Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Salary expectations questions – How should you answer them? (2020)

fearlesssalarynegotiation.com

123 pointsmooreds159 comments

I always recommend this article: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ I think this topic is super important and I’m really glad I didn’t follow advice of saying your “expected salary or expected +20%”. Here my anecdotal SWE salary history:

Worked at a startup for a bunch of years making 90k by the end

Got offered a place at FAANG. Recruiter pushed me a little bit on expected salary but I didn’t give one using all the approached from the linked article. They offered me 250k. I would have never ever assumed that I can be payed this much. Instead of accepting I again followed the advice and asked for time to think. I had no counter offers but spoke to the recruiter thanked them for the offer and asked if there’s room for improvement. And they were nice and reasonable, they said yes if there are counter offers or you are leaving unvested stock behind. I was leaving unvested stock in an unprofitable startup, but I wrote the amount and vesting schedule and got offer bumped by 25k.

After working there I considered going to trading shop. Used the same approach and they offered 400k. Again this number seemed insane at the time. So I asked for more, this time I had much lower counter offer. But I could use it as some form of leverage. They upped the offer by 150k by the end (this is sign on+ salary+guaranteed first year bonus).

I am writing this not to show off the numbers, but to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong. Let the employer give information first and don’t back yourself into the corner by revealing your ignorance of market or minimum comp you are willing to take.

That is absolutely bonkers. The range of developer salaries is so huge. Congrats on moving far above 90k!!

What kind of work experience would you say was most valuable in climbing that ladder? Open source stuff? Anything you could show off?

I think what made the difference in both places is that I had good projects I could talk about and the tell a good story of this is the business problem, this is what we did, this is how I contributed, this is the result. I know this is not super helpful and sounds like standard STAR stuff. I was lucky because I was given a chance to deliver large and important projects and I think this is what they liked. This comp is high but once you get into l7 and above or get senior roles in trading firms numbers become even more crazy.

I think the main thing his experience showed is that if you want to make a lot of money, you need to position yourself to move into industries that can pay a lot. For software engineers that means 3 major options:

1. The US tech giants (the "FAANGs"). These companies are so insanely profitable and they can afford to pay a lot, though they all have become more cost conscious in the past couple years.

2. Finance. Again, they've got a lot of money, and especially for trading firms it's usually more straightforward to assign value to individual developers than in other areas.

3. Currently there is a big desire for AI talent, so if that's your industry one of the big startups (OpenAI, Anthropic) or one of the smaller well-funded ones should be able to pay you well.

So I would say this person didn't so much "climb the ladder" as opposed to position themselves well to get hired at other companies that would pay them a lot more. And I think this person did it in perfect order, i.e. it's been said a lot on HN how "the startup deal" (i.e lower salary but more equity) is hardly ever worth it for IC software developers these days if you can also get a FAANG job, but it can be a great stepping stone to getting experience that leads to a better paying job at companies that can afford to do so.

For a real world anecdote:

I was leading enterprise app dev + AWS projects at a small startup making $x. I got a remote job working at AWS (Professional Services) as a mid level (full time direct hire) consultant making $x + 65K working remotely.

I got Amazoned and a year later, now I’m a “staff” consultant (full time) at a smaller consulting company making the same as I made as a mid level consultant at AWS.

If I were to work at GCP as a “senior” (one level down) I would be making $150k - $200K more than I am making now. But even that department has a return to office mandate. Maybe I would try it after getting a few more years under my belt working at this level

> to show other engineers that your idea of how much you should be payed could be completely wrong.

Defintiely could be. But not in this economy. I'll take what I can get.

But in general, it really is a matter of knowing your worth and what they could pay. IF you have a certain noteriety in a community of a domain and you get an offer, understand how much leverage you have vs. yet another front end web dev. Let alone 99% of students out of college.

Notice I’m not suggesting that people go for “hard” negotiation. You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early. Worst case you will get offer that’s too low. But best case you get offered above what you expected.

> You don’t loose anything by not revealing comp early.

The benefit is, if they can't pay you enough to join them, you don't have to waste your time going through some six-interview multiday gauntlet.

I don't mean to point fingers but it's telling that OP talks about maximising salary, while you talk about minimising effort.

I'm not interested in going through the gauntlet either, but these things are surely related.

I think another factor I didn't talk about was pay transparency. My state has it and it's slowly expanding so outside of like, Netflix's "100-600k" range you don't really have to play many games here. Know your worth and pick in that range internally. Go above if you really feel you can.

I do want to emphasize being careful with current times, though. I've heard of very mild negotiations (were talking a 5k counter offer or an extra week of vacation time) leading to rescindings in 2023. Which is unheard of from 2022 or before. They'd at least hold firm in the worst case. But we're still in the middle of this circus that is probably going well into 2025.

I see "know your worth" advice pretty frequently, and I tend to think it is pretty bad advice for software developers. "Your worth" is completely dependent on the business the employer is in, and then of course a lot of that "worth" can be due to the employer already having a huge market (e.g. I've seen small decisions result in multiple millions of additional revenue, but those multiple millions were only possible because the employer was already pulling in billions).

