48 min
Take Stock of Your Compensation with John Nicholson (2/3) Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
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- Careers
Welcome to episode 225 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_) – two technology professionals with backgrounds in IT Operations and Sales Engineering on a mission to help others accelerate career progression and increase job satisfaction by bringing listeners the advice we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 2 of an interview with John Nicholson with a focus on compensation. We’ll talk through stocks as compensation, how resumes might highlight expensive skills in a manager’s eyes, and how good managers look at employee compensation.
Original Recording Date: 02-02-2023
John Nicholson is a Staff Technical Marketing Architect at VMware and co-host of the Virtually Speaking Podcast. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with John, check out Episode 224.
Topics – Compensation, Org Charts as Tools, Stocks as Compensation
3:35 – Compensation
* This blog John Nicholson wrote about points of consideration before taking a job offer was a jumping off point for much of our discussions.
* It’s probably best not to start with talk of numbers unless a recruiter asks you.
* Listen to John N’s strategy for dealing with random recruitment direct messages on LinkedIn. He mentions this has helped him avoid a lot of conversations but also that this blunt approach sometimes gets a recruiter to keep you in mind for something down the road (i.e. level sets on what you want).
* If you’re interviewing with a hiring manager / other members of a hiring team (not the recruiter), John N recommends not leading with numbers.
* If you’re working for a large technology company, you can do your own homework and get an idea for what the salary range might be.
* Check out levels.fyi – it’s a bunch of compensation specialists and former HR personnel who have experience with FAANG companies that have done salary surveys and reverse engineered pay bands.
* They (levels.fyi) also have details on stock benefits like RSUs (restricted stock units) and how vesting works for this type of compensation. If you get $250K in stocks but won’t see it until year 3, that’s a big deal!
* The above is different than Glassdoor, which usually only talks about base and variable components of compensation.
* Much of the above is covered in John N’s blog post if you want to learn more, but the idea is to consider all elements of overall compensation for a position.
* What is the bonus structure for the company, by how much are people usually hitting their bonus targets, and how often do bonuses get paid? It’s helpful to have people in your network who work for the company in question and will be able to tell you. If people tell you they haven’t hit the bonus in a number of cycles, it would likely not be contributing to compensation by much (if any).
* Start with the bigger numbers, but don’t overlook smaller things like ESPP (employee stock purchase plans). It’s a little bit of a roulette game, but you can earn some extra money by participating.
* Should we ask a recruiter how the benefits have changed over the last 6-12 months because of the economy?
Welcome to episode 225 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_) – two technology professionals with backgrounds in IT Operations and Sales Engineering on a mission to help others accelerate career progression and increase job satisfaction by bringing listeners the advice we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 2 of an interview with John Nicholson with a focus on compensation. We’ll talk through stocks as compensation, how resumes might highlight expensive skills in a manager’s eyes, and how good managers look at employee compensation.
Original Recording Date: 02-02-2023
John Nicholson is a Staff Technical Marketing Architect at VMware and co-host of the Virtually Speaking Podcast. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with John, check out Episode 224.
Topics – Compensation, Org Charts as Tools, Stocks as Compensation
3:35 – Compensation
* This blog John Nicholson wrote about points of consideration before taking a job offer was a jumping off point for much of our discussions.
* It’s probably best not to start with talk of numbers unless a recruiter asks you.
* Listen to John N’s strategy for dealing with random recruitment direct messages on LinkedIn. He mentions this has helped him avoid a lot of conversations but also that this blunt approach sometimes gets a recruiter to keep you in mind for something down the road (i.e. level sets on what you want).
* If you’re interviewing with a hiring manager / other members of a hiring team (not the recruiter), John N recommends not leading with numbers.
* If you’re working for a large technology company, you can do your own homework and get an idea for what the salary range might be.
* Check out levels.fyi – it’s a bunch of compensation specialists and former HR personnel who have experience with FAANG companies that have done salary surveys and reverse engineered pay bands.
* They (levels.fyi) also have details on stock benefits like RSUs (restricted stock units) and how vesting works for this type of compensation. If you get $250K in stocks but won’t see it until year 3, that’s a big deal!
* The above is different than Glassdoor, which usually only talks about base and variable components of compensation.
* Much of the above is covered in John N’s blog post if you want to learn more, but the idea is to consider all elements of overall compensation for a position.
* What is the bonus structure for the company, by how much are people usually hitting their bonus targets, and how often do bonuses get paid? It’s helpful to have people in your network who work for the company in question and will be able to tell you. If people tell you they haven’t hit the bonus in a number of cycles, it would likely not be contributing to compensation by much (if any).
* Start with the bigger numbers, but don’t overlook smaller things like ESPP (employee stock purchase plans). It’s a little bit of a roulette game, but you can earn some extra money by participating.
* Should we ask a recruiter how the benefits have changed over the last 6-12 months because of the economy?
48 min