Frag You, Pay Me: Getting Started with Salary Negotiation

[Music] why do this talk so I think this was probably the best illustration I could find suppose that to 30 year old recent MBAs a man and a woman received job offers for $100,000 a year by negotiating the man raises is offered to a hundred and eleven thousand while the woman accepts the hundred thousand because that's pretty good money right even if both receive identical three percent raises for the rest of the careers by the time they retire at 65 the difference between their annual salaries will have widened to over thirty thousand dollars the man who negotiated will also earn more than the woman during every one of the 35 years in which they work if he invest that extra income into an account earning 5% that initial 11,000 the product of a single one-time negotiation turns into 1.6 million dollars by the time he's 65 years old so in short an absolute

goddamn [ __ ] [ __ ] ton of money Thank You Cindy Gallo and we want you to get your absolute goddamn [ __ ] shits in a ton of money both men and women and I get it this [ __ ] is intimidating getting past that initial hurdle and actually going to the table and negotiating and not just taking what you're offered that's hard so as part of this we've assembled a panel of amazing speakers or two amazing speakers in my ass so Robin here is going to be talking through more of the kind of emotional hurdles behind getting up to doing salary negotiations I'm going to talk through some of the tools tips resources and just kind of prep work that you want to do getting into negotiations and then Elizabeth's gonna bring it home with the other side of the table the perspective of the hiring manager so without further ado I'm going to hand you over to Robin

hello thanks Tara all right I would love to get a sense of who is in the room with us today so if you'll indulge me could you raise your hand if you are currently looking for or working in the first job in the game industry Wow oh that's so exciting round of applause that's really really exciting see you guys here raise your hand if you've ever tried to negotiate a job offer before okay good good you're good keep your hand up if you successfully negotiate a job offer what do you guys do in here go see something else I'm kidding you can stay um raise your hand if you were just thankful to get a job offer at all and so you just didn't negotiate yeah all right all right those are my those my people all right hi my name is Robin I lead product strategy at code combat where we make a game that teaches computer science we are in half a million we were played by over half a million players in the US alone and we

are in over 15,000 schools hello I've been in the game of street for over 12 years I started my career as a news editor and eventually I moved into game production and design where I shipped dozens of web and mobile games most recently I ended up in user experience design which led me to join code combat where I negotiated a promotion to product manager and now I lead strategy and for one of the best coding games that's out there thank you all right why is negotiation terrifying let's talk about feelings for a little bit let's imagine for a second being in that space so you found a job posting that you got really excited about you thought you met the requirements right and you got a response from your application saying hey we'd love to talk to you we think you might be a really good fit for this role so maybe you do some phone interviews maybe you got brought onto an

on site you know you spent a lot of time getting real excited about this job right you're you're really eager to hear back and then yeah you see this this call or the female comes in Oh it's good I mean I have a job right now and I'm still excited to see this right we'd love to extend to you and offer to join our team it feels amazing every bone in your body every fiber of your being is like yes it's friggin do this right and this is the last thing you want to do after all that is to negotiate right you want nothing to do with that conversation maybe you weren't prepared or maybe you haven't researched the salary ranges maybe you have no idea what to do next because what if you ask and something bad happens right like what if you ask and you know you appear ungrateful or unreasonable all of those heels are terrifying and that's the reason I want to call that out there's a lot to recognize about the emotional components of negotiation and I want to talk about all those feelings that we

get but I also want to call out that I think all these things are swirling around one big unspoken thing specifically in the game industry and it is that like why is it truly truly terrifying to make that ask when you're in the game industry because this is my dream job right how many raise your hand if you have thought this to yourself as you've like gone through a job interview process right this could be it this could be my dream job ah so here's the secret our industry traffic's and dream jobs you've heard this from friends before right you are so lucky to be working in the game ministry wow that must be so cool and you thought this to yourself before right you know what things are really stressful I'm working 70 80 hours a week but you know I'm so lucky to be working in the game industry I should be grateful people would kill for this job and you've heard it from your peers you know the hourly rates that they settle

for to work on the biggest franchises and I think we use the idea of a dream job to use it as a bludgeon as a manner above all like labor complains compensation complaints and any career development that you really want is the message that we receive at the end of the day is you know sure you can have your dream job of working in the game industry but only conditionally right I think the industry is really poor for these dynamics these stories that we have to give up control we have to give up agency in order to have dream jobs I think they stunt us I think they burn us out and I think that this is the same dynamic that leads us to say yes to the first offer that comes our way that causes us to believe that we shouldn't risk it we have to replace this belief in the dream job right I think it's morn from a place of fear the fear of losing our chance to work out are like our favorite studio working on our favorite franchises I think we end up manifesting these fears and self-limiting beliefs and it makes us