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I think better advice is to simply do a lot of research on what comparable salaries are for the position you're looking for. There are tons of information sources online now that can give good info on accurate salaries, including breakdown of cash, bonus, equity, etc.

To your last point, you better be aware of who has the leverage when you start negotiating. If there are a hundred other qualified candidates, and you really need the job, going into "battle mode" over 2-3 percent is not a good idea. On the flip side, if you really are that "purple squirrel" for which there are few if any compliments, go for all you can get.

I think we're in general agreement. I say that's what "know your worth" is about. If you choose a web dev position, you're probably less vital than someone who works deep down in compilers.

Your worth is a mixture of (but not limited to) your expertise and how you sell yourself, the supply and health of the market, and what markets are offering vs. What they can potentially pay. Too many factors to give universal advice. So you'll need to fill in the variables based on your current experiences.

Right now the market is horrible and I'm not a purple squirrel. So I want to take what I can get for now and just focusing on relieving short term debt over long term plans to improve myself.

Your “worth” is completely dependent on where you work. That startup is never going to pay you as much as BigTech

Sure. that's part of "what they could potentially pay you". Startups don't have money for 400k engineers without crazy VC money and a ton of confidence. For the rest, they offer equity.

If that's what you seek or think is your worth is an entirely different discussion.

at least one third if not half of the job applications i have come across have a required form field for expected compensation. initially i just wrote 0 or something obviously bogus, but i got concerned that this was used as a filter. so now i am not sure what to do. for european companies it is probably ok to just write something as they are unlikely to have a much higher range anyways. it really helps though if they actually post their range.

Ah, the United States of America, this is hardly possible in Europe, especially Germany.

This is UK

ouch ... that hurt

...are you hiring? :)

If you are serious then I think trading firms are actively hiring. There’s a bunch of them in London jump, Jane etc. comp will be very high there. I think faang hiring is slower now, but not sure

I was mostly joking but might start looking in the new year. I'll keep trading firms on my radar, cheers!

This is why we Europeans like working at American companies (in Europe)

Now the question is where to find American companies willing to do B2B/freelance contract without location-adjusted bs.

Nowhere in Europe unless you want to never have free time during daytime. If they don't location adjust, they expect you to be available in their timezone.

If you're OK with that, just visit the US and make some friends. Go to meetups and conferences. You will definitely find something much better than any EU offer (while still wildly underpaid in California) - that's your starting point. Do a good job, underpromise and overdeliver, and ask for referrals.

What you call "location adjusted bs" is actually just supply and demand.

The supply of good, experienced software developers willing to work for $100k in the Bay Area is practically non-existent when "normal", nothing-special suburban houses there can go for a couple million. There are a much higher supply of developers willing to work for that in Poland because the CoL is so much lower.

Similarly, a gigantic reason American companies hire overseas in the first place is because wages are lower outside the US. Without that wage differential most of those jobs wouldn't exist.

Not with that attitude

Germany needs to regulate a mandatory posting of the pay range with every job being posted. The power dynamic is very skewed towards employers because when you send in your application, you must also indicate your pay expectations but employers (except select few) never post the pay ranges. In the end what happens is that, two seniors in the same team will earn in 50-70% difference while doing the same duties.

I’ve had similar excited experiences. On one FAANG offer in 2020, I asked for time to think, as you mention. I already had awareness of pay bands and an idea of the range for this particular role from levels.fyi.

When I came back to the recruiter, I asked how much room she had to negotiate, and asked if she could put me “in the middle of the band”. She immediately said yes and it resulted in a bump of $75k/yr or so.

The thing to remember is that recruiters key metrics are about hires. They desperately want to get people in the door, especially after going through all of the effort to schedule interviews. They will happily help you out within reason.

This just seems incredible to me, to the point where I almost can't believe it. Throughout my 25+ year career, I've 1. never been positively surprised by the number I got, and 2. never had a company increase from their starting offer. It's always very close (within ~10-20%) to what I'm already expecting, plus "Take it or leave it. There's a line of 50 behind you willing to take that compensation." What are the exact mystical words you are saying to get these kind of results? Not that it really matters at this point. I'm pretty much at the tail end of my career and making a small fraction of the numbers you're posting.

You can check levels.fyi large faang l6 and above get those numbers. I think there is a massive gap between faang and similar and smaller places. When I got the recent crazy offer I interviewed in what I thought were good smaller companies and several offered me below my current salary. And a couple were in 110k range with absolutely no room for negotiation.

To be fair, FAANG L6 and above are what, 10% of each FAANG? Maybe 5%? Probably 0.1% of the tech workforce. you're not talking about a normal job ere.

L6 for Amazon is Senior, L4 is mid and L4 is junior. Below that are the non “blue badge” employees - factory workers, drivers, etc.

I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”. I worked at AWS for 3.5 years until last year. I would assume the distribution is about the same thing for most other tech companies.

Doing a quick bit of research, you’re not to far off. My back of the envelop math is about 7.5% work at FAANG + Microsoft. Maybe 10% if you include other companies that pay in that range

> I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”.

I think your assumption is way off. From what I've gathered, each team typically has a single L6 engineer (some have zero), and each independent organization has a single L7 engineer. We're talking one senior engineer per 9-12 engineers, one principal per around 50 engineers.

