Advice Needed from Parents with HR background and/or in Tech/IT Industry

Parent Cafe
1

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but could really use some advice from parents with an HR background and/or in the tech/IT industry for DS on a salary negotiation issue.

Backstory: DS has interned for two very well-known tech companies, one after sophomore year (Company A) and one after junior year (Company B). Received permanent job offers from both at start of senior year. Company B’s permanent job offer was much more lucrative. However, for a variety of reasons, he thought Company A would be a better fit for him. Prior to accepting the offer from Company A, he mentioned the disparity but was not specific because the terms of Company B’s offer were confidential. He said he was led to believe that the compensation package for Company A’s program was fixed and that everyone in the program got the same offer to start. He decided not to push the matter and accepted the offer.

Subsequently, he learned that a friend of his who he had interned with at Company B (and who also received the same offer from Company B) had also chosen to accept a job offer at Company A in the same program. Lo and behold, however, friend got (presumably negotiated) an offer that matched Company B’s starting salary (a fairly significant amount of money, about 20% more). DS and this friend have very similar resumes, skills, and accomplishments to this point. Of course, now DS is kicking himself that he did not negotiate harder at the offer stage, but he also took was told to him at face value (i.e., that starting comp for all in the program was the same).

The question is whether he should attempt to address this at this point, and if so how. The terms of the offer letter from Company A do not apparently have the same confidentiality language that Company B’s did, but he does not want to get his friend “in trouble” for discussing compensation, so is worried about being too specific. He also is concerned about “rocking the boat” before he even starts the job. Any advice from parents with experience in these matters would be much appreciated!

2

Is the offer from company B still available?

Would he choose to move if it were?

  • He should NOT, under any circumstances, discuss anyone else's compensation.
  • If the offer is still active, there is no reason he cannot go to management and say "company B really wants me and counteroffered, it is hard to pass up but I really want to stay here. Is there any room to increase my current salary?" People ask for more money all the time, and companies hate to lose good people. If it is within the range for his band he might get it with little hassle. Make sure he asks humbly and politely, and again, stresses how great company A is.
  • If he does not get it, and he makes less than his peers, he should view that as a sign of how his current management values him, and take that as a sign to 1) improve his standing there and ask again in 6 months or 2) look to move to a place where he is more valued. The reason for this is **NOT related to salary directly, but rather compensation as a sign of value related to future advancement opportunities**.

Good luck! And congrats – two job offers! Pretty awesome either way for someone getting started. I am sure it will be a long an lucrative career regardless of how this moment plays.

3

Thanks for the advice! DS is a senior in college and has not yet started the job. Once he accepted the offer from Company A, he was required by Career Services at his university (and as he would in any event) to officially decline the offer from Company B. I just think this is a situation where his friend did just as you describe above, while my DS accepted what he was told at face value. It’s unfortunate because he was very excited about joining Company A, and now this is somewhat coloring his perception before he’s even started. I’m inclined to tell him to just absorb this as a life lesson, while DH seems to think there’s no harm in asking for more money. But I think there might be, especially if its not done the right way.

4

You are welcome. I think your fears are reasonable, but like so many things in life, 'if you don’t ask you don’t get". As for “Asking the right way”, well, that is ALWAYS a challenge and a great skill to develop now. When my employees ask for more money, it is VERY hard for them, they are nervous and shakey… but I have the best team in the universe and if I can afford to give them more they get it. And as a shareholder it is my money – so if your son works at a big company and it is “in budget” and he likes him, he’ll be happy to give it to him!

If it is the kind of company it sounds like, he’ll be posting for a promotion within12 months anyway, so it won’t cost him much either way.

5

Now that he has accepted the one offer and rejected the other, there is nothing that can be done. Mentioning it now would prove to HR that these kids have been talking about their salaries and both would be gone immediately. But, maybe another offer will come around. He’s young and can make it up in a year or so.

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I don’t know that he would be “gone immediately” but it would not be appropriate that they were talking about salaries and it would be starting off on the wrong foot if he’s accepted the original offer. The time to negotiate a salary is when the offer is made… It’s never harmful to ask for more at that point in time…sometimes it happens sometimes not, but asking for more doesn’t cancel the offer that has been made so there is nothing to lose with negotiating at the time the original offer is made. Lesson learned for your son. Negotiating is a good skill to have. Depending on how each of the kids performs on the job they may end up with salary parity someday regardless of how they start off and perhaps he’ll have another shot during his year-end review or mid-year review to negotiate a raise.

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Thanks Momofthreeboys! I also suggested he discuss this with a counselor at the Career Services office at his school. I think it would be good for him to get their perspective on this as well.

8

When I was hired into my company right out of college, many factors influenced what new hires were paid (particularly recruits from more competitive colleges or more competitive majors would receive a higher initial salary) even though they were all effectively being hired into the same training program and being trained for the same consulting job. Of course no company is going to make it obvious that you might be paid less than peers who are filling the same role. That’s true of new hires and people who have been with a company for years. This is a great life lesson that you need to ask for what you think you deserve and if you don’t ask and find out later that you could have gotten more, you need to let that be water under the bridge and find out out how maximize your potential moving forward.

