120k offering: 40 minutes closer than the other...

gespenstern

I use maybe roughly half of this list and something else, but something is new to me, will certainly take a look. Thanks, Deathmage!

ITBot

Deathmage Every time you post something, I make it a list of things I need to study. Keep us updated!

cfirsten

Deathmage wrote: »

.....

Maybe I'm too kind, dunno, thought 95k would be generous.

Never tell them how much you want. Let them make you an offer, they know how much they are willing to pay and they're willing to start you out low. If they ask you how much you want, tell them it doesn't matter how much I want, I was wondering of what the starting rate might be and we'll go from there? What matters is how much are they willing to pay. If you're not in line with what they're offering, tell them, let me discuss it with my family and I'll get back to you. Also they don't like candidates that throw money at them, I want this or that; you are there to do what they ask from you, money comes later .

Good luck man!!

Deathmage

noahp34 wrote: »

Deathmage Every time you post something, I make it a list of things I need to study. Keep us updated!

I'm touched that people know of me so much and follow me so.

Deathmage

Just got off the Skype with the recruiter and boy did he try to low ball me now, he offered by 75k for the job I was like nope, my lowest will be 90k. This is obviously the recruiter speaking, it will be interesting to hear from the actual employer.

We shall see, right now this isn't my core focus, my ICDN2 study is my focus. I got another email from a company in Albany area. My resume has only been on Dice for a week now and gee I'm geting contacted more and more....

if it's not a 30k increase I won't take it.

techfiend

I've taken Omega 3 Fish Oil for years, I don't think it really makes a difference for me but I keep taking it. Acetyl L-Carnitine on the other hand is fantastic and I can tell when I miss a day, which is kind of scary, hopefully I don't become dependent on it. I may try one of those long-term pills mentioned because I find that kind of an issue. I'd say I've already lost half of my cisco knowledge but a quick refresher would likely bring me back up to speed. I really don't want to start taking a cocktail of pills, which long term chemical do you think is more effective?

Dakinggamer87

Deathmage wrote: »

Just got off the Skype with the recruiter and boy did he try to low ball me now, he offered by 75k for the job I was like nope, my lowest will be 90k. This is obviously the recruiter speaking, it will be interesting to hear from the actual employer.

We shall see, right now this isn't my core focus, my ICDN2 study is my focus. I got another email from a company in Albany area. My resume has only been on Dice for a week now and gee I'm geting contacted more and more....

if it's not a 30k increase I won't take it.

At least your getting more offers. It will be interesting how the company responds keep us posted. Keep up the CCNA studies!!

Deathmage

techfiend wrote: »

I've taken Omega 3 Fish Oil for years, I don't think it really makes a difference for me but I keep taking it. Acetyl L-Carnitine on the other hand is fantastic and I can tell when I miss a day, which is kind of scary, hopefully I don't become dependent on it. I may try one of those long-term pills mentioned because I find that kind of an issue. I'd say I've already lost half of my cisco knowledge but a quick refresher would likely bring me back up to speed. I really don't want to start taking a cocktail of pills, which long term chemical do you think is more effective?

Long term wise they all help. I've gotten to the point in my studies that the more I study the less I feel I'm learning, even review is so mundane.

Acetyl-L-Carnitine plus Alpha Lipoic Acid work well together with Omega. Huperzine is good for learning without a doubt. Vicopentine is amazing it does something, helps a ton with focus and memory retetion.

Deathmage

Dakinggamer87 wrote: »

At least your getting more offers. It will be interesting how the company responds keep us posted. Keep up the CCNA studies!!

I know, staying positive, but one week till exam can't think about job progression ..

techfiend

I used to take Focus+ which has Huperzine and Vicopentine. I switched to ALC and prefer it, just ordered ALA to go along with it, thanks!

Supplements always seem to be able to cure everything, which makes me lose trust. I've tried a few others with no results until focus+ which had some effect.

greg9891

Congrats. Its your gig!.....do what makes you happy. You will eventually get that and more.