Senior engineers tend to have a 1:1 correspondence with software development managers, whereas principal engineers have a 1:1 correspondence with senior managers.

> I would think that about 20-30% are “senior”.

You should check your notes, as they are way off. Even if you Google the topic you get 15% senior engineer, 2% principal engineers. I know for a fact that flagship organizations within Amazon have a single principal engineer, 4 or 5 senior engineers, and around 50 L4-L5.

My only anecdote is from ProServe where I use to work. But admittedly, I forgot that my part of ProServe didn’t really hire L4s. We would take a very few as interns and give them return offers.

It's not about interns, it's about roles.

L6s are tasked with interfacing with higher-ups, such as product owners and senior managements. They coordinate with principal engineers to design and deliver critical features. They help communicate and coordinate tasks with SDMs about the work that other SDEs need to do to reach goals.

By design, they are normally one senior SDE per team, and a single principal engineer per organization. They are there so that senior managers and executives can discuss plans, goals, and roadmaps. You definitely do not need a team full of interfaces.

You should really read the kalzumeus salary link for the exact words and methods.

Similar: My first job out of college was ~a year after the Great Recession, so everything I looked at said to expect ~$35k starting salary. Maybe I could've asked for $40k if I'd followed salary negotiation advice. Instead I didn't volunteer anything and the first offer I got was $50k.

I started my first job in 2008. I had a friend who got a job doing software development for a city government at $60k. I interviewed at a big tech company. I don't remember even being asked about my salary expectation. The offer came at $75k. I'd been expecting 40-50, based on what the career center at school was telling me.

I wish we had dates to tie to these numbers; inflation is hard to contextualize.

I've talked to several recruiters and HR people who were prepared for quite a different answer than I gave to this question.

I got the feeling that several interviews were carried out afterwards out of politeness or because the recruiter "had to" do it, but the interview ended before it began. Than, there's either ghosting or almost immediate (like up to an hour past the interview) copy-paste email along the lines of "we decided to go with another candidate".

A few recruiters however were open that they've checked the salary for similar position in my country's capital city (Warsaw) and it's much lower than what I'm asking. Pointing out 20+ years of experience and listing accomplishments seems less important for a lot of businesses, than paying as little as possible.

I got a few links to these "check salary for [level] [position] in [city]" websites from recruiters. All these seem to be crafted in a way that undervalues employees by artificially lowering country-wide salaries to ridiculous levels.

>Pointing out 20+ years of experience and listing accomplishments seems less important for a lot of businesses, than paying as little as possible.

If paying as little as possible wasn't that important to them, they wouldn't be hiring in Warsaw in the first place, but in the Bay Area, Seattle, Zurich, London, Sydney, etc

From my experience, this is not necessarily true. Some companies might have the budget to pay at the 50th percentile in New York, or the 95th percentile somewhere else, and would prefer to do the latter

I'm not interacting with companies seeking cheap labor in Poland - like Intel. Despite their quite active recruiters, all conversations with whom end up at "company policy doesn't allow me to discuss salary range".

I've set up a small business with EU tax id over a decade ago and I'm issuing invoices to European countries (EU and Schengen) and North America.

It's a trade-off of giving up European employment safety, pension, some quality of life when working in different timezone, benefits and job security, to work for higher salary.

But it only makes sense until some business decides that they would like a contractor from Poland with a Polish salary.

I agree with you but your locals need to be educated on this issue. Many may think it’s a good deal, especially if promises are thrown in. They would sabotage themselves but it’ll take some time for them to find out it’s a bad deal.

"company policy doesn't allow me to discuss salary range".

Walk.

Any company that puts policy over people isn't a good company.

So, the majority of companies?

Well, yeah.

But you are right that this is not actionable.

Giving up pension? Does that make good financial sense? I hear this a lot from people under 40, then they have an "oh shit" moment after 60 and regret it.

Presumably we're talking about remote roles here, in which case this is nonsense. A Zurich developer is not worth more in a remote role than a developer in Warsaw. The only reason large cities have inflated salaries is because that's what you have to pay someone for them to live within range of your fancy office. If it's a remote role anyway, the companies that aren't out to exploit you will pay the same salary band for all roles anywhere where they hire.

Location-based pay in remote roles is a major red flag that the company doesn't reward merit.

Companies aren't moving to Warsaw to find the best talent in the world. That talent is mostly already in the super expensive tech hubs where the top software companies have flourished for decades and cross-pollinated creating a supply of experienced talent in the area.

It's much more easy to find an experienced tech lead even remotely, around London or SF, than say in some village in Bulgaria or Poland because no F500 tech company ever came out of there.

Companies like Google that have the infinite money glitch don't care about finding the best bargain employees, but most SW companies aren't Google.

I don't know that it ever was true that "the best talent in the world" is concentrated in the super expensive tech hubs, but it's absolutely not true any more post-COVID. It's largely a myth that's understandably popular among Bay Area types.

