When they ask you, what's the ballpark figure for your salary? Or what are you looking at? That's their way of saying, let's see if they actually know what they're worth and also what this position is worth. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. The following is a snippet from Julian's PDM mindset hacking session, where he gave some valuable tips for the salary negotiation. Make sure you don't undersell yourself and really show what your worth is. I hope these tips will help you the next time you're looking for a job. So the whole salary negotiation thing, when you're looking for a new job, especially as a python developer, right. Let's relate it to that. But this is agnostic information. The first thing. The first thing to do. It's funny, people think about salary negotiation. They think about having these talks about their pay as something you do in the moment, but there's so much pre work to it. There's so much preparation you should be doing before you even go for that interview. Right? And the number one thing is to do your research. So understand what developers in your city, not even just your country, but in your city, get paid. So, perfect example is the US. The pay bracket for, say, people in New York City is very different to the pay bracket for people in. I don't know enough about the city layouts, but, like, the central cities and states, like, God, I don't know enough about America compared to Birmingham. There you go. There you go. Exactly. Birmingham to the west coast. So. And then along the west coast, you're going to have higher salaries up in San Francisco versus down in LA, down to San Diego and so on. Right. Texas, different salaries to North Carolina, you know, so everywhere you go there will be different salaries because they base it on your cost of living in those locations. Right? So to relate it to me, Sydney, salaries are much higher than up in Brisbane in Queensland, so it's just how much it costs to live. And that's something you have to research. So it also gives you that confidence to not be. To not be ripped off because they might try and give you a lower offer. Right? But if you come in knowing that experienced or certified developers in New York make 200 5300k as a salary us and they're offering you 150. You can tell them to get stuffed, right? Because that's not enough to get you through, right. So you have to do that research and you can do that through places like glassdoor to check for what people are posting as their salaries in these different cities. That's the first thing. Do that research. Right. The other thing to do is, and I relate this to PDM somewhat, make sure you have your evidence ready. So have your portfolio ready, have the skills that you've developed ready. Have all of that stuff, top of mind, even write it down on the piece of paper that you might take with you to interviews for. So like I've, I've always said when you're going for an interview, have the examples that you're going to talk about written down on a piece of paper. So when they ask you a question like, hey, give me a time when you showed some initiative or something, just have a little note like, oh, the time I did x, and then you can elaborate on that story. So on that same piece of paper that you bring in, have the data points for why you're worth a salary. So the next step of this is, what is your worth? What is your value? What is your number? So there's two sides to that coin. The first thing is going to be, yeah, you know what you're worth. You know what you're currently making in your current job. You know what your hourly rate is. If you don't know, calculate it and you might find, okay, I'm getting paid$60 an hour. Okay, if you're getting paid $60 an hour, you know, you don't want to go into anything that's less than that. So how can you prove that? Where's the evidence that when you have these conversations, you can say, yeah, I'm worth $60 now, or whatever that equates to over a full year. So let's call it one hundred forty k, one hundred twenty, thirty k, whatever that is. But if you want to go for those, if you're in, say, New York or one of those higher paying areas and you need to say, yeah, 250, well, then you're looking at, you know, I would say that's over $100 an hour. Right. So you have to be able to prove that without being arrogant. Just be confident. Okay. And so being able to do that is super important because they're going to try, they want to hire you for as little as possible. So if you can get in there and say things like, yeah, look, with my PCPD certification, there's the proof. Here's my GitHub. Have a look at the giant technology stack that I use for my, that I've used for this application that I have demonstrated knowledge with. Play with it. Have a look. You'll see that I'm worth every penny, right? So that's one side of the coin is knowing your value from that perspective. The other side is knowing what you actually need. Because potentially what you earn is not necessarily what you need to get by every day. So there's that sense of budgeting. You have to know what your minimum rate to survive is. And that's also something people forget. They forget, they always think about this from a skills perspective of, oh, you know, I made 100k in my last job, I want to get to 110. But realistically, you have to start thinking, especially these days with inflation and all of those things. Well, what is my number? To live in this house, to pay my mortgage, to put my kids through school, to pay for daycare. What is the minimum number I need in my house to be able to get to that point? Knowing your number, both from your value and from what you actually need to survive is super important. And the reason you need to do all of these things beforehand is because confidence is key in your salary negotiation. If you go in there not knowing your number, if you go in there waiting for them to sort of give you a number, there's every chance you're going to use this term, lose that battle, right? Because they're going to say, oh, this person doesn't know, let's take them. And it depends on the company, right? If obviously smaller companies, a little more human. But the big companies where there's not a single drop of humanity in them, they're less likely to advocate for you. They're going to say, no, this is great, if I can get a senior dev in for half the price. Because they don't know. They don't know how to negotiate. Fantastic, right? So what you need to do is come in with that confidence and it's, remember the difference between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is like, who do you think you are? I'm worth double that, mate, you know? No, that's arrogant. Confidence is in knowing also when to back out of the conversation and say, look, I appreciate