feel like we can't negotiate because it's risking too much right we have to acknowledge that these are the kinds of fears that are in place when we get to that moment when you see a job offer or land in your email inbox and I think we have to acknowledge that it's preventing us from shifting our mind set and so I want to talk specifically about three self-limiting beliefs that prevent us from negotiating and how we need to change the way we approach them so self-limiting belief number one I'm asking for too much who's felt this when they were thinking about negotiating right super common feeling I think this one comes from the stories that we've heard from other game developers getting shortchanged or having to settle for less that may be true for them but that doesn't have to be true for you I think this feeling of asking for too much like I think it comes from you know oh they must they must know more about industry salary ranges than me or you know they must be offering me what I deserve you know or maybe you know that's the way the pay scale is at this particular studio there must be a reason that offer is where it is so if I can negotiate I'll be seen as asking for too much look

this is a huge self-limiting belief right because we often gauge our self-worth on what other people tell us our worth is so the mind chefs shift that we need to make here is I know my worth hey you have to know your market Worth rate which is what Tara will cover in strategies talk but I think you also really need to internalize this idea that you are worthy you guys are worthy of working at a place that acknowledges and validates the values and the skills that you're bringing I think we need to notice when this feeling comes up if I'm on enough and realize that it's coming from this kind of like unfounded fear right it's not a reality and we can shift this mindset and let go of judging our value by what other people tell us it is and in this case maybe that starting job offer so anything we need to ship our ships are thinking too I know my worth I deserve to earn a salary that is commiserate with the value that I'll be creating for this company all right self-limiting

belief number two I'm not good enough right who's felt this before I feel this like everyday I think this one is especially rough especially when we worked so hard to get to this dream shop because in a lot of ways like maybe we didn't believe we could actually get the stream job to begin with right this is imposter syndrome like 101 this is imposter syndrome and it's most insidious form and it's the sense that like maybe I'm not you know experienced enough to ask for a better offer or to negotiate he's like yikes maybe I tricked them into hiring me I really should just be grateful that you know and just like get away with it and so you know I shouldn't make any noise because what if they realize that and you know they realize that I'm not actually supposed to have this job I should just lay low now give them any chance to realize the mistake that they've made here this one's a huge problem instead we got to think about this I earned this offer this is the shift that I want us to make I already got this offer right they made the decision already to hire you you crush that interview you showed up and you

show them all the things that you're gonna be bringing to this job your enthusiasm your skills your dedication your commitment to this game if we can shift from finger feeling like I'm not good enough and starting to let go of that imposter syndrome that self belief we can move towards actually I already earned this offer I can make sure it's truly what I want here so I think that this is important shift to make because I think it starts making sure that we're not only you know negotiating in service of getting the salary that we want from a starting salary standpoint but it's recognizing that you actually deserve to be on this team right you've earned this offer and you deserve to work at this place and that's really important for this next one which is self-limiting belief number three they're hiring somewhere else they're gonna hire somebody else if I negotiate they're gonna hire somebody else and this one is hard because you've already gotten to this point where you have this job offer and this one's not just a mindset right it's a rarity but it's reality we hear just enough that it kind of scares us from asking because like maybe maybe this is the time that we're

gonna get this happening to us so there's a lot here that strategy why is that Taryn Elizabeth will cover about how to structure a so that you'll set yourself up for success here but if you're letting your fear limit trying to negotiate in the first place I think we're perpetuating a cycle that allows companies to continue this behavior on other people I think that this is like really really damaging in that way and I think of the mind chefs mindset shift that we need to make is that I can break this cycle right this is the mindset shift we need be the one to break the cycle make it difficult for this companies have to shoulder the burden of going through the extra work of hiring another person to potentially have to continue their search right again you deserve to work in this game industry you have earned an offer and now you have an opportunity to break a cycle that we know is being used to prevent other folks from getting what they deserve make sure that the next person that comes along will be able to negotiate as well right that cycle so the reason it's hard to negotiate is because we're led

to believe this is our one shot at our dream job right that's why all those fears I am blow fide that's because the notion that this is our this is our chance like this is how we're gonna make it but it's actually the same reason that we have to negotiate because we don't negotiate it's not actually our dream job I think we have to be willing to ask for what we deserve in service of making our dream jobs a reality and here's the real secret negotiation of a guest negotiation I have a single slide with an image in this entire talk and that's how important this is if you give a mouse a cookie they will ask for a glass of milk if you start your job with salary negotiation you are setting yourself up to be able to advocate for the things that will actually make this job a dream job for you you're going to be able to advocate for the co-workers around you you're going to be able to ask for the support that you need you're gonna be able to ask for that promotion once you realize you've earned it right that's actually the creation of a dream job it doesn't happen we accept the offer it's not just about the starting salary or the benefits I think we gotta let go this idea that the dream job is

like its shaped in that package somehow we receive it and then we have to like pretend that we have to hold on to it right I think that when you real I thought the dream job is something that you shape versus something that is given to you that's when you start to make this shift right negotiation baguettes negotiation be the mouse be the mouse that asks for the cookie this is your negotiation mantra I know my worth I earned this offer I can break the cycle you've got this make the ask shape your dream job we believe in you and you have got this folks [Applause] great job Robin so my portion of its talk is gonna be focused a little more on finding the resources and the tools that are gonna help you feel prepared for your negotiations so briefly my name is Tara