What you do find a lot of in tech hubs is the type of people who move to tech hubs. This often means that in a certain type of company you get better "culture fit" by using a geographic filter (thus avoiding illegally filtering by protected characteristics), and you definitely get a higher percentage of people who are willing to structure their life around their career. And when you get enough of those people in a room together, they're certainly the types that will happily persuade each other that they represent "the best talent in the world."

Software is a potent leveler—all you need is a computer and you're on equal footing with the rest of the world—and I find that the best programmers are the ones who learned to do it for fun and only later made a career out of it. Those people are equally distributed across much of the world at this point, and if anything there are fewer of them (as a percentage of job applicants) in the tech hubs because the tech hubs attract those who chose software for the money.

Let’s be honest, you don’t need the best talent to build yet another SaaS CRUD app or most of the maintenance work done in BigTech.

Exactly. That's why you also don't need to pay US salaries or hire on the big tech hubs.

To play the devils advocate there are some justifiable reasons to try and hire international employees. Maybe some component requires some physical proximity or has some large benefit. Maybe someone is exceptional at a global level and doesn’t want to move.

With that said I tend to agree, most companies are shopping around for a bargain if they can find one.

Most of the software is more like landscaping than architecture, but software engineers want to build fancy bridges and gothic temples.

That's why they demand high salaries. You are paying so much to convince them to build boring software instead of the fancy bridges and gothic temples.

Rather than hiring architects as landscapers and paying them a lot to trash their skills, I tell candidates upfront that the job is to mow a lawn and the pay is appropriate for the job.

That's great transparency. And I imagine you get what you pay for. That's honestly not a bad thing as long as it's a living wage. You don't always need an achitect, especially non-tech .

But we should always keep in mind that these crazy salaries aren't all a result of impact software can make, but also as a bid to prevent other companies from hiring those architects. Paying someone an extra 200k/yr to potentially keep a new competitor from making 10m/year is an obvious bargain sale if you can afford it.

At least, that was the gameplan back in the '10's. I think we're past that point and those levels of salariesare only reserved for director+ level people in 2024/5.

I respect this approach.

I hope it reduces the mismatches of salary expectations in your hiring process. Less drama for everyone.

I would never apply, but that’s fine. I’m not a landscaper.

Aren't the landscapers still trashing their skills? They are giving up the opportunity to develop the architecture skills that they need in order to get better roles in the future.

Unless you end up with someone like me who has a budget and always pays the max.

I usually ask "what do you expect to be paid" to understand if I'll make them happy or sad when discussing what I'll actually offer.

This is not foolproof and has caused some issues with people coming in as very good negotiators and thinking my inability to budge is because I'm being hard-line, when in reality it's because- as mentioned, I always offered the max for a role.

The second issue is that not all people are equivalently valuable, but I think solving that in the salary is terrible, because salary should cover your compensation for responsibility. If you have to reward someone valuable then it should probably be via bonus' imo.

I think salary + performance bonus is generally a good way to go. I've only had one job that did that. The base salary wasn't remarkable but there was a bonus that had a component that was calculated based on the overall performance of the company that year, and a component that recognized individual performance. So everyone got a bonus, but high performers got more.

You used to see bonus compensation in most financial companies. I'm not sure if that's still the case.

A former employer did 40% bonuses. It made for a nice holiday surprise even when they decided "the company didn't meet expectations" and gave everyone half bonus. Eventually they decided to "align with market expectations" and coincidentally started hemorrhaging staff.

Eventually they decided to "align with market expectations" and coincidentally started hemorrhaging staff.

At my fist full-time job out of college (non-tech), the company gave everyone an extra paycheck as a Christmas bonus.

The next year, everyone got half a paycheck as a Christmas bonus.

The next year, everyone got a spiral-sliced ham as a Christmas bonus.

Before the following Christmas came around, the majority of people had gone to the competition across town.

Let me guess: the year after that it was a jelly-of-the-month club. The gift that keeps on giving the whole year.

> Unless you end up with someone like me who has a budget and always pays the max.

Why don't you disclose the value to the candidate then, rather than asking what's their expectation?

Because it helps you position the offer, and emphasize/sell certain parts.

Salary, equity, title, working hours, etc.

More information always helps.

Fargren is asking why a recruiter would want to to withhold information.

Your answer is "More information always helps." That doesn't answer the question.

Yeah, the company can tell the candidate the salary they will pay for someone in the role. If that doesn't match the candidate's needs then the process stops. If the candidate's performance during the interviews shows they can't function effectively in the role, the process stops.

They are asking why the information is shared in that order.

Are you not allowed to disclose salary first? Sorry to be blunt, but if you are allowed, then this sounds incredibly stupid.

I can disclose, but when I have people start trying to negotiate as if it's a starting position, they get really happy with the number and then irreconcilably annoyed when they realise the number doesn't change.

Hindsight and looking externally on the situation would have you think that you'd react differently, but it's a 5/5 repro rate.

If I think the money is enough then I'm quite happy, but if they expect more then I have to emphasise other parts of the job (remote first structure for example, and flexible working hours) - I wouldn't need to do that if their request was lower than what I offer.

Why not disclose it and also say "it's not up for any negotiation".

that is exactly how it's presented, I give my methodology and how I arrived at the number (market rate in munich + 20%) and then give the number with exactly this caveat.

