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Comment by bargl | Hacker News Reader

I had a job interview once where the HR rep asked me how many lines of code I wrote a week. I responded, "On a really good week -1000, I don't remember the exact figure." She was extremely confused by this answer and wanted me to give her a number. So she said, "I'll just put down 10,000."

This is also the interview where they refused to continue unless I told them how much money I made (which I don't do anymore). The justification they told me was that they weren't going to give me a 20K raise if I wasn't making that much right now. I didn't point out that they aren't giving me a raise, they are paying me market value based on what the position is worth (to oversimplify it).

I was offered the job but decided not to take it because that plus the technical interview made me wary.

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> The justification they told me was that they weren't going to give me a 20K raise if I wasn't making that much right now

Even after 20+ years in the labor force, I've never understood that justification. "I'm a nosy bastard" at least has a ring of truth to it.

"I want to pay you as little as possible and still get you to come to work here." That's the truth.

Actually the truth is more like "I want to pay you as little as possible for you to work here and be productive." People who're worried about money are really bad at their job. They spend all their time thinking about something else. If someone is willing to accept a job on a salary that isn't really enough to live on (say, because they don't know how expensive the area is) then you should pay them more than what they believe their minimum is. Unfortunately hiring managers quite often fail to understand this.

Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide disagreement about comp. It can be equally advantageous to both parties if you use it properly.

No... there are recruiters who are a lot more invasive and pushy (and a couple employers I've run across).

"Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back, and I've heard similar stories from colleagues. No, of course, I don't bother going forward in those situations.

"What are you making now?" is crass. The good recruiters I've worked with phrased it as "what are your salary expectations?" or "the range is $x-$y - are you OK with that?"

I've taken it literally in situations where they actually meant it literally. "We will not pay you $80k until you can prove you were making $80k at your previous job". Insane, but it does happen on occasion. How those companies ever manage to hire anyone... I'm not sure.

I guess you're right, that does happen sometimes. In those cases you also shouldn't be mad, though, because they just gave you a crystal clear sign they aren't worth working for.

> "Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back

It's best to immediately walk away from a situation like this.

Yes; proof that everything that comes out of your mouth isn't a lie suggests a lack of trust.

I've gotten "I need a number for us to continue" multiple times.

> I've gotten "I need a number for us to continue" multiple times.

"Considering your obnoxious lack of professionalism and the fact that your approach is apparently acceptable to the company, I'm not sure there's any offer you could make that I'd be excited to accept. But everyone has his price, so write down $500,000 for now and I'll decide how much to increase it after I hear the rest of what you have to say."

Just say "my salary expectations for this position is $XY0,000". I use it as an opportunity to set the ballpark for the negotiation. Sometimes bosses don't know what people are worth so they ask these kind of questions. Once we opened an office in a new country, and when we hired people, we asked them what they expected and gave them that + 20% because we really had no idea how much we should be paying.

Threaten to walk away.

> recruiters

Dude, that right there is the problem. They make a commission off your starting salary, so OF COURSE their primary concern is your past and future financials.

This is why I hate recruiters.

I disagree. Recruiters have a conflict of interest that often goes to the candidate's advantage and against their employer's interest. The higher your salary, the higher their commission. And employers are fine with that because a good hire is better than no hire.

The conflict of interest is more complicated:

For the recruiter, getting you in at 160k is twice as good as getting you in at 80k, and infinitely better than you walking away.

As a candidate that currently earns 100k, an 80k offer is worthless.

(Threatening to) walking away from a deal is one of the strongest strategies in negotiation. But that's the one thing a recruiter will never want you to do.

Candidate: High salary > no deal > low salary. Recruiter: High salary > low salary > no deal.

You are right, that the recruiter has an even bigger conflict of interest with their employer. But that conflict does not mean the recruiter's interests are aligned with the candidate.

(One way to align any interests is generally to repeat games. That's why internal recruiters are usually less sleazy than the external kind: they are at least clearly on the site of the employer. And honourable employers have a reputation to defend---another repeated game.)

That is what you would expect, but they want to optimise both on commission and on throughput. If a slightly lower salary makes it easier to position you and get you hired fast, the cost of the lower commission is less than the cost of working on your case for a long time. It is the same with real estate agents. From that perspective, their knowledge of the market should theoretically set the price at the optimal short-term, hiring decision point. Nevertheless, for the employee and employer this is a long term relationship and it works out bad on both sides (lower salary than could be achieved for the employee, greater employee turnover for the employer.)

While a fair salary is ideal for all parties, optimizing for job satisfaction would be a wiser decision than optimizing for salary amount. Scoring a high salary may merely mean the new hire will be one of the first to be cut from the crew should the firm hit choppy waters... an outcome that recruiters do not need to care about.

What's really fun about that is that most people I interview, when asked "what are your salary expectations?" answer with "I'm currently at XYZ a year"

In addition to other reasons, it can also be beneficial for any side to postpone this discussion for a later phase.

