I frequently get requests from people who want to know how much they should be making in their jobs or how much they should be paying their employees. As the person that sits in on the salary discussions for a wide variety of technology companies here in the Washington, DC area this is a frequent topic. It came up twice today, both with a client and with a friend who wanted to make sure they are in the right place. Sometimes this is isn’t easy because I’m in a position where I have to represent the interests of company management. I am open about this whenever someone asks me this kind of question and will happily tell you if I can speak candidly or not. If I will also happily tell you where you can go to find the answers. This is life in the management consulting world that I eat, breathe and sleep.
So tonight, after I just spoke with someone about this, I am going to share some secrets that will help job seekers and hiring teams can use to help themselves to know where they stand with respect to the salary negotiation table.
Secret #1: Your pay package isn’t as important as the value that you get out of it. If you work a 2500 hours in a year that is different from 2000 hours. If you work in a job where you are not learning anything, or worse, your work is super compartmentalized (think CMMI or 40 person developer team), then your value as an engineer is diminishing rapidly and it doesn’t matter how much this job pays (if you plan to move - EVER).
Secret #2: You need to network. Even if you don’t talk salary with your peers (which I would NEVER recommend - perhaps we can discuss this in a future post), you should talk to people in your community. It requires leaving your computer behind (usually), but it will pay massive dividends.
Secret #3: You need to check out Indeed.com’s salary tool. It provides some great analysis and segmented data based on job titles and zip codes. It isn’t perfect, but it is very useful.
Secret #4: You need to know what you need to make. Sounds simple, right? Maybe it is, but you need to calculate how much your cost of living is and then decide for yourself. Forget about this and you will be looking for a new job sooner rather than later.
Secret #5: Your peers will change jobs and help you get a better job down the road. If you go to work somewhere where people are uninspired then so will the opportunities that arise down the road.
The counterpoint to all of this for employers is that if you are not considering the same variables then your employees are. Start thinking about it today.