Remember that people go by what others do. There is 0 penalty for lying about the fact that the number is not negotiable and so recruiters will do that often. So job applicants are conditioned to try to negotiate even if told quite clearly that its the “final number”.

I'm not surprised that people still try to negotiate. I am surprised that they're irreconcilably annoyed when negotiating fails.

you could post it as a range. from something lower up to what you actually intend to offer. or even below that. if your goal is to avoid needless negotiations, then after you tell them your range, they tell theirs and then you tell them the actual offer.

someone else replied and then deleted their comment, but i think they made an interesting point that i don't agree with.

they said that someone desperate to get a job will accept a low offer and keep looking for something better. and by asking them for their expectation this could be prevented.

if i am desperate for a job then i am going to give you a lower expected number in the hopes that i'll get the job and then keep looking anyways.

so no, i don't think asking a desperate candidate will help you avoid that problem.

> If you have to reward someone valuable then it should probably be via bonus' imo.

That, and it should be individual, instead of the "based on how the company performed" thing many do.

A star engineer who overhauls cuts your server costs in half shouldn't get dinged because someone in sales couldn't be effective

This whole game is so stupid to me. It really feels like the employer is trying to screw over the potential employee before they’ve even joined.

My default answer to these questions is now “what’s your budget?” And if they return with a non answer, or try and push me to give a number without giving one themselves, I walk.

I can’t think of anywhere else where the seller (in this case the employer “selling” a position) of something hides the price and expects the buyer (the potential employee) to magically come up with number that meets their criteria.

What a dumb game we’ve developed for ourselves.

It's a dumb game, sure. But I'd say it arises from opposing incentives, not necessarily from a real desire on the company's part to screw you over.

How important is feeling "not screwed over" at the beginning of an employment important for you? Does it trump a great work environment and interesting things to work on? How sure are you that your subjective feelings during negotiations match how the employer actually is objectively?

It would seem intuitively obvious that there must be correlations between being screwed over in the beginning and then having a bad experience later on during the actual job as well. But I'm personally wary of blindly following intuitions in matters that relate to money.

Being able to just "walk away" from decidedly some of the highest paying jobs in the world (irrespective of the feeling of being low balled) is a privilege too.

Anyway, in my own personal experience, I was screwed over during the offer phase of a previous job, and the job was not great either - terrible wlb and politics, but I did learn a lot and became very efficient at my work. As a bonus I stopped caring about my work outside of being necessary for paying my bills, while still maintaining decently high quality output.

I had the opposite experience with my latest job - the recruiter was professional and empathetic, and I had a great offer experience. The job itself is great as well.

So yeah, maybe there are correlations, but I'm still just one data point and so I'm not keen to generalize yet.

> It really feels like the employer is trying to screw over the potential employee before they’ve even joined.

I mean, on the flip side, the employee wants to get as much salary as possible. You say this is a "dumb game" that we've developed, but nearly all negotiations work this way, and a lot of it is fundamentally dependent on leverage: how much does the company really want to hire the person, and how much does the person need the job.

I will say, having hired a lot of software engineers in my time, that I never see it as a bad thing if a potential employee gives a very high number. Similarly, I think it's totally reasonable for an employee to ask "what's the salary range for this position" and to expect an honest answer. But I have seen employees "negotiate themselves out of a job" because they've read too many "principles of negotiating" books and somehow act like we're negotiating over the end to the Ukraine War. Basically, if folks are going to be a total pain in the ass before the job has even started, I'm pretty sure I don't want to work with you (and every single time I've "overridden my gut" and thought "well, maybe this person won't be so bad, after all they're great technically", I e come to regret it). As you point out, the employee is obviously free to walk as well - in my opinion, it's probably better for everyone if things reach a "hmm, someone is going to be unhappy with this decision" moment that folks walk away.

> It really feels like the employer is trying to screw over the potential employee before they’ve even joined

Oh, you noticed.

Here's the thing:

- the candidate has a range of salary they expect or need

- the company has a range of salaries that they can pay

If these don't overlap there's no point going forward unless the range of the company is higher.

If these do overlap, it's worthwhile proceeding. Then it's a matter of skill. If you apply and ask for the top range in my salary band, and you are truly exceptional, I'll do my best to match it. But the ask needs to be commensurate to the skills you demonstrate in the interviews. The higher the ask, the stricter the criteria to match.

If you get to the end of the process without disclosing the salary, and you pass all interviews, I'll offer you for what I think you are worth. If you have an ask and did not disclose it, you might have just wasted everybody's time.

Believe it or not, negotiating a salary higher than your worth is a terrible idea. It might sound good, but it sets you up for failure.

Nothing is more insulting to someone than knowing in advance that their expectations are far beyond your own, putting them through hours of interviews, then offering half the salary they asked for plus funny money equity.

I try to be as up front as possible with my expectations, but I've also got the seniority / experience to match what I'm asking for. Yet, people still try to low ball me as if I'm making up numbers.

I made the mistake once of taking a job after they low balled me, then met my asking salary after I flatly said no.