OctalDump

alias454 wrote: »

huh I better start updating my blog - good luck

Yeah, that's what was going through the back of my mind while reading this, too. But that linkedin, I just feel weird about linkedin.

egrizzly

If they're giving you $120K as an initial offer you should ask for $126K. I have a buddy in HR and he says all offers have a range and their recruiters have a policy to always present the low end of it (unless the candidate is flagged "highly competitive" ).

So in this case politely ask for $126K and justify the reason why you should be paid more in a statement like below:

" While I appreciate the offer at $120 note that I have extensive experience in A, or strong exposure to B, or have this and that certification. I believe that I am comfortable at a higher salary. Can we do $126K for this position "

You then wait for a response from the recruiter. Note that you merely just say you deserve more because of your skillset/experience. At that point either one of two things are going to happen. 1.) Recruiter will come back and say ok lets do $126K (because this is in their range anyway), or they'll say they'll have to check with your hiring manager. This takes either minutes or hours, or maybe a day. If the manager says that $120 is their max then just make up an excuse with a really cool benefit they offer and say "It looks like I can be flexible because you have really good paid time off, or so, and so." ...then, and only then do you accept the offer.

This leaves an impression on the manager that you're not cheap and not jumping at the first crumbs thrown to you.

Deathmage

My feeling is, I'm now getting comfortable with Networking with regards to Cisco and Dell. and I'm quite content with VMware and well Windows administration is easy, at-least for me. ...I kind of like Dell networking cause the new N series switches are all Force10's in the firmware and if any of you Cisco guys know, Force10 is a splinter cell of Cisco engineers, the CLi feels just like Cisco IOS. Moving from Dell to Cisco is very easy. However working in the older Dell in the GUI is a royal *****, untagged, tagged bullshit drives me bonkers! ... I see "T" and I think Trunk...

The more and more I blow away my home-lab the more comdotable I get with VMware and my mix on 2008/2012/Ubuntu Server 14.04. I really can't even express how much I love having a 6 area OSPF in the home-lab and even though the FR is slow as ****, it's my ghetto WAN... (heck been thinking of getting a cheap ass LGA 1155 mobo for a i7-2600k and popping on 16 GB's of RAM for an ESXi 5.5 box for each 'remote' network - spec'd out the costs and it would be like $350 off Newegg for the 4 year old mobo and fugly case and PCI-e low-profile card and 24 GB SSD. - I got two 2600k's in the closet from a different project that went cold) ... But what I find more interesting is this multi-area OSPF is more like CCNP level stuff since all I do is live in a L3 switch now these days at home.


it would be pretty neat to setup 3 VMware cluster in the house, the primary being on the 3 R610's annd the remote networks being nested. Unless I could figure out the HCL for installing ESXi 5.5 or 6.0 on a normal PC's mobo. I got a few PCI-e Broadcom nics in the closet so I'm not worried about networking. My closet is a a nerds paradise, so many parts in there. I'm like a 2015 version on Anikin Skywalker at 12 years old.

I will say this a CCENT may not be the highest cert out there but the study and labbing really helped me visualize how a network flows and flowcharts are so much easier to make now. It really helps when troubleshooting Windows and VMware problems at work, since we have a 3 area OSPF at work (it's a small network but I wanted the network done right from the get-go, was also my real-world training for CCENT/CCNA-based network design). I can go from A to B and then C. Most Windows Engineers that are purely wintel would stop at B and be like here I can't figure it out...

Now the kicker is marketing this knowledge to a employer, the stuff I've done solo at my current emlioyer in 8 months makes the Dell engineers I talk on the phone with, their heads spin, they say "you did this all yourself" .... I'm like 'sort of I got a great network of professionals on this mystical forum and I got a home-lab', but maybe I sell myself short ....They look at my home-lab and are just flabergasted.

