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Admin
Zreoth
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Snoofle - Indeed. (no further comment needed)
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Good for you that you can afford to stand for your principles, Remy.
Many other would have done differently (including me, I think, but then again I have much less than 30+ years of experience).
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Ooops, I misread the author - that's not Remy, it's snoofle.
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Totally agree, Remy. If only I was as close to retirement ;)
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Good for you, Remy!
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That's the subtlest "Make $$$$/day working from home!" spam comment I've ever seen.
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I'm in a similar position. I'm lucky enough that working hard for decades has given me some choices.
Everybody's scared of money, and it messes us up. It messed up the hiring manager in this story.
Why didn't he just have a conversation with snoofle along these lines:
Mgr. Hey, any chance we can get you for a little less? Your cost is a little high for our budget this year. Snoofle. I'm listening. Mgr: How about 120 instead of 140. Snoofle: Look, you know I'm worth 140, and so do I. Mgr: If you can help us out this year, I'll budget for a bonus at the beginning of the next budget cycle. Snoofle: How do I know you're not messing with me? Mgr: You don't. But I'm not.
Admin
We get it, we get it. You don't need the money. sheesh. Now, back to work for the rest of us.
PS: Are snoofle and remy the same person? heh
Admin
"A few days later, he called me again and informed me that he got the budget to pay the originally agreed-upon rate." At this point, my reply would be that based on what happened my demands had suddenly gone up by an additional $25K. Surely "no big deal".
(Note to all: I am not saying that this would have been a wise reply)
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Now that is artificial intelligence, isn't it.
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The mere idea that $50k "wasn't that much money" should disqualify them. It suggests the.sort of deep disconnect from reality that is endemic to the more asshole oriented tech culture.
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Good on you. That is some messed up nonsense right there.
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Aren't managers supposed to give you as little money as possible for the job? The fact that doing that means starting work with one eye on this job and another one on other opportunities is the managers problem, not yours.
Well, of course, if everybody working there is in the same situation, it might affect you to some extent, but, then again, there are no perfect jobs and people with one eye on other opportunities will always exist in any team.
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*manager's
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Some years ago I applied for a got a job as senior sysadmin at a company. They were pretty desperate for me to start and at the second interview agreed to pay me the salary I asked once I completed probation, and offered me the job on the spot, with a contract ready to be signed and an offer letter, right there and then! I said I needed to review the contract, and in the meanwhile they could amend the offer letter where the salary was specified in order to show the payrise after 3 months.
Come the end of the 3 months probation, I went to HR, where they mysteriously couldn't remember the pay rise, and only when I said I could go and collect the offer letter, did their memories miraculously return!
Moral: get it in writing, and hold your ground!
Admin
"Aren't managers supposed to give you as little money as possible for the job? "
To some extent, true (they still need to get qualified employees, keep them properly motivated, etc.), but the issue here isn't "Snoofle wants $50K more for the job".
The issue is they advertised and interviewed for a position paying $X for Y years of experience then at the last minute pulled a bait-and-switch to say that they really needed Y-15 years of experience and would pay $X-$50K. If they truly didn't have the budget for the position, they shouldn't have advertised as such. It's just a shady search tactic where they hope the candidate is thinking past the sale, had envisioned their job search being over, etc.
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It's a lot either way. If I made $50k less than I did right now, I'd be making less than minimum wage. Yes, I live in a flyover state. It's good money here.
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Are you sure they paid less than the job post offer? I would bet they said $X-$Y and they offered $Y-50K, which was in the $X-$Y interval. Until we get the exact details, most responses here are just emotional ones towards "the bastards".
Admin
Amen brother, amen.
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Good for you being able to walk away. I had a government agency pull that stunt on me once. Unfortunately, I was on unemployment at the time so I didn't have that luxury. The upside, I guess, is that their egos handcuffed me so much that they didn't get a fraction of even the reduced amount that they were paid for. The only thing more astonishing than how much the "senior" developers there didn't know was how much they didn't want to know.
Admin
snoofle,
In kind of the same boat, just keeping busy because I enjoy the problem solving, not because I enjoy the work or need the money.
On thing to consider in this sort of deal (I'm hoping to stumble into a deal like this somewhere) is to take a reduced salary for reduced hours. Since money isn't the object (but the manager's slimy tactics are), perhaps another approach is to negotiate "-$50K means three days/week".
You get what you really want (keeping busy), he gets someone with good skills and experience.