If you ask for a specific number or a range, and they offer you below that range, just walk away. Even if they come back with what you wanted, they'll resent your salary and have inflated expectations above reality. They've already demonstrated they didn't take you seriously. Just walk away.

Even if they come back with what you wanted, they'll resent your salary and have inflated expectations above reality

that is something i worry about when i see a high offer. in part it's imposter syndrome, but also a lot of job descriptions are like we want the best, and you are super fast and an excellent this and perfect that, able to work in a high pressure environment, etc.

these claims are so meaningless. they don't tell me anything about what it is really like to work there.

who really wants to work in a high pressure environment with the expectation to be a rock star developer?

This really depends on the company. If they have interviewed you and made an offer, then it is only a question of whether you think they got to know you.

Personally, I like small companies / startups with a bit more pressure. People focus more on getting things done than playing politics and bike shedding. I can absolutely understand it is not for everyone though.

With regards to what you quoted, I was referring to the scenario where their initial offer was below your expectations, you said no, and they made a second offer that met your expectations. In this case, you're right, there is no way that you and the company have the same view of the monetary worth of your contributions. The well has been poisoned from the start.

i have worked in startups, and i don't mind the pressure that comes from the high risk a startup is taking, but when i see a 500+ employee company with a job ad that says "you strive in a high pressure environment", then i wonder just what kind of pressure they are talking about.

Stacey Vanek Smith wrote "Machiavelli for Women". She said in radio interviews about the book that she wanted to put in the book the suggestion that if an interviewer asks what you make, an interviewee should reply with the real value plus 10%. Apparently legal people at her publisher did not allow her to put this in the book.

I think it's reasonable to ask what an interviewee expects to make, but not reasonable to ask what an interviewee makes now.

That's fascinating, I wonder why that suggestion would be any more dangeous than any other advice. Too bad she didn't just put in a footnote describing why she can't suggest asking for 10% more.

Lying about this these days seems rather risky to me. Some employers may not care, but some will.

The Worknumber product from ADP (and it's equiv from Paychex) covers a vast range of white collar employees. Perhaps most.

Your new employer has a very good chance of seeing precisely what your current salary is down to the paycheck level going back years to even verify raises and title changes.

Replying with what you require to make to take the job seems like a much safer bet to me.

You can opt out of that I think, can’t you?

Might be wise to do before you interview.

You can opt out of The Work Number. It's a bit of a convoluted process, but not byzantine - I did it a few months ago, involves filling out a form by hand and scanning it or mailing it, but I did get written confirmation that I'd been opted out.

Note that this may make major purchases more complex in the future.

You may not remember to opt back in to the "service" a certain number of months before you buy a car, for example. Then you're stuck either paying a higher interest rate because the lender sees you as riskier without a trusted method of verifying income, or you have to do a bunch of paperwork with the seller or finance company may or may not be willing to deal with.

> Lying about this these days seems rather risky to me. Some employers may not care, but some will

It doesn’t have to be a lie. Between base salary and the value of benefits (and expected value of equity) you have a wide range of where you can answer what you’re paid, what your compensation is, what your “take home” is (what does that even mean if you’re W-2 and 1099?), et cetera.

Let’s be real. Statistically the value of equity in a startup is $0

Work Number is from Equifax. ADP's similar product is called Smart Compliance.

Bad idea to lie when there are other equally valid negotiation tactics available.

I had a job early in my career and they asked to see my W2 from my previous employer to validate that my previous job income answer was correct and finish onboarding.

Much better to instead have a second competing job offer in hand. Clearly that’s more competitive than your old job you’re leaving anyway.

Theoretically, what they pay you should have nothing to do with your current salary, given that your current salary could be anywhere from $0 (e.g. if you're an unpaid intern) to INT_MAX (if you're being vastly overpaid).

As a freelancer who gets paid by the hour or by the job, I've never been in a position to negotiate salary directly, so I wonder how tenable it is to politely decline to answer questions about your current salary, given that it may give the potential employer more leverage against you.

I equate this to businesses (not you employer but places like the cable company) asking for your SSN: they may want it, but you are not always legally or morally obligated to provide them with it.

The person getting paid INT_MAX probably fooled a king with a chessboard.

You only have w2 available for previous year. In any case employers can pay to Equifax and the like to view your actual salary which most payroll processors (including rippling starting next year, i think) happily sells to them.

In general, vertical movement in the tech sector is near zero these days. Thus do a search on the government published wage ranges for the mean/maximum listed for your region (this is what HR does anyway.)

The mistake people make is forgetting to sum up the liabilities of working at some firms:

1. Commute time/costs from home at rush hour (3 hours a day is equivalent to a 30% to 40% pay cut)

2. Cost of both temporary and permanent housing (urban metropolis are economically hostile if you are paying over 27% of your income on your home)

3. Cost of insurance and healthcare (property crime, environmental disasters, and pollution)

4. Location specific risks like Crime/Violence, or Hazmat (money is meaningless if you are not enjoying life)

5. Never bluff in game theory... just explain the options... than follow through and just leave for the competition.

Tip: If you compete with desperate demographics to be at the bottom, than your quality of life may be far lower than expected.

