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Negotiate Like a Beast and Get Paid
Engineers: Ask for what you are worth!
Engineers misunderstand true value, therefore they throw away their talents and hard work for ambiance.
A nice monitor, chair and cool glass to write on is more attractive than stock, profit-sharing or the notion of running their own businesses. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d wonder if the business world wants engineers to continue to focus on aesthetics, rather than being paid well.
And I mean, paid-paid, not just salary.
For most of my career, I missed it. I worked for years — running teams, building software, managing customers, and making other people money.
If you added up the year’s worth of salaries, you’d picture me sipping scotch off the back of my yacht. But here I am.
I was fortunate to collaborate with guys who were millionaires back in the nineties. These guys were in tech for the money and understood how to wield the dollar. Their approach to salary was different, and none of them are working today — not one.
I bumped into one of them in a coffee shop in the early 00’s. A few lattes later, I realized I had it all wrong. I figured I was at the top, but; I was duped by a business world that still today, devalues engineer’s work.
