How do I measure my (monetary) worth?
April 17, 2015 12:13 PM Subscribe
Let's pretend Glassdoor, Payscale, and other similar websites don't exist. How do you determine what to ask for in salary? How to I determine my value to a company in a role I haven't inhabited before?
I am entering into the fourth round of interviews at Big Company and suspect that salary questions will be asked during my next interview. I have used every keyword I can think of (the title alone is not helpful) to ferret out the market value for this position, but the answers are all over the board (anywhere from $33k - $110k) and I don't trust just picking the mean or median.
This job is not in my desired field, but it utilizes many of the same skills. For Reasons, salary ranges are also very hard to search in the field I intend to enter into later. So, I would like to figure out how to judge my skills and the job responsibilities in such a way that I can make an intelligent decision about what salary to expect (bearing in mind variances by geographic area, sector, etcetera).
I do not know how to do this kind of analysis. Do you? Will you teach me? I can dance around the question and coax them into putting a number on the table first, but I still want to be able to figure out what to expect so I can tell whether I'm being low-balled (or the opposite!).
I am entering into the fourth round of interviews at Big Company and suspect that salary questions will be asked during my next interview. I have used every keyword I can think of (the title alone is not helpful) to ferret out the market value for this position, but the answers are all over the board (anywhere from $33k - $110k) and I don't trust just picking the mean or median.
This job is not in my desired field, but it utilizes many of the same skills. For Reasons, salary ranges are also very hard to search in the field I intend to enter into later. So, I would like to figure out how to judge my skills and the job responsibilities in such a way that I can make an intelligent decision about what salary to expect (bearing in mind variances by geographic area, sector, etcetera).
I do not know how to do this kind of analysis. Do you? Will you teach me? I can dance around the question and coax them into putting a number on the table first, but I still want to be able to figure out what to expect so I can tell whether I'm being low-balled (or the opposite!).
Call a recruiter in your area that specializes in your field, and tell them you're look and want to know what they could get for you.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:35 PM on April 17, 2015
posted by blue_beetle at 12:35 PM on April 17, 2015
Are you working with a recruiter? If so you could call them up and say that if and when salary negotiations come up you'd like to be on the same page about salary ranges given your qualifications and could they please let you know what the role typically comes with salary wise.
posted by Hermione Granger at 12:36 PM on April 17, 2015
posted by Hermione Granger at 12:36 PM on April 17, 2015
Response by poster: I am technically working with a recruiter in this instance, but he's in-house with this specific company, so I think his usefulness in this instance is limited to helping me schedule interviews and find out who I'm going to be interviewing with.
I'm looking more for general guidance; advice I can turn to again if this happens a second time in another position in the future.
posted by Urban Winter at 12:54 PM on April 17, 2015
I'm looking more for general guidance; advice I can turn to again if this happens a second time in another position in the future.
posted by Urban Winter at 12:54 PM on April 17, 2015
Even in house recruiters are willing to talk salary ranges! Don't discount them --- they've always been the best resource for me when it comes to finding out ballpark ranges and such.
posted by Hermione Granger at 3:40 PM on April 17, 2015
posted by Hermione Granger at 3:40 PM on April 17, 2015
Odds are good that whichever position you're applying for, it has advancement ranks (Junior Software Developer, Software Developer, Senior Developer, Principal Engineer, etc).
It's a good question to ask in general, but it can also reveal something on salary: Ask about what distinguishes between the ranks, what it takes for someone to go from [where you're applying] to [one step above], and what the compensation bands are.
This is good information to have, it looks good to an interviewer as they know you're looking to sharpen your skills, and they should provide some idea of where they're thinking you might fit within.
posted by CrystalDave at 4:06 PM on April 17, 2015
It's a good question to ask in general, but it can also reveal something on salary: Ask about what distinguishes between the ranks, what it takes for someone to go from [where you're applying] to [one step above], and what the compensation bands are.
