Negotiating Salary

i'm meeting with an employer soon to discuss my work and salary. this is my first job, so i'd like some advice on negotiating my salary.

i've been hired by a hedge fund company to:

1) design and implement company databases for investment managers, strategies, and investors using some integrated program.

2) design a database to evaluate performance, correlations, volatility, and relative performance for investment strategies used by top hedge funds and proprietary trading rooms.

i'll need to create and test algorithms for investments, so i'll develop ways to keep track of investments, evaluating prospective investments, performance data, and so on. i've actually never taken a computer course in my life, so i have no idea how this job will be.

i need to figure out how much i should be paid for this work (based on these descriptions, what do you think?), and how i should be paid (by project, hourly, monthly), and whether he should be responsible for my taxes or not.

any comments would be appreciated.

#187229

i don't know how clearly you're going to find a match for your job description, but maybe salary.com can help... you select the closest job description and your area and they provide the high/low/mean salary for that job in your location. that may be a starting ground for yourself in negotiating.

#187235

thanks, i'll check it out.

i just need a ballpark value to start off.

#187238

thanks for the detailed response. i really appreciate it. i'll try and elaborate more on the situation.

my hobbies are in drawing, music, and philosophy, and i have an interest in computers, but i haven't taken any technical courses in programming. my academic background is in economics, and mathematical game theory in particular. in my undergraduate career, i focused mainly on developing theoretical models; e.g. my senior thesis was a theoretical model i devised to analyze ebay.

i applied to the hedge fund company for a fund analyst position. he responded saying that he had some projects that he needed to be done, so he asked me if i was interested. of course, i said yes. he interviewed me, so he knew my accomplishments and abilities. he wouldn't have offered me the opportunity if he didn't think i could do it.

the projects involve helping him set up the models and framework that would be used to create a fund of funds. so far, it seems i would be responsible for getting familiar with the software (he signed a contract with a software company) and setting up some investment databases to track performance. i won't know more of the details until i meet with him again in a couple days, so i can't really say.

but looking at those figures, all i can say is wow. i had no idea what to expect.

do you have any suggestions?

#187298