J Brannigan I'm the community lead at 5ca we're a customer support outsourcer in the Netherlands I'm pretty much on Twitter 24/7 so if you ever have any questions or you just want to reach out that's the best place to get me I've worked at a whole bunch of different game companies and non game companies all around the globe and this is pretty much me on any given day I am an anxiety filled mess about 24/7 I'd say not when I'm sleeping but also while I am sleeping I overthink everything constantly and I mean [ __ ] that I did back in elementary school still recycles so for me it's really important to have a foundation of like facts and figures and tools at my disposal because those are the things that calm me down and make me feel like I'm standing on firm ground in short I like to be prepared

and welcome to that being stuck in your head for the rest of the time here so what's in your toolbox what are the things that you know going into salary negotiations what are the scripts that you've practiced do you know what this job is worth when you're starting out your toolbox might look a little more like this and that's okay cuz as with anything you build on this over time and I'm gonna say I don't have all the answers I don't even have half the answers but getting started is one of the hardest things to do so for me one of the first steps is to research and to ask so there are tools out there and I'll say like treat things like glass door and pay scale you know you know this is kind of the sad fact and Robin talked about this bit is that you have to kind of count on some game industry tax here and that can be anything from five to twenty percent community management I use this one specifically

because Community Managers in game dev we're all getting screwed like that's the nicest way I can put it if you compare the community manager salary for the average Community Manager in San Francisco at a given tech company versus say those two anonymous game dev salaries both from the UK and the US you'll notice a substantial difference and part of that is you know understanding that and pushing back against it because it doesn't actually change until we start to push for our own value and if you have friends who have been in those roles who will tell you their salary and a trustworthy environment do it I'll tell you straight up when I started at PopCap some I don't even know how many years ago at this point that was like seven years ago I was making seventy five thousand dollars as a community manager with one year experience it's gone down fun thing

about the state of California so Californians you actually have access to an amazing law so this new law a B one sixty eight bars employers from asking about your salary history either past or current on top of that if you ask them they must provide you with the salary band for the role I highly recommend asking that and this applies to all job seekers it doesn't matter if you're entry-level or CEO you are able to take advantage of this do it so for me one of the things that was really useful and I'll recommend to anybody after this talk if you haven't already done it go check out Tara wheelers minute zero in the gender pay gap it's a free article it's up on medium it's bloody brilliant she also did the women in tech book that actually goes into this and more in depth but if you want to just get started right away go for this she outlines a lot of great scripts that address some of the common

problems in doing salary negotiations so here's this is just one example that's a great place to start I understand that you can't go outside of your salary band so let's work on finding other ways to get your offer I can't say that word I'm sorry with my others because I love this company and I really want to find a way to work here and this opens up the opportunity to look at things outside of salary as well would you like to work from home a day each week that's worth a certain amount for me I would absolutely sacrifice a little bit of money to be able to work from home a day or two um and you know you don't have to use these scripts one-to-one you don't have to like practice these rote memorization that's actually going to come off a little robotic it's you know taking this idea and adapting it to your own like your own way of communicating a special note as somebody who has moved abroad make sure to look at the cost of living comparison because it's not a one-to-one

you know $75,000 in Seattle you're not gonna get seventy five thousand euros and [ __ ] gas deutschlands the thing to pay attention to like this is just numb Bo calm and these are not like directly you know it's not gonna give you exact costs but it's gonna give you a nice rough idea of what the differential is the big one to pay attention here is rent price because that's gonna be a large portion of your monthly income in the case of Stuttgart and Seattle rent prices are 97 percent higher in Seattle so that helps frame what you should be asking for if offered a job and should cut so negotiations sometimes we kind of think of those like this right really hostile you're trying to win it's about beating the other person right well not according to the FBI actually so Chris Voss was one of

the top negotiators with the FBI he wrote this brilliant book I recommend all of you check it out even if you're not going into salary negotiations this is great for day-to-day living I'll never split the difference negotiating is if your life depended on it and this is the sort of guy that they called in where you know somebody's been taken hostage they're gonna kill them in seven days they're asking for $300,000 what do we do this is not a situation where they're shouting most of his recommendations are actually about learning how to harness your voice learning the difference between an upward tone and a downward tone one suggests that there's more to be said and the other says this is the end of the conversation learning how to mirror words selectively so this I actually love doing this once I learned how to do this is mirroring word selectively is when somebody says something pick the last one two three words that they said and say it sounds like what you're saying is blah blah blah this is

