[Baypiggies] Job - Salary Questions

[Nathan Yergler]

God forbid that I prolong this thread, but I'd like to offer a data
point which counters this.  I don't claim that it's representative,
only factual.

I was considering applying for a position with an east coast company
that does all Python, and they explicitly state that they require
"salary requirements" with resumes.  I was chatting with the CTO at
PyCon that year and expressed my reservations about that.  He
basically said, "look, it's in no one's interest for us to talk to
people who require a salary outside our means; it's not a good use of
time and it's not fiscally responsible for us to convince ourselves
that they're worth it and stretch ourselves too thin.  It's also not
in our best interest to pay someone just what they require if we want
to retain them.  So hopefully people see it as an opportunity to start
a mutually beneficial, trusting relationship."  I think the thing that
struck me was that I was assuming "the man" was out to get me, and
here the man was saying "we're trusting you to do our business, we
require some trust in return."

I applied, stated my requirements (with some justification), and
received an offer at the top end of the range I specified.  I wound up
turning it down for reasons unrelated to salary, but the experience
does make me approach that question differently these days.

FWIW,

Nathan


On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Roderick Llewellyn
<roderick at sanfransystems.com> wrote:
> Thanks those of you who responded to my questions about salary requirements
> on application forms. I have been checking out some of the sites mentioned
> by you. The Rands in Repose site has some good information, although it is
> obviously directed towards young people who are now currently working,
> basically the opposite of my situation. The salary.com site yields numbers
> compatible with those I've given on these forms, though knowing how one fits
> into salary.com's "Software Engineer X" (where X goes from 1 to 5) is
> unclear.
> I think I agree with those who say that if they ask for a number, one
> shouldn't bother working for them. A firm's asking for these numbers
> actually suggests insecurity on its part about what they should pay. Perhaps
> they are just fishing for income information and don't intend to hire
> anybody.
> Again thanks,
> Rod L.
>
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