This is good information to have, it looks good to an interviewer as they know you're looking to sharpen your skills, and they should provide some idea of where they're thinking you might fit within.
posted by CrystalDave at 4:06 PM on April 17, 2015
I have used every keyword I can think of (the title alone is not helpful) to ferret out the market value for this position, but the answers are all over the board (anywhere from $33k - $110k) and I don't trust just picking the mean or median.
Department of Labor publishes wages and job descriptions in their Occupational Outlook Handbook. Once you think you've found the most relevant role, you can find more detailed information in the Occupational Employment Survey, which covers pay variations based on industry and regional factors. This is the original glassdoor, without the selection bias.
If you have a special snowflake situation that is outside the 80 percent of jobs the OOH/OES covers, then you have to resort to more Hayekian methods. Hayek claims that market economies work well because prices embed information and that information is distributed across society. Meaning that allocating yourself to the highest paying job means you'll be doing the most good for society. Under this scenario, you ideally want multiple competing offers, so that employers are bidding what they think you're worth to them.
It's helpful to think of this from the employer's seat: How much should they be offering the typical candidate for the position? There's a number of ways.
You can think of it from the perspective of what value you provide. If you hire a widget assembler for ten dollars an hour, they need to be able to assemble enough widgets per hour for the company to sell to cover their wage. Preferably more. Similarly, if you're a salaried lawyer at a big firm, you need to bill your clients enough hours to cover your salary, and administrative overhead.
Some jobs have a less direct measurable impact. I think computer security is the best example I know of. We're really good at preventing most of the automated attacks that hit every internet connected server daily. But motivated attackers targetting your infrastructure specifically are much harder to defend against, but also much rarer. These are the things we generally associate with security: large, rare events. The black swans of computer security. To the best of my knowledge, there are no ROI metrics for this sort of computer security. We have no idea how much value security administrators provide. It could be negative, costing firms salary, but also lost opportunity cost from other admin's time, and from making the daily operations for staff harder and less efficient. In this scenario, you look for jobs with comparable qualifications and skills, and make a guess at what you'll pay.
posted by pwnguin at 12:29 PM on April 19, 2015
Department of Labor publishes wages and job descriptions in their Occupational Outlook Handbook. Once you think you've found the most relevant role, you can find more detailed information in the Occupational Employment Survey, which covers pay variations based on industry and regional factors. This is the original glassdoor, without the selection bias.
If you have a special snowflake situation that is outside the 80 percent of jobs the OOH/OES covers, then you have to resort to more Hayekian methods. Hayek claims that market economies work well because prices embed information and that information is distributed across society. Meaning that allocating yourself to the highest paying job means you'll be doing the most good for society. Under this scenario, you ideally want multiple competing offers, so that employers are bidding what they think you're worth to them.
It's helpful to think of this from the employer's seat: How much should they be offering the typical candidate for the position? There's a number of ways.
You can think of it from the perspective of what value you provide. If you hire a widget assembler for ten dollars an hour, they need to be able to assemble enough widgets per hour for the company to sell to cover their wage. Preferably more. Similarly, if you're a salaried lawyer at a big firm, you need to bill your clients enough hours to cover your salary, and administrative overhead.
Some jobs have a less direct measurable impact. I think computer security is the best example I know of. We're really good at preventing most of the automated attacks that hit every internet connected server daily. But motivated attackers targetting your infrastructure specifically are much harder to defend against, but also much rarer. These are the things we generally associate with security: large, rare events. The black swans of computer security. To the best of my knowledge, there are no ROI metrics for this sort of computer security. We have no idea how much value security administrators provide. It could be negative, costing firms salary, but also lost opportunity cost from other admin's time, and from making the daily operations for staff harder and less efficient. In this scenario, you look for jobs with comparable qualifications and skills, and make a guess at what you'll pay.
posted by pwnguin at 12:29 PM on April 19, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
I've gone in blind and paid the price for many years to come for not insisting on getting grade range level in advance, and or not being able to get the company to follow through on an agreed upon timely reassessment once we're settled in.
posted by tilde at 12:29 PM on April 17, 2015