Salary Negotiation is Tough
Oftentimes it feels like companies hold all the cards when it comes to salary negotiation. When yearly reviews come around, we wonder, "What did I do this year?" and scramble to dig up anything we can deem an accomplishment so we can prove our worth to our bosses.
Michelle Brenner has a better idea! Michelle talked to us this week about really owning our career path and taking charge of negotiations. Don't just passively let reviews happen to you! Listen to this week's episode and learn how to gather ammunition for your negotiations.
About this week's guest
Michelle is currently a Senior Backend Engineer at Netflix. She has 9+ years experience, from the front lines of support to managing a team. While spending most of her career in entertainment tech, she worked tirelessly to help movies and television get made faster and cheaper. A Philadelphia native, she is an art school graduate and a self-taught Python developer. She also runs a tech podcast called From the Source, interviewing working professionals with a focus on underrepresented voices, to answer the question of what tech jobs are really like. Michelle works to promote diversity and inclusion in tech through conference speaking and organizing, mentoring, board membership and making sure everyone knows they belong here.
Show Notes
- 1:01 - Working for Netflix and learning Java
- 3:30 - How Michelle got into programming
- 5:32 - Tips for learning Python
- 6:23 - Installing Python
- 7:16 - What is B2B?
- 7:59 - How did Michelle get into the entertainment industry?
- 8:59 - Working in a support role before an engineering role
- 11:12 - The Twitter Salary Rollercoaster
- 12:36 - Secret Salaries and Glassdoor numbers
- 14:16 - What makes a salary?
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14:52 - Networking to learn about Salaries
- 16:01 - Michelle's Salary Negotiation Workshop
- 17:12 - Negotiating as a Junior Dev
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19:04 - What to do when getting that first job
- Looking for Mentorship
- 22:04 - Yearly Review Strategies
- 27:24 - How to handle a job where you don't have 1:1s
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30:38 - Self Assessments and Modesty
- Broken Review Systems
- 35:32 - When to jump ship and keeping your resume up to date
- 36:36 - How to word your experience on your resume
- 37:27 - When to go outside the review process and talk directly to management about salary
- 39:16 - Should you stay or go if you get an outside offer?
- 41:10 - General Advice for Negotiations
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42:32 - Backend Development vs Front-end
- Learning Infrastructure
- 45:09 - Python in the Backend world
- 50:38 - Async Python
- 55:24 - awsnewbies.com
- 55:50 - From the Source Podcast
- 56:40 - FAANG
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58:01 - Nerd Minute
- Star Trek Picard
- New Twilight Zone
- Guardians
- Tiger King
- Don't !@#$ with Cats
- Crip Camp