What if you never negotiated salaries?

Created: March 3, 2021

Today a friend and former colleague of mine - who happens to now be in a development leadership role for a NetSuite partner - was lamenting the extreme difficulty of finding and hiring NetSuite developers.

I'm always keenly curious about hiring practices for NetSuite developers, so I asked a few follow-up questions. As the conversation turned towards salaries, my friend struck me squarely and directly on an exposed nerve.

I didn't ask permission to share the full story, so I'm afraid I can't go into details. I will, however, spare you from my dramatic overreaction to the situation and instead ask you a question.

What if you clearly defined a job role, decided what value the company would gain from a competent person in that role, derived a salary from that value and the required ROI for the position, and then published that salary with the job description?

I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts, processes, and reasoning when setting and negotiating salaries.

-EG