This negotiation tactic works fine if you don't have to do full day coding challenges to get to that phase, while also working a full time job.
Happy to do coding questions, but not 8 hour long take-home projects. Those have screwed me too many times
The fastest way to avoid companies like that is to set boundaries on what you will do and will not do. Good recruiters LISTEN and respect this. I do not want my time wasted and likewise for the recruiters and companies I am talking too.
I admit I'm speaking from ignorance here, and am only curious to gain more insight into this.
Yes, absolutely they can! And almost nobody talks about this. Most of the conversation about take-home projects surrounds cost/benefit ratio, but almost never as a negotiating tactic and sunk costs.
With the greatest respect, the vibe I'm getting is "this person is prone to reacting in a volatile manner when things are not to their liking."
I've ended up wasting a lot of my own time with this strategy. I'll get to the point where they want to extend an offer, I name my number, and then we have an awkward 15 minutes on the phone (e.g., "the VP couldn't ever approve that amount") and then I say I'm not interested 24 hours later.
This is impossible to know though, as is its breakdown. Many places have very fixed limits on salary and bonus, for instance, but RSUs and sign on they have a lot of freedom.
Even the places that have fixed budgets all around may have multiple openings of varying levels; a strong interview showing may cause them to bump the level they'd look to hire you at, just to meet your comp expectations (I've seen this happen numerous times as a manager when a candidate came back asking for more).
If they bring it up at the start, great, it saves a lot of time for both of you. If -you- bring it up at the start, though, you're just closing off opportunities.
Fair enough if you only want to work for a company that offers your target comp -without- negotiation (since even if they're open to negotiating at the start, you're doing so when your hand is weakest), but otherwise there is nothing to be gained by bringing it up at the start.
It seems so strange that they’d offer X and just after being asked would switch to 4X. That’s a huge range.
Yes, I was surprised as well that they were willing to move that much. However, I know RSUs tend to be a lot easier to move on for companies than salary or bonuses (in fact, the salary offered was about 5% lower than my prior; I didn't even touch on that, instead looking to make up the difference, and then some, in the RSUs), and vary a lot more in the market. There are some companies that don't offer RSUs at all, pre-IPO startups whose grants are of questionable value, companies that grant RSUs yearly but only to a percentage of their employees, companies that give comparatively small amounts of RSUs to all their employees, and companies that give comparatively large amounts of RSUs to all their employees. That means the market range is huge and increases can more easily be justified; market range for salary tends to be far more constrained.
It's possible this may have also been due to being outside of SV; while the company has an office in my metropolitan area, I don't believe it's mostly dev, and while they have salary guidelines for outside of SV for dev, they may not for equity. So it may have been that the initial RSU offer was tailored to the locale, and my ask was okayed because it was in line for dev. Point still stands; they were incentivized to move, and they were able to. Had I asked at the start they would likely not have, simply because a recruiter isn't going to ask to make an exception for a candidate they haven't even interviewed yet.
If you're playing chicken on who can waste the most capital against these guys, you're probably going to lose (otherwise, you wouldn't be applying for a job there in the first place, they'd be asking you to hire them).
They've got a pool of other people like you, they know it and they know roughly what it'll cost to find another you. They might be willing to jump a little to avoid that but they're not going to bend over for it. They also want someone willing to take orders, not someone too aggressive, so that might signal that you could be a problem. I'm not saying don't stick up for yourself and try to get your piece, just that you should be careful playing these games unless you're prepared to lose and walk away.