Hi fellow data professional!

Big news from my home base of Orlando: Disney hired a new CEO with a pay package of nearly $40 million. If you read beyond the headline you’ll see that his base salary is “only” 2.5 million with the possibility of up to a 250% target incentive and some $26-ish million in stock options.

This is why you, the job seeker, need to think beyond base salary and look at TC.

Total compensation.

Thanks to labor transparency laws passed in hiring hubs like New York and California, more employers are including salary ranges on job listings. But even this doesn’t tell the full story.

To understand how competitive an offer is, you need to think about the “full package” you’re being promised.

Of course, finding this out depends on a recruiter sharing comp info upon initial contact.

I’ve personally been ghosted because (more than one) recruiter will DM me about a “great position” and include either a vague salary range or omit comp entirely.

I encourage you, even if it feels “icky”, to break the ice on comp at the earliest opportunity.

In this instance I simply responded: “What’s the proposed TC for the role?”

Recruiters not responding to this question is a red flag. After all, applying to a job is a capitalist exchange, not a charitable act.

So anyone who seems shocked you care about, *gasp*, money, isn’t someone you’d want to associate your professional brand with.

The easiest response to the question is, “there is a salary range from x to y.” Your offer will most likely fall in the middle so, if hired, you’re not at the ceiling of the role’s salary band.

Comp can get complex fast.

Even a straightforward bonus can have specific contingencies; if a recruiter lures you in with talks of a performance bonus ask: “How much of this amount is dependent on company performance? What percentage of goal is usually hit?”

At entry or mid-level you most likely won’t have to worry about equity or restricted stock units (RSUs). Though, if you're fortunate to receive them as part of your comp structure, they are often more powerful wealth builders than a salary.

For comp structures beyond a basic salary it’s critical to understand the contingencies, as incentive plans often have performance and tenure-related rungs to clear.

And if your once-excited recruiter goes silent when prompted with the TC question, just know that you probably just saved yourself much more than money; so, when is it appropriate to discuss TC?

The last poll overwhelmingly demonstrated a need to better understand the "why" behind coding.

I'm working on a resource that aims to take you beyond the code to understand the business implications of what you build.

Stay tuned!

Thanks for ingesting,

-Zach Quinn

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