Glad to hear you're found a charity to work with, that's another direction I'm considering moving.
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Preach!
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"Aren't managers supposed to give you as little money as possible for the job? " Not really. Their job is finding someone who fulfils the minimum requirements, and is worth their money. Their next job is to keep them productive, and keeping them happy is often the easiest way to keep them productive. And the next job is to make the employee stay.
Being an arsehole who reduces an offer by $50k doesn't achieve any of the goals that a manager should have. If it happened to me, I would make a counter offer of say $10k more than the original offer. Because I don't want to be greedy, and there's a small chance they accept it and that means I am in a very, very strong position at that company.
Admin
Tricks used to hire H1B's!
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"I had a government agency pull that stunt on me once."
Ditto. Guess where I don't work anymore!
And that agency wonders why they can't retain STEM talent. Well, actually they don't, they just hire contractors. (Guess what I am now!) Which of course means that they effectively spend way more on the salaries of the people doing the work than if they'd just hired directly and paid fairly, but hey, government.
Admin
My jaw dropped at '$50k isn't a big deal'. The only time I can imagine that being true is if your paycheck is a number followed by about 20 zeroes. Tech companies themselves may be floated with billion-dollar IPOs, but not even the CEOs earn all that money. I have to say, nice follow-up, exactly what I would have said - suddenly $50k IS a big deal when it's coming out of an individual's pocket rather than the department budget!!
Don't blame you for walking away. I probably would have hung up the phone if they'd called me back, before they even got to 'okay, we give in, we'll pay you what we said we would after all'. Anyone belittling your earnings does not deserve respect - it doesn't matter that you don't need the money, as you said, your skills are worth that much. I have no doubt they'll try to screw over the next candidate, who might not be in a position to turn down the offer :(
What a f***ed-up planet this is.
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"$50k is not a big deal" - lol, f you very sincerely, mr manager. It's more than I make in a year.
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I will never understand people who would get a job just to give themselves something to do. Don't you people have hobbies? I have more hobbies that require more time than I would have even if I didn't have a job at all. Granted, most of these hobbies are video games, and I'd have time to play some of the video games I haven't been able to get to, and time play MMO's again, but if I wasn't working I'd have more time to devote to other non-video game hobbies. I could delve back into Go, do more modular origami, go take some free MOOC courses in physics and math, if I had some retired friends as well play way more board games. I could probably spend several hundred years before I got bored enough with all of that to even consider voluntarily going back to work just to have something to do. And even then, I probably wouldn't just to avoid any related stress or constraints on my time.
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Spoken like someone who still needs to work. Call me in 30 years to discuss it.
When my wife no longer wants to work, we WILL retire - together. Until then, games get boring quickly.
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Being a mostly retired part-time consultant, I sympathize. I left full-time work in 2008 but was not emotionally ready to stop working. My criteria were to work at home, have minimal travel, and get hourly pay commensurate with my years of experience, accomplishments, and specialization. I have had exactly that for the past 9 years.
Next month I will be fully retired. My hobbies await and travel is already booked.
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I work in NJ (Jersey City), in the financial industry with 27 years of experience... and $50k is not a small amount of money. Nope, not at all.
I'm unmarried, no kids, paid off my mortgage. I don't need to work. But after leaving a job last year, after 4 months I was starting to get bored, so found another one :-)
Admin
I work in NJ (Jersey City), in the financial industry with 27 years of experience... and $50k is not a small amount of money. Nope, not at all.
I'm unmarried, no kids, paid off my mortgage. I don't need to work. But after leaving a job last year, after 4 months I was starting to get bored, so found another one :-)
Admin
Anyone who thinks it's OK to advertise one salary for a job, then offer a lower one for a qualified candidate, should consider the following scenario:
I would guess 100% of you would walk away.
Admin
""A few days later, he called me again and informed me that he got the budget to pay the originally agreed-upon rate." At this point, my reply would be that based on what happened my demands had suddenly gone up by an additional $25K. Surely "no big deal". (Note to all: I am not saying that this would have been a wise reply)"
I basically did this to a company once. As part of a spin off I was cut loose as redundant, while my counterpart was handed a golden handshake (3 weeks of pay/year of service) (I had 6 years there, she had 35). Problem for them was we were the only two developers. Well, when they realized their HR dept had a left hand/right hand not talking problem they tried to get us back. She refused (they expected the buyout money back) and I added $100,000 to my wage requirement.