wonderful because it one it makes the other person feel like you are genuinely listening to them and you genuinely understand them to it is a great stalling tactic for when you're frantically trying to figure out the next thing to say because that actually doesn't take much mental bandwidth Chris Paul focuses a ton on empathy so a large part of negotiation is actually about understanding the wants needs and limitations of the other party it's not about a fight it's not about who's going to win it's about learning how to find where the win-win situation is and I can't get into all of this because we only have so much time but I just want to say like the summary of this is this is more about understanding other people the constraints that they're in listening to them as a human being and finding a situation that works for both of you again it's not a battle your target is a win win a situation in which one person feels cheated either direction is a bad way to enter a job

you do not want to enter a new role feeling like you got screwed out of money it will eat at you every single day you will start to resent your dream job and conversely if an employer feels like you just went too far and they caved they're also not gonna feel great about that situation so one of the things that always makes me feel good and I to be fair like I don't actually use this in the negotiation I'm not sure if you can even see that but I'll post a version of this up on the website later is I go through the process of writing out basically my hit list of like what is my goal what is my current salary what is the salary I want to get to what are the constraints around that you know as healthcare different in that states that country a summary why I'm great like this makes me feel really good going into negotiations it's just a

reminder that like no actually I am you know I earned I earned my place to get to the negotiation stage what they want do I fit that yes I do so you know let's let's keep going along here some calibrated questions those are questions that are gonna you know pull out more information about the role their constraints through limitations realistically a lot of negotiation is just asking questions and genuinely listening and sometimes it's just saying like well you know I'm the the sole breadwinner of my family at this point in time that's probably not going to change for the next six months how am I supposed to make this offer work in this city and just posing that as a question and saying that nicely and openly people will naturally go into a mode of troubleshooting like oh okay well maybe we can do this or you know would it be helpful if we gave your partner relocation assistance and job assistance

these are all benefits that can be negotiated for as part of this process and again like I don't take this with me into the negotiation unless I'm able to do it by Skype and then I will totally have it open in another window for reference but I just look at this or hand it gives me a little more confidence on the next step and this is something that says a lot about me but sometimes it can be really useful to remember that like it's not just about you so when something's just about me I'm really prone to just downplaying it like I well you know it's not that big a deal it's just me it's just me which I mean that's a whole separate call separate talk about self care that we will get into but for me it can be really beneficial to just remember like look me negotiating means that it should be easier for the next woman in the same situation in this company and I gotta say there's nothing that made me more confident about negotiating than being on the other side of the table so as a

hiring manager I learned very quickly what the wiggle room is what's acceptable what's not acceptable and I'm not gonna go in depth in that because that's all of elizabeth's stuff so without further ado hi everybody before I get into my talk I just also want to put in a plug for the book never split the difference it's really amazing I actually bought a copy for my studio and it gets a lot of circulation it's not just useful for salary negotiations but really any kind of trying to get to a consensus that you will have to do in your work that said hi I'm Elizabeth San Pat I'm the studio creative director at future games of London we are an ubisoft studio and I just want to let you know that we've just started pushing a huge

hiring campaign every single one of our studios all over the world is hiring right now so if you would like to get some experience with salary negotiation I strongly urge you to check out our hiring booth before I was at the creative director at F gall I was the game design department lead at cyber games and I was also one of the lead designers on plants vs. zombies - at PopCap I've been deeply involved in hiring in almost every job I've had over the last seven years whether in an independent company or in studios owned by larger companies and to my detriment it took me a while to realize something important which was the ways in which I was getting hired were also the ways in which I was hiring other people the constraints that I was under as a hiring manager were the often the constraints that people trying to hire me were under as well I have friends with stories about how they tried to negotiate salary or

benefits or something else and instead of countering the company did actually pull their offer if this has happened to you nine times out of ten it's not because you said or did anything inappropriate but sometimes there are just requests that hiring managers can't fulfill and if you haven't phrased those crust requests correctly it's easy for a studio book to believe that employee you wouldn't work out even if you would have actually been fine taking the original offer so if you've ever sat at your computer staring out an offer letter and wondering what the hiring manager was thinking when they were drafting its contents let me let you in on the secret first of all we really want you to take the job do you know how expensive hiring is a studio may be paying internal recruiters contracting with external recruiters paying to place job ads on job boards and a million other small things that all cost money even small studios usually have someone whose job

