How can I stay motivated working at a company that I know I left money on the table in job offer?
Posted by realitynofantasy@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 21 comments
Good day,
Just a background about my situation. I am currently in a contract position that is bound to end this June 27. Few weeks ago, I started applying so that I have a company to work for once my contract ends.
More info. My current company I am working at as a contractor gives me $220k a year rate. It has same benefits as a full time permanent position. Only difference is that it has a contract and being absorbed/extended is not predictable. I have been working here for 6 months.
The company I accepted an offer at I was able to get $113k a year. It is a permanent position. It is also a product company in cybersecurity space so I think I will learn a lot here. As in the interview, they mentioned that I will be assigned overseas (around 6-12 months) to be trained and have knowledge transfer. Their goal is to expand the expertise in our site.
Before working at my contract based role. I was working a full time permanent position earning $95k a year. I worked there for a year before taking the contract based role.
I am feeling bad right now because after signing the offer. I started to realize that I should have said that my expected salary was $130k. Upon further research, I learned that peers with same experience as mine is earning that amount and more in the same company.
Now, that I already signed it out of fear during the job offer because I can't handle the chance of the offer being rescinded and my contract ending. I said the figure of $113k.
I know I should be happy I secured the job already and that it is an increase compared to my last full time permanent position. But it still stings that I know I could have secured more, it also stings that it is a big gap from my contract role.
I want to ask for some advice from you guys on how to shift my mindset and not be so bothered by it. I am afraid that I might be disengaged in my job and not grow. Thank you!
Ozymandias0023@reddit
It's money you didn't have before, and you still don't have it. Nothing has changed, you didn't actually lose anything. Just focus on doing a good job, enjoying your work and appreciating that you make 6 figures sitting on your ass. We have it pretty good, objectively.
Then, after some time has passed and you've made positive impact on the team, see if you can renegotiate your salary. But seriously, it's so not worth getting yourself in a twist over something you can't change right now.
deer_hobbies@reddit
It’s okay to be bothered by it. Being lowballed sucks.
But like, I don’t know where you are, but for me, if I haven’t started work somewhere, that’s the time to bring up that I don’t like a contract. If it’s in the US, you could try asking if they’ll reconsider for the reasons you laid out here - you want to be able to give your full attention to the role. Nothing is guaranteed, and if you can’t afford the risk of potentially losing the role, then it may not be worth the (imo small if you’re respectful and professional about the ask) risk.
Also, if you’re making $225k on a contract, why are you accepting such a low full time rate at all? Often full time pays better than contracts, at least here in the US.
t-tekin@reddit
This is not correct,
Every tech company pays contract positions higher. The flexibility of the position to the company, instability to the other side, and various other factors like tax differences changes the pay.
For an apples to apples position contract positions should pay easily 25% more. (Here read this old thread, same thing applies today: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/iou98b/whats_the_conversion_rate_from_fte_salary_to/)
But regardless, I also think apples to apples conversion should be a higher rate for full time.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
You’re talking about something different:
You’re 100% correct that the dollar number for a contract role should be higher than the equivalent full time salary with benefits. The contractor has to pay the employment taxes (which are paid by the employer for full-time employees) and also for benefits, as well as some overhead for the risk of not finding work in between contracts.
However, the average contract role tends to have lower overall net full time equivalent pay than full time roles.
There is also a separate, pointy end of the contracting world that is more like consulting, where companies pay much more than they would for FTEs because they need specialized experience for a short time. That’s not the common case, though.
t-tekin@reddit
The key word here is “apples to apples positions”. Sure the pay depends on the company’s hiring strategy and the purpose of the contractor.
Regardless, even if the contractor was hired for a lower responsibility or for a position that has less importance, compared to the full time positions that are doing the same work they should be still earning more.
The company strategy might be to solely employ contractors for this type of responsibilities, but then you just have no comparable full time worker.
You can make the same argument with specialist and consultant positions.
deer_hobbies@reddit
I’ve seen this and have heard this, but it’s really not my experience. I do see some local contract roles at $95/hr for instance but for FTE roles at those companies they make well over that in total comp. It’s just been my experience having worked for agencies.
I agree that contractors should be paid more, but often contractors and temps are just lesser-than employees and treated as such!
t-tekin@reddit
Hmm now I'm thinking, I guess it really depends on the company and industry.
But again, I'm talking about apples to apples positions. (Same empowerment, same responsibilities, same authority etc... Contractor is there for staff augmentation but do the same exact work.)
If this sentence was true for that company, than the argument is already different, they are not doing the same work and the positions are not apples to apples: "often contractors and temps are just lesser-than employees and treated as such"
IcedDante@reddit
I don't think you learned your lesson- you should not have said what your expected salary was. It is pretty standard not to ensure that the prospective employer puts out the first number and you come back with something higher or accept it if it sounds good to you.
As far as the sting of the big gap from contracting- man I know that feeling all to well! But you can continue to explore for the next contract now to get an idea of what the market is like.
In terms of renegotiating your offer- great! you did the research and found tangible numbers that indicate you are underpaid. Those numbers may not be correct, so you can get to the bottom of that with a polite letter to HR.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
You’ve received some good advice, so let me tell you what not to do
Something like this happened to a guy at my very first job. He discovered somehow that he left money on the table and the budget for the job was higher than what he negotiated.