Interestingly neither of us worked for them and they had to scramble to fill the gap on an internal platform that was piss poor documented (not my fault, my predecessor "lost" the source code/docs for the FPGAs in the system, so all we had for the hardware was bins).
Admin
I was in a position like this once years ago. I had a regular job with a very small company where I mainly worked alone in the back office. I was also single and needed something to get myself out of the house other than my 9-5. So, I interviewed for a part-time loading job at a warehouse furniture type of place that advertised starting pay as $10/hr if you have previous employment. I went in, interviewed for the job and received the offer right then--at minimum wage. I turned it down stating that they advertised $10/hr. They replied that they didn't say when $10/hr starts or for what position--turns out it was management and after 6 months. They also said that anyone who applied for that type of job would be happy to take whatever was offered because it was something only desperate people would take. I thanked them for their time and said I wasn't going to waste anymore of mine talking with them. They called the next day and made an offer that if I signed a contract for 3 months I could start at $8/hr and go to $11/hr after 4 months. I told them it wasn't the money and I just wanted something to get out of the house but was turning it down because I couldn't trust them.
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Applied for a position last year offering a salary between $lowBoundary to $highBoundary. I was to the third interview when we started talking about salary. They asked what I would expect and I said I'd be satisfied with at least $lowBoundary, and they practically laughed me off and abruptly ended the interview.
Admin
Kudos to the author for walking. I'm in a very similar situation, and have also walked from bad deals.
Hint: sometimes it really is about the money, but most of the time it's about honesty.
Admin
Sometimes the best job you can do as a "salesman" is to say NO to the offer. Unfortunately many times that luxury isn't there, and the end result is likely a mess. It happens all the time. How many times have us IT guys had to cover some salesman's rear end when they promise "the world" and (you guessed it) we have to deliver.
There is a lesson for all of us to learn here.
Admin
$50K isn't a big deal -- so then Mr/Ms. HR manager you won't mind making up the difference from your own pocket then?
Admin
TRWTF here is that having too much fun while the wife is still at work would be detrimental to the marriage.
Admin
So you would travel and do the sorts of things that you can't do while you're working without your spouse? Either your spouse is a saint, or you don't have one
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It's rarely "about" money. Most engineers aren't thinking "I'm rich, biatch!", it's more about cutting through the bullshit. A manager can tell everyone who works for him, "you're such a great employee, I really love all your work," but he can't fake good pay. Your pay is a reasonably objective signal to you that you're putting enough time into working vs. other things in life like sleep or having fun or whatever.
And the signal works both ways. When someone messes with your pay and you do nothing, it proves to them they can mess with you in other ways. (And the harsh reality is sometimes they really do own you.) Snoofle was right to beat feet.
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First and foremost, they're not supposed to be dishonest.
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In all seriousness, why did you write this story, snoofle? Was it for our benefit, or for yours?
Do you believe many readers of this site are in the same position as you, working not for money but for other reasons? I doubt it.
Certainly, many of the responses here have been "Good on ya, mate, for turning it down." Yet I think less than 1 in 20 of us will ever be able to afford to follow your example.
In a very real sense, it seems like you wrote this story for the same reason that rap stars guzzle Hennessey and wear giant golden necklaces: to show off your own affluence.
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Not at all.
I've worked three and a half long, hard decades to get to this point, working very long hours and putting up with all manner of BS to get here.
I'm not "wealthy" by any stretch, but I can afford to live a reasonable life. If you start saving for it in your mid twenties like we did, you'll get there too,
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I'm 50. I've been in the workforce since 1986. I have worked plenty of 60 and 70 hour weeks. My life is not uncomfortable but I will never be able to do without work. So fine, if I'd been as brilliant and careful as you I might be in a better spot. But my point is that you are exceptional and unusual and it is fatuous to pretend otherwise.
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I'm more or less in a similar position to the author, and really working only because I like my job, and the people, and work. If someone is dishonest in the interview process, can you really expect them to be honest when you are an employee? Run, and don't look back. They won't change. A dishonest boss is not someone you want to work for.
Admin
Looking at some of the other comments. I got where I am by saving a large amount of my income and by avoiding expenses that could be avoided - i.e. $500,000 houses, $100,000 cars. Save as much as you can possibly, and scrimp on costs. Eat at home. Provides options that you might otherwise not have.
Admin
I don't know a lot about typical US salaries, but "50K is not a big deal" is the hugest WTF I ever saw on this site. This "not big deal" is what I make in a year.