Common mistakes in salary negotiation | Hacker News Reader

Common mistakes in salary negotiation

interviewing.io

629 pointseamonnm454 comments

I used to work in trading and I think some of the principles I learned there apply directly to salary negotiations.

Two key things I think about all the time are price discovery and competition. Price discovery means that in some illiquid markets, you don't really know what a thing will trade at unless you try to trade it (which itself reveals some information to the counterparty but that's not important in the job case)

From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc. Interviewing is the only real way to learn "the market" - what offers to you would actually look like, and other information as well. Like if you always get offers at the low end of a range - or if you always fail interviews - is very good signal that you can act on.

Competition - when we traded bonds, we'd always go to multiple dealers for quotes. The dealers would know that we always ask at least X of their competitors by rule, so they knew that whatever number they gave us, we'd compare against others. That prompted them to strike the balance between a good deal for them and a price we'd actually accept. From that point of view, the best negotiating advice is to have multiple offers, because (1) you see what the highest one is (2) you can see how close or dispersed they are and you can infer something from that (3) they give you leverage. EG: let's say you want job X most, but job Y gave you $20K more on the offer or whatever. You can always tell job X "I'd love to work with you but it's hard to accept a lower offer, can you match?" This isn't even a game, you'd be saying this sincerely. Or, if your offers are close, you can push the highest one a bit because you know they aren't so far out of the norm with more confidence.

"the best negotiating advice is to have multiple offers"

This is borderline "get in the job cannon and blast off to jobland" territory.

Also - it can be terrifically difficult to line up multiple simultaneous offers because companies would rather explode their offer than generally let people get a better leverage. I know multiple companies who do this on purpose for this explicit reason. Is it inefficient from a market perspective? Of course. But since when has that ever stopped the owner class from oppressing the workers?

> it can be terrifically difficult to line up multiple simultaneous offers

I've found that too. It seems like even if you apply at the same time, companies move at a variety of speeds. But there are things you can do to help align the offers temporally, at least a bit.

- At the start of each process, ask how long the process will take (how many interviews, number of weeks from start to offer). They'll generally tell you. If you do this for every company, you have an idea of which companies are fast and which companies are slow.

- The fast companies can be slowed down, a least a bit. It's Thursday and they want to schedule an interview for Monday? Say "Unfortunately I'm not available Monday to Wednesday next week, would Thursday next week work for you?" Answer emails the next day, or if they sent you one in the morning answer in the evening "after work".

- The slow companies can be sped up a bit. Firstly, ask for interviews sooner, they might go for it, who knows. If you get an offer from one company, send an email to all the other companies that you have an offer but you'd like to get their offer as well, that might speed them up.

None of this is guaranteed to work but it's worth trying.

Never accept an exploding offer. If they won’t give you more time, then let them see you’re prepared to let it lapse. It’s a ploy to create urgency when there is none, as is never in your interest as a candidate. I’d be very surprised if a single offer actually expired, it’s expensive to lose qualified candidates for the hiring company.

Urgency isn’t a always just a ploy.

My background is consulting and earlier-stage startups in the UK which may mean we’re in a different environment to what you’re used to, but the teams are often lean, and sometimes strained by the time we’re out to hire.

Sourcing and screening often starts a few weeks/months before but generally we move quite quickly through technical to offer stages - I think its healthy and fair for both parties to keep expect these final stages around 1-2 weeks.

Interviewing takes quite a bit of time and energy from the tech team and can impact team health, delivery, and ultimately bottom line - where our salaries come from.

If we’re in the fortunate position to have a final candidate (or two - three), theres going to be an exploding offer because we need to get back to work, and we need to let other candidates know to move on.

As a candidate its very fair to line up your interviews with a few companies and tell them you would like to make a decision by a particular date. If they cant accommodate you or extend an offer with a deadline prior to that, its on them. In my last job hunt no company turned down this request and two adjusted their processes to accommodate it.

This is more "job cannon" stuff.

This works well if you don't urgently need income and have significant additional job prospects. The power imbalance between employers and employees means that "just avoid the businesses that exploit you" is not an option for a large number of workers.

The only way to actually defeat exploding offers is collective action.

If a company gives you an exploding offer, it's a strong signal that the culture of that company isn't good, or that they can't afford to hire quality candidates (or both). In companies like this you can assume you'll probably also get poor raises.

In practice, if you get an exploding offer, unless you already think it's an extraordinary offer and love the potential opportunity, you can tell them that you won't be able to make a decision within that time. If the company is worth working for, they'll remove it. If they won't remove it, it's probably best not to take the offer.

>>If a company gives you an exploding offer, it's a strong signal that the culture of that company isn't good, or that they can't afford to hire quality candidates (or both).

I work in games - what happens for us quite often is that we'll interview ~10 candidates and 2-3 are actually good enough to hire. So the process is to give the top candidate the offer with a few days to accept it, if they don't then we move on to the next candidate because they also want to know whether we are proceeding or not - otherwise it's just rude(to the candidate). How does that indicate poor culture?

This is highly dependent on the role. I have been tasked with growing teams where my mandate is to hire X number of engineers at various levels. If I found X hires and then hire X + 1 shows up and was a great fit, the company would make an exception. No exploding offers necessary.

On the other hand, sometimes you are hiring to fill a specific position rather than to generally grow a team. You have two candidates you like and you can't afford to let candidate 1 sit on the offer for three weeks. People treat it like it's nefarious on the part of the company to ever have an exploding offer, but sometimes it's just not practical.

It's generally easy to line up the interviews, at least at big companies you can pretty much pick your interview date.

Then if you've done say 5 interviews (1 per day for a week), you can just wait for the first offer and use that as leverage to get the others to hurry up. Since they already have all the data they need.

I haven’t pursued it seriously so I don’t know how much you can hurry things along, but most of the interview processes I’ve seen are weeks long. Google even warns you up front that it’ll probably take on the order of months. So it’s kind of tricky to get them to all line up like that.

I agree it can be hard to line up multiple at the same time, but unless you're in a desperate situation you can get much the same effect by being prepared to walk. I've talked offers up by being entirely opened that I walked away from an offer of $X, because it was a clear signal to the place I was interviewing at that I was confident I could land more, and I was confident I could because that first offer helped confirm I understood the right salary levels.

It's not quite as powerful as having a simultaneous offer, but the point is not whether or not you go to a specific other company, but whether or not they believe a) you'll actually turn them down, b) you're worth roughly what you demand. Another offer, even if turned down will help in both respects.

IMHO, ability to do this varies based on role, market, experience, etc. In my past 3 job searches, I went the multiple opportunity route. I let each company know that I was in-process elsewhere, what my rough timeline was, and that if things got to offer stage that I wouldn't share that info between companies (i.e. bring your best offer). I stated these things not as demands, but in a friendly, agreeable way. e.g. "I'm very interested, but I also have anothet good opportunity as well and want to be able to choose what fits me best."

I have asked up front if people attach timelines to their offers or use exploding offers and just decline to interview. Those offers are, in my experience, always less competitive.

It's hard to see how making $400k offers is exploiting the worker, rather than the worker exploiting the company.

I make around 600k. My employer has enough cash in the bank to give every single full time employee a bonus of more than half a million dollars. Net income per quarter is something like 100k per full time employee.

Yes, I am incredibly fortunate. Yes, I make a very very large amount of money compared to a typical american worker. Still, I capture only a fraction of the value I generate for my employer.

Exploitation is not about whether each party is making a lot of money, it is whether one party makes a disproportionate amount of money over the value the other party produces.

The first time I applied to work for a high frequency trading group in a hedge fund, my boss asked me what my desired comp would be? I replied 400k, to which he immediately responded saying that's extremely reasonable... So clearly, I f*** myself over in the negotiation.

No company in our capitalist society pays any worker at any level. What the worker thinks they are worth- they pay the worker the absolute bare minimum that they think they can get away with. Doesn't matter if it's an entry level job, or ( like mine) a high end algo trading outfit etc

They're talking about exploitation in the Marxist sense, that excess profit belongs to the workers. Of course, I don't believe in the Labor Theory of Value, as supply and demand is a much more useful model of the world, but that's what they mean by exploitation, not what it's seen as colloquially.

> From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc. Interviewing is the only real way to learn "the market"

Interviewing may be the best way to gather market information, but does that make it surprising that people hate doing it?

There are very few activities I hate more than taking part in a job interview (on either side of the desk). That it's useful and necessary doesn't make it any less unpleasant.

>but does that make it surprising that people hate doing it?

When an activity validates you, it's tough to imagine other people having the opposite experience with it. Imagine every time you went to a round of interviews you were offered riches and status. It would be tough to understand why others just didn't muster up the gumption to go downtown and get what they're worth.

I am the person y'all replying to. This is a good prompt for my mental model on interviewing.

I assume that the answer in any interview process I go into will be "no" 90%+ of the time. That's not some defeated pessimism, it's just reality that the process is hairy (how many people do you go on dates with before you get married?) and every single instance can fail for reasons that have to do with you (how you did that day, fit for the role) or not (hired internally, headcount went away, etc.)

While obviously it's frustrating to fail a round / not get an offer, there's less sting to it when you manage your expectations as above, and then add to it that the frequency of at-bats + the learning process can lead to a better outcome despite - and in fact - because of - the rejections.

So yes, there's a big mental/attitude component that helps you engage with this productively and see the process as something you're doing for yourself - and thus even the fails are part of the plan - versus stepping into some sort of meat grinder.

And to be fair to your comment about "offered riches and status" - I would not put it that way and the 90%+ fail rate is very real. That said, I definitely feel positive about work and have been lucky with opportunities and there's no question that extensive experience interviewing - and learning from the fails - has been key to that.

Because for some people, the activity itself is incredibly unpleasant regardless of the outcome.

> It would be tough to understand why others just didn't muster up the gumption to go downtown and get what they're worth.

If I were guaranteed to make a million dollars and/or gain high status by cleaning a cesspool, that wouldn't make cleaning the cesspool any more pleasant.

I can agree w that but with a caveat. There are lots of activities that fit that description (eg public speaking, exercise) that are good for you but many people hate. But there's also room to learn to enjoy and have fun with it. Maybe not available to everyone.

> You can always tell job X "I'd love to work with you but it's hard to accept a lower offer, can you match?"

It's of course very dependant on each country and the jobs market, but in my experience the issue would be even getting to have multiple offers in a short enough period of time. To the point that it happening could be called a coincidence, more than anything. Unless you are fiercely hunting for a job (aka. doing several interviews per week), I don't see how it would happen to get an offer and telling the company "well, wait for a couple weeks or a month for my answer" just to see if it happens that offers arrive from the other places and one gets to compare simultaneously.

Seems more likely that an offer comes, you accept or decline it, if declined then other will eventually come some time later, and one can compare them and maybe regret having declined the former, and so on.

These seem like old times or a very narrow band of. High salaries.

The only general purpose advice here is the price discovery. If you want to know, you need offers.

The article says to not do it but I’ve had pretty good results with “I’m on a short timeline due to competing offers” to speed things up.

Ditto. Almost every recruiter will ask you at the onset if you are interviewing with other places. They ask so they have a lever to speed up your process if necessary - eg "hey hiring manager, this dude's resume looks great and I had a good convo with him, but he's already had one round with AWS. We better line up our side of things ASAP"

As I mentioned in another comment, I try to be forthcoming with companies especially in cases where the transparency doesn't hurt me and helps everyone. So if the following is the case, I would say something like "Yup, I am in a pretty active search right now, I am talking to a handful of other companies. I am definitely interested in going through the process with you as well, so if you want I will keep you abreast of how my other conversations are going throughout this process" - I've found that this both creates credibility/good vibes and the company is often able to keep pace with the process and offer timing.

Elsewhere in this thread someone was asking how you can possibly get to a place where you have multiple offers around the same timeline - it's something like this.