your stance, I appreciate your ability to fund the role to that extent. Unfortunately, that doesn't meet the mark with me. So thank you for your time and back away and go find somewhere else. Right, but that's where the research comes into it. Because if you know your number it is very likely that number is not going to be something ridiculous that makes them laugh. So if they ask you what your number is, which is what they tend to do these days, because they want you to rip yourself off, most people don't know their value. They haven't done the research, and they don't know what these roles are worth. So when they ask you, what's the ballpark figure for your salary? Or what are you looking at? That's their way of saying, let's see if they actually know what they're worth and also what this position is worth. So I've interviewed for roles before where I've said, and you also, you don't want to answer too quickly, you don't want to answer too slowly. There is a bit of theater to this. You want to take your time, but you want to be confident in that answer. The longer you take, the less confident you, you sound, right? No? So if you say, yeah, look. So for this role, for the experience I bring to the table, which I can show you after this discussion, I'm looking at anywhere from 200 to 230. It's actually a good idea to give a range these days rather than a single number because it shows that there's room for negotiation. It softens the blow. Right now, the other thing to consider and to enjoy in the conversation is that it's not always going to be base salary. There's a lot of compensation that comes in there through share packages, through perks such as healthcare, such as education budgets. Some places will give you those, and these are nuanced, but some places will give you those unlimited annual leave packages. Some companies tend to do that these days. Take as much leave as you want, you know, so based on these perks, the number might be a bit lower, but that might be okay. So you have to, again, be prepared to consider that in the moment, do that prep as well, and say, hey, if their companies are paying healthcare, I'm actually okay with taking a pay cut of 1020k depending on how much healthcare costs where you live, if it even costs anything. So once you consider all those pieces and you get your number out there, you then have to be, this is now going back to that evidence piece. This is where you have to be able to fight for yourself and advocate for yourself. So an employer might come back and say, 200, julian, that's a bit much. What makes you say that? Why 200 for you? What makes you essentially, what makes you worth 200? And that's where the prep you did in advance comes in. If you start stuttering and be like, you feel that heat through your body as you're nervous and anxious, like, oh, my God, what do I say to that? Lean back on those evidence that you talked about that you prepared in advance. So if someone said that to me, I'd say, well, I'm awesome. No, I wouldn't say that. But if someone said, 200k, julian, come on. Really? I'd be like, yeah. I said, well, it's roughly what I get paid now. And that's the other thing. Never tell them what you get paid at the moment, right? Never tell them that. They don't need to know that information. So I can say it's, it's what? It's. I could say it's roughly what I get paid now. It is. My worth is based on these factors. Show them the GitHub repo, show them your certifications, tell them about your years of experience and say, there are things that I've done over the past 15 years of employment that are not on a piece of paper. The experience that I bring to the table is an experience you're not going to find in anyone else. I can guarantee you that if you speak to that level of confidence, again, not arrogance, you will have a much better time of being able to convince them or justifying that you are worth the number and more importantly, that you've thought about the number. So I remember being in interview where I said, for this position, the time commitment, and this also comes down to understanding the position you're going to. So in the role that I'm talking about, it was going to be a global management role for a company. It was going to involve work across three geographies, right? APJC, Emea, and the Americas. And I said, I know the level of work involved working across those regions. I know what you're asking me to build from the ground up. I know what's happening, what my workload is going to be like, totally get it. Seeing your role, you want me to build a team as well. I'm looking at no less than 230k. Right. And so when you speak like that, it shows an understanding, a respect for the role, a respect for the company, respect for yourself, and it moves you up a notch in that level of confidence and like, oh, yeah, okay, they know what they're talking about, you know, and competency. So, yeah, the idea is to have convincing and have conviction, have some clarity to your answers as you talk through this piece. And then, yeah, the last piece of this, which I mentioned before, is know when to stop some companies just can't afford you. That's going to happen. Right. Sometimes they just sit there and say, I appreciate it, but yeah, we just don't have the cash to pay you what you deserve and what you're worth. Or sometimes they'll sit there and obviously go with someone else or go with someone else who's cheaper or whatever, but. And that just comes back to that piece of. You got to keep trying. But that's how I negotiate. These. These are the two. I wrote them down on my phone. That's why I was reading off my phone. But that's how I negotiate for roles. Do a lot of prep. I would say, you know, 70% of your time with this should be preparing your answers and your knowing what your value is, getting that confidence piece in. And then the next piece should be getting in there and speaking confidently. And you can practice that with people. You can give me a call and say, hey, Julian, I want to practice a conversation around compensation with you. I'll be like, okay, I'll grill you through it. Hey, this is Bob again. A bit different this week. Yes, but there was a lot of value in that mindset call. We wanted to share with you all and also give you a glimpse into what our group calls are like in the PDM program. If you have any questions, please check out the PDM program. The link is below and we will be back with a fresh new episode next week. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pybite Friends, that is Pibit es friends and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show. And to join our thriving community of Python programmers, go to Pibytes slash community. That's Pibit Es community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.