it is to just go through LinkedIn while they're on the clock sometimes it's an HR representative but often it's just the hiring manager themselves when they get fed up about the role sitting empty but there's also the expense of just having the empty desk sure the company's not paying a salary right then but if there's somebody in the office who's given notice every day without their replacement is a day when there's no handover when some precious amount of institutional knowledge is risking getting lost or if there is actually a desk already sitting empty that's another day with somebody who has differing skills and responsibilities having to cover them additional stress and taking away from that person's original workload maybe they can't have anyone cover that role at all and the role just isn't getting done maybe it's holding up the timeline of a project maybe that means that a publisher is breathing down their neck so sure there might be someone else

waiting in the wings to accept if you turn the job down but while you're deliberating on whether this job is right for you that runner-up may be out interviewing for their dream role and regardless we already decided that person is the runner-up we want you and if there's not a runner-up that means we have to spend even more on recruitment starting over from scratch pushing the timeline line down the road by weeks or months which is a pretty shitty worst-case scenario we're not trying to insult anyone with a lowball offer nothing about offering you a job is trying to make you feel bad we're just crossing our fingers that you take it and doing everything in our power to try to make the offer compelling we're trying to get to yes with you as quickly and efficiently as possible but we're not in control of everything especially if you're applying to a studio owned by a larger company there

are salary bands in play that sometimes we just can't go out of I know this is a lot of people trying to get into their first job in the industry so quick show of hands who knows what a salary band is okay great I'll do a really quick definition it basically it means that the company as a whole sets a salary range for each particular title that the company has and they don't allow people to go outside of that band sometimes we can get wiggle room there by changing the title in order to get a little bit more salary but in order to do that we have to justify that title change for the role and the parent company may not authorize changing that resource at a previous company I once had a role sit open for months because the salary band we were required to stay within wasn't compelling to the people who had the skills that we needed and it was difficult to get our parent company to change the role title on offer to something with a better likewise special requests are often a

great way to get value when you can't get more of a salary but some requests are harder than others to grant things that are visible to the rest of the studio like regular work from home days or extra vacation days are often suggestions that are made in articles and that kind of thing but unless the office already has a standing work from home policy or a flexible vacation allowance Studios can be really concerned that offering special treatment could set a precedent and annoy veteran employees maybe a company could afford to give you an extra week of vacation time but if they have to multiply that by 50 or a hundred employees that gets hairy real fast we also don't want to hire you we want to retain you if you tell us that it is vitally important that you make 20% more than we offered you and that takes it outside of the salary band or that you need to work from home two days a week in order to be happy and successful but the policy is one day a week then yeah

we might pull the offer why because we believe you if you decide in the moment to settle for a salary 20% less than what you told us you need that means your interest is going to be peaked by every single recruiter who contacts you on LinkedIn you'll rate your job satisfaction lower on every annual company review and you might get raises and believe me if you're doing your best we will advocate as hard as we can to get you those raises but every time we do we'll both know that you still believe you're worth more than you're getting which means you have a higher likelihood of quitting which means that we lose the training and energy put into you and we have to go through the expense of hiring all over again we want you to be happy right from the jump and if we think we can't give you what you need to be happy there's no moving forward I know this sounds really depressing everyone else is telling you to negotiate and it sounds like I'm just

up here giving you the company line but really I want you to know the lay of the land before we start talking about how you can make this information work for you first of all there is a salary band not a salary this isn't true for every studio but if you're applying someplace really large or at a company that owns multiple studios it's almost certainly true in order to keep things equal and fair so when you feel it's appropriate you can utter these magic words I know it's a bit early but I'm in discussions with a few other studios and I just wanted to make sure we're aligned I understand that compensation is more than salary but what is your range for this role if they ask you what you're currently making and you're not in California say that you're just trying to ensure salary is competitive for the current market after all it's not like they're competing against your old studio to hire you there's a chance that when you make that when you try to

negotiate that first offer you're made you may be told that that's the top of their range that could be possible if you hear that it's because a cut one of many things could be going on maybe you made your salary history and expectations clear and they knew it would be a stretch to compete if they didn't start as high as possible maybe you're more qualified than the other applicants and they're really afraid of losing you so they wanted to come out really strong from the gate or maybe they're being foolish and risking a relationship that should be built on trust by lying to you look most of the time there is absolutely no reason for the first offer to be the best offer not just because it's not financially responsible for the studio but it also could mean that there's less room for raises early on in your tenure because you're already at the top of that salary band but the main issue is this we live in a society where most people expect to

be able to negotiate their salary offer consistently offering the top of your range is a great way to lose candidates who assume you're just being stingy recruiters and HR read the exact same hiring advice as everyone else if the candidate is never supposed to accept the first offer the company has to leave some breathing room how much breathing room not a ton but usually enough to make a difference if you're talking about a salaried role I would not go more than 5k the tricky part is estimating where you are inside of a salary band it's rare that a company would automatically offer at the lowest part of their range but it's also really rare that they would agree to offer a candidate that they did offer at the lowest part of the range the highest possible part of the salary band you might be able to negotiate more in special circumstances but if you're trying to be safe I would stick around 5k also if you can't get the salary

