Diskurswelt.de

During the last two months I have been on the receiving end of the question What are your salary expectations? numerous times.

Much has been written about salary negotiation. Some people, among them Patrick McKenzie, advise you to never give a number first. While I agree with the general notion, I do not think this is universally feasible. At least not in all industries and especially not for entry-level positions such as the ones that I applied for. So you have done your research and you give a number. Confidently, you just state it with a calm voice and a straight face.

That was more or less the final part of your job interview. The interviewers ask you to wait a few minutes and leave the room in order to confer. You look around the room, stretch, drink a glass of water and here they are: We think you are a great fit for our team and would like to make you an offer!

First of all, good job. You got an offer, let us hear it. A salary of €48,000 is offered. Coincidentally, that is the exact number you gave them. Now what? You should be happy, should you not?
No, somehow you have got the feeling that you have not maxed out the room for negotiation. What would have happened, had I asked for €50,000 instead? you ask yourself on your way home. You will probably never know. However, due to the fact that they gave you exactly what you asked for, an additional €2,000 p.a. seems somehow likely. This leaves you with a bit of a sour taste.

To be honest, there is not much you can do this except following the aforementioned advice on never giving a number first. However, this article is not directed at you as a job applicant (ha!), but at the people on the other side of the table among whom you will likely be one day.

If a candidate is a great fit, his expectations are somewhat within your range and you really want him to join your company, exceed his expectations. Actually, this is dead simple: just make your number greater than his or hers.
If €48,000 are asked for, offer €50,000. If that is not feasible, offer €49,000 or €48,500. Hell, even offering a ridiculous amount of €48,231.07 or 48,056.89 would probably be better than parroting the €48,000 the candidate asks for. This signals to the candidate that (a) you are not a cheapskate, (b) you really want to have him and although you are limited by some magical upper ceiling that is beyond your control, you try to give the best deal your company possibly can offer. Does this sound reasonable to you?

Yes? (If not, please tell me in the comments.) So next time you have a great candidate, surprise him and exceed her or his expectations and he will be happier about your offer. Thus, you increase the chances to seal the deal in your favour — great candidates will have more than one offer.

I left Bamberg last weekend.

There is so much that could be said about this beautiful town, my alma mater and all the friends that I will dearly miss. For now, I would like to keep it brief: Adela!
And with Daniel in mind: Servus! Tschüss! Ade!

In case you are looking for me, you can find me in Cologne (German: Köln).

I can put any item of my choice on your personalized amazon.com homepage. Did I hear you say Bollocks!? Well, here is proof:

1. Open this page.
2. Visit amazon.com.
3. Observe Dale Carnegie’s classic How to win friends and influence people appear on your personalized amazon.com homepage (see screenshot below for comparison).
4. Order it if you are interested, it is a great read (optional step ;-))!

So how does it work? The page contains a hidden iframe that triggers an HTTP GET request to the book’s page on amazon.com. Now amazon thinks you are interested in this article and recommends it and similar ones to you on their homepage. I would like to leave possible malicious applications to your imagination.

How to fix this? If the X-Frame-Options response header is set to SAMEORIGIN, modern browsers will not allow third party websites to include a page. Interestingly, the German amazon website amazon.de does this.

I have informed amazon.com of this issue via Twitter and E-Mail.

Disclosure: all links to amazon.com are referral links.

Update (2012-04-05): amazon.com got back to me and told me that they have added the X-Frame-Options header.

Phew, I have not posted photos in quite a while. So here’s a few shots I took in the summer of 2009 in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s most northern state.

The first nine were taken in Friedrichstadt, a lovely little Dutch town with canals. I always enjoy going there (and they have a great ice cream parlor).

The following five shots were taken in Husum, the grey town by the sea (Theodor Storm). I love to stroll around the harbour. Although Husum is a rather small town, it’s of importance for the region due to its role as the capital of the district Nordfriesland. Nowadays, it is actually not very grey.

The last three photos were taken on Nordstrand, a green peninsula near Husum. Nordstrand is an invitation to relax and forget all worries for a little while.

Oh, how am I longing to go back!

This is YouTube letting me know that I cannot watch a certain video. The reason?

Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may [sic!] contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.

GEMA is an acronym and stands for Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte which is a marble of German officialese and roughly translates to Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights.

Because the GEMA asks for €0.1278 [sic!] per play — a price which is obviously not sustainable for the traffic gorilla that is YouTube — many of the (music) videos I have posted on Diskurswelt are not available to you if you are visiting from Germany. Sorry about that, but there is not much I can do about it. We have to wait for GEMA and YouTube to stop pointing fingers and sort this out like grown-ups.