If I were your son I would not ask for more money at this point but would work his butt off. At his first review point if he feels he has truly performed at the top of his peer group, he can evaluate his raise and bring up the starting salary disparity as an argument for a higher merit increase.

9

Everyone knows that virtually all private employers are covered by the NLRA, and therefore may not prohibit employees from discussing compensation, right? Any inappropriateness in the discussion between friends would all be on the company side.

10

^^^ Correct. Salary is a term/condition of employment and discussion of it may not be prohibited.

11

Whether it’s illegal or not is not the question. Most companies would view it as an ethical issue because it can be demoralizing for the employee who may be paid less. Most companies have pay brackets for jobs and employees that do those jobs fall somewhere within that bracket which means there may be employees at the low end of the bracket and employees at the high end of the bracket for many reasons including what got negotiated at the point of the original offer. Those pay brackets are generally open information - sometimes shared proactively with employees and sometimes you have to ask, but it’s generally not secret info. You can ask what the pay range is for a position when you are interviewing too. The recruiters can be cagey at times, but some are quite forthright. The career service office is a good resource to ask…I’m sure they have experienced this before where similar students negotiated dis-similar starting salaries.

12

Of course employers want their employees not to discuss salaries. However, there is not one thing unethical about comparing salaries.

And speaking of ethics, apparently Company A lied to the OP’s son when they said their salary offer was not negotiable. They are in no position to whine about ethics.

13

The deal is sealed…I do hr…he would very possibly be fired and the friend too…it would take 5 seconds to figure out who the friend is.

Imo lesson learned…tell him do an awesome job and revisit hr in 6 months based on how awesome he has done
Never bring up other confidential offer or his friend.

P.s. they will not give the cause as discussing salary…if they terminated relationship.

14

I have never heard of an organization firing someone for discussing salary. But then again I’ve only had two employers myself since graduating college.

15

I like the idea to talk to his career center people . . . they will hopefully have current advice about how things are done in his industry, etc.

I lean towards not re-negotiating at this point. Chalk it up to lesson learned (on several different planes) and move forward.

16

Legally a company cannot fire employees for discussing salaries, but like many things in the work world the law in practical reality doesn’t mean much. Most of the jobs I have had are employment at will, and what would happen if a company figured out someone (especially a new hire) had talked about salary, would likely to put a big black mark against them and look for other reasons to either fire them, or in more than a few cases, make them want to leave. Believe me, if they want to, they could find plenty of ways to make either the kid who found out the salary or the one who talked, live’s miserable if they wanted to, and it would be next to impossible to prove it was retaliation (I doubt very much a manager would put it in e-mail or on messaging, because those are archived).

In the S’s position, I wouldn’t recommend trying to negotiate for a higher salary, and I doubt very much with a hire out of college that B for example, would take the kid on if he suddenly said "hey, guess what I didn’t take that other position (they might if the kid was some kind of superstar in school, had already created a killer app, etc…but that would be really rare). One of the life rules the kid learned, or should learn, is that when a company says something is ‘fixed in stone’, it may not be, it could be company A was very cheap, or lowballed him, but there is always room to negotiate, if in this example if the kid had said that he loved the company but the compensation looked off based on what similar jobs seemed to be paying at other firms, they may be willing to sweeten it (or they could say “nope, that’s it”, a lot depends on how good the candidate it, too).

There is another life lesson here, too. So B wasn’t a fit, but paid better, but A seemed more a dream job, then sometimes it can be better not to look at compensation and look at the whole picture (no, I am not talking, like happened to me once, where a company offered something that was ridiculously low, tried to argue because it was in NJ where I live I would come out ahead (I wouldn’t, the difference in taxes and commuting costs would be a fraction of how far they lowballed me). Working for a company that may not be a fit, no matter how well it pays, can be a bad decision, there are plenty of companies in my own field that I would not work for, despite the fact that they likely would pay me better than my current employer, because I know what they are like and would go nuts working there.

My advice for your son would be to graduate, go into the job running and if he really likes it, see what they do for him. Some companies offer things like fast track raises for employees they feel are going places (others, like my current one, not so much), and if in a year or two he feels like they aren’t paying him well, he will then have some leverage if his skills are good and in demand and they don’t seem to care. My first job out of college didn’t pay well and it had disadvantages to it, but it did turn out to be one of the foundations of my career, taught me a lot of life skills and job skills that were unique, and over the long term I made up for the difference pretty quickly.

17

I would also chalk this up to “lesson learned”. My advice would be to work hard for the next year, but in the meanwhile make sure he’s marketable professionally, which would include a solid LinkedIn profile, learning as much as he can, keeping track of his accomplishments, and getting any professional/technical certifications available. At his annual review he can then ask for a raise concurrent with external job-hunting and thereby get himself to market rate either at his current job or elsewhere.

Also bear in mind that 20% might seem like a lot, but may not be all that much in reality. Say it’s 70k vs 84k. The extra 14k gets taxed at his marginal rate, so maybe 30-40% depending on what state he’s in. Yes it sucks today, but with salaries in the high-tech field he’ll blow past that 14k difference in a few years.

18

Thanks all! He has an appointment to discuss with Career Services tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what they tell him.