Yeah I mean it really depends on where you are applying to work. If you are trying to join as a senior member of an organization negotiations have way fewer rules, but if you are applying to Google etc. below a level 4 position it seems pretty reasonable to not need to assert your individuality as an engineer by disrupting the system since you'll be ending up with a standard package anyway. Sometimes you just need to learn how that game is played and play it instead of changing it.

Even at Google you should negotiate: their base is pretty standard, but the stock grants differ. A lot.

> equally advantageous to both parties

There ain't no such thing. Salary negotiations are pretty close to zero-sum.

The actual dollar value is usually literally zero sum, but if you have a family and need a $200k salary with specific benefits as a hard requirement it's going to be helpful to get that out of the way up front. On the same note, if you want a $200k salary and only make $180k it can be useful to say you are currently making $200k. So again, this moment can be advantageous to both parties.

No, please don't sugar coat it.

HR people do actually see current income as 'social proof' of your actual worth. This is not necessarily out of a desire to take advantage of employees, but they find it hard to justify to their bosses why they did no negociate a better deal.

I learned it the hard way, by trying to work part time (like 10hrs per week) while studying and then having employers unable to grasp that I was demanding a much higher salary because I was offering my undivided attention in a full time position. This was explained to me by a simpathetic (though probably naive) recruiter, who literally coached me to lie on my application so she could process me as a viable candidate.

I did not get that job anyways, but at least I learned to avoid mentioning the fact that I had been "working for peanuts" in the recent past.

It is, in fact, possible that some aspect of a negotiation can be beneficial to both parties, but not for the reasons the parent suggested.

If we assume that your minimum bid is in fact below their maximum offer, then the market should clear: you should get hired. Under such circumstances, anything preventing a successful conclusion to the negotiations is harmful to both parties, since there exists a price at which both sides would be satisfied that they're getting more value than they're giving. Therefore, anything eliminating or preventing such an obstacle from arising is beneficial to both parties.

The corollary is that employers who insist on "social proof" place themselves at a disadvantage; they're less able to hire, and the people they do hire will likely be inferior. They are giving up value every time they enter negotiations, not by overpaying but by failing to engage in beneficial transactions. Those hidden costs can be, and often are, far greater than overpaying by some small percentage on the transactions in which they do engage.

> Under such circumstances, anything preventing a successful conclusion to the negotiations is harmful to both parties, since there exists a price at which both sides would be satisfied that they're getting more value than they're giving.

I am afraid, reality is more complicated than that. There are opportunity costs, and there are threats. (Read up about the latter in "The Strategy of Conflict".)

Threatening to do both parties damage, can give you a better deal.

> There ain't no such thing. Salary negotiations are pretty close to zero-sum.

If you do strike a deal, that's along a fixed sum border.

But do keep in mind, that either party can always blow up the whole process at almost any time. This is important.

Depends on the BATNA; failed negotiations can quite easily be negative-sum if it results in not hiring someone and both parties having to spend effort continuing the search.

I would say "only if you tell me what you have budgeted for this position"

Has nobody here played poker? You don't just say what your hand is when you start betting.

That sounds a lot like a friendly way of saying "you should lie."

I don't really disagree, but we might as well be honest about it here.

Or give the the answer to what they want to know, not to what they asked.

Either lie or refuse to answer.

Totally agree.

Getting a salary ballpark out early can save both sides a lot of time.

As a potential employee it's important to phrase it right as "If you are not going to pay at least X we are wasting our time". Where X does not need to be your current salary - but really what would be least it would take for you to work there.

If they insist on current salary be firm on X. Point out that this is based on what it would take you to consider them, and you are already taking into account a lot of factors like company prestige, type of work, location, lost options etc.

It is important to realize that you are not giving away any negotiating power by putting out a lower bound. One easy trick is to mention that you are also talking to other companies that already agreed to the same lower bound.

Also do not ask for or let them tell you an upper bound from the hiring company. If they end up really wanting you it will be harder for them to change that.

Getting a lower bound will help both parties. An upper bound you do not walk away from will hurt your position a bit though.

the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making

Correct. They're just trying to figure out how little you will accept.

they are asking you to start the salary negotiation

Never be the first to give a number.

> Never be the first to give a number.

Always be the first to give a number and conditions.

Setting the stage is too important to let the other party do it.

None of what you say has anything to do with someone's current salary. If I'm in a job paying $50,000 in a market where the typical salary is $80,000 and I want $100,000 then asking for the $50,000 number doesn't help anyone. It's just meaningless data that clouds the issue of what you are willing to pay to hire me. I can understand asking a candidate what salary they're looking for. That's useful. It's got nothing to do with their current situation.

How do you know what the typical salary is?

How do you find out anything at all? Talk to other people in the same profession, glassdoor etc.