Sometimes taking a $10k income cut makes more sense, than being a poser in a high tax bracket city. i.e. the amount of cash in your hands after taxes can actually be higher.

It is complicated for sure, but employee retention is usually a function of location, skill uniqueness, and wage rates. Best of luck =3

Huh? Thousands of people are promoted every year in the big tech companies into seven figure positions. And many many tens of thousand into mid six figure positions.

How is that ‘near zero’?

The vast majority of tech workers leave firms in under 3 years, move laterally, or are mission critical with meaningless title changes.

If you find 6 different division managers that entered the same facility as coders, than I may agree. You won't, but I respect your youthful idealism. =)

Right, but the vast majority of tech workers by definition must be in the bottom 95% of workers.

I only asked for a mere 6 examples of developer career-lotto winners to infer your ideas were plausible...

You have provided 0, and instead of acknowledging real issues... you present a straw-man argument as a poor substitute. In time, you will learn how the corporate world is structured. lol =)

Why do your ‘asks’ matter?

You don’t have any rank or authority over other HN users… so they are free to ignore any ‘asks’ presented… and write about what they think is relevant.

This is not about me, not about forums, and again off topic...

It is about your conduct making unsubstantiated claims orthogonal to observable facts. Then (still) trying to change the subject when asked for proof.

It is how we both learn if observations are erroneous, and someone is blinded by their idealism. How about 3 examples, that would be twice as easy right... lol...

In time... you may understand kid. Best of luck =3

So then why do any of your opinions matter?

How are you going to convince me or any other passing reader that this isn’t just random nonsense?

I can’t even decipher half of the comment so I’m not sure if you understood my previous question…

It only matters to people that discover fictional vertical movement in a traditionally uninformed exploited role. The evidence often seems anecdotal, but a pretense of a meritocracy often drives the naive to act irrationally.

One may find a dismissive attitude is ineffective with data-driven decision makers. Inferring folks experiencing this phenomena are "nonsense" is just disrespectful. =P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE

This doesn’t answer any of the previous three questions?

"so they are free to ignore any ‘asks’ presented"

Being hypocritical on top of flippantly disrespectful does not lend credibility to your assertions about detractors.

Have a nice day =3

Hypocritical about…what? You need to actually write down the argument, if there is one…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY

Therefore…? Just linking a troll video with no explanation is pretty bizarre.

Not really, it just seems that way to someone heavily biased by idealism.

I think you are feigning ignorance, and avoiding a simple question about backing up hilarious claims with a very low standard of minimal proof.

You can believe whatever makes one happy. However, if you want upper level positions it usually means leaving for other firms, and or founding your own entity as a board member.

Good luck, the world needs more dreamers. =3

Are you confusing my comments in this chain with some other comments?

Because this sounds totally incoherent in relation to what I’ve written.

Indeed, one has still failed to backup your assertion, and continue to engage in insolent off-topic trolling. The nonsensical detractors are a waste of bandwidth.

Best of luck, this conversation should have ended with the first Straw-man argument. bye... =3

This still doesn’t make sense but sure… Bye then.

Good time to direct people to the classic work in this genre: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

I tell recruiters what I want to make from the beginning (my first reply to them on LinkedIn or wherever they reach out) yet say that's what I'm making now ..how competitive is this opportunity?

Either they can match or increase it. If they can the conversation continues and the pay is set in stone never to be discussed again thru all interview processes.

Third-Party Recruiters are actually great, they're super expensive for the company who you hire through, but they're the only people motivated to make sure it's a good fit and are neutral on it.

You'd expect that they would be incentivised to place you somewhere bad so that you're a repeat customer, but there's something that seems to make this not true, perhaps reputation?

Yeah if they put you in a crappy job or it's not what they represented it was, you'll never use them again and you'll tell your network not to use them.

They are motivated to place you in a job, since that's how they get paid, but they want you to be happy with it.

Recruiters only get paid if a candidate stays beyond a period of time. If the candidate does not work out the recruiter needs to find a replacement. Recruiters won’t deal with shit people because if they don’t stay or are prone to not working out they are a burden.

In terms of money it’s usually a percentage of the salary. So if the recruiter works on 10% then they have incentive to get you as much money as possible.

It's quite logical to think that they have an incentive to get you as much money as possible but in reality it's often not quite correct. Their stronger incentive is to establish a relationship with a business and to continue feeding them candidates at an attractive price point for the business. The marginal amount of extra commission that they make on your increased salary is not that significant.

The incentive is not to make sure you get the most money. The incentive is to make sure you get placed fast.

While $200K vs $220K means a lot to you over the course of your job, they aren’t going to risk losing a placement arguing for you to get $20K more so their firm can get $44K instead of $40k and the recruiter themselves can get maybe 60% of what the firm gets.

There was a famous similar study published in Freakonomics about real estate agents.

https://freakonomics.com/2008/02/real-estate-agents-revisite...

200 vs 220 is likely noise. The recruiter shouldn’t care about tha2, and neither should you.

But £200k vs £400k is real!

That’s the real span for e.g. hedge funds in London. Actually, it was a few years ago. Probably more now!

You shouldn’t care about $20K???