That's a sound advice for bonds but jobs are largely not like that by design. It is kind of like dating, and asking for a price upfront makes it closer to whoredom and companies explicitly downgrade you for being in it only for the money. If you want to sell a bond and the other person's price is too low, you don't sell it and that's that. For interviews, you end up spending hours through the interview process and may not even know whether you will end up getting a salary quote at the end of it. Getting multiple quotes is a great idea, but putting it in action is harder than it appears. It may help to go with someone like a recruiter who can disintermediate the process. I've often thought someone like an agent for software professionals could make a great idea. That person's job is to get you great gigs and good prices and she makes a percentage of your salary so is aligned with getting you the best offers.

Typically you're not asking for a price(salary) upfront. Ideally you've done a bit of homework to figure out what positions can pay in the ballpark of what you want. Then you get their offer at the end of the interview process and negotiate as appropriate.

Yeah you may go through hours of interviews and not end up with an offer in some cases but think of it this way: you could potentially earn tens of thousands to over one hundred thousand extra dollar per year off that time investment in interviewing.

Attempting to line up multiple interviews and balancing offer timelines is hard, but the payoff can be huge. Considering that people spend 4 years or more working in college to get into their career, making a time investment of a few weeks to get a potentially large raise is nothing.

Interviewing on the actual offer/price is not the same as interviewing about getting a chance to schedule a conversation about ability to qualify for being considered for an interview with a person who could evaluate your worthiness to fill in a position within known but flexible compensation band which may not be directly offered after all...

Of course, not always it is that convoluted, but the "beef" is often that much detached from the process.

> From that point of view, I am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing, are reluctant to interview, etc. Interviewing is the only real way to learn "the market" - what offers to you would actually look like, and other information as well. Like if you always get offers at the low end of a range - or if you always fail interviews - is very good signal that you can act on.

I don’t think anyone disputes the value of the information. It is just painful to obtain.

Unfortunately, a big problem is getting offers in the first place. Very hard to be the last candidate standing, and that's by design. Very little practice equals poor performance.

This stuff only works if market participants abide by the law, which we know they don't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

The other issue you run into is cost of getting to competing offers. In your example, you can just ask a dealer for a quote and they'll give it to you, with little to no work on your part. In tech, you have to go through multiple hours of interviews to get this information.

It's no wonder that people are resistant to go interview. Especially when you can get most of this information much more easily through levels.fyi.

Also it's not just a matter of getting several offers in a two week period. That's somewhat doable if you are unemployed. If you're trying to interview without your current employer freaking out, you have to space these things out. You can only have so many 'appointments' in a two week period.

I follow your logic but I am not sure it really works.

Agree levels.fyi is a great resource under the right conditions. EG, if Facebook wants to interview you as an E5 engineer, it's great to look up the range for that.

But if you are say a "senior developer" working outside of FAANG, what does it mean for you to know the E5 comp when you have no idea how that lines up against your profile? How would you know if FB would consider you for an E5 or even an E3 unless you interview and see how close you can get? The only other way is if you're already in a FAANG with very comparable levels. Otherwise, what's a "senior engineer" in one place may not pass the resume screen for a "junior" in another.

I agree with you that it obviously takes multiple hours to go through an interview, I am calling out that it's often well worth it, because: you may actually get an offer at the end, which you may take or use to negotiate with another company, and even if you constantly fail interviews there's a very actionable signal in that too. So the return on investment for those hours - ultimately being able to get a better/more lucrative job, seems like a good use of time.

> am always surprised to hear people who hate interviewing,

Inreviewing is expensive. I think coding tests are a strategy to make it more expensive for a candidate.

Even if you are one of the best, getting a single offer can be full 2 days work - if you count the time spent searching, applying, etc.

> Like if you always get offers at the low end of a range - or if you always fail interviews - is very good signal that you can act on.

Can you elaborate on that? I'm not seeing why these are good signals to act on.

The signal varies and I think you need to calmly reflect on the data points which is hard. But I can imagine a few scenarios:

Let's say you recognize that you "underperform" versus your capability because you get insanely nervous. At some point you have to realize that your ability to grow depends on your ability to get your nerves under control. How you do that is the next question but that could be one observation.

You can seek patterns of what kind of interviews you tend to fail out on. Eg, is it coding, algorithmic, problem solving, behavioral, whatever. Once you have that zeroed in, you can ask yourself (and the internet): how can I get better at X type of interview.

More generally, you can seek for patterns of what kinds of questions surprised you and you had to make shit up on the spot, but could have been better prepped? EG if you go "hmm let's see" if you are asked about the coolest thing you've worked on or whatever, maybe that's the kind of topic you can pregame and have a story for.

Another maybe subtler thing is reading the interviewer. What are the things you were saying/doing where the interviewer was visibly happy/impressed vs confused, where did they say "that's great, go on" and where did they go "hmm.. but what about.." In the moment you may have just taken the "what about" as a prompt but in reality they may have seen you struggle and tried to help you - what can you do to prep for that type of questions next time?

I can go on - but the conclusion is something like this - I know a bunch of people who every interview they had, they think they nailed it and then they are totally shocked to not advance. And I know people who can reflect on what went poorly and adjust for next time. I don't know how to teach someone to recognize all the signals like this but it's definitely there to be perceived if one looks.

The signal is that you don’t present well and need to work on that.

That's a signal you can more easily get from a practice interview. In a real interview, you have no idea why you were rejected.

Maybe you don't present well. Maybe you present perfectly well, but somebody else had slightly more experience dealing with a specific problem the company needs solved. Maybe they already decided to hire somebody, but needed to conduct interviews anyway to satisfy the lawyers.

Is there a good way to extract that information out of an interview? I always ask for feedback, but I rarely get it.

Is it though? Surely it could equally show progression - edging in to the next range up, so always offered the lower end (not the upper end of the range for the more junior role you've moved out of). Just a thought.

> I used to work in trading and I think some of the principles I learned there apply directly to salary negotiations.

I think exactly zero of those principles apply (assuming you are talking about stock exchange trades).

All these types of "technical analysis" on price-discovery during negotiations is fairly pointless.

There's only one rule that works when personally doing a trade with someone:(whether you're negotiating salary, buying a property or selling car) be likeable!

The more the other party likes you, the more flexible they are going to be on their price-points.

So, sure, the hiring manager has a band (say $100k to $140k). What you want is for him to make an offer at the top of his band ... or even higher - if you interview well they may decide on a more senior role for you.

This is why, even if your minimum is above his maximum, be likeable!

Even if you have already decided you don't want that job, be likeable!

Even if you don't want to work for that particular company, be likeable!

Even if you already have an offer in hand that is way above anything anyone else can offer you, be likeable!

What likeable means depends on context.

When selling a car, being upfront and having all the paperwork up to date, and all the services done on time and recorded as such, a clearance certificate to prove "not stolen", etc ... makes you likeable.

When negotiating a salary, gush about how nice their offices are, how their mission statement resonates with you, how wonderful the interviewers have been up to that point.[1] Make a list of things you admire about the company/its products/its vision ahead of time so that you can truthfully tell them all wonderful things about themselves.

Practice telling people horrible things in nice ways (called constructive criticism?). Practice, Practice, Practice! They will give you stupid challenges, maybe even broken code. How you respond must make them like you even more for the role.

You must come across as a collaborator and leverager, not as a coding genius. Coding geniuses are a dime a dozen. Competent coders who can act as a force multiplier for their team, their manager or their company are rare gems who get offered much more than genius coders.

Everywhere I've been at, or done work for, for over 25 years, has been filled with people who would rather work with pleasant people who are basically competent (or even slightly below average) than work with unpleasant people, no matter how good they are technically.

Look at highly paid surgeons: the ones making the most money are the ones filling every single one of their slots. They know - bedside manners matter.

[1] I spent a full day interview for a senior-ish (L5? L6? Dunno now) position at AWS. It was hard work, with challenges coming at me the whole day, coding, design, etc ... and yet I thanked every single interviewer for their time, and told them how much I appreciate them making the effort to interview me. I was warm, pleasant and friendly the whole day, not just civil, in spite of the constant set of new problems thrown my way.

Your main point was about salary negotiation (and I don't know much about that) but your example about interviewing is interesting to me:

> I spent a full day interview [...] and yet I thanked every single interviewer for their time, and told them how much I appreciate [...]

Where I work we became very sceptic about this trait in candidates, especially if someone is overdoing it. Then the suspicion rises whether they are overcomensating for another trait they believe about themselves.

I feel that being likable is table stakes and not something you would optimize for that much.

> Where I work we became very sceptic about this trait in candidates, especially if someone is overdoing it. Then the suspicion rises whether they are overcomensating for another trait they believe about themselves.

I'm also skeptical about overly positive candidates, but if their other visible traits are average, then there's no need for me to be paranoid.

The odds that there's a problem with them that I cannot determine during the interview is exactly the same as the odds for any other candidate.

Being that the odds are the same, I may as well get the person who everyone wants to work with.

>Look at highly paid surgeons: the ones making the most money are the ones filling every single one of their slots. They know - bedside manners matter.

If you are picking a surgeons based on this criteria, you are paying way too much for a 10 minutes conversation aka bedside manners. I personally will go with the rudest mf-er that will fix me right the first time.

> I personally will go with the rudest mf-er that will fix me right the first time.

But that's you personally. The clear majority of people prefer the friendliest mf-er that fixes them right the first time.

> My general policy with third-party recruiters is to not tell them ANYTHING and to always deal directly with the companies they introduce you, once you establish a point of contact there. You should assume that anything you tell your recruiter is going to get back to every company you’re working with. Why? Because their primary objective is to place your butt in the seat of one of the companies they’re working with, and they will do whatever they need to do to make the deal happen. Often, those things will run counter to your interests.

While the OP has a ton of experience, I disagree with this advice unless you're just starting out and don't know what you're worth yet.

I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're looking for up front.

If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews.

If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. If the number isn't realistic, they'll tell you. Last thing they want is to waste your time interviewing for a position you'll reject because of the package.

(There are plenty of recruiters that only care about placement volume and nothing else. Inbound emails from recruiters that clearly look like a copy and paste job are probably one of these. Good recruiters don't leave money on the table like that.)

I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making).

Forcing the company to name a number first works well when the person has absolutely no idea what market rate is.

However, the idea that it’s the optimal strategy in every situation has been blown out of proportion online. When you force a company to name their price first, they will start with usually a number lower than their target compensation because most candidates will then want to negotiate up. Of all the salary negotiations I’ve done in the past decade, I can’t remember anyone who asked us to make a price first and then didn’t counter with a token $5K or $10K (or more depending on position) counter request. So the easy bet is to take your mid-range comp target, subtract $5K, and then most candidates will end up at your target after they “negotiate”. It’s basically a script that everyone who reads internet advice follows, and once you see it play out you can start to predict it.

If you want to get the upper end of what companies are willing to pay, you often have to start by naming your price and letting them negotiate down. This is scary to people who don’t have a lot of data or who are afraid of being told “no”. It can also result in outright discontinuation of the interview process if the company doesn’t want to pay a lot, but that’s not really a big loss if your goal was high compensation anyway.

Don't forget that you have multiple axes to negotiate on: I would happily take a 25% pay cut if it came with a couple months worth of PTO. Then, when they're unwilling to budge on the PTO, you can leverage that back into getting the salary number moving again.

I find that kind of haggling to work best as a synchronous, ideally face-to-face, communication. In that setting, it's very unlikely that you can't manage to smooth over any too ambitious of an ask and arrive at some sort of agreeable number.

> If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can.

I'm pretty certain the article covered this exact point; even GOOD recruiters aren't going to jeopardize a deal with $1500k commission for an extra $150.

We see the same thing with real estate agents, or sales anywhere a commission is paid - the sales person would rather have 10% less commission from a closed deal than 0% commission from a deal that fell through.

Their incentives aren't aligned with yours: Their incentive is to close the deal, yours is to close the deal at the highest price.

> Good recruiters don't leave money on the table like that.

All good sales people are closers. That means they are always leaving money on the table. It's more important to close than to hold out for 10% more.