He became so resentful that he decided to slow his work down. He became snarky and made comments about he’s not paid enough to do what they’re asking.
And he was eventually fired because he was not only failing to do his work in a reasonable time, his negative attitude was bringing down everyone in the office. He spent a long long time looking for the next job.
realitynofantasy@reddit (OP)
Thank you for saying this. This is something that I am afraid that I might do, such as being demotivated to work and have bad performance. I will try my best to see past the salary and try to learn as much in the role and hopefully give value to the team.
verb_name@reddit
Is $130k top of market (or even 75th percentile)? If not, then you are better off thinking about how to get into the higher-percentile jobs than min-maxing your compensation at companies that do not pay top of market in the first place. Learn from the experience and move on. And maybe ask for more before joining or some time after you join.
ZukowskiHardware@reddit
Work it for a year, then shop the market again. You could very well make up the difference right away with your new position.
LetterBoxSnatch@reddit
Think of it as a $15k "course" or "learning experience" that you've paid for to make yourself better at negotiating. If the experience makes you consistently better at negotiating for the rest of your life, it will have been well worth the cost of admission.
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
You’re clearly unhappy with the offer and have a fallback the answer is obvious! Ask the new people for more money
Weekly_Potato8103@reddit
I don't know how much of a difference 17k/year makes to you. If you can live comfortably with your current salary I'd not be bothered at all. It's very common to look at other's salary, but in the end just focus on yourself.
Money is not the most important, unless it is strictly necesary. If you like the company, you like what you are doing, you like your boss and you feel you can thrive there, just focus on your growth. The extra bump will come later, there or in another company thanks to the things you will learn.
For companies, the salary is also a combination of many factors. One of them is the current market. There are times when you have a hard time finding good engineers and you need to pay way more to get the right talent. Now it's been the opposite for some years: for the same money you paid before for a mid engineer you can get a solid senior-high engineer, so sometimes it's not about the company being unfair to you, or your colleagues being better. It's just the timing.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
Salaries are not forever. There are people unemployed for 2 years simply because their last pay check was 225k. There’s a big queue of people hungry to do the same and better for 90k.
You can maybe start with that and after 3 months discuss a salary bump.
t-tekin@reddit
Negotiations depend on a couple of things;
* how much the company needs to fill that role
* the applicants pool you are competing against
* how much you need that job, how well can you negotiate
* how well you did in your interviews, how much the hiring manager believes in you.
So "I learned that peers with same experience" is not a factor here. The above equation might have been different for them.
3rd factor, when you don't have an existing job, it is extremely hard to negotiate. Don't be hard on yourself. But if you are really frustrated, there is nothing stopping you to continue looking for jobs
What I'm trying to say is, I don't think you could have changed much here. Look forward, do good, learn, show that you are irreplaceable, your starting salary is your starting salary. If you are early in your dev career it will change a lot in the next a couple of years. In the long run what you are trying to optimize right now will not matter.
deer_hobbies@reddit
I disagree somewhat with your conclusion, though negotiations can matter about those things you listed. This is how engineers end up working next to people who just got hired with less experience making double - it’s not fair to that person and the company is happy to pay the super low rate. Eventually, the person wakes up and leaves sometimes an otherwise good situation for them because they feel cheated.
Don’t trust in raises, don’t trust in promotions to make it right - the base that you’re working from will almost never be rectified. I’m neurodivergent and was being taken advantage of until I learned to negotiate more strongly - it’s not a bad thing and can be very respectful and even gain you respect - saying “I’m a 5 YoE engineer at this level, industry standard for the area is this, it’s within your salary band, I’m asking for ____ so I can fully commit to you and not have to think about it.”
Many engineers spent tens of thousands of hours learning and practicing, but won’t spend 2 hours watching a YouTube on how to negotiate salaries. It’s a huge deal!
realitynofantasy@reddit (OP)
Thank you for this man. I will change my mindset to what you said "Your starting salary is your starting salary". Now that I think about it, it is a good base when I do get a raise or transfer to another company. I am still about to reach five years experience this November so still quite early in my career. I do hope one day I could say, I am optimizing something that would not really matter that much. Thank you!
FunClassic3253@reddit
Similar thing happened to me accepting my current role. I am of the belief that any good company that values their engineers, they will pay the amount they are worth. When joining my current role, I tried to negotiate and got only a 5k bump. I was bummed up because I believed I was worth more. I worked for them for 6 month and asked thst based on my past performance, whether wr can look and renegotiate my salary (I had to bring this up tho, and insist about 3 times) and they bumped my salary by 20k.
My advice to you is do the best work you can while you there. It sounds like they have great plans for your role and want to keep you long term. Put in the work, and in 6 month open the convo to renegotiate your compensation
realitynofantasy@reddit (OP)
Thank you. I will try to focus more on learning and contributing. I hope that in six months, I will be in a position to re-negotiate my compensation.
If it is okay with you to share. How did you go about starting the conversation with your manager about re evaluating your compensation? I just have a feeling I would make it awkward.