In 10 years invested at $20K a year that’s 370k at 10% returns (about average for the S&P 500).

Thinking like that is how car manufacturers get people to pay for useless add ons.

On top of that, raises are usually a percentage of current base.

Would you tell someone making $20K not to worry about $40K

you've not heard of tax?

It’s called a 401K or HSA…

One is free from federal and state tax up to $23K (well $30.5K for me this year - check my username) and one is free from Federal, State and FICA up to $4250 if you’re single or $8500 if married.

That means I can shelter $39K from taxes.

That $20K is over half the allowable amount.

20k isn’t noise to most people in a 200k salary range.

And with most raises being 3%-4% a year, if you don’t negotiate that in the beginning, it’s going to take 3 years to reach that amount after you start

> The incentive is to make sure you get placed fast.

No. If you place someone and the company has a 3 month probation period. If the person does not last past probation the recruiter does not get paid.

Unless America is different, this is how it works in Europe, Asia, AU/NZ.

The only time this changes is contract work because contract work done via a recruiter is the recruiter might charge you at $150/hr to the company and pay you $100/hr taking $50/hr for himself.

There isn’t an official “probationary period” at most jobs in the US.

But we are referring to cases where a good candidate wants $20k more. The recruiter is more interested in convincing a candidate to take the job than negotiating hard for them to get $220K.

The candidate especially in this market isn’t likely to jump ship in a year over $20K

I don't argue as mentioned I tell the recruiters I'm making 220k (while really I'm only making $175k for example) already forcing them to either not continue the conversation if they can't match or they can & the conversation continues.

Of course this is done once you have a few years experience and aren't really looking. Though recruiters on LinkedIn & via email reach out and you can casually play the field for fun to potentially giving yourself a huge increase. Job jumping is a good way to really boost your salary.

The thing is, they won’t get the placement if they don’t push to get a $220k offer and the other recruiter does. It’s competitive. It’s a better model than real estate because you aren’t agreed to work with one recruiter.

But only one recruiter is going to be placing you at that job. Two recruiters trying to place you at the same job is radioactive to the company. The company has to decide who gets the referral money. Lawsuits start happening for the one who doesn’t get referral money.

Also most companies who do work with external recruiters only work with one company

True. I was thinking of how you have 2-3 recruiters trying to get you offers at different companies that are mostly equivalent.

Have you seen the market since 2022?

I’ve been in software development since 1996 and looked for a job in 1999, 2001 (took a counteroffer), 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2023 and a month ago. My job in BigTech in 2020 fell in my lap.

I have never seen a job market this bad. Even in 2000, as a regular old Windows developer I could easily find a standard enterprise job.

My only saving grace when I was looking both last month and last September was that I had 3.5 years of working at AWS in the Professional Services department (full time direct hire) and AWS partners love to get people from ProServe because they know we can be trusted to talk to decision makers and fly out to clients and lead and do the work.

But I usually would throw my resume up in the air pre-2020 and have multiple job offers fall in my lap.

Appreciate sharing that experience. I’d wondered about the pros and cons of AWS Professional Services especially; almost went there once…

I have recent experience. It’s definitely slower in the last 2.5 years. I see that as a different issue. If the hiring market is soft, then a recruiter can still be working hard for you if your offers aren’t as good. Some of that sorts out earlier in the process when you pitch yourself to the recruiter to be worth presenting to the employer.

What I personally did in early conversations is express my comfort with a longer search process and focus on the right mutual fit. That let them know that they may be overlapping with other applications, and also that they were competing with my job at the time. I realize I was fortunate to have a job to use as a motivator.

"You'd expect that they would be incentivised to place you somewhere bad so that you're a repeat customer"

You answered your own question: "they're super expensive for the company who you hire through"

The person that pays the recruiter money is their customer. The item their customers pay for is the recruiter's product, which is you.

So the recruiter's reputation does matters to acquire additional inventory, but it matters more for their actual customers. Selling bad fits to their actual customer, the hiring companies, would be business-ending.

It is so important to understand when you are the product and when you are the customer.

One other thing to have in your back pocket:

In certain jurisdictions, it's actually against the law for employers to ask you for your current salary during the interview process (pre-offer), as that can perpetuate wage discrimination. (This is different from asking about salary expectations.)

It looks like 17 US states have a ban that applies to all employers: https://www.hrdive.com/news/salary-history-ban-states-list/5...

(The relevant laws in DC, NC, PA, VA only apply to local government, and AL's law is somewhat weaker in that it only prohibits rejecting a candidate based on not providing salary history.)

Notably, many of these laws are worded as a prohibition on seeking salary history, and do not differentiate between asking the candidate directly and querying third-party databases like The Work Number.

I don’t know if this is the best advice, but here’s what I tell prospective employers that ask for my compensation expectations.

I tell them I live in NYC, and with my current compensation I can comfortably afford the preposterous rent.

It’s very cool that you can get away with that.

if submissions like these make you feel like a loser. i'm in germany and make 65k. and yet i can still look myself in the eyes in front of the mirror every morning. so, don't let this drag you down.

FAANG salaries for developers are often double, if not treble, those of upper management where I work.

There's absolutely no reason