There is no such thing as a sales person who only closes deals at the highest possible price; they'd starve.

I read "place you at the highest comp package they can" to mean "place you at the employer that will give you the highest comp package they can". So if they think you're good enough for clearlydoomed.io who pay 175k and GigaTech who pay 200k, but not Risk Securities who pay 300k, they will push you towards MegaTech.

> even GOOD recruiters aren't going to jeopardize a deal with $1500k commission for an extra $150.

$1500k is quite the commission. ;-)

This exact thing was covered in Freakonomics years back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFYlgqv3T-w

> If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews.

Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article.

I get what you're saying about knowing what you're worth, but that in itself doesn't give you very much help in knowing what potential offers might come your way. Unless you have detailed inside information about all of your potential employers (hint: if you do, you should already be leveraging that information to get a job offer without having to go through all the drudgery of interviewing like everyone else), you can't possibly know how the number you give compares to what they could potentially offer you. So you shouldn't give a number at all.

In fact, the more you know what you are worth, the less inclined you should be to give a number instead of just waiting for an actual offer. What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place. Don't even bother talking to companies that you know can't compensate you enough. But you don't need to, and shouldn't, tell recruiters what your threshold is for "enough". Just tell them company X doesn't look like it would be a good fit. Nuff sed.

> If recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can.

They want to place you at the highest comp package they can as long as it doesn't risk not placing you at all. They never want to walk away altogether. But you might. So your interests and theirs are not quite aligned.

You argument is essentially hanging on the assertion that the first number an employer would offer is also the maximum number it could offer. I know exactly one company that operated like that: they'd make the maximum offer and if you did not like it there was no further negotiation. Most companies don't do that (neither does that one any more, the CEO who had this policy had retired a while ago).

What I've observed in my experience is that most companies will try the minimum offer regardless if you tell them your requirements or not, which makes sense since they do research too and unlike yourself their HR has much more experience and data for that. If you were asking less than the minimum they were willing to pay they will likely still pay the minimum as the sibling suggests, there is no point to save and get to hire again for the same position in a couple of months.

I think it's an illusion people get when they ask for a number and get it without much fuss. It makes them think they asked too little but in reality the hiring manager had the range like 200-250 and you asked for 210. Why would he bother to try to push you down to 200? On the other hand, why would he offer anything other than 200 if you did not ask?

It might be different in the US but in Australia the way it works is:

60% of jobs will tell you a salary range either on the ad or via the recruiter.

The rest wont play the “you tell me first” game and just pass on you.

Since more offers is more leverage it might be better to play their game individually to have a better overall position (more offers)

Just give a wide range that sets the floor and gives room for growth.

When I was interviewing last time I told people I was hoping for somewhere in the range of 100K-200K (I'm not in the U.S.)

The lowest offer I got was 115K which I then negotiated up to 135K (the most they could pay).

Several companies bowed out because they weren't even able to offer 100K, and I was glad to have saved us both the time.

If you want 240K, say you want 200K-400K.

If you're looking beyond 300K, say your range is between 300K-600K.

I realize that, yes, you're putting an upper limit on that range and in theory you might get offered less (but you can mitigate this by adjusting that upper bound to be the top of the range for the next level beyond the position you're interviewing for)

E.g. when I interviewed at facebook I told them 150K - 300K

> Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article.

That's why I said to give the number you _want_ up front.

This way, you don't have to worry about haggling up to get to a number you're happy with or getting FOMO over offers for more that might have been.

Otherwise, you're going to enter a negotiation with a recruiter who has way more information and access than you do, and you'll still feel FOMO anyway at the end result _while_ potentially losing out on getting what you wanted (which might have been achievable, had you stated your asking up front).

> What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place.

I've interviewed, and have worked at, several places whose comp ranges really surprised me.

I've also worked at Google, which is where I got paid the _least_ in my career thus far. (Note to readers: unless you really really really don't care about the money, don't EVER take a pay cut at face value!)

You really can't judge a book by its cover, and, again, recruiters know more than you about what their clients can (or would be willing to) afford.

Also, at the end of the day, recruiters are salespeople. If they think a candidate is a perfect fit for a client's needs, they (the good ones, at least) will absolutely go to bat to negotiate with the hiring managers for the highest comp package they can. Of course, it would be way more efficient to have a direct connection with the hiring manager, but that's not always possible.

> Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number

Then do better research before going into the meeting instead of playing games after multiple interviews rounds.

Also companies don't have a lot of incentive to pay too much under market rate anyway, especially for higher end jobs where they provide some training, or churn from people getting pushed constantly for a dollar more will kill their business.

> I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're looking for up front.

That assumes you know what you want and know what's reasonable/fair for the job and area.

Most people don't know. Even if they've worked a similar job in the area, doesn't mean they know what the current going rate is. Once when applying for a job I asked for what was basically my current salary plus $20,000. The hiring manager said something to the lines of "Oh, we can do better than that" and ended up hiring me at my ask plus ANOTHER $40,000. I had way undervalued myself and wasn't up to the moment on the latest in pay rates.

Needless to say I was lucky and that person was an excellent manager. But most people will not be so lucky and most managers are not that amazing.

There is another side to this advice.

If you don't know what market is, you can do one of three things:

1. Check out levels.fyi (overindexed on FAANG; not reliable),

2. Ask for a number that "sounds" high to you, and let the recruiter negotiate down (risky; recruiters might laugh you out the room if you go too high), or

3. Ask a recruiter, and then add a premium on top of whatever they tell you!

Recruiters will be an excellent source of what a realistic market is for your skills in your area. However, as this article articulates, many people don't negotiate, so it's fair to assume that the market rate they give you is low.

You left out:

4. Don't give a number at all. If you are interested in Company X, and you've gone far enough in the process to know they are interested in you, tell the recruiter that you would be interested in seeing a competitive offer from Company X, or something along those lines. At the end of the day, the best negotiating leverage you have is that if Company X actually does want to hire you, at some point they have to commit to an offer. You don't. You can always walk away and go talk to someone else.

> If you want $200,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews.

This article isn't about getting an amount that makes you happy, it's about getting as much as possible.

If you say $200,000, you've taken $300,000 off the table, which may have been on the table before you opened your mouth.

For many people, leaving money on the table is bad, and they want to get as much as possible.

> I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making).

I wonder how much of this information the companies already have access to. Like, they probably use ADP or Paychex as their payroll service, and I wouldn't be surprised if they can ask the payroll company or just look up what you currently make.

The last time I interviewed (at a FAANG), they didn't do any kind of negotiation dance about pay. They didn't ask me what I make or what I wanted. After the interviewing, they said "Here's your offer, it is non-negotiable." and lo and behold it was about 0.2% or so above what I was currently making. Like a difference of under $500 for the yearly figure. Uncanny how they came so close! I tried negotiating but they were indeed unwilling to negotiate on anything.

I was also told my FAANG offer was non-negotiable.

After declining it, for reasons of pay and location, I got a call back 5 minutes later, with a better location, and ~12% more money on the table.

(Junior position in 2012)

They probably do have access to that in some circumstances, but then you can start plying them about other benefits. Just because two jobs pay the same doesn’t mean I value them the same.

Yeah, the OP's advice makes sense only if you're looking to get the theoretically highest possible offer, to where you surprise yourself, like holy shit I didn't know it was possible for me to land this number! If you know what you want and have room to decline an offer below that, the OP's advice does not apply much. In fact, if you take the OP's advice, you're opening yourself up to wasting time with chumps who were never going to meet your internal number.

Yep. Based on my experience with recruiters both as an employee and employer, following this advice is almost certainly just going to do you a disservice.

faster and easier yes, as long as you're happy to leave money on the table.

So this is the exact same problem with Realtors. They will say that they have a fiducial responsibility to represent you and that they will try to get you the best price (either the most or least, depending on whether they are on the selling or buying side, respectfully). And they will do that, to some limited extent. But really their incentive is to close the deal. And that means telling you that this is the best price the counter party is willing to extend if they secretly think you will still do the deal.

According to Freaknomics, realtors get about 3% higher average closing prices on their own properties than when they're representing you as a customer. That is the delta when it is their money on the line vs yours.

3%? That's like a minor 'I want this to be done now' or someone else is coming for a second viewing tomorrow type bump, if that's even statistically significant, frankly that seems fine?

Considering a house purchase is one of the biggest expenses for the average person, 3% can be quite a large amount indeed.

3% of a big number is... still pretty big. It's easily going to be five figures in most markets.

18k on a 600k house. Not anything to shrug at.

A lot of the time a seller is not really trying to maximize their sale price.

They start out trying to but then time drags on and they “just want it to be done.” At that point the seller is also prioritizing a deal over maximization.

Agents, since they’ve gone through a tonne of these processes, are more immune to the mental load the sale takes on them. I’d bet they’re less likely to try and blow through those final steps.

You can see this kind of thing play out across industries. In SW, a comparison may be the seasoned dev has no problem ripping apart their candidate solution and rewriting it since that process takes them less effort than the junior.

My rule is that nobody is working for the buyer or seller. Everybody is working for the sale.

Very much this. It is actually a real scandal that realtors make a share of the sale as opposed to a flat fee. The paperwork and all is the same regardless of if it's a condo or a mansion.

Paperwork is the same, but other work is not.

The time, and marketing, costs of a property tend to go up with price. If I'm buying a 12 bedroom mansion, I'm going to expect a lot more photos, better staging, and so on in the marketing compared to a 1 bed apartment.

Equally small, cheap, properties are likely to sell faster (bigger buying pool) than more expensive ones. That $20m mansion is going to take a lot more visits than the $200k apartment.

In other words, there is sufficient variability in the cost of selling to warrant a sliding fee. And generally the best way to do that is as a % of the sale. A % BTW which is negotiable based on how fast the realtor thinks the property will sell, and the sale price expected.

How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront?

I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.

I ask the recruiter what the salary range is. If they refuse to say, I tell them to get back to me when they know what the range is.

I'm not going to waste my time if they want to play games like being secretive about the pay.

I have never had issues with this approach. Yeah you'll get a few people who think they're being cute about wanting to schedule a call or whatever, but when it comes down to it "I don't move forward without knowing the budgeted range for a position" gets me a number probably 19 out of 20 times, almost always the first time too.

It makes no sense at all for the company or recruiter to hide the range for you. Because they would be wasting their timing doing all kinds of meetings if your expected number is far above that range.

I do think being proactive like you suggest is a good approach. It is pretty easy to couch it in a relaxed way that you are attempting to save everyone's time and it makes them show their hand first. That way you aren't reducing the possibility of making a higher than expected salary and you can hopefully short circuit positions with companies that are below your desired range or as you said, being secretive or weird about it.

Since many people here lack the skills to coax this into a non-confrontational exchange, you would say:

“I understand that you’ll need time research to give a meaningful answer, so let’s reconnect once you’ve been able to put together a range. Thanks!”

Yes, this. I always nail this down before spending any real time or effort on the opportunity.

I've had some success by saying a ridiculously high number, and then quickly adding that "This is what it would take for me to accept an offer on the spot. As I learn more about the role and team and how well this would fit me, I expect that number to go down significantly."

Once they've responded to that I ask something along the lines of "By the way, what's the budgeted range for this role?" or "are you forbidden from sharing the range for this role" or something along those lines.

For some reason, recruiters seem more willing to share the range after I've anchored high – perhaps because they get insecure about whether they've misjudged my qualifications.

The article just avoids that problem.

> very few companies pay so much below market that it would be a nonstarter

I don't really agree with that statement as my experiences have been different.

Yeah given the author’s expertise in job markets I’m shocked she wrote this as well.

I don’t think there’s a single other profession with as much compensation variability as software engineer. I’ve heard it described as bimodal or trimodal, but I’m not even sure that captures it.

There was a YC company on the hacker news homepage recently looking for senior AI engineer for 60k. Even by international standards that’s absurdly cheap , but this is a YC backed company, I don’t think their head is in the sand (though I do suspect YC coaches founders to play moneyball with hiring as YC companies as a whole seem to pay far below average).

