Frontend Developer Serhiy Belyakov faced salary dumping from his employer and decided to discuss this topic with the community. Are IT professionals willing to work for significantly lower salaries than they expected?
Frontend Developer Serhiy Belyakov faced salary dumping from his employer and decided to discuss this topic with the community. Are IT professionals willing to work for significantly lower salaries than they expected?
«I recently had an interview at a small outsourcing company. I liked the company, and the team liked me. But after discussing the amount of compensation and the manager’s words that he would „see if it would be possible to give such an amount,“ in the end I was offered 40% less. That is, the minimum in the market, considering that candidates now depend on companies. Of course, these are the realities of the candidate market, but I used to think that the dumping of salaries comes from the candidates themselves due to high competition, and not from companies,» he said .
According to Serhiy, over the 8+ years in IT, he has repeatedly discussed salary issues, and a certain compromise has always been found. «But now I see a different picture: salary dumping due to the lack of other offers from candidates. Previously, several offers were the norm, but now it is rather an exception. And companies are actively using this. What is the way out of the situation? Agree to less simply because of a weak market or slightly lower your expectations, but keep them realistic? Both options are possible, but the second one carries the risk of a longer job search. «Is it better to have a tit in your hands or a crane in the sky?»
«For me, the answer is obvious: it all depends on the situation. There is no universal recipe here,» he said.
Under the developer’s post are dozens of comments in which IT professionals discuss salaries.
«In my opinion, lowering your expectations by 40% is a big step. Personally, I wouldn’t pursue this proposal further, but things can be different,» says JavaScript Technical Lead Volodymyr Shaitan .
Vitaly Shmidt, Senior .NET & AWS developer, believes that the level of the proposed remuneration does not always depend on the employer. «What if the client himself did not allocate enough funds? The company also needs to earn money from you, no matter how it sounds. Of course, it’s rubbish when you have indicated your salary wishes from the very beginning, gone through all the stages and only at the end they tell you that it is too much for this position, but, fortunately, this does not happen often. Regarding your question, it seems to me that it is almost always more profitable to have a tit in your hands and, perhaps, sometimes look at the crane in the sky,» he advises.
«Excuse my possible callousness, but in my opinion, it is important to understand what to expect from a particular type of company you are interviewing with. If it is an outsourced or outstaffed company, then it is worth understanding that the company is in the field of tech talent providers or engineering services, and sells the engineer’s time to someone else, that is, the engineer is the product that is being sold. And as in any commerce, the product must be bought/made cheaper in order to have some margin, especially now there is an understanding that there are not so many customers who were previously willing to pay big money for an engineer’s hours in our market. Therefore, in my opinion, it is quite logical that the company looks at hiring a specialist through the prism of margin for business,» notes STO Oleksiy M.
He adds: Instead, product companies sell product value, and engineers are evaluated on the potential contribution to the product and the potential future value of the product, not the margin on the number of hours sold to the customer. «So if you feel that you are ready to push the product forward due to your professionalism, critical thinking, involvement in the product and value, then I can tell you that the market is very open for such specialists right now,» he summarizes.
In turn, PM Anastasia Korystynska believes that the candidate will agree, and then as soon as he finds a better company, he will leave. «I understand when the difference is 10%, but when it’s forty, it’s too much,» she noted.