On a side note, I'm really glad we got solar panels last summer, our electric bill is only $45 a month, up for $22. My lab normally runs off the nightly battery packs for the panels in the evening. Really making those panels work during the day. .... the house has geothermal heating from (6) 85ft wells (Enviromental nerd info, but Geothermal is awesome, 3 feet below the surface the temperature of the ground is a constant 55 degrees year round, so all you need to do is heat from 55 degrees), so my lab does help heat the house from a exhuast intake at the top of the rack that goes through a air filter and is cycled through the house, lol!!!!!! less heating from the oil furnace if it's ever used since we got a large fireplace. I just actually got done with firewood last weekend, stacked 8 cords of wood, found 3 massive oak trees so they burn hot and long.

My 1st degree was Foresty and Environmental Science but after working for the NY DEC for 10 months I went back to school for IT and now here I am, but I've got a bit of a green thumb. ...hence why I'm playing catch-up my early 20's was in a completely different field...Will be honest I have no idea what my Dendrology teacher was saying but knowing the latin names of Tree defeintly doesn't do ****, but knowing what trees are hardwoods vs softwoods helps for burning and I can read a tree by it's bark or leaves, so I guess it does have purpose

egrizzly wrote: »

If they're giving you $120K as an initial offer you should ask for $126K. I have a buddy in HR and he says all offers have a range and their recruiters have a policy to always present the low end of it (unless the candidate is flagged "highly competitive" ).

So in this case politely ask for $126K and justify the reason why you should be paid more in a statement like below:

" While I appreciate the offer at $120 note that I have extensive experience in A, or strong exposure to B, or have this and that certification. I believe that I am comfortable at a higher salary. Can we do $126K for this position "

You then wait for a response from the recruiter. Note that you merely just say you deserve more because of your skillset/experience. At that point either one of two things are going to happen. 1.) Recruiter will come back and say ok lets do $126K (because this is in their range anyway), or they'll say they'll have to check with your hiring manager. This takes either minutes or hours, or maybe a day. If the manager says that $120 is their max then just make up an excuse with a really cool benefit they offer and say "It looks like I can be flexible because you have really good paid time off, or so, and so." ...then, and only then do you accept the offer.

This leaves an impression on the manager that you're not cheap and not jumping at the first crumbs thrown to you.

Thanks for the pointers, technical recruiters I've read do go on the low-ball scale so they get a higher return on the canidate, however I won't sell myself short, the move to a different company would need to be better for me not just a little better.

I want paid time off, flexible weekends (for exam taking), full benefits, and investment options. I understand full benefits is easily a $10k buffer in costs on the employer so I do take that into account. But I won't leave my current job unless it's a 30k minimum increase in pay.

Deathmage

@PM:

"using ospf areas when it's not needed is definitely not the right thing to do and an area can have a hundreds or even thousands of routers with no problem. all you accomplished was to make that company's network more complicated for the next guy"

While true, they want to use vCloud Director in 2017 for a SaaS deployment on a IaaS platform of a ERP so the goal was to prepare the network for easier segmentation of network flow once resources where needed to be isolated from internal traffic. The core will still be the backbone, but the other customer networks will be isolated networks and I didn't want routing to even flow over the internal network of the company. But for the next guy, I've documented everything and thoughts on why this design was choosen. I documentent everything, my last job at PCG I was left with zero documentation for a /21 subnet of devices and when I left they had a 350 tab excel document with EVERYTHING documented and I did most of it will painful patience. documentation is now an important part of IT for me, what happens if I get hit by a bus?

Perhaps at this point in my understanding this was a wrong approach to the issue but segregating traffic into area's from a dynamic perspective seemed to make more sense than doing it all statically. Of course I will be also be using ACL's so this may all be completely overkill but maybe once I get to CCNP level my thinking will have changed.

See now that I'm getting more ways of resolving problems Im always brainstorming ways to accomplish tasks, the lab helps put the idea into practice. I will contest most of the things in my lab are CCNP level. I know many are saying focus on CCNA but I simple can't stop learning/formulating, it's a problem indeed. Like I read a whole chapter on say VVRP or FR or Multi-Area OSPF and I'm like ok enough already where is the confriguration steps. I'm way more of a visaul learner than a book learner once I see it work in the lab and I've troubleshooted issues to completion the task is cemented into my skull.