There’s many companies that consider 150-200k as “standard”.

And there’s still many companies paying 400-600k for senior engineers. I thought in the “tech recession” with the interest rates up this wouldn’t be available for a while but an acquaintance who got laid off from Twitter did the “grind interview prep and interview a dozen companies simultaneously” strategy just this summer in 2023 and got multiple competing 500k+ offers (all liquid) for staff SWE including from some companies I didn’t realize paid that much like HubSpot.

Despite many great offers he also encountered many companies that tried to lowball by claiming “salaries are going down for engineers” but that turned out to be wishful thinking and/or a bluff on the company’s part given his final result.

So basically there is no “market rate” for senior engineers but to the extent there is one a huge percentage look to massively go under it. I don’t blame them as it’s part of the game but just be aware many companies say things like “we want the best and are willing to pay for it” but then lowball and try to bluff engineers into thinking “the market” is much lower than reality. Which they do because many many engineers fall for it.

A lot of companies don't know what they want and how much that costs. The "senior engineer" at my FIL's 60-person company makes less than an inbound "junior" at a FAANG.

Obviously a silly example, but the caliber of folks is totally different. If I am a job searcher, I want to know the employer understands and is willing to pay for my caliber because otherwise our ideas of what the role is and what it should pay could be vastly off.

Because the marker is relative. What’s crap pay to you is a golden opportunity to others. Experience is relative as well. They may not have the experience and the company doesn’t care about that, only to fill the seat. Don’t take it personally.

Whether I am thrilled to take a $60k TC job or my absolute minimum is $400k that doesn't change the market in that 60k is insultingly low and 400k is well above the median (cue all the folks who think FAANG is the market chiming in about $450k TC juniors).

My understanding is that the game is usually about the money saved between the offer and the target salary band.

Companies have their review schedules and the new hires would be boarded before the reviews. This would allow to hire at low ball and then give a "raise", effectively leveling it.

Not only aiming at below market figure saves company the money, this also serves as a retention tool.

So, it does pay to know an approx of the target comp band AND your own "happy" target. The hard part is to formulate it as a package.

Precisely. The article misses a third bullet point:

3) Many recruiters will say yes to everything and anything to get you into the interview seat

And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.

> And if you're juggling multiple FAANG offers in the same week, you probably don't need salary negotiation tips.

If they are remote jobs, you just accept them all, buy as many computers as the offers you accepted and multitask for n x the pay.

I thought the next step was hire N people in india to do the work, collect the difference between your salary and theirs, and apply for more jobs.

r/overemployed is leaking

FAANGs can be _really accomodating_ money-wise if they badly want you. The initial offer is normally final except when it is not.

I had 3 FAANG offers. There are so many ways to screw this up. IMHO, the article’s advice is spot-on.

Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also.

Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the above regions.

A lot of businesses post stupid ranges.

Like, ok your range is $150-250k, fan-fucking-tastic, that’s completely unhelpful

Author here. These ranges are typically wide because your compensation depends on your interview performance and perceived seniority/value add to the company.

There's no way to tease this out before you interview, except that if you're looking for compensation that's significantly above the top of the band, it might be hard to get. (A little above the top is possible, and sometimes a lot is possible too... that's where the negotiation comes in.)

It is very helpful, the bottom of the range tells you almost everything you need to know. I don’t care if the top is $1B per year if I am willing to accept $200k in order to decide which jobs to apply.

That's not "completely unhelpful" - if your current job is $99k/yr or $400k/yr it answers your "should I bother spending time interviewing here?" question quite nicely.

The fact that the range is 100k isn't that big of an impediment to utility.

It's better to have reasonably large salary ranges than no range at all.

But like, that is a perfectly valid salary range for a job? Not all companies have a 10k salary band on a given title.

I recently found out that i did not know the maximum. Only multiple offers and taking some risks allowed me to find out and it was well beyond what i had assumed.

You're spot on, and I don't know why people complain about "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is both a valuable skill and a good information discovery process - as you mentioned.

If you are doing a lot of interviews and not getting jobs - then you need more practice doing them. If you're getting so many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more demanding positions.

>I don't know why people complain about "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is both a valuable skill and a good information discovery process - as you mentioned.

for me:

- it's long, often 3 stages minimum, but more typically 5-6 rounds. do I really want to take 5-10 hours per job out of my month just to "figure out my worth?". As long as I can pay the bills and I'm not miserable at my job, I'm fine.

- if you have a job, it is hard to schedule around all these rounds. In addition, it feels stressful since by most intents, a company does not react well to hearing you are shopping around

- it generally makes use of skills that do not reflect my performance in a job. I am 6 years into industry, I don't and never needed to invert a binary tree on the spot. Meanwhile, actual skills like proper coding practices/architecture, code review feedback, test coverages/edge cases, and the ability navigate through the company to find the person you need are barely even mentioned.

- it's a sterile, artificial environment that more or less makes you put on airs to show "your best self". "why do you want to work for this company" is asked in nearly every interview setting and we all know your real answer is the wrong one, as opposed to using the time to show off how much you researched the company. Even if you basically jut googled "X engineer" and applied because the salary range fit you.

I can understand testing in juniors, because there is no license exam for an engineer, and maybe on the other side of the hump you can get to a point where the companies are trying to impress you. But that middle hump feels like the worst of both worlds.

>If you're getting so many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more demanding positions.

if you're at that point, you're probably not going to find your answer on the internet. those sorts of jobs are word of mouth.

The thing is, as an employee you tend to look for a new job only if you start to feel unhappy. This puts you in a slightly needy position and does set the tone. I used to be self employed and learned to enjoy the negotiations. It is kind of crazy to have this binary situation of beeing either employee or contractor but i dont have a solution either.

How did you elicit that maximum?

You refuse to do any unpaid "interview project" jobs. I'm not doing any "test projects" that are longer than 4h.

"Portfolios" in some form are often necessary. (In my space, writing samples.) If you have those ready to go, easier for everyone! But if you don't have a relevant portfolio, you'll need to either put something together or I'll pass. (I'm not really looking for a specific assignment but just something that's representative of the type of work.)

why would a software dev have a portfolio? The comparison to design or writing doesn't make sense. A graphic designer can point to logos or marketing material that is publicly available. I'm not going to put proprietary code on a portfolio nor am I going to spend multiple years building some open source project when I already have a full time job.

Software engineering must be the only profession where employment history means nothing. And yet... interviewers always want salary history to knock you down. If you don't care about the work I did in the past, then why do you care about how much I was given for that work?

If they want my labor they can pay for it as far as I'm concerned. We all know it won't have anything to do with day to day responsibilities anyway.

Been there, done that, never again.

This exactly. Had way too many companies waste my time before revealing a 20-30% increase from my current comp was too much.

If I understand things correctly, current comp shouldn't be part of the equation or talks as far as your recruiter and company that you're interviewing with are concerned. The position will have a comp range. That is not related to what you may be currently earning.

That's not the point. The point is that most people wouldn't leave their current role without a bump, so if they'd known that up front they wouldn't have bothered with the interview.

They will tell you what you want to hear and still low-ball you at the very end to try the sunk cost fallacy on you.

You'll still be glad you asked up front, because that kind of BS tells you something about the company. Sure you wasted your time in the interviews, but you now know not to push back on their initial offer because you don't want to work for a company that'd pull that on you.

The sunk cost goes both ways. The company has likewise spent a lot of time and effort interviewing you and if they are extending you an offer and you say no, the process starts over for them.

Especially if you have a job already, when they want to hire you is when you have the maximum leverage.

That's only when most of the interviews aren't automated via codility and similar atrocities. If they built or contracted a process that is scalable, interviewing you will cost them like $5 and almost no time outside maybe the final call with your future boss whereas you'll waste a lot of time.

for big companies a lot of salary/comp data is out there. I didn't discuss comp at all for the last 4 companies I interviewed at, since I knew they'd all beat my current comp by quite a lot.

If it's a well known company, I've found sites like levels [1] to be very informative and accurate. Otherwise I always just ask in the initial calls, no reason to beat around the bush. If you know what you want, you can ask what the salary range is and decide if it's worth it from there.

[1] https://levels.fyi/

I ask in the initial calls even when I already know what the answer is. Sometimes, there's a discrepancy between the two that can be a clue that you should look more closely to see if the company is a straight-shooter or not.

One way or another, you DO disclose some expectations in that scenario.

> How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews

Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in the company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them that their offer is "a good starting point for discussion" and then make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation, bonuses, or whatever you value.

Conversely, if interviewing for unattractive positions that pay well is motivated by non-negotiable financial considerations (mortgage, kids in college), then by all means, be up front about it.

This may seem like I'm being dismissive but I don't want to work anywhere. I work because I have bills that need to be paid. I don't derive enjoyment from making other people wealthy. I legitimately cannot think of such a state as enjoying work nor enjoying working at any given company in particular.

Do you, and if so how did you cultivate that? If you don't mind answering.

Neither do I, but within the scope that I have bills that need to be paid and thus need to work, there are organizations where that work is enjoyable, others where it's acceptable and even more where it would be unpleasant.

I want to not dread going to work, so I only entertain offers from outfits where the job and its environment appear enjoyable. "Acceptable" is below the bar I set unless I somehow end up desperate for money.

The attitude in my case wasn't cultivated. It stems from the fact that I like what I do and I'm very good at it.

Consider, thoroughly, the hypothetical lottery jackpot. What is it you would choose to do, pursue, aim for, if money were no object and you had nothing except your inner volition to drive you. Would you spend your days reading, exploring philosophy and knowledge? Or would you travel and see the world you've yet to traverse? Maybe you're an individual striving toward community and you want to focus on family, friendship, charity. Maybe a bit of everything?

Design, intentionally, the dream you would live if you could. My friend often responds cynically, saying if he is asked about his dream job he would be a space explorer like some Marvel movie. I hear him as flippant and he's clear he thinks it's a dumb idealistic pontificating exercise. . I go toward the path of okay, what would it take to BE that thing or pursue it...

If you can visualize and reason your way to how something might happen, you can reverse engineer it. You can think of it like chess. Position yourself with strength, understand openings midgame and endgame, but know there are many, many, undiscovered lines left in many positions. Now expand from 64,64 squares and so many moves to the infinite variability in Life. You have levers and positions you can exploit and transpose.

Circumstances will always have a hand as will pure luck, fate, or Higher Power, but... you have immense power to craft your reality and I mean this in no woo terms. You change your thoughts, your words, your actions and most crucially, your influence and environment.

Good luck, oneironaut.

Hello, I work in the games industry. You basically need some self-fulfillment to not burn out, be it in designing/implementing gameplay features, digging deep into some graphics/hardware level instructions to optimize, or simply working alongside non-programmers (artists, sound designers, VA's, writers, etc. Very diverse environment) to get something beyond a technical project finished.

How to cultivate that is pretty straightforward. I like games, and I can tolerate making games by leveraging my existing skills. I want to make my own games one day, but I need more financial stability for that. Of course, I can't say I feel as passionate about making someone else's game as I would my own, but industry gives me experience, lets me meet other kinds of talent, and lets me prepare savings for that day I try to do my own thing. That's how I keep motivation going.

I'll grant you, "enjoying work" is rarely, if ever, a thing. The choice might come down to "less bad", but there's still a range of work situations. By "companies you'd like to work with" I mean companies shipping products or services that resonate with you, using tech your interested in, and development processes you don't hate. I don't like working in fintech, for example, so that's a place I wouldn't interview unless I was in need of money. Others might really love the idea of working as staff at academic institutions, and be will to accept less money in exchange for other things.

> Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer 2/3rds of what you want.

So… literally no-where then? Because anywhere that would offer 2/3rds is not a company I’d want to work for.

This might come as a shock, but some people aren't motivated by money beyond the basic need to afford to live in the market the way they want. Some would be willing to take that offer if the position included a variety of attractive intangibles.

To put it another way, "total compensation package" for some people includes things that aren't money but have a value roughly equal to some amount of money for that person.

>Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in the company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them that their offer is "a good starting point for discussion" and then make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation, bonuses, or whatever you value.

This would only work in a hot market, for a desirable candidate. Not everyone has the luxury of interviewing places they really want to work at any cost.

> This would only work in a hot market, for a desirable candidate. Not everyone has the luxury of interviewing places they really want to work at any cost.

Yes, that would be an example of "non-negotiable financial considerations". I'm going of the statement of the original comment, implying they had the luxury of choosing only those positions that meet their compensation criteria.

I work for a Fortune 100 company. Years ago they wanted to make sure that everyone in the same job was making the same amount of money (they were especially trying to make sure women were making as much as men). So they had an outside consulting group look at everyone’s salaries and adjusted them as needed to make sure they were all the same within $1. I ended up getting a $15k bump. They review it again every year to make sure nobody makes more or less than anyone else in the same job. The end result is there are no salary bands and no negotiation. The salary is what it is. You can’t even get $5 more dollars. They did this years ago and so far it hasn’t seemed to negatively affect us.

It sounds like a great way to miss out on talent that can command a salary higher than the average, while simultaneously attracting talent for whom this is a good deal.

Sure, it sounds that way, if we assume that negotiating skill and job performance are tightly correlated. But why should we assume that?

If the two traits are just randomly assorted, then sure, they'll rarely overlap at what is a statistically random rate.

But, if we can assume that the "rare talent" is anything other than straight out of college, they will have discovered that they are a rare talent, be aware of it themselves, and barring some sort of crippling neurosis, want to cash in on it. They might not even be skilled at negotiating... they'll just be aware that they have leverage.

We might even phrase the problem that way... that it's not so important that they have "negotiating skill", as it is that they have "leverage awareness".

Above a certain threshold of talent, there is no need to negotiate at all.

You get what you pay for.

If there is a one off person who can command a higher salary, its unlikely they alone will make a huge difference to the company anyway.

If there are a lot of people who could command a higher salary in that role, the pay is too low.

Overall it seems like a pretty good system. You could argue that the current system favors people who are good at negotiating, and not necessarily more skilled workers.

There are lots of people who aren't choosing jobs based solely on which one pays the most. I have absolutely taken positions that paid much less than I can command elsewhere because the companies in question offered me nonmonetary benefits that were worth more to me than money.

On the other hand, they probably spend significantly less time bickering about their respective salaries.

IME, talented people can spend an absurd proportion of their time bickering about how ${other_talented_person} makes ${trivial_number}/year more than they do, all because they're ${some_trait}.

Overall, I could imagine this filter being both good and bad. I'm not confident whether it nets out good or bad, but you can't argue it's not a dramatically simpler system, and simple systems are often surprisingly better better. :shrug:

Whenever an employer talks about industry median pay, I ask if they want industry median work, or industry median talent and remind them that half of all will perform better.

Not if everybody in the entire industry is paid the same. :)

Not having a band is surprising at Fortune 100. I'm guessing the talent retention is still done through bonus and LTI.

Oh, there are band levels (at least, assuming we used band levels in the same way you mean), but everyone in that band level must make the same amount of money. And the band levels are fixed. It's not like talent acquisition can magically make up a new band level to give someone more money.

But people will still argue over leveling, no?

It's obvious to those on the ground that there are vast differences between people doing the same job. You can say "we only want the best" and fire the pretty-good, but the tone that sets is incredibly harsh. You can try to promote your top performers, but L+1 is usually defined as a different nature and scope of work, not the same work done better. This creates perverse incentives like separating people from their mentors so that they can demonstrate leadership, or choosing the most complicated way of getting something done & involving a lot of people so that they can demonstrate scope. Managers play these games because if they don't, they lose their best workers to outside offers.

that’s nice but not holistic enough

people are overly assuming ingrained bias from a shadowy cabal of hiring managers and not looking at different gendered funnels, attrition, and personal contribution to the outcomes all within the same roles

HIRED’s recruitment report, for example, found very gendered compensations asks to begin with

similarly, people discount the risk many men take to skew it. for everyone worried about coming across as “too bitchy” there are a bunch of men that came across as “too cocky” and got fired or rejected and kept trying until they were hired at a company who needs someone to “to make the tough decisions” like tough to swallow decisions

the observation discounts how many people are overly focused on moving up in one company, versus not being married to any particular company at all, and how gendered even that is, when the latter has a 30% pay bump compared to eking out 5% discretionary promotions within the same company

also discounted is how many men would also leave the workforce if there was a reliable option of being subsidized for house work and unpaid emotional labor, you’ll get workplace equality and wage normalization overnight with that patch to the culture, instead of focusing solely on trying to patch the workplace and acting confused when the same outcome persists

the incentives for men are work or homelessness, unsheltered, outside. there are no classified ads with discounted or free rent “for men only”, or working for the self accolade of proving you didn't do the easy option. these things are all connected to workplace outcomes

Nobody was talking about gender here until you used it as an excuse to reiterate talking points about how pay disparity is actually explained by women not asking for enough money or how men actually have it hard.

the person I replied to was in an environment about gender

> “they were especially trying to make sure women were making as much as men”

when the incentive models are unequal the behaviors of the market participants will be unequal

you’ll get workplace equality and wage normalization overnight with that patch to the culture, instead of focusing solely on trying to patch the workplace

This is mostly wrong advice mutated from trading and that mostly doesn't apply for the highly asymmetrical power balance that exist in salary negotiation, but which still get repeated ad libitum in blogspam sites.

Instead of trading like you're in a bazaar in middle east, focus on doing your research. Know your worth, and how to substantiate your worth during an interview.

Tell the numbers openly when asked, bodily and proudly, and have it confirmed that falls into their budget, and back up your worth with an adequate interview.

Can you imagine doing five rounds only to discover your ask would have never be met, that's madness, how can people suggest that?

Absolutely unprofessional, wastes everyone time, and put all the chances into a single, high stake rounds of wage roulette. And who has the most to lose there?

Especially in countries with limited PTO, just tell that number, and filter out interviews that would have lead to inadequate offers.

Instead of taking the problem with random adhesiveness, just put all that effort upfront and go in the meeting with a number that is well researched both in terms of matching or beating the market and in terms of allowing you to earn your living.

You can always tune the ask down if you're not getting enough interviews, or up if your getting too many. If you get a job too easy, pass and look for a better one, use the job market signal about your performances against itself.

Your ask and the demand will put passing interview on a Gaussian curve. From there is just a repetition game. Ask too much and you'll need infinite time to get a job, but knowing the variance you can establish an ask that matches your time horizon.

This is a very good comment. I think the article presumes lower level roles. Very senior comp packages are wildly different so you always go into the convo with “I expect at least X, can you meet my number?” Otherwise you’re that person that tries to negotiate a 250k position up to 500k which is not going to happen.

> Preparation and leverage means doing the work to make sure that you have multiple offers, that all your offers come in at the same time, and that you don’t tip your hand too early. Laying this foundation is 80% of the work. You’ll need to slow some companies down, speed some companies up, and hold off questions from recruiters until you’re ready to negotiate, and not before.

Laying this foundation is largely unachievable for people who are not full-time job seeking.

Even when you're doing nothing but applying and have a decently impressive combination of skills and experience, it can be quite difficult in certain environments to get a single offer, let alone multiple offers, let alone multiple offers coming in at the same time.

But if you're currently holding down a full-time job and are looking to make a move into a new role, the odds of everything lining up perfectly like this are going to be so low as to be unrealistic even for very talented people.

I’ve found this advice to be far too prevalent and largely unrealistic. Nearly everything about the interview process is out of your control. Getting multiple, competing offers to line up is extremely hard.

It’s basically like saying “you win a race by being the fastest”. No duh! How you be the fastest is the hardest part.

Yeah it is so difficult to align these. I had two interview loops going and the other company was my clear favorite but the loop took like 2 months while the other was two weeks. So what I ended up doing is that I took the first job and now in a month or so I am going to quit and move to the other. It sucks but I literally had no other way because I cannot predict the result of the other interview and I cannot ask the other to wait freaking two months

It's uncomfortable, but possible. In other domains, you might not be able switch from one choice to the other at all.

I find that thought calming.

Wow, that doesn't seem right.

Is it really? Maybe it depends on your market, but I've been able to do it... pretty much every time over the last 12 years. You apply to a bunch of places over ~2 weeks, then try to get the slow ones to speed up and/or the fast ones to slow down. If you've got an offer and are waiting to hear back from a few other companies, you can usually just say that and the first offer will wait a week or two.

Would you work 80 hour weeks for a month or two to make an additional $5-20k per month indefinitely for the foreseeable future?

I would. It's not like it's impossible, it's just more work.

This feels like a "mythical man month" fallacy.

Say you're working a standard 9-to-5. Sure, you can submit applications during the evenings, but once you get your foot in the door, you're constrained by the business hours of the place where you're applying.

Most job interviews take place during normal business hours. You might be able to take your lunch hour to do a phone screen, or you might be able to take off a couple of days of PTO for an on-site interview.

But you can't work your normal 9-5 and then expect to do all your job interviews from 5-midnight.

You're right, but I imagine there is wiggle room - both in scheduling interviews from 5PM to 7-8PM, as well as trading day job business hours needed for interviews for "working late" (really making up the time) for stuff that isn't meetings or synchronous.

If you're hustling toward a $300-600k/yr gig, I think a lot of temporary insanity can be tolerated in furtherance of that goal. Remember also that salary increases compound over your working career.

While you have no children, maybe

I did it (3 FAANGs). I also did it once before with my then-current employer and two other companies.

You have to stall the urgent folks and push the slow ones.

It did take a lot of burning vacation time.

It's even worse if you lack any impressive skills and experience.

Aside from the fact that interviewing itself is really bad for my mental health, despite being in the bottom of the percentiles on places like levels.fyi, I doubt I'd be able to match my currently salary with any job that I could actually get hired for. So, looking up this type of information just ends up discouraging me even more.

Knowing that finding a job is less about salary and more about just being able to get an offer makes most of this advice less than helpful.

“The key is to get multiple 400k offers in the same week”

Wow why didn’t I think of that!

There's a FAANG company on 1 Hacker Way. There's one on 1 Infinite Loop, Apple. There's on on Sand Hill Road, Ampitheatre Parkway actually, that's Google. Netflix, 100 Winchester Circle, that's a good one. You know, I think they're all in the same place, the FAANG District.

Seriously though, I can only imagine how much I'd be laughed out of the room if I was some little shit 22 year old trying to negotiate a salary at a gigantic company, where exactly 0 people I am talking to have any agency whatsoever, only 1 year after 150,000 people in the tech industry were laid off, the memories of dozens of my classmates getting their offers rescinded fresh in my mind. And then for what, to live alone in Sunnyvale for 13 months?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/10rko7k/mo...

The big companies prey on 22 year olds who have mindsets like yours. It’s the wrong one to have.

I did that half a decade ago and got nearly 2x the original offer.

[smacks head]

The hard part about these tips is they will lead you to waste a lot of time. Most companies have no real perspective on if they are in the 60th percentile by comp or the 95th percentile by comp for a role. Some companies will also slot you at different levels based on a number of factors including different levels meaning different things at different companies. If you're trying to get your first FAANG job and generally haven't worked in other high comp roles the advice certainly applies, in that you're likely to underestimate what's possible and shoot yourself in the foot early. If you're already at near top of market compensation you might get a better offer in the end but you're also going to go through 25 entire interview processes you don't have time for because neither side wants to establish compensation.

In my experience hiring, we know the benchmark numbers for the roles. Because we have current employees in those roles and we want to understand whether we're paying them fairly. Not out of some kind of deep kindness, but because otherwise they'll at some point get a better offer and leave.

But it differs across the company where we aim to be. For some roles we aim for 50th percentile, while for other areas we deliberately pay 90th percentile and adjust current employee salaries yearly (after performance review) to match that. Because those areas are important to our strategy/roadmap.

