired salary. A job is necessary to live, while a new hire is a luxury that will help you become wealthier. I wouldn't say those situations are comparable.
In your reductive view of the world do you hold the distinction that one is a person seeking meaningful employment while the other is a business seeking to fundamentally change xploit someone's labour?
If more people simply said "no", that wouldn't work for companies. Even so, I doubt that employers can afford to be that picky. If they could, everyone would be getting minimum wage. Everyone getting above minimum wage obviously has leverage.
Just say "no"? And do what? Lot's of folks are supporting others, or need to support themselves.
"Sorry my sweet daughter, no cancer treatment this week, I said no to that job."
I have 0 clue why you think picky === minimum wage. It just means suppressed wages, which is highly documented. Even the big tech companies had agreements not to "poach".
That's why they organize into political groups and manipulate wages on the nation-state policy level.
Owner vs. worker power struggle is always all about who can better coordinate collective action. Owners have an inherent and mostly dominating coordination advantage.
> Cartels try to deal with this by making compliance required by law.
That's what I'm saying.
Except you have the wrong idea about stability, because the law itself is the cartel, and very stable.
> It's not a power struggle. It's supply and demand.
It's not supply and demand because it's about which side coordinates better!
Supply and demand, the labor market, and markets generally, exist within parameters determined by political collective action. The big owners generally get their way but there is some democratic pushback.
I'm not thinking of things like non-poaching but things like tuning the level of social benefits in order to control the supply of labor.
If the workers get too powerful, they starve them one way or another.
Back in the early 20th century the socialist radicals had ideas about making one giant union of all the workers. If they could coordinate every industry they could negotiate for everything!
The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (aka Taft-Hartley) made all such ideas quite simply illegal.
If unions get too powerful, unions will be hobbled.
If the market fails to deliver exploitable labor, the market will be fixed.
Do you have family that struggles financially, or lacks the education and training for anything more than Walmart or if really lucky a mechanic?
The world you live in is nothing like the people this law was designed for, where labor exploitation is rampant and worker desperation so high that you don't have the luxury to wait for new opportunities because you can't feed your family or risk being evicted.
To be really honest here, New York City's labor market is famously exploitative of creatives and depending on the employer the same job can pay $200k or be an illegal internship with a metrocard stipend.
I know an animator who was "interning" full-time for 12 years before someone intervened and made them speak up for themselves to demand a paying job.
Good copywriters are worth every penny you can pay them, but I see loads of legitimate businesses trying to pay minimum wage for fulltimers.
> legitimate businesses trying to pay minimum wage
Of course. This is how supply+demand works. I'd bet every worker wants to be paid $$$$$$. The two parties then negotiate!
After all, when you buy a car, do decide you're going to add $10,000 to the asking price of the car so Cratchet's commission can buy Christmas presents for Timmy? Or are you going to get the best price you can?
Everyone tries to get the best price - employer, employee, salesman, customer. That's how markets work.
Yes, but thankfully markets aren't completely free and the government sets a floor on the price of your labor and things like price gouging are illegal.
And if we all had to negotiate our salaries from a minimum wage it would be an epic waste of time for both employers and job-seekers, so what point are you actually making here?
I was quite directly saying that employers in creative spaces in NYC are taking advantage of salary information (or even labor law) inequality in order to exploit the people they hire. NYC has quite-rightly decided to make this illegal and is leveling the playing field somewhat.
I've hired people for non-tech, no-skill jobs. They can and do often turn them down. They also walk off the job, never to be seen again, whenever they feel like it. I was paying above market rates, too.
I mow my lawn myself because I can't get anyone to do it for less than $400/mo., and that was 5 years ago.
Old people are notorious for exploiting informational asymmetry against the young and innocent or the naive. All of human history shows what a problem this is. Making things more transparent and fair is good for everyone except malicious old people.
> There's nothing whatsoever preventing the candidate from, at the beginning, saying: "hey, before we spend a lot of time on this, what kind of salaries are we talking?"
True, but futile.
Any* enterprise will answer that with "What are your expectations for the role?"
No* enterprise will tell you a number until making the actual offer unless legally obligated.
This is HR 101, where risk aversion informs policy handed down to hiring managers. (In six figure job cases, often hiring manager isn't even allowed to say a number, there's a separate comp team.)
I get informed all the time on HackerNews that I cannot negotiate certain things. But I can, and do it all the time. All these futile attempts are not so futile at all.
For example, I've negotiated price with doctors and dentists. I negotiate with auto shops. I negotiate with employers. I negotiate with department stores.
