[widebody911]

I've been doing contract work (Sr Devops Engineer) for a medium-sized retailer since April of last year. I've been knocking it out of the park and they want to convert me to FTE, but we're stuck on price. My boss, who is in his early 30's and ambitious, is rather new to the whole management thing but you can tell from listening to him talk that he really wants to climb the food chain. He actually got the head count approval, but he refuses to just come right out and offer a number: he wants me to tell him what I should be making. I really, really like the contractor money, but going FTE would get me cheaper health insurance and other benefits, of which right now I have none. (I have health insurance, but it's literally more than my mortgage)

I dug up some salary surveys (and I know the boss has too) and most of them come in a lot less than I'm making now, and some of them even less than I was making at my last job.One aspect that makes coming up with a number interesting is the "devops" job description is kind of fluid; ask 10 people what a devops engineer does and you'll get 4 different answers and 6 blank stares. It's a mix of developer, build engineer, and sysadmin.

Another guy on the team is leaving in a few days; my boss has already started interviewing offshore candidates for that position. I can see him trying to pull a fast one and lowball me so I don't take the position and thus has justification for another offshore body. I would estimate the current technical staff is ~75% H1-B, and that's just the workforce here in California - I don't know how many offshore bodies they have. Another interesting observation I've made is they seem to have a lot of turnover. There are a few people who have been there a long time - like 15-20 years, while everyone else seems to have been there less than 5 years.

From previous experience in negotiating pay, it's been my observation that the first one to state a number generally loses. I know that's not always the case, as with my current position I gave them a number they would have to exceed in order to get me to even talk and that actually worked out well.

So it's a bit of a pickle. I like the job, but I don't want to take a huge pay cut just to satisfy a manager's ambitions. My game plan at this point to write up a sort of "proposal" with the number that I'd like, and justifying it by listing my experience, what I've been doing for the company so far, and what my extant peers in the industry are making.