you're looking for negotiate benefits that are unique to your specific situation if Studios are rightly concerned with the quality and may be different or difficult to get more of the things that are standardized throughout all employees but when you're starting at a new company that's a great time to bring up ideas for unique benefits that wouldn't necessarily apply to everyone in the first place if you're relocating for a job it could be much easier to negotiate a higher relocation package than a higher salary when I first got my first job in Europe I was terrified of getting stranded because international okay relocation is a nightmare and I was uprooting my entire family just to take a chance on this company I used my unique situation to negotiate a clause in my contract where if I left the company for any reason in the first 12 months they would then relocate me back to the city of my choice in the United States all expenses

paid so when I lost my job after 11 months knowing that I could get my family home if I didn't find a job that worked for me in Europe was a massive relief I also have friends who have negotiated successfully for personal development days basically being able to go to conferences on their own dime without taking vacation time to go this is a great tactic to take if you're new to the game industry because you can really spin that as wanting to get even more experience and even more knowledge as quickly as possible fewer friends have been able to get guaranteed paid access to certain conferences every year but it never hurts to ask if you could make a really compelling argument basically when you're asking for these unique perks imagine a co-worker who gets paid exactly what you get paid coming to HR and saying why does this person get so much more that than I get when I've been with the companies so much longer give the HR person a really compelling

argument to make look job-hunting is basically like online dating when you start out you're doing everything possible on your tinder or your OkCupid profile to seem broadly appealing but once you're tired and jaded your profile just becomes a list of [ __ ] you're not willing to put up any with any longer in order to weed out people early don't be hostile or aggressive because you might put off people you could click with instead just be friendly and honest about what you're looking for I had a fantastic interview with a company whose work was incredibly exciting to me they flew me to a totally different country put me up in a in an amazing hotel took me out to dinner the night before my interview and then I spent the entire day of interviews being really excited and energized by all the interviews and discussions then in the very last minutes of the very last

interview with the head of the company at 6 at 6 p.m. he asked me what my salary expectations were I said I didn't know what the cost of living was in that country but I was more than happy to offer my last two salaries for reference yeah a few days later I got a very lovely email saying that there was no way they could afford me but if anything changed to please let them know I'm actually really glad that I had that experience I keep in touch with a lot of the people that I met on that interview and it was a really lovely trip but if either of us had brought up salary earlier in the process it would have saved them some money and me some jet lag if you know that you have particular needs or expectations it's worth figuring out a way to bring those things up and casually early in the process in order to make sure that you're on the same page otherwise you could end up on a really long awkward first date I mean interview without an way to make

an excuse and lean in conclusion it's worth remembering that all of the advice about acting like you're on the same team works because at the end of the day you really are all on the same team no one wants a new employee who feels resentful or cheated or insulted by the hiring process but there can be a lot of external circumstances and constraints that can make it feel otherwise the only thing that can fight the stress of salary negotiations on both sides is transparency thank you just one quick note so we have actually put up a website frag you pay me calm there are not a huge amount of resources up there right now and kind of a call to action for all of you is if you find some that you really really like please send them to me on Twitter and I will add them to that page this is also all three of us on Twitter so we're gonna open up for

Q&A please wait for a mic to come to you and yeah hi um so I am currently about six months into my first major job in the industry and at some point in time I'm hoping to talk about promotions or salary raises things like that how do some of the things all three of you were discussing apply when you are at a company and happy there but maybe approaching your one year or working on your second project with them thank you the the number one piece of advice I would give you is every time that you do something that tangibly helps the company or every

time that you get an email saying hey great work on this project save it put it in a Google document and that way the big question that I would have if you came to me and you were like I think it's time for me to get a raise I would 100% be in your boat but I would need things that I could bring to my boss to say look we really need to we really need to make this guy is pay a little bit better here's all of the great stuff that he's done for us this year I'd also make sure that you have a good relationship with your manager ongoing right so make sure that you and your manager on the same page about what it takes for you to get a promotion right so what are the things you need to show what are the metrics need to increase what are the ways in which you're gonna prove to your manager that you're actually meeting what their expectations for motion are and then once you get around that time I'd use a lot of these same strategies about like doing some market research putting a case together and then make your proposal like hey like here I'm like I know we're talking about my promotion we're about to kind of come up on it I want to get a sense

of like where we are in terms of compensation right and so just kind of open it up and be transparent to that it's very clear that you expect a raise as part of that promotion just a special note for folks who work on social media community management etc the second you join a job put a file somewhere that lists the number of likes comments typical engagement rate all of the channels over time as you add channels note when you do that basically in a year you want to be able to show this is exactly what I did and anybody who works in social media you know that numbers aren't everything but they are really solid indicator for these conversations hi a lot of us was framed around negotiating after you get an offer but unfortunately in my experience salary usually comes up way sooner I've often been asked about salary before I even know what the requirements of the job are the responsibilities I've been asked on web forums do you have any good tips on deflecting that until the time is right to actually negotiate especially with someone who actually has power just