May sound unfair to those that aren't in those areas. But this is business, we're spending our money where the returns are highest for this company. If a role isn't a 90th percentile role for us, it might be somewhere else, and we are willing to accept higher turnover on the 50th percentile roles to make money available to get the people we really need on those other roles.

I am curious. Given you have identified an underpaid employee and want to make sure to keep her/him. Do you actively approach the employee and set the salary straight or do you just watch closely and say yes to the next pay raise?

We do yearly increases based on performance review, we offer a higher increase if their salary is below benchmark number

In my experience, every company sees what they want to see when it comes to benchmarks. I've seen companies that think FAANG compensation doesn't exist in the marketplace at all and I've seen other companies that target above that level for roles.

FWIW I did all of those things this article says not to do and ended up making close to 200% of my previous total compensation (which I'm happy with).

Some recruiters didn't ask me for my compensation figures upfront. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Snap, LinkedIn, and some startup recruiters never asked me for my compensation numbers up front. The only ones that did, were to make sure neither of us were wasting each others' times. Usually that meant that I didn't continue to interview with them.

Most if not all recruiters asked me where I was in the interview process and which companies I was interviewing at. I mentioned every company I was interviewing with and where I was in the process with them. I probably got lucky here as I had around 50% onsite to offer rate so I was never left in a spot where I had no leverage.

My best offers were the ones where VPs called me to try to close the process, and I negotiated directly with them instead of the recruiter.

> FWIW I did all of those things this article says not to do and ended up making close to 200% of my previous total compensation (which I'm happy with).

The article mentions this:

> Let’s say that you currently work at a startup and make $150k in cash with some amount of equity. You go to levels.fyi or a similar site and look up Facebook’s salary bands for the role you’re targeting. Let’s say those bands for total comp are $250k-$350k. Hell, that’s way more cash than you’re making now, so you decide to share that range, thinking that if those are their bands already, it does no harm. That’s reasonable, except that let’s say Google ends up making you an offer, and it’s $400k (we’ve seen this scenario happen to a bunch of our users). Now you have to walk back what you said, in which case your recruiter will invariably ask why. And now you have to reveal, before you’re ready, that you have a Google offer, which means you’ll probably end up revealing that it’s for $400k. Now you’ve set an artificial ceiling for your Facebook counteroffer to be $400k as well, when in reality that ceiling may have been closer to $450k or even $500k.

The article is about optimizing for maximum comp, and your strategy is "sub optimal" because who knows if you could have gotten 250%+ of your previous comp had you negotiated better?

You must be a 100x engineer.

You can have this conversation:

You: Ok recruiter, is there a budget/range set aside for this position ?

Recruiter: Yes it is $x-$y

You: Ok I can work with that. My expectation is ideally $x+ z% <= $y OR "Sorry that won't work for me. Bye"

Scenario 2:

Recruiter: Hey, what are your salary requirements ?

You: Ok recruiter, is there a budget/range set aside for this position ?

Recruiter: <crickets> Or goes "No but I am interested in learning what is your requirement ideally" ?

You: $Market-Rate + %YOUR_IDEAL_INCREMENT

Scenario 3:

Recruiter: What is your current salary ?

You: Recruiter, I can disclose that but that wouldn't matter as I am interested in hearing if there is a fixed budget for this role already ?

Recruiter: <crickets>

You: If you don't know the budget, regardless of what I make now, I wouldn't make a move unless I am making $MARKET_RATE + %INCREMENT

The point is that don't worry about being underpaid by asking first necessarily. You can ask for a number that works for YOU. Even if it was less than what they would have paid, why should you care if you are happy. Yes, do your research and know your market obviously.

Sure. Some candidates are extremely experienced in negotiation and know exactly how much they are worth. Those people should absolutely name numbers from the start to avoid having their time wasted. But those people also know who they are and know that they don't need to read advice about negotiation.

Most candidates have no idea what they're worth. Here's what I imagine is happening behind the scenes in your scenarios, assuming a normal candidate:

Scenario 1: Recruiter: Great news. The candidate was happy with the offer and I didn't even need to ask for permission to offer higher comp. It's always extra time and work when I have to ask for $x+$y+$z.

Scenario 2: Recruiter: Ha ha. This candidate has no idea what the market rate is. They must only be interviewing at crap companies. We'll offer the bottom of the pay band and they'll be overjoyed because it's 10% higher than they were asking for.

Scenario 3: Exactly the same as scenario 2, except there was a brief moment when the recruiter wondered if the candidate knew how much they could get.

> Even if it was less than what they would have paid, why should you care if you are happy

This is a weird argument. It seems like you're saying "these scenarios are fine even if they lose you money." I would argue that "you should care" because most people would, all things being equal, like more money. The point of a job offer negotiation is to optimize a few different variables, of which "money" is generally a (or the) primary one.

If saying a number first (as you do in all 3 of these scenarios) reduces the ultimate amount of money get (it generally does), you should not do that.

Mine almost always goes like this:

Recruiter: How much are looking for?

Me: Could you please provide a range for the role?

Recruiter: no, please let us know what you want

Me: relatively high but not crazy number

Recruiter: No, that's too high

Me (in my head): why did you ask me then

Me: Ok, please let me know what is reasonable

Recruiter: some number that may or may not be acceptable

Me: asks for a bit more if number was close to acceptable

IME you could have gotten the higher number if you'd avoided saying it.

Because you surrendered a number almost immediately, they have decided that you're inexperienced and so deserve less money.

I think a better strategy is to not answer: "OK, I think it's fine if you don't want to talk about salary right now. I'm sure you pay competitively. Let's focus on whether I'm a good fit with the team first."

After the engineering team has told the recruiter that they want to move forward with hiring you, you have more leverage to negotiate.

If you're finding that your opening bid is always rejected, it's probably because you don't know what's a good number to name. (Lots of people sneer at this but I don't think this is some failing on your part--companies pay tons of money for this kind of salary data which is how they know it.) In this case, you should just do anything you can to avoid naming a number first.

Sorry, I guess my brief summary wasn't clear, I basically do what you say and avoid the discussion as long as possible. You are 100% correct you are in a much better position when the technical folks want you vs some random recruiter.

Personally, I just wouldn't work with a recruiter who did that. That sort of behavior is a red flag to me.

What would you do instead? Ask for another recruiter?

That negotiation sounds like the estimation process at some companies I have worked for.

the best part is the "exactly what to say" at the end:

"At this point, I don’t feel equipped to throw out a number because I’d like to find out more about the opportunity first – right now, I simply don’t have the data to be able to say something concrete. If you end up making me an offer, I would be more than happy to iterate on it if needed and figure out something that works. I promise not to accept other offers until I have a chance to discuss them with you."

i love it. I would have to have that right in front of me and read it word for word. And if I get pushed to reveal a number I would need to just pause and slowly repeat it again word for word like a robot.

I don't think how you say it is as critical as understanding the concept. When I am interviewing, I am usually talking to a few companies at the same time, so my answer is usually "While I don't want to throw out a number, just wanted to be transparent that I am talking to a few companies and have/expect to have another couple of offers before I make a decision. Obviously how those offers come in will be a factor in my expectations and I would of course let you know if we need to work on the numbers. So right now I would just be very happy to see your starting number and go from there"

maybe less words than that, so it's literally the mental model in my head. Repeating something like a robot is probably better than blurting out the number but having a real game plan and treating the recruiter as a partner is probably better.

yeah but I was raised to be a good kid and do what the teacher or adult authority figures tell me to do. Even though I'm an adult now, when a fast talking recruiter demands to know some numbers I have a hard time not just folding and giving in! I would need to print out those words and paste them on the wall and like practice 10 times with a friend playing the role of sneaky recruiter.

That's a funny and impressive sense of self awareness.

If I may, I wouldn't think of the recruiter as an authority figure (they have none...) Rather they are your partner. Their best case scenario is that you are a good candidate for their job and they get to fill it. Which is also your best case scenario!

So it's more about how do you get there together collaboratively - at least that's how I frame it in my mind. So when they ask for something I don't want to share I respond more from the frame that it's not the piece of info that would help right now but here's how we should play it.

But your script is definitely a good start!

> I would need to print out those words and paste them on the wall and like practice 10 times with a friend playing the role of sneaky recruiter.

This is actually a really fantastic idea. You should absolutely do this.

> I would have to have that right in front of me and read it word for word. And if I get pushed to reveal a number I would need to just pause and slowly repeat it again word for word like a robot.

LOL. I'd probably read it like a bank heist hostage. Ideally, while blinking rapidly and visibly sweating on the Zoom meeting.

Not talking about your salary history is a decent tip.

But negotiation isn't rocket science: you need to be thoughtful and honest to yourself and come up with an aspirational number (what you want, best case) and a floor (which you will not go below). Any number in between should be acceptable to you, by definition.

I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away.

The point is that your aspirational number may be way, way off. Not saying the aspirational number is how I got twice the salary I planned to ask for as a junior while interviewing for my first job years ago.

There's no consistent and transparent pricing for individual skills on a resume, so you can't sum them up, adjusted by years of experience, and reach a rational number. Job titles can be similarly vague. Plus there's no premium for having a useful bundle of skills as a single hire (companies charge us for convenience and bundling all the time though!)

This seems hard, but plenty of analytical brain power could be applied towards this. But there's also no will for companies to reach pricing frequency and fidelity like a stock market or retail because the inefficiency is in their favor and I suspect the real numbers that would come out of that would be much higher.

Yes. Ask a company what they would rather have on a public github: their source code or their payroll file. I bet they’d say source code!

>> But negotiation isn't rocket science

Its more like a poker game. The more information you know, the more advantageous your position will be.

When recruiters ask me a range, I typically go 20%-30% above what I'm currently making as the starting point and about 10% below what I'm actually making as the floor. I also always tell the recruiter I'm open to negotiating.

This usually gets a reaction from the recruiter. They either tell me I'm asking too much and will give me the actual range the company is looking for or they say, "Oh that's perfect, its right in the range the company is looking for."

That information on its own will tell you whether its worth it to continue or not in 99% of the situations.

I gave an honest floor salary to a company prior to interviewing. Their offer was 20% less than my floor. I think they thought it was my "best case" number despite very clear communication that it was my minimum to consider leaving my current role.

I walked away vaguely annoyed with the hiring company.

> I gave an honest floor salary to a company prior to interviewing.

Never reveal what your honest floor is. That's just for you, so you know what is an acceptable negotiation range. Tell them what your expectation is, instead.

It can be safe to assume the floor is current salary plus whatever it would take for me to leave plus a little bit extra. I wouldn’t offer a floor lower.

So I can see making an offer below or near floor. 20 percent is awfully low, but I would have fun and make a counter. If they don’t move much you then it’s clearly time to move on. Really depends on what else is on the table.

I'm a little sympathetic to the hiring company. Unless you really know the other negotiating party, it can be hard to guess when they're posturing.

(OTOH, maybe it's a mistake to low-ball a candidate by such a large percentage, regardless. It sounds like a recipe for a discontent employee.)

> I find the hardest thing for people is being honest about the floor and being willing to walk away.

The problem is that you almost certainly don't have enough information to predetermine a floor, because that almost certainly depends on what other options will be available to you in the near future. I mean, sure, technically your floor could be literally just the lowest amount that you could survive on, but most people anticipate that the options available to them allow them to go higher than that.

The floor should be the number that you don't feel bad about accepting. That indeed includes your perception of alternatives. If your floor is higher than what you're going to get, you'll miss a few jobs and then learn that your expectations should be lower. That makes the new floor acceptable.

There isn't really a shortcut, because if you feel like you've accepted an offer below your minimum and never applied for other jobs you'll feel like that forever. Which isn't a good foundation for the next years working in the role.

> If your floor is higher than what you're going to get, you'll miss a few jobs and then learn that your expectations should be lower. That makes the new floor acceptable.

Right, but this process is only acceptable if you believe that you have more than a few options in the near future.

