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Comment by gitgud | Hacker News Reader

Salary is often negotiated on a person to person basis. One of the first rules of negotiation:

“Whoever mentions a number first, loses”

As the other negotiator knows the expected salary and can undermine it...

I am not sure if that's always true. If you name a high number first you can manage expectations and avoid being confronted with a low-ball number. Maybe it's just my market value but when I waited for the employer to name a number first the number was never a positive surprise so to me it's better to immediately signal the expectations I have.

As others have mentioned, this rule only applies to negotiations where one side is willing to offer more than the other side expects. If you're expecting $150k and the company only has budget for $120k the opportunity cost of engaging in a lengthy interview process to find that out is rather bad.

A better rule of thumb for in-demand professionals (in my experience on both sides of the table) is to do your homework ahead of time, have a realistic understanding of what you're worth and what the company is likely able to offer, and name a price that's a little bit above that. You'll save a lot of time and weed out low-balling recruiters immediately without actually sacrificing much in the way of compensation.

The company also wants to attract lots of people who would be happy with (say) $90k, and not anchor anywhere above unless necessary. If you expect a number of people applying, chances are good that someone is willing to be underpaid for whatever reason, and this fact is huge for companies.

Actually, “whoever doesn’t have an alternative loses”. If you’re interviewing at Google, casually mention that you’re interviewing at Facebook and Google will raise their offer. This is much more powerful.

Meh. There are more jobs than developers, so developers have lots more alternatives. As I developer I would not apply for a job that did not advertise a rate unless I knew in advance it would meet my expectations.

I feel withholding salary info is a premature optimisation of salary negotiation. You are not going to attract top talent and then snag them with a lowball offer.

That is why you talk about your minimum acceptable level, not your expected salary. It won't prevent upwards negotiation, as they are still competing with other offers. Whereas if you don't communicate a minimum, you could go through a lengthy interview process, only to get a lowball offer that you never had a chance of taking. Waste of time for everyone involved.

Do people really have multiple offers while applying somewhere? I can see that for college grads who have time to apply a lot but once you have a full time job how do you find the time to set this up?

Not always, but yes it happens quite a bit. These days the interview process for experienced hires tends to be rather lengthy and it's easy to draw it out even farther if you want to. If you're ready to move on and have been hitting up your network and applying to multiple new positions (that you're qualified for), it's not overly difficult to hold off one company making an offer while waiting for another to come through.

How do you find the time to deal with applications at multiple companies? Between phone screens and interviews that's a lot of time.

I usually don't have multiple offers at the same time.. but you don't have to mention the timing. I can honestly say that I've received offers from companies X, Y, and Z - even if all three were in the past and I already turned down all three of them.

It's not as good as having them all at the same time, but it's better than nothing.

You should always be looking. The best time to look for a new job is before you need one.

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