I used to think like you. Then I had a friend from Iran. He'd haggle everything with everyone. I was shocked he did that. I was further shocked at how successful he was at it! And so I learned.
P.S. There's nothing more mutable than a policy that some business will tell you is non-negotiable. It's all negotiable.
I have a friend who's contract is coming up for renewal. The company says things are tight, and said their best offer was a 5% decrease in the amount they'll pay. My friend told them his expenses have risen, and demanded a 7% increase.
Ya just gotta know how to do it, and have the stones to follow through.
> I get informed all the time on HackerNews that I cannot negotiate certain things. But I can, and do it all the time.
That's different, and yes, you should absolutely negotiate! Their policy has them offer you below what they are happy to pay, well below what they are willing to pay. Do some research first, pick comps like a realtor picking houses. Understand you're on the sell side, so pick defensible and high comps.
Most likely, they didn't really pick comps, because the people who set their pay bands don't know that the consultant market data about tech jobs includes your uncle's other nephew that fixes computers at home, and a lot of other classes lumped in by job classifications, so the numbers they think are true are .. half? .. what you could make at a good shop. So again, choose well and defensibly.
Now the tables are turned, information asymmetry is in your favor. If they were lowballing, they'll come up easily. If they were stuck in a pay band, you're enabling them to get unstuck, which helps them and you. You have a valid pay scale, it's not about whether they evaluated you well during interviewing, its about whether the company is hiring well. In this situation the hiring manager probably has gathered their HR team is trying to make them under-pay, you're probably the nth candidate asking for more than they were told to offer -- but you're the first to bring them the proof points. They now go have an internal fight, better armed, and get you paid. Maybe.
But to be clear, YES - NEGOTIATE. :-)
For what its worth, this also works of course at the car dealer, but also at, say, BestBuy, or retail clothing stores, or most anywhere incentives can become aligned.
PS. Contrary to your characterization of my thinking, I never thought like you used to think (wink), as I came of age in Africa myself. All prices for anything in both directions were fluid and dynamic. So I came back to the US and just said "here's what I'll pay" and it worked.
A general comment to the people who replied to me:
There are many books on negotiation you can buy. They aren't hard to find, and are easy reads. Invest a few dollars and a couple hours reading them. It can change your lives for the better. Even a modest effort here can pay off handsomely with $$$ in your pocket. The government isn't going to do it for you.
My interest isn't in wringing the most possible out of my negotiation with a company. I don't want to "win". I want to get what I want (even if that means that I'm not getting the most possible).
More importantly, unrelated to how much I get, I prefer things be fair. I think it is stupid that your ability to negotiate has a larger impact on your compensation than your proficiency in many cases. Reading a book on negotiating doesn't fix that, but getting the law changed does.
> I think it is stupid that your ability to negotiate has a larger impact on your compensation than your proficiency in many cases
Nobody in my long life has ever called me handsome. It's unfair. I can't fix that. But I can find other ways to succeed.
I know many proficient people who are bitter that nobody recognized their talent and they consistently get overlooked. They ask me for advice, I give it, they ignore it and get even more bitter.
Nobody is going to toot your horn for you. You're gonna have to do it yourself. Want to know who was a master at that? Steve Jobs. He never sat around waiting for someone to notice his brilliance. How about the Kardashians? The same. Pick any celebrity. Same story.
> I know many proficient people who are bitter that nobody recognized their talent and they consistently get overlooked. They ask me for advice, I give it, they ignore it and get even more bitter.
This has nothing to do with salary negotiation. Tooting your own horn might help you get the job, but it won't help you when you're trying to haggle over your compensation. And generally speaking, knowing how to advocate for yourself is a far more useful skill than salary negotiation, and yet the second will often have a greater impact on your compensation which is my point.
The other half of my point is that me getting paid more doesn't fix discrimination. And you saying "yeah but people should learn how to not be discriminated against", isn't the best response. Yeah, sure, it might help some people, but not everyone will be able to take the advice, so instead of making people bootstrap themselves up, I'll advocate for the social shortcut of changing the law.
Forced? Don't be absurd.
"After the culmination of an arduous, emotionally draining interview process, an offer could be made that is far below the expectations of the eager candidate."
There's nothing whatsoever preventing the candidate from, at the beginning, saying: "hey, before we spend a lot of time on this, what kind of salaries are we talking?"
And at the end, if the candidate gets a lowball offer, there's nothing whatsoever preventing him making a counteroffer.