I think part of the (perhaps unconscious) resistance to thinking clearly about the floor is that the hiring side (i.e. people who do this every day, rather than once every few years) have a knack for sussing out what that floor is and ensuring that that's what you get and not a penny more.

Maybe there is a kind of madman theory of salary negotiation as well, heh: throw out some numbers, don't think about it too much, randomly blow up the negotiation for any reason, or for no reason, etc.

For my part I just accept that I'll be getting the floor or very close to it.

I am expecting raises to come soon and I am trying to think through how to ask for a higher raise. Any input would be appreciated.

My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should be paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap: "We can't give you more because it's not industry standard" etc. Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this list, my raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of years.

The other thing is our growth has slowed. We had a few years of over 20% growth, but we rely on the ad market, and it hit us hard with the Apple/Google changes. But, we still have positive growth, just not the 20% the CEO desires.

> My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should be paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap: "We can't give you more because it's not industry standard" etc. Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this list, my raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of years.

I worked for a company that did that too. "Our hands are tied, the book says you can make within this salary range, and [surprise, surprise] you're already making the top of that range!" Book or no book, this is a tactic I've seen from all 4 out of the last 4 companies I've worked. Every manager will say this. Oh, yea I swear, I'd love to give you a 5% raise, but you're at the top of your range already!

The usual recommendation is to go get another offer at the salary you want and use that to make your case.

Now, I use to think that the "spiteful boss" was a myth, ie the boss that is going to be all pissy because they feel blackmailed and give you a hard time. I actually did encounter it for the first time in 2 decades a few years ago. I was VP of eng at the time and one of my reports used this technique to show that we were clearly lowballing him (which I knew, but budget was controlled by the CFO). The CTO got mad with a big M, saying that he didn't want to be blackmailed or held hostage of whatever. Threw a big tantrum and we basically lost an engineer.

As I said, it was the one occurrence in my 20 years in the industry so it's not very common. Most managers understand that it's business, you're showing them the data and they don't want to lose someone who's doing a good job.

> Most managers understand that it's business, you're showing them the data and they don't want to lose someone who's doing a good job.

Yeah, exactly.

If a 150k engineer brings me an offer for 175 and asks me to match, my options are to either:

* match

* let them go, lose 25k of company productivity while my team interviews & hire & pinch hit for someone who left, then lose 40k in time training a new candidate & waiting for them to come up to speed

The corollary to this: you don’t want to do it often. A previous coworker did this twice & on the second ask his bosses bosses boss (CIO) brought him into his office, looked him in the eyes, and said “last time. no more.” So negotiate well and bring your best offer.

If the guy can regularly get offers that much higher than what they are paying him, that's what he's worth, and they can meet it or he'll walk. Maybe just actually pay the guy his market rate and he won't bother wasting time job searching.

You forgot option 3:

* Offer them 250K to let them know you really want them to stay while also ensuring they feel properly valued by the company, which also exceeds the external offer by high enough that the other company probably won't counter counter. If you can't offer 250K, but, say, 200K is in your budget, then also throw in some more vacation days. Also throw in a mandatory minimum severance guarantee for good measure, so they don't have to worry about layoffs.

These articles always have a weird touch to them.

> What to do when you're working at Apple and a Microsoft recruiter calls > Get competing offers from Meta and Netflix at the same time > This shouldn't be a problem, as you have networked in the past and your in-company friend can pull some strings to make any recruiting requirement optional

I'm not sure these assumed readers need all that much career advice?

I feel like these "tips" are from some kind of weird subculture I've never been part of. I've used 3rd party recruiters for almost 20 years and negotiation is always pretty transparent. I want X (which is more than I am currently making) and the recruiter finds a good fit. Sometimes the role is well above what I asked for.

Unless it's a boutique startup, I'm going to get into the role and find out right-quick what the salary bands are anyway, so the gaming seems silly. If it is some startup, I already provided the benefits I was looking for (and tradeoff for salary I would accept), so it doesn't seem to matter much.

It is very FAANG oriented (and US oriented at the same time).

something about this doesn't quite sit right when I consider my experience with negotiating for roles at startups. I agree with the approach for big tech, but it sets a weird tone for working closely with a team if you just spent a week stressing them out and shaking them down. I've done that negotiation for myself, tried to hire people who did it to me, and I've watched others go through it. it always leaves a funny smell with the team, because at the startups I've been involved with it's kind of rare to play hardball.

just my experience. I am more on the mission-driven end of the why-do-you-work spectrum, it's not just the money for me. and I've gotten bitten in the ass by the sharks who sit on the board and hand down layoffs, I know it's how the world works. just speaking about the small teams where you are negotiating with the overworked hiting manager.

The most important advice is: let them talk first. There are two cases: 1) You'll get more than you expected. Good for you. 2) You'll get an offer for less than your expectation. You'll see how much your work is worth for the company. Maybe it's time to submit your CV elsewhere.

It's an interesting article but I hope it would not just dismiss wasting time:

> The main question recruiters ask up front about money is: “What are your compensation expectations?” They claim that it’s because they want to make sure that you’re not so far off in your expectations that interviewing with that company would be a waste of time. This is a nonsense reason — very few companies pay so much below market that it would be a nonstarter

I down want to earn "market" or "average". I want to earn what makes sense for me, regardless of how much above (or below, although that would be weird) market it may be. Or I want my conditions to be specific enough that the whole thing is worth it (benefits in terms of remote, medical, etc).

I also don't want to waste time interviewing a lot if there's no minimum bar that's close to my goal. I can always say no, and the part of aligning interviews so that you get offers at the same time makes a lot of sense, although it can be hard, since it's easy to overload yourself with interviews.

Every second wasted preparing for interviews is somewhat wasted, regardless of the experience you gain from it, so you want to minimize it. One of the biggest keys is probably leaving at your own pace so that you feel perfectly comfortable saying no. "No" gets you renegotiations pretty fast because you've made the sale. You just don't want to keep making the sale many times fruitlessly.

There's also a lot of "right time and right place" going on with interviews, so being open to change and knowing what you really want is important.

There's a point where you also know your value enough that you don't have to play so many games or stress that much. It works quite well and gives one job satisfaction.

I dunno, I've never really aggressively negotiated at hire time, but certainly at my industry jobs, just getting the door was the important thing, because my comp grows exponentially once I'm on the inside (all Googlers got a 10% raise one year. Just because.)

What does happen is during the first recruiter chat (before talking ot the HM), I make sure they are OK with my number (base + bonus + stock) in theory. Some jobs I've wanted have ended at that point- I asked for $270K base and they won't go above $230K, for example. it's a shame but I guess over my career I've done well enough, even with many rejections, mostly by just paying attention and moving to tyhe right place at the right time.

In my most recent role, the hiring manager had to put me in the highest eng level ("distinguished") to meet my salary expectation, and it was still a pay cut compared to my previous job in FAANG. However, my life quality more than makes up the difference. Don't always chase the biggest number.

No offense, but what do you do that is "distinguished"? I thought that title was only for like the top .01% of engineers who have done insane stuff no other mortal can pull off.

Distinguished comes after principal, but I can't say I did anything distinguished in my career. It was just a salary band/title.

HN's own 'patio11 has also a very good post about negotiating: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Every time this advice comes up I groan because it's so specific to a single type of individual and a single sector-economy convergence. If you're not a top engineer applying to companies with massive salary caps, or especially if you're not a typical dev/PM role this advice is generally crap and will waste your time.

My advice for people who don't fall into the above:

1) Spend time to actually figure out what you are realistically worth in a new role. Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, H1B comp reports, ask your friends, there are tons of resources to do this.

2) Set a "reach" salary based on #1 and ask for that up front. 20% above your target salary is a good starting point. This accomplishes two things: a) it immediately weeds out all the spam recruiters and low-balling companies without wasting hours of your time on interviews; and b) it puts you in the right place to negotiate with the companies that are serious rather than trying to play chicken the entire time.

3) Set a floor below which you walk away and stick to it. The floor is going to be different for different companies. If there's a company you really want to work for because they're doing interesting things and you like the people there, your floor should be lower than at a generic job you're just considering as a ladder rung.

Will this advice potentially get you less than the absolute max you could make? Sure. But if that's your only goal then you should hire a personal recruiter working for you.

In my experience the only negotiation tactic that really matters is having an alternative offer.

It's mostly a waste of time, trying to negotiate with the big tech companies.

I tried this with one, and they offered me a larger signing bonus.

What I didn't realize was that they just ended up deducting that from my year end bonus.

Even if it was net neutral on hard compensation, guaranteed money now beats potential money later. Seems like a net win for negotiation.

A small one. If I'd realized I was only getting a 6 month advance I probably wouldn't have taken the offer.

I got 2/3 FAANGs to double their total comp. One was 2.8x. It is indeed a worthy exercise.

The only way to do that, of the places I'm aware of, is to get them to change your starting level from "fresh grad" to "engineer with 2 years of experience".

Since the people involved in setting salary are not involved in setting level, that mostly doesn't happen, because they're not going to countermand the leveling decision just to get your compensation up.

When did you do this? In the current hiring climate, I can't really imagine that happening.

Almost 2 years ago.

Strong disagree sharing expectations is sabotage. Many companies will waste your time with lowball offers and you can easily find a top-of-range number through comps at other companies if there isn't already a published range. Netflix generally pays top-of-market and pays cash they're usually a good comp. Also you might not value equity the same way or they may be unwilling to give you the information you need to value their equity (which means it's probably worthless).

>The main question recruiters ask up front about money is: “What are your compensation expectations?” They claim that it’s because they want to make sure that you’re not so far off in your expectations that interviewing with that company would be a waste of time. This is a nonsense reason — very few companies pay so much below market that it would be a nonstarter.

Of course there are, lol.

e.g "software houses" in Poland

Oh yeah recruiters.

If they ask how long I have been looking I say 2 weeks: shows I am seriously looking so worth investing in but not on the shelf too long.

If they ask if I have applied to other companies: yes a couple, if at interview stage “yes I have another company I am interviewing with”. Too many it looks like they wont be able to snag. Too few and it looks like you don’t have leverage to negotiate.

Those in-page notification popups are annoying. The desktop web seems to have become a wasteland almost as hellish as mobile.

Salary negotiation tips always assume a lot about your situation. Use your head. If you get paid shit then dont be the first to say a number. If you are above the posted range then dont decline to talk about salary before the offer stage and be disappointed when you cant negotiate above the posted range.

This contradict my own experience with companies who pay below market trying to mitigate this by lowballing with an even more below market offer, acting surprised at the market salary you say you're interested in, and then making a show of reaching deep into their coffers to make you a "generous" offer that's closer to (but still below) market.

Is it also true that the recruiter is not really the "friend" of the company either? If they'll work against your marginal interests to close the deal, why wouldn't they work against the company's marginal interests for the same?

Since they are working for a percentage of the amount of salary they have negotiated for you, they have a diminishing return to spend time pushing too hard. Additionally, if they fight too hard, too often, the company is less likely to engage with the recruiter in the future, if they feel they are overpaying for that recruiter's candidates vs another's.

The approach I've taken throughout my career when asked about my salary expectations is to say: it depends on the details. There are some jobs I would do for free as a volunteer or purely for equity (e.g. advising a startup or teaching kids to program), and there are some jobs I would do only if I were making a ridiculous amount of money (e.g. being a mid-level project manager at a large company), and a lot of possibilities in between. So I can't tell you what my compensation expectations are because they depend too much on the details of the job.

It has the added benefit of being the truth.

[flagged]

"These are the two things you must avoid. Both involve how you talk to recruiters at the start of your job search, way before there’s an offer: - Revealing information too early in the game - Negotiating before you’re ready"

Yup. At some point I heard the guidance "don't be the first person to name a number". For my current role, I would have asked for 20-30% less than what the company offered. Say "I'm not sure what typical ranges are in this sector", or "it depends on equity and perks, of course".

I have a very simple rule of thumb that has worked exceptionally well for me. I never reveal salary expectations.

