On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 08:27:03PM -0400, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: > I have my own thoughts on this subject, of course, but I'd like to hear what > you guys say. > > > When you're on the market, how do you determine your own value?
What I'm getting now plus 20%. Obviously, this means that if I don't have any income, I'll take whatever I can get. I mean, I ask for whatever large number salary.com seems to say someone with a similar title can get, I have never seen any downside to asking for more, but I take whatever I end up getting. The thing is, I'm always available, if not actively looking. Make sure to interview once every few months. If someone offers me 20% more than I'm getting now? I take it. If someone else offers me 20% more, obviously the first company was lowballing me, so why should I stick around? My policy is to ask for it all in base salary; cash on the barrelhead. I can buy stock options if I want them, and if you are paying me enough to get me to work for you, well, you are probably part of some bubble that I don't want to invest in. I'm not a gold miner; I sell picks, shovels, and pans. There is a large difference. Now, obviously, I'm American, so I place something of a premium on good health insurance, and I try to convert other benefits like vacation that I will use to cash when I make this 20% calculation. I'm pretty irritated that health insurance is tied to your employer, and that the tax laws make paying in benefits rather than cash advantageous; it makes the math much harder. > When you're hiring, how do you determine their value? First, I assume by value, you mean "what should I pay this person" and not what value I'm going to get out of that employee. Those two numbers are largely unrelated, in part because the second number is quite difficult to determine. I mean, there are other reasons, too, but I think that's the main reason. I think the 20% rule is still good. I mean, obviously, I can't go and hire someone with a real job; I am paying myself around half what an entry level sysadmin in my area can expect right out of college, and I'm paying you less, right? I mean, I pay better than ISP tech support, but I demand *NIX SysAdmin ability. So, I'm getting people who have been out of the industry for a while, or people that are new that I think I can bring up to speed quickly. if I meet someone working retail or something, and I think they have the skills, I make sure that I give them at least 20% more than they are making now. Same goes if i poach from another small company like mine. (There is an entire industry built on paying kids $10/hr to do IT work, and sometimes those kids are worth poaching. I mean, in that case, I'll probably give 'em more than 20%, but you can usually get people to jump jobs for 20% more than what they are getting now, no matter what their current salary. Usually there has gotta be something wrong with the old job for them to take less.) The rules, I'm sure, are different if you have money; but you know? I can't remember the last time I switched jobs with less than a 20% raise, unless you count me leaving to work on my own stuff, so maybe that number I made up really is reasonable? For less than that, meh, I guess if the old job really stank I'd move, but it seems like a lot of effort, you know? Of course, you need to worry about some other company offering the kid 20% more than you are. In my case, I try to give large percentage raises every six months, and then I don't worry about it. Once someone with money notices they are good, it's over for me, which is okay. That's part of the deal; you work for me as a sysadmin for level-2 wages for a while, and eventually someone comes along and gives you a real sysadmin job. If you have money, you probably want to figure out what the competition is paying; being as I haven't hired someone when I had money, I don't know a lot about this, and I guess that was your central question. When I was much younger I'd use salary.com to justify raises; but I think that mostly worked for me because the version of salary.com I had access to at the time didn't factor in experience or education, and I was young with no college degree, so the salary.com number was always smaller than what I got. Looking at salary.com now, huh. yeah, actually it looks about right. I'd laugh at offers below the 75th percentile, and I'd think about letting the kid run prgmr.com for a while if someone wanted to offer me more than the 90th percentile, which is probably about right for my experience level. Note, the 20% rule applies to hourly rate applied to hours of actual work; The number of expected hours of work can vary dramatically from one salary job to the next. My girl has been trying to poach one of my friends to do qe work for the company she works for; My friend currently works doing QE for a company that makes set-top boxes, and he's one of those guys who is way better than anyone else willing to work that job at that company. He can do most whatever he wants, as long as he keeps things moving forward. "I get to watch a lot of TV at work" he explains, so even though moving would net him more than 20% salary increase, I believe he's turning down the job because it may, in fact, decrease his hourly rate. -- Luke S. Crawford http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
