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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that basically what a recruiter does? Every time I've dealt with a recruiter, they've done the salary haggling for me.

EDIT: I should point out that that's what they do in regards to full-time W2 work, not contract.

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Be careful about that. The recruiter's incentive is stronger to get more people into jobs that to get one person a little bit more money. It's much like the situation with real estate agents that freakonomics covered in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jO_w6f8Ck

A high quality third party recruiter has different incentives than a real estate agent, because they expect repeat business: Few people buy more than two houses in their life, but having a good relationship with a stable of good developers that change jobs every couple of years leads to a far easier and lucrative job in the long run.

There are plenty of awful recruiters who will undervalue you, send you to gigs that don't fit you and such. But it's precisely how bad the field is that makes being a good recruiter such a strategically smart play. Being the rare recruiter that does their job well lands you top talent, that top talent means you can start asking for higher wages for people than the salary bands posted, which leads to more people coming to see you, because you can actually get higher rates than what someone could if they asked up front.

I often ask recruiters what the salary is for the positions they offer. The right recruiter in my town, who I have a work relationship with, will often talk about a 20/hr premium. When compared to the worst (consulting firms that tell you a rate that has nothing to do with what they'll ask the employer, and will hide this) the difference can be huge. I have worked on the same team with another very comparable coworker, and I was getting paid almost triple! and he is an American, not an H1-B.

I'm assuming you're talking about third party recruiters, not recruiters that are employees of the company you're negotiating with. Yes, they do commonly do that, but they're only going to be involved if they've been involved since the beginning of the application process.

> Isn't that basically what a recruiter does? Every time I've dealt with a recruiter, they've done the salary haggling for me.

Recruiters are much more likely to cut bait and leave an extra 5% on the table to:

1. Keep a good relationship with the employer

2. Keep their turnover high, making money on negotiating many "OK" salaries instead of maximizing each individual salary (including yours).

I agree, except what I generally tell a recruiter what I want for a job before an offer has even been made, and I usually work with multiple at once. It gives me some haggling power without being the one who has to haggle directly.

Sounds like you are already your own "agent" as it were. The rest of us just don't know how to haggle, sadly :|

It's no different than buying a car.

Be careful. Recruiters (even 3rd party recruiters) work for the company. They don't work for you.

Third party recruiters work for themselves. Both sides in the transaction should remember that.

Ya, agree.

They get paid by the company though. So if I had to pick between the company and the candidate I'd say they're more aligned with the company.

You're definitely right though that they aren't really aligned with the company either.

Third party recruiters dealing exclusively in contracts are more likely to side with the employee. Those dealing exclusively in long-term employment will be more likely to side with the employer.

This is because of how their compensation is structured. The contract guy is going to start getting paid immediately. The employer guy is going to get paid when the employee has vested a certain amount of time with the company.

Yes, but their contract and fiduciary duty rests with the employer, not the candidate. They are paid by the company to find an employee, not the other way around.

Many third-party recruiters are simply matchmakers, not retained agents of a company. Sure, they still get paid by the companies for matching employees, but their motivation is still to make matches, not get either the employer or the employee the best deal.

> fiduciary duty

I think you are misusing that word. A third-party recruiter does not have a fiduciary duty to the company with the role unless they have been empowered to make the hiring decision themselves. I don't know of any agencies with such power.

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