Going through a series of interviews
- Thread starter Aquarians
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In short, I will not settle until I make myself at least a billion dollars. Axiomatically, that's not gonna come from a salary or in general "doing your job".
Why so much money? Because I want to change the world. If you think of "the world" only as "Earth" and you know some physics, that's already a helluva lot of energy to change anything. So change = energy, big change = a lot more energy, energy = money (even before the stupid bitcoin. always was).
Finance with it's trillions looks like a better place for my goal of diverting a "mere" billion into my own pocket, it's that simple. That's why "I finance".
So when I look for a job that I could use to extract more opportunities than I already do, I look for someplace where I have a peer that I can talk with so together we make 3 billions. You know, the assemble is more than the sum of the parts.
Like I'm showing them my pricing models:
Which lead to the call option price being computed as:
Which might be speeded up a lot of one could wrap all that sausage with a single formula but no progress so far:
Why so much money? Because I want to change the world. If you think of "the world" only as "Earth" and you know some physics, that's already a helluva lot of energy to change anything. So change = energy, big change = a lot more energy, energy = money (even before the stupid bitcoin. always was).
Finance with it's trillions looks like a better place for my goal of diverting a "mere" billion into my own pocket, it's that simple. That's why "I finance".
So when I look for a job that I could use to extract more opportunities than I already do, I look for someplace where I have a peer that I can talk with so together we make 3 billions. You know, the assemble is more than the sum of the parts.
Like I'm showing them my pricing models:
Which lead to the call option price being computed as:
Which might be speeded up a lot of one could wrap all that sausage with a single formula but no progress so far:
1. What business arrangement? W2-hourly with benefits, 1099, or C2C? What is your current arrangement?
2. This is through an agency, right? Did you find out the margin on your time? What are they charging the client for an hour of your work?
Based on your comments, it looks like you're going to hard pass on this, so use it as a learning experience. Ask lots of questions; work 'em a little bit. Negotiate.
If they're asking $50/hr for your time, paying you $30, that's $20/hr profit. At 2000hrs/yr, that's $40,000/yr into their pocket for little more than direct deposit and waxing their carrot all year. Remember, there's a lot of money in it for them if you say yes.
This is the shit they don't teach you in school.
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#1: Full time employment, EU-based, so no idea what W2, 1099 or C2C would translate to.
#2: An agency indeed. Dunno their margin but I'm currently working for a product company so there's no middle man (which probably explains the higher rate - even though it might actually be lower than what they'd get through an agency).
Overall I just wanted to do some "reconnaissance" and figure out if they would have some guys who are into trading and I might learn something from them. I've got far better chances here on ET (or other boards such as Wilmott) than some stupid random agency.
Can you clarify their offer? To hire you as a FTE at $30/hr? If it's FTE why are you quoting an hourly rate? Is that a salary (60k/yr)? Do you get health insurance, vacation time, and benefits?
I've converted it to hourly rate since it seems to be a popular way of comparing income. They said €50,000. I currently make €60k, with health insurance, 26 days of vacation per year (in addition to 15 national holidays) and a range of benefits I won't be enumerating here. May not look like a lot for Americans but it's competitive enough for EU that I've little incentive to move elsewhere, particularly if I factor in the cost of living.
Why the difference in price? If you're making €60k with a range of benefits, why is this other firm not competitive? Can you get them for €70k, or even €80k? Here we see the contracting house's cut. They're probably billing the client at least €50/hr, or €100k/yr, offering you €50k/yr with benefits, and cutting a nice profit. You are a product, my friend... no different from a car, lumber, or pork bellies.
If you're on salary, quote it as such: €50K/yr, FTE of consulting house; or, €50K/yr FTE of <FIRM NAME>.
This article is required reading for you. It explains the different business arrangements:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2014...w2-hourly-1099-salary-what-is-the-difference/
Well perhaps I could, but money is only part of the equation, the other part is effort. And effort estimations in software development are not portable from job to job. Like if you're a truck driver, the effort requirements across different jobs are fairly consistent. And not just that, but "drive a truck from point A to point B" is almost always a finite-effort, predictable endeavor. While a software problem could effectively be impossible to resolve, certainly bordering impossibility within the time constraints that are usually imposed.
Somehow "managers" or whoever the heck has the decision, think or pretend to think that porting people across the software domain is just as simple as moving truck drivers from one route to another. In fact like the computer architecture, a programmer's brain works much in the same way. The "CPU" is one thing but what really defines productivity is locality of data. Having developed the system from the ground up and / or worked with it for many years has the property of bringing most of the key components of the system into the "cache memory", so one can operate with it at the speeds that managers actually expect. Even working with a system for a long time, there's only so much cache a person has, so more complex stuff has to be retrieved from "RAM", and that's an order of magnitude slower, at least. And again, being parachuted on a hot project "that needed to be delivered yesterday", like it's the case for this contract (or for what matters, most projects I've seen in my life), there's a huge impedance mismatch between manager expectations of delivering at "CPU cache" speed and the reality of having to access the data not on an SSD, not even on a magnetic disk storage but on a freakin' slow network (also take into account all the missing context information and generations upon generations of consultants who worked on the system, crapped something for as long as they could stomach it then left when complexity exceeded their cognitive level - but you are expected to pick up the pig and make it fly).
So not for €70k, or even €80k, thanks but no thanks.
I'm not asking you to move or change jobs, or to argue whether software engineers can be commoditized. I'm asking you to _negotiate_.
You had the guts to submit for the role, and impressed them enough to get an offer. Now push them to determine your market value. Next:
1. Ask what they'd pay you on an hourly rate, with taxes withheld. In the U.S. we call this a "W2 hourly" because you get a W2 tax form. In this arrangement, they do the accounting work, but you get no benefits. You'll have to factor that into the price.
2. Ask what they'd pay you in ca$h, where you file your own tax returns: you'll have to factor that into the price. In the U.S. we call this a "1099" because, again, that's the tax form number.
3. Ask them if they can do a "Corp to Corp," or "C2C." This is where you form a corporation. They pay your corporation, and you pay yourself from your own corp. There are tax, liability, and unemployment advantages to this arrangement.
You will learn from this experience, goddammit. I'm going to make sure of it.
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