Serious question: Why is asking your salary any less relevant then asking for your previous place of employment? If I say I did X on project Y at Google, that's a pretty incomplete picture of how valuable my coworkers and bosses found my work on project Y. Thus, it seems like a salary is another potentially helpful data point indicating how valuable I've been to previous companies.

Obviously in a better world it would be possible to glean this information from an interview alone, but the bottom line is that interviews generally suck at informing how useful a candidate is going to be. A candidate who claims they've done valuable work is potentially exaggerating, and it's difficult to tell by how much. That's (part of) why we have resumes, and (most of) why an employer wants to know your previous salary.

Note that I'm asking this unironically. I know that "never tell anyone your salary" is a popular point of discussion here, but I have trouble seeing why it's any different from, say, a grad school asking for your GPA.

For starters, the grad school won't be giving you a lower GPA depending upon the one you give them.

But the bigger issue is that they rarely ever give their hiring range, so why give them more info that can only hurt me?

I live in an area of the US where the cost of living is low (think $1.60/gallon and $725/month to rent a 2-bedroom apartment).

If I'm interviewing for a potential employer in an area with a higher cost-of-living, I'd (in a certain sense) be cheating myself to state my current pay.

It's a well-known tactics to lowball you. The standard answer is "I'm not allowed to disclose it" and if they push, I just give them what I want them to give me minus 5% regardless of what the actual number is.

If they end up calling my current employer and that this employer gives them the number (which is extremely unlikely), I just tell them "What I'm making right now is irrelevant, I gave you the salary I think I'm worth right now. If you don't agree, I'll just walk, no big deal".

520,000 lines of code per year! :)

Couple that with pay and just tell them to pay you $1 per line of code written.

# Need to increment this count so it matches up with the length of the list we just created.

count = 1

count = count + 1

Ha, I guess the developers they are hiring used to be sci-fi writers! But don't most writers say the hardest part is cutting words out of their book and cleaning up language?

P.S. I don't remember exactly what she put down as my "line-count" I was pretty annoyed at that point, it might have been a much more reasonable 5000. :-)

This reminds me of a quote I enjoy:

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."

Some interesting attributions of that and similar quotes: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

A good case to use code generators, I guess...

Are we counting the code my macros produce? As far as git is concerned I might be down a couple hundred to a couple thousand in a good week, but if we count macroexpansion, I'm rolling in the LoC.

Time to write yourself a private jet.

Obligatory Dilbert:

http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13

> I was offered the job but decided not to take it because that plus the technical interview made me wary.

Sounds like you made a great choice :)

What is the current average in a language like C# or Java for a skilled developer? Average that goes into production rather than what's likely thrown away.

In a week long project (some supporting tool, or something similar) it's easy to write 10k lines a week. In a 6 months project, 10-100 lines are more likely, and in an "eternal" software that is already mostly written, 0 is a perfectly fine number.

Appreciate the reply.

I dread the day someone starts tracking LOC vs productivity in TFS. I might be switching between C#, SQL, CSS, HTML and Javascript on a busy day. A context switch == a productivity hit.

That was actually one of my favorite moments! Someone pulled up the TFS chart of lines of code added/removed per developer. First, I removed way more lines then I added. But second, the number of lines I removed was (completely accidentally) the same as the number of lines my team lead added. When he saw that, he just kind of looked over at me to make sure I wasn't following him commit by commit to rewrite his code!

I have senior in my title so I guess I count as skilled, I work on an Android app (so Java).

I have absolutely no idea of what my average LOC / week looks like and could not care less.

This is a really dumb metric.

Between Annotation processors & code generation plugins, it already means nothing. If you factor in DRY, it is just insane.

Am I supposed to willingly write horrible and unproductive code just to increase my LOC / time ?

"Between Annotation processors & code generation plugins, it already means nothing."

Getting a project of a given size done on schedule means nothing? Your company sounds pretty laid back. That's nice.

"Am I supposed to willingly write horrible and unproductive code just to increase my LOC / time ?"

It's a nice strawman you built there. The metric in your case would be average, custom LOC brought into production. So, it would hopefully be productive, great code at a certain rate. The rate varies among people and programming approaches.

>Getting a project of a given size done on schedule means nothing?

rofl, you are assimilating LOC and actually accomplishing a task on schedule and you talk about strawman ? give me a break.

I'd be very tempted to ask the HR person for their salary and/or ask for the CTO/CEO's salary and/or some confidential revenue number or something like that before ending the interview.

It's fairly shady negotiating to anchor the process one sided. If they want your salary they should tell you what the highest paid developer makes as well.

> The justification they told me was that they weren't going to give me a 20K raise if I wasn't making that much right now

So you base your salary offer on my current salary, instead of what I would be worth to you guys? Good luck. We're going to be here a while, since I'm not going to disclose my salary.

These sound like two very big red flags. You have probably dodged a bullet here.

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