just like ninjutsu it back at them right the thing that all that all job ads say is salary commensurate with experience right so if you you have to fill out one of those forms just put in TBD or if you're in a conversation say you know that's a really interesting question it for me it really depends on the whole package but this is a really great time to dig into a little bit more of the responsibilities of this role and what your benefits package is like or just say you know that's a really good question what is the salary band that you're offering yeah go check out that article by Tara wheeler she's got scripts for exactly that question I have used them successfully over and over again to get them to go first and they have always named a number higher than I would have I I have a friend and she's in a she's in a complicated situation she knows that when you first get a job

that's when you have the most leverage because they don't have any information from you and you haven't said yes so they want to hire you and retain you but the challenge is is that she is an assistant art director and the art director who is in charge of her left the company and so now her title has changed but they haven't had any talks about how her pay will change and now she believes that she's getting severely underpaid perhaps that person got double what she is currently making and it's also a complicated situation because when she first joined she was the only woman in her entire department and even now there aren't that many women and so she's struggling to figure out how she can negotiate advocate for herself even though she's already at the company and is very thankful for the job while navigating the interesting perception of women negotiating versus men so I would I

would give you a friend basically three pieces of a dice the first one to network and make friends with other art directors at other companies in the same city get them to tell her what their salaries are the second thing is after about six months is a really great time to say you know I've really proven myself in this role I think it's time to talk about are you be hiring for this role was this an interim thing or am I being promoted to this role in which case I've done my research and this is the general salary it seems like is normal for this role in the in the city what do you think is my research correct on this one particular thing I'd add there especially for any time when you are kind of at a company and it's not clear it's a promotion it's that you're taking over another responsibility make sure that you don't hinge your salary negotiation or percentage based on your existing one because if you're taking a new role new responsibilities it's not based on oh you know we every promotion is ten percent or whatever make sure you start over we set the expectation based on

market value I would also say just briefly your friend should set some time for him in your mind at which point this is no longer acceptable and be looking for other roles because I almost guarantee she will find more money outside of the company unfortunately that's my experience during the negotiation process from the HMR / sect perspective are there any questions that are basically red flags and or vice-versa are there any questions where you're like oh wow this person that's a very good question we really want them I I don't have any specific questions but I will say when it's clear that somebody has done zero investigation so I've had candidates especially abroad

that did zero investigation into local cost of living and literally we're asking for more money than directors at the company made you know that's just it's a really hard place to start one thing that actually the three of us were talking about before the panel started is especially because there are so many people here that are sort of looking for their first role in the game industry a lot of times people will go in and they'll read very generic salary negotiation tactics online that are actually much more sort of tailored to people who are in the middle of their career so if somebody was coming for example right out of school and we're decided to ask for for a whole bunch more than what we offer them and and my first question would be why and there could be a very good reason for that maybe they have experience that that would actually make them really valuable but often a lot oftentimes the response is well you know for my unique skills

and my unique experience to which I would say okay what are what are those especially if you just came from school unless you've done some really special really unique things while you were there you don't necessarily have unique skills or experience yet so part of it is is knowing that you are making an argument to hire you specifically and you should have really concrete examples of why you specifically are worth what you're asking for and specifically for kind of early career folks something that I always find really powerful is acknowledgement and confidence and the skills that you're bringing but also really open mind to what you could be learning there right so saying things like oh you know I'm excited to bring my skills here and I'm really excited to learn from this team that has worked on this game or on this product for a while that open-mindedness and that ability to learn is something that I know we screen for a lot in our early candidates

hi for those of us who are not as early in our careers if you're in a very nice discipline which I am I'm narrative design and especially as you go up the ranks I've been in the industry for like 13 years now and there's not that much information out there especially when you like know your market worth there's very very little data that I can find from Glassdoor or whatever what kind of resources can you recommend for that sort of very niche it's all about networking you got to know the people in your industry and you got to be willing to get intimate with them to be able to share your salary's we're just scary right I think that's I'm the I'm the emotions person it's very scary because if you ask your friend who's also working your narrative what your salary is what you might hear is that it's a salary that's much higher than yours right so that opens you up to a lot of vulnerability but I think that is the way for it especially in those niche industries it's like you need that you can get this information from peers around you too and and one of the great things specifically for narrative it's

it's sort of like art this way is that you have an incredibly unique portfolio you have something that nobody else has that's applying to that job which is your body of work so it's especially with 13 years in the career in your career you should go into that being like You Know Who I am like and if they're like well why are you worth so much more than then we were going to offer you you should feel comfortable saying well did you read my samples they like own your career the fact that you you have that kind of longevity is something really unique and special and that makes you more marketable what would be what would be your advice to someone with a number of transferable skills who wants to move into the field in some ways you have a lot of skills but you don't have the skills in this