I've been really thinking allot about in lately and I'm really tossed on which I want to do 1st. VCDX or CCIE, I initally wanted just VCDX but now that I'm into Cisco I really want CCIE just preparing myself for my 30's being completly sucked down the toilet into oblivon, so once I start down the path I can't stop... really need to bang out a MCSE though even if Wintel administration is going more towards the cloud, I can't sell myself as a matter expert if I don't have at-least one.

I do realize one thing, small networks are not for me, I need complexity to stay alive, lol!

Deathmage

Question:

I'm finding out the real amount from the employer is 100k not 120k. so that makes more sense now.

My question is this, my friend at CSC is telling me this recruiter is shady. he explained to me how recruiters work, if the company is willing to pay say 100k and the recruiter offers me 80k, my friend tells me the recruiter gets paid the difference in the total amount that the company is willing to pay. So it essence if i take 80k or 90k the recruiter makes 20 to 10k for my effort at the job.

is this accurate? - if so I'm not going to let the guy make that much off me....

thomas_

I've heard that too, but I also have heard that while it may be a percentage of your salary that the recruiter's commission is based off of, the money comes from s different pot and does not come from your salary. As to which one is right is anyone's guess unless there are some former recruiters floating around in this forum.

techfiend

Depends on the company or independent recruiter. I've had recruiters say I should ask for more, which hints that they make a percentage, this is mainly larger agencies like rht, kforce, etc. I've also had recruiters that seriously low-ball and this looks like a difference profit.

Recruiters paychecks have to come from somewhere. My experience with recruiters is mostly bad even if they start out good. I've learned to mostly ignore them especially the ones that say "I have some positions that would be a great fit, you can call me...blah blah". I've also caught multiple small agencies advertising fake positions. They've kind of ruined the industry and unfortunately have risen in popularity.

ratbuddy

It really depends what arrangement the recruiter has with the customer.

If it's a direct hire by the client, the recruiter will usually be compensated as a percentage of the pay for the position. Recruiters want you to make more in this situation, because it directly increases their income. Note that they will not push overpriced candidates, since closing the deal is more important than eeking out that last few percent. They're rather have you hired at 70k for an 80k position than have you walk because you demanded 85k and the client didn't want to pay it, but they'd also rather you made the full 80k. The recruiters have to walk a line between making higher margins and closing more deals.

Also in the case of direct hire, there may also be a contract stating something along the lines of 'RecruitCo will provide you with an endless stream of poorly reimbursed TSA1 candidates, and you will pay RecruitCo $4000 for each one you hire, regardless of how much you will pay those recruits. The recruiter generally doesn't care what you make, and has little to no say in how much you are offered. The recruiter may offer hints about how much the position usually pays, but that's about it. They get paid the same no matter how much you make, it's up to you to negotiate your pay with the client company.

If you're not a direct hire, and the recruiting company will be writing your paychecks, it's a whole different situation. They are usually paid a fixed rate to fill a position. RecruitCo provides a network engineer for ClientCo, and ClientCo pays RecruitCo 110k per year. RecruitCo then finds an engineer who meets ClientCo's needs, and offers them a percentage of the contract value. 50% is not uncommon. ClientCo doesn't need to handle any taxes or benefits for that position, just the payment to RecruitCo.

RecruitCo has some wiggle room, so if the position is not attracting qualified candidates, they can just reduce their portion of the contract value until they get someone who can pass an interview and get hired at ClientCo. In this case, say they are getting clown resumes, so they readvertise the position for 65k instead of 55k. They're still keeping 40% of the contract value, but RecruitCo will not be making as much money than if they had found a clown at 55k who was good enough for ClientCo.

In the above case, RecruitCo has every incentive to pay you as little as possible. They will probably offer you horrible medical benefits that cost more than going to the open exchange. They will nickel and dime you on paid time off and other benefits like that. Forget about retirement etc. Again, every dollar they pay you comes off their bottom line.

Another option is a percent based contract. You technically work for RecruitCo, are assigned to ClientCo, and ClientCo pays RecruitCo a fixed additional percentage on top of your pay. 60% is fairly typical. You are hired by RecruitCo at 25/hour, while they bill ClientCo 40/hour for your time. If it's an agreed upon percentage, RecruitCo will generally till you how much you can expect to be paid, because they know what the client is willing to pay for this position. If you can negotiate more pay from ClientCo, RecruitCo will get paid more as well.

If this is the case, they will generally encourage you to negotiate salary and go for all you are worth. You ain't gonna get it, since RecruitCo has to keep the lights on, but if ClientCo is desperate to fill the role, you may be able to negotiate a reasonable market salary despite working through a recruiter.

Be aware that if you are hired through a recruiter and work directly for that recruiter, the client (almost?) always has a buyout option. It's probably something like 30% of your yearly pay at the start, then will drop to lower percentages as the contract ticks down. After some time period, the company is free to directly hire you, if they want. If you're really good and they want to keep you, they will pay the buyout and hire you early in the contract. You can, and should, renegotiate your pay when converting to direct hire - ClientCo no longer has to pay the recruiting firm on top of your salary, so you aren't out of bounds expecting a piece of the difference.

Also be aware that all this goes out the window when you find a shady recruiter. They do not care about establishing relationships with you or with the hiring firm. They will edit your resume, shotgun it all over the place, submit you for jobs you are over/underqualified for, tell employers you will work cheap and tell you the employer pays heavy. They are only interested in closing enough deals to stay in business, and they do not care about repeat business from either end.

Unfortunately, it's up to you to figure out what type of recruiter you are dealing with, and it's up to you to figure out what kind of arrangement they have with the client. Don't be shy about this; in all cases, you are being sold as a good, and you deserve to know the terms of the sale. Ask questions, and ask to speak directly with the hiring manager as soon as you can. Any reputable recruiter who thinks you may fit the role will get out of the way and let you speak with the potential client. If the recruiter doesn't want you speaking to the client or won't tell you the recruiting contract situation up front, there's a good bet they are playing games, and you should break off contact.

zcarenow

If people update their linkedin, they will get contacted quite a bit. That is what i see.

Deathmage

zcarenow wrote: »

If people update their linkedin, they will get contacted quite a bit. That is what i see.

I wish I had a DND option, i get emails daily.

techfiend

I rarely get contacted through linkedin although all I've done on it lately is update certs. Otherwise my resume has stopped growing lately, I'm doing some interesting things but it's already on the resume.

I'm finding moving up from JOAT positions is about as difficult as getting in. I should consider myself lucky since I skipped the help desk portion although I still do workstation support, it's not the majority of the work. Just wished the money followed my skills.

SteveLord

techfiend - sounds just like me. Skipped helpdesk roles and went right into a JOAT for 9 years now (across 2 jobs). Trying to get out of that is indeed a challenge.

Deathmage

3rd phone call in 5 minutes.

coreyb80

zcarenow wrote: »

If people update their linkedin, they will get contacted quite a bit. That is what i see.

Usually recruiters looking to fill positions most won't take, but there are some rare gems that may come along as well.

Deathmage

3rd phone call went well. They liked my blog and home-lab plus flowcharts. I'm doing another phone interview with the company on Friday afternoon.

paul78

Sounds like you are making progress with the interview process. Good luck on the next meeting...

zcarenow

Check this out. Only a contract job for 3 months guaranteed, but after that , it is up in the air. Still, not bad. I am seeing quite a bit of this. The job seems pretty simple, but if you owe a mortgage or have kids, it would be wise to skip this.

ratbuddy

Deathmage, is this the one in Hartford? If so, where do you live, and are you planning to relocate?

Deathmage

ratbuddy wrote: »

Deathmage, is this the one in Hartford? If so, where do you live, and are you planning to relocate?

This one is in Milford, near New Haven.