Employment offer advice - lawyer?
 

Posting this here for traffic.

I have recently received an offer with the following statement after listing my compensation "The company may adjust your base salary from time to time at its sole discretion" and after that they list their annual review period in another paragraph.

I have never seen this before in my previous offers of employment in the same industry (Software engineering) - is this normal? Does this mean they can simply lower my salary from 100k to 90k whenever they feel like it?

Yep. Not legal either, unless it’s in the contract you sign.

Don't sign jack until you are happy with all the contractual terms. Once you sign, you won't be able to change jack. Unless you are asking something ridiculous, most of the time, employers will accommodate/accept (as they have already offered you an offer and interested in you as the final candidate).

Is this an American-based company?

The language indicates they can adjust your salary based on the annual review period meaning they can give you a raise (or not) and if you are given a raise, they will adjust your salary. There are a lot of other variables such as market adjustments and what have you.

I'm not a lawyer but deal with these types of contracts involving professional services regularly while working with a legal team closely.

No, not an American company. The company is headquartered in Vancouver but has a global presence if that helps.

Yup this is correct. I am in HR within the tech industry for 8+ years now. Its pretty common and most companies started doing this for the past few years, given how quickly the market is moving for software engineer's salaries. This basically allows them to give you a market adjustment, aka a "raise" because annual reviews sometimes does not move fast enough. Also, they will never lower your salary.

Every 1-2 years they hand me this. Sign here or else. Or else what I asked, HR told me sign or leave.

They basically cut pay 10-15% per shot, so in turn we pump up sales and productivity in the hopes of regaining our wage. It just gets more stressful and more stressful, always moving, no breaks, constant stress. Company is making a boatload of money.

Front line gets constant pay cuts. And they don't think we know every other damn department in the company gets annual raises. They don't think we are buds and talk?? We are now discussing bringing a union back in, that'll fix it.

I can't comment on that exact language however I have to review contracts all the time for project I bid and land. Whenever I see anything I don't like, even if I think the wording creates grey areas in our scope of work I cross it out and initial. Sometimes they come back and we talk about it other times they agree sign and return.

My advice is if you're not happy with it cross it out or call them and ask about it.

Man, every time I find out someone is a software engineer, I look at them with a look that says, "DAMNNNNNN SON, YOU MAKING THAT MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY"

I can't help you with your question, but congratulations on your career choice. You must have worked really hard to get to where you are today and you should be proud of yourself. Even if you don't "enjoy" your job, know that you worked hard to get to where you are and a random guy on the internet is giving you props.

Besides, with the money you're going to make, you can always "enjoy" other things haha

reminds me of contract that was pushed to me as a consultant stating I cannot work with any companies in the same market for conflict of interest reasons. Very reasonable and common to see... except.. indefinitely. I reached out to HR director to clarify if they meant to put 6 months or even for a year after when the contract ends but didn't get response back. I know that it's not legally forcible, but didn't want to get involved with company that couldn't give me clear answer so I never bothered to sign the contract..

For every high paying software engineer job you hear about, there's 5-10 software engineer jobs that pay much, much less.

Vancouver is software lowball wage city.

Not just software engineers. I work in analytics field and I was offered practically double the salary accounting exchange rate differences for similar positions if I move to states. Same goes to medical field.

Thats why software engineers in Vancouver should find a remote role from the states or look for SF companies that have offices here.

Just an update, spoke to recruiter and they basically said exactly what KayC and bcrdukes advised. Still haven't accepted the offer yet but I might soon!

Also to those saying Software Developers are underpaid in Vancouver - compared to America, yes we are underpaid but to the rest of Canada we are 1A/1B with Toronto.

Just in my experience if you have a couple years of experience you can easily land a 70k-100k role in Vancouver. Just avoid the shitty startups. We have a few unicorns home grown from Vancouver in the last few years like Clio and Thinkifc. Vancouver is becoming a tech hotbed, covid just pushed the market even higher. Someone I know who just finished school, got a job right away for 80k from a local company.

Like KayC said, try to get a job with an SF company, a lot of them are here and all of them will offer 100k and up.

Good luck iwantaskyline! I know at my last company, we were offering new grads 105k right out of the gate with total comp of around 160k

Your username will soon be "ihavemanyskyline"

Selfishly I would like to see Vancouver grow into a bigger tech hub and companies be more competitive with pay along with the market compared to the US. There will always be a disparity between the two countries in terms of pay, but being able to pick and choose from a variety of near shore support and development teams are always nice.