I learned this lesson many moons ago after not getting a job I really looked forward to because my honest expectations were too high, and later ending up in a situation where I got paid 70% of what a friend earned for exactly the same role because I low balled myself.

After those experiences I just say that if they’re willing to make an offer, we’ll go from there. If it’s a company who can’t work with this approach, I don’t want to work there anyway.

If you're interviewing, you've getting lowballed.

Picture a board chairman discussing a CEO position with his or her top candidate. The chairman's courting the candidate, they're playing golf, they're dining together and he's trying to convince him CEO is a job worth taking.

The job's his, and so is any reasonable dollar figure he wants.

Now, if that fails then the chairman may have traditional interviews with his second or third choice candidates. But they're for sure getting paid nowhere what the first candidate would get.

Unless you did something exceptional, like create a world-renowned programming language or are a staple in the biggest conferences in your niche, you're interviewing.

But I agree with your general sentiment.

Having a strong network to fall back on when you're looking is much better than throwing fish (resumes) into the barrel.

When I sense I'm being informationally interviewed by a recruiter or discussing a job I realize I'm not interested in I offer up high salary expectations to push up the overall pay expectations for filling the position.

I kind of figure the market knows what my skill set is valued at and gambling for an outsized payout isn't likely to work unless you're interviewing at the top tier. When discussing a job I am interested in taking I push my tier to the upper end but leave room for discussion.

So weird to me to focus so much on the money. I care about what the company does and what I'll be contributing to that much more. Choosing based on salary offered seems like a recipe to always be in jobs you hate.

Also, I usually have a job, and then nay apply to another when something interesting comes up. Isn't that more common than the situation of interviewing with four companies at the same time while not having a current job that's also part of the comparison?

If you don't care about money, there is no way an article called "Common mistakes in salary negotiation" will ever be helpful to you. This is not a fault in the article, though.

Well, I still care about my salary and need to negotiate it. Just in the context of a single job that I would like to have.

The article is supposedly about salary negotiation, but it only considers the case where all jobs are interchangeable except for the money.

> My general policy with third-party recruiters is to not tell them ANYTHING and to always deal directly with the companies they introduce you, once you establish a point of contact there.

As a third-party recruiter, I'd love that, but absolutely none of the companies we work with want that, and we can always ask for more money or informally sound out an employer in a way that's much more difficult for the candidate to do directly.

I usually just tell recruiters I won't even consider interviewing unless they can tell me up-front that salaries are not negotiated and are systematically the same for all employees in the same seniority ranks.

I feel like these companies are often the more equitable ones. Salaries are never fair when they depend on negotiation skills IMO, and I say this as someone who would probably benefit from the negotiation tradition.

> salaries are not negotiated and are systematically the same for all employees in the same seniority ranks

What companies actually do this? In my experience, none. Not even governments actually do this, though on paper many will claim they more or less do.

My last 3 employers. They exist!

I probably reject 99% of all recruiters that reach out.

recruiters are basically agents, similar to realtors in real estate market - don't reveal your budget, you're not buying the 'PRICE', you're buying property (with it's features, relationships to area, market etc).

Likewise, your salary is the 'PRICE', but they're getting YOU - so you focus on selling YOU: your experience, your abilities, your 'value add' etc, right to the end. then place your SALARY (your price, plus other perks [training etc]).

Sadly, but true enough, the process is mostly about perception of value, and perception (emphasis on interpretation) is 'workable/pliable' thus hackable (not trivial):

- directly via training/brokers [books, OP etc]

- via networks such as referrals/clubs/accreditation/alumni/nepotism [happens]

- indirectly via social/personal/political/weather factors

Worth reading books on Negotiation, the field is as old as humanity.

p.s. for the avoidance of doubt, i'm neither saying 'workers are like buildings', nor mean 'hack' pejoratively :)

I don’t get the part on not saying a number. I say a number and it is not my lowest but what I want. Recently I either get an OK or twice “that is above, let me talk to the hiring manager”.

So either way I an ok with that, if I say nothing I also don’t where I am at. If someone tells me it is 30% below then thanks and good bye.

I keep seeing these salary negotiation posts, but aren't the recruiters and people hiring also reading them?

Right, but if the average recruiter already knows most this stuff, and the average candidate doesn't, it still brings the candidate closer to parity, even if both parties learn something.

Wonder how the current job market situation affects these tricks. Some of those salaries seem pretty crazy to me but then again, how else are you going to pay for that ridiculously expensive house and college tuition.

Why negotiation is necessary even if you think it's a waste of time:

you: look, I really like the job. I won't waste time negotiating as long as it's fair market price.

recruiter: sure, that's fair. [then proceeds to low-ball you]

Salary negotiation is all about information asymmetry; typically the company holds all the cards and the candidate none. Not sure any article could help with that in any way.

> Salary negotiation is all about information asymmetry

Which is exactly why the whole article tells you to not reveal any information and to get as much as possible. You agree with the article..

This is only partially true. Sure the company has a lot of cards but they are playing a different game. They are Hikaru playing 12 blitz chess games at once, and potential employees are offering something, else they're not negotiating they're just working out the terms of their slavery.

Not exactly. Some candidates outright lie about competing offers or existing compensation. Less unscrupulous tactics are to give TC figures based on the peak of the stock price performance, which isn't technically a lie - you just forgot to cite the most up-to-date price.

Software developers are not commodities. Don't think about yourself this way.

All the HR & hiring processes lately are about commoditizing swengs...

Wish this article was mobile friendly. Looks informative but really annoying to horizontally scroll through.

What is salary negotiation if I can't even make to a technical interview? I would agree to any salary

Most companies have a range for each level within their org. Candidates whose expectations are above the range are automatically filtered out. Ones within the range have no problems going forward with the interview/offer. The ones who suffer because of non-disclosure of the range are the ones whose expectation is below the range. People talk. If such a candidate joins your org, they will soon find out they’re being underpaid and will leave as soon as they find a better offer. It looks like disclosing the range is benefecial for both parties. Things are improving with laws mandating a range disclosure with the job application and websites like levels.fyi making things more transparent. There shouldn’t be a need to “neogiate” your salary above/below this range.

Now I need one to get a raise during a hiring freeze.

I find just being honest and upfront really helps.

Great read thank you

This reminds me of a conversation I frequently have with my dad and family. I have my cash investments in a cash plus account, earning 4.7% interest. They're all hooked on T-bills and laddering, which has a current rate of 5.55%. I'm finishing my PhD program so don't have a large investment. Let's say $10k for easy math. At 4.7% that's $480.26 on return, while 5.55% is 569.34, a difference of ~$90. In my cash account, I am: FDIC protected, can withdraw and deposit money at any time, and am able to employ a "set and forget" strategy. With the T-bill method I need to lock my money in for 6 months at a time and realistically laddering this decreases my gains. I have to be quite active to perform this. Here's the question, is that time worth $90? To me, no. I'd much rather spend that time doing my PhD work or taking breaks to do things like visit HN. Not worry about my finances and squabble over money that isn't significantly meaningful and is small compared to my expectation in a few years. Any time spent following the active strategy is time that would be better invested investing in my PhD work, where the expectation of return is several hundred thousand of dollars a year. Even were my investment 10x, we are talking the difference of <$900, but the FDIC protection carries far more weight here (coverage up to $1.25M).

This is a common mistake I see in all types of modeling (stock investing, time estimation, quality assurance, etc) and is exactly the same game afoot here. Like the article says, we assume a recruiter's interests are aligned with ours since the more money we make the more money they make. But this is a poor model because we are not our recruiter's only prospect. And, like the article discusses, their returns are diluted. The recruiter's more optimal strategy is to not hold all their eggs in one basket. To diversify and operate on quick turnover rather than a not-so-golden goose. External costs and auxiliary factors often play critical roles in models.

The devil is always in the details. Nearly everyone I talk to believes that a first order solution is at worst non-optimal, but relatively aligned with the target function's trajectory. But when we look deeper and include nuance, we actually realize that our first order approximation is in the opposite direction! I hear "don't let perfection get in the way of 'good enough'" or similar cliques. But there is such a thing as having too naive of a model. Many functions necessitate even considerable "nuance" (orders of approximation), as an example sin(x). The real world is far more complex than the sine function. It thus necessitates understanding the limitations of our approximation, rather than simply approximating.

Don't let "good enough" get in the way of __good enough__.

Nuance isn't equivalent to pedantry.

There is only one rule when talking about job, or essentially anything in life, if you wan to win. And that is - always be ready to walk out. This mostly means able, not just willing. Never put yourself in a position where you are cornered and have no way out. This is where "fuck you money" comes in, usually. If you know you will have food on the table, roof above your head and a bed to sleep in, your perspective will be quite different than a person that is one blown up tyre away from getting evicted.

And secondly, when it comes to jobs, always look for a job while employed. And not just that, you can use that to renegotiate your salary and benefits with your current employer because hiring new person would also mean mentoring them in the company culture and know-how and things like that, that you already know. So it is a cost to them that might be, and usually is, much higher than increasing your salary.

And a tip for the road, make sure your pay increases every year, either with inflation or based on agreed upon percentage(like 5% a year, for example). Inflation is universal and companies increase their prices accordingly, yet workers never require increase of their salaries, usually until years later.

> Inflation is universal and companies increase their prices accordingly, yet workers never require increase of their salaries, usually until years later.

Every (shitty) company: Best year ever! Profits are up XX%! Investors are happy! Sorry, there's no money for raises.

Even worse:

"Best year ever! Profits are up XX%! Investors are happy! Sorry, there's no money for raises. Also, we're laying some of you off."

That's exactly what Activision-Blizzard did in 2019. They announced record profits, and in the same week announced the layoff of 800 workers.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/12/18222096/blizzard-layoffs-...

It may seem odd at first impressiom, but profits are about the past, layoffs are about the future, so its also not nonsensical.

> when it comes to jobs, always look for a job while employed

I have never done this. Sure, I might have missed out on summer cash, but I enjoyed the breaks between the jobs immensely.

Those are not mutually exclusive, you can specify a starting date one year ahead of signing the offer, if the company is not in a hurry. At least where I live. Then you have bargaining power and vacation at the same time.

I don’t think it’s a requirement. A well timed interview loop and having 6+ offers on the table where you pit them all against each other does wonders for your negotiating position as well

He who cares the least controls the situation.

Similarly, not hitting a gift horse in the mouth is a good idea.

I don't think is a good idea to negotiate a raise with an offer.

Either leave or stay.

Raises are bullshit. 3% inflation raise for everyone! Maybe?

> And that is - always be ready to walk out.

No, it's to crush your competition. And we all know it. Employment is largely out of an individual's ability to negotiate—we're all getting fucked and we know it.

This is all sickening really and all pointless really.

If the company end up overpaying Person A (which they'll learn by hiring Person B,C,D and seeing their performance), they will let Person A go.

If the company end up underpaying Person A, which will be obvious from levels.fyi, glassdoor and colleagues, Person A will just not do a good job and leave.

Slightly meta (relating to the website) and not this specific article, I got a popup toast saying

> Secret Zebra just left feedback for their FAANG interviewer: I really enjoyed the interview, you did really well in giving me the right level of assistance to keep under the time constraints. It was also pretty useful that you had prepared some extra code for testing.

Apart from such toasts being unusual, I doubted that a review would be "just" left by someone. Googling the text brought me to https://interviewing.io/mocks/Reverse-Nodes-in-k-Group, which as per archive.org was at least as old as 2 June 2023[1]. Not terribly old, but feels scummy to be honest.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230602224912/https://int

We're actually testing those popups right now. Cycling through a few preexisting ones to see if engagement moves at all, and then we'll make them realtime.

How is making your website more annoying supposed to “engage” anyone?

Those pop-ups are annoying and distracting.

Someone asked me what my salary requirements were.

I asked, "what's the budget?"

They gave me their budget and I did it with a few thousand off. Worked well and I was surprised.

TL;DR

- Recruiters are not on your side

- Never be the first to volunteer a salary number (or anything else)

Pretty obvious advice, but worth repeating I guess.

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