Salary negotiation help requested for upcoming full-time conversion.
I would love it if the community here helped me get a sense of where I stand with respect to the market.
My background is in computer engineering and I work in research. Prior to grad school, I had 5 years of experience in the industry as a software engineer in networking and network security. I finished grad school in 2019, after which I was working in a university as a research engineer for three years. My TC there was 110000 USD. After that, I moved to Houston to work for HP Enterprise, where I am currently located. I was hired as a post-doctoral research scientist and my TC is 130000 USD and I got a sign-on bonus of 20000 USD (and I have all the other benefits at the company, minus RSUs and bonuses). The goal was to convert me to a full-time employee in around a year, which is coming up soon.
For the purposes of HPE banding/leveling, they consider my grad school to be 4 years of experience, and I have my 9 years in academia/industry. This puts me at their Expert level, which is a huge band in itself. From what I have understood, there are folks with my experience at Expert and even folks with 15-17 years of experience in the same band, but at different pay scales.
For reference, my peers were offered 180K-190K (albeit in California) four years ago after we graduated together. Given a safe 10% YoY increase, that puts them at 250K at the very low end of the spectrum now (which I think is a very conservative estimate).
I have been doing my research on levelsfyi and Glassdoor etc., but I have not been able to get a clear picture of what my asking range should be. I see insane salaries being posted in and around the Houston area for companies for software engineering roles with the same level of experience. I don't think I can get HPE to those numbers anyway, so I was wondering if you good folks would be kind enough to give me a starting range to work with? I am struggling to put a number on what I am worth, mainly because of the time spent in academic research for quite a while and I was disconnected from industry-level salaries.
Thanks in advance.
You need to ask what level you’re being considered for. Each level at a company has a pay band.
Years of experience isn’t the most important thing to most companies (maybe HPE does care). They usually care what level you were at in seniority, scope, etc. at your last role and what you accomplished to determine your level. Some people get to senior levels in 5 years, others take 15 years.
Focus on your scope of ownership, scope of your impact and your accomplishments.
I would try to be Expert or Master level at HPE and give them a case for why that would be your level.
Expert has $140-150k TC with 125k base in Houston.
First you need to convince them you’re an Expert or ideally Master. Then there are options: Either use external leverage of other interviews at higher paying companies or just anchor at a TC of high $100s (vague) “but this is by far my top role and I want to get to yes”
Ideally do this on the phone so they don’t get upset and you can pitch how much you want the role. They are an older company and may act conservatively to negotiation.
If they get you a low offer below 140k, then ask to get to $150k or close to see what they can do. Ask for base first, then equity. Once they counter, ask if they have sign on bonuses to close the gap.
Again. If you aren’t willing to accept losing the offer, make sure you do this on the phone and make sure they know you want to make it work and that you just want to make sure you’re properly valued since you plan to be there long term and just want to focus on doing great work without worrying about compensation.
Good luck!