specific field so I would think that some sort of mentoring or something to catch up right what's your advice on how I approach that I think you kind of answered it for yourself a little bit there is getting those mentors finding you know one or two individuals who are doing the thing that you want to do that will help coach you you know and mentorship is not this strict program where you you know have to have this meeting and then this meeting in this meeting then it's done a mentorship is like any other relationship they may not have all of the answers which is why it's good to have a couple people with their perspectives that can help coach you as long as you're outside of the field how do you get that mentor so this is this is a question near to my heart because I was actually 29 when I got into the game industry my previous my only previous like non freelance experience was working at the Sears Portrait Studio for 795 an hour before I got my first salaried position in the

game industry and I met my mentor on Twitter really a mentor when you boil everything else down is somebody who's interested in what you have to offer and who believes in you so strike up conversations with people who are sort of in that in that sweet spot in that area of the industry that you would like to go in I've even helped out an artist who was looking to transfer out of medicine just because she called she cold emailed a bunch of women in the industry and I was the only one who responded a mentor doesn't even necessarily have to be somebody who is in your exact discipline it's really just somebody who wants to help you succeed and is willing to put in a little bit of time to ensure that you do I when it comes to going from one job to another and obviously you're hoping your new job pays better than your previous one if your company if the company that you're interviewing with is aware of your salary history and you're also

aware that your current salary is on the low end of their salary band how far is too far over what's your limit when it comes to your salary requirements trying to get to the higher end of their salary so obviously the first tactic is to try not to let the new company know about your new salary so that's a tactic one but if they do know I would try to reframe the conversation in the same way that you would if you were taking a different job at the same companies like like yes this is acknowledge what my current I'm currently making the current salary band I'd like to talk up the responsibilities for this job new job that I'm applying for and getting an offer for right just be like just Marie friend be like I know I was doing this thing over here and I was making this money I'm doing this new thing now and here my expectations let's start from scratch right let's start from market value discussion I think Tara would probably agree with me from the hiring manager standpoint in that I've never chosen a candidate because they were the cheapest it's it's never like oh and we're gonna get this guy for a steal you know so if people already want you they're open to whatever they were whatever number they originally had

in their head and so if you get to the offer stand point and they try to offer you something closer to what your salary was you can just level with them and be like you know I felt like I was really underpaid at my last job and one of the reasons that I'm looking now is because I really hope to end up someplace that values me and so this is a chance for us to figure out if this is the place for me because I really do want to feel valued that's a specific thing I want to point out is that you definitely don't want to get into a situation where you're saying is I want to be paid more what you need to say is I want to work at a place that acknowledges the value that I'm bringing yeah and also kind of a was oh my god - Elizabeth point sometimes I as the hiring manager was literally sitting there going off for the look why did you not ask for more and this like this is intimidating as hell so I understand why people don't want to do it but if you can have that as a conversation one-on-one with the hiring manager as a conversation they will have a little

more wiggle room so I had a situation where somebody asked for two thousand more I easily would have given them more if we'd had it as a conversation but with HRC seed in that conversation I am now limited to what I can do I managed to bump it just a little bit to round it to an even number but I couldn't you know have that conversation like you know thank you this is the last question but we'll probably stick around for a couple minutes if you have additional now some pressure for me which is the value of the fancy titles right because some position I'm in the field of game design and then at some point you start like but I mean like

product manager and there is like game leads head of product head of design director of design creative director and it's difficult to map from one company to the other maybe xanga is head of design but it is a senior game designer in our company so I find like very difficult to to understand which is the value of that and also in wondering which is the value for the high manager you got a look at the responsibilities a list and as part of your job interview process ask them specifically ok I'm gonna be responsible for this ok I'm gonna lead this team I'm gonna manage these people and then when you bring in the data that you're looking at you'll be like ok this studio lead here is kind of like a creative director here but they have is the similar responsibilities and therefore you can look at that information yeah like my I once took a $40,000 pay cut to go from a senior game designer to a senior game

design strategist I think yeah it's the fanciest title I've ever had was not with a pay cut but honestly you've got to think about titles like when you're as a hiring manager they're like they're like clickbait titles like they really are it's something that makes me go who this person was head of production at a Google studio you know what I mean but ultimately what we actually give a [ __ ] about is everything you list under that is your responsibilities I got so much more traction from responsibilities where I was listed as a senior game designer than I ever got from the responsibilities listed when I was a senior game design strategist so don't so you can get kind of screwed over if the work that you're doing is so far beyond what your actual title is but anyone who actually reads your resume is not going to care about the title itself

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