More interview/salary questions

Were you just going to be a freelancer than?

 

No. Way. I started at like $19K. I didn't top 30 until I got my second job, five years later. And this was only four years ago.

 

I take a probably perverse pride in having started in this business making $15K -- and that was in 1998, not 1968.

 

Howww?

I thought Conrad Black was a nice guy!

Actually, no, I didn't, but I thought he paid reasonable amounts that year, and I thought you were there.

No no?

 

JESUS christ. You've been doing this for 10 years?

I'm going to go swallow a gun barrel.

 

I just topped $30K for the first time last October.
Was making $27K, got hired at $28K with 6-month raise to $30K, then the sports editor quits two days before I am supposed to start. I ask if they would consider me for the position, and they did and I got the position at significantly more than $30K.
Awesome, aawesome, awesome day. Got a promotion and a raise before I ever started.

 

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.

Sir Brown (which is how I address my poop, by the way): When the Post started up, some folks got paid a lot of money. Some of us did not. Although to the paper's credit, when I did get a raise, it might have been the biggest raise by percentage in the history of sportswriting. And I wouldn't have paid me more than $15K to start, either. Hell, I felt lucky they let me in the building.

 

In a major colelge beat and not breaking 30,000 yet for some reason perhaps bad negotiation 5 years ago. Way to get a raiseless promotion from preps isn't it?

Umm...I think I am underpaid. It's a sore spot with me too. Fuck the biz.

 

At bigger papers, I always figured they should pay the preps and small-colleges writers more, because fewer people would want to do those things. But if you offered one of those guys a pro beat, would he really say no if it didn't come with a raise attached? Even more so when promoting from within for a columnist -- would one of your writers say, fuhgeddaboudit, I need a big boost in pay? No, most likely, hr or she would be glad for the duty.

I know that hiring from outside can throw all this out of whack, but if you stay in-house, does the person have any real leverage if they want a better role?

I'm not advocating this, I'm just wondering...

 

Using vacation time as a bargaining chip is a sensible move. Some employers can't tweak the systems and don't want to award off-the-books time, so be aware that it might not pan out.

When I was a hiring editor, I occasionally would put a new hire on the payroll a few weeks early to goose the number a bit. It was a little extra buckage in the hire's pocket at an expense-laden time (moving costs and such) and was budget-friendly, as the position was already funded.

 

Yeah, my last SE did that for me. They couldn't pay for "moving expenses," per se, but I got an extra $500 out of it (which I sorely needed at the time.) He also got me a day or two of OT pay my first two weeks, so I got some extra cash that way, too. ... There's always ways around the rules, if management is going to be that cheap about it.

 

You or I would call it that. They wouldn't. Pay jump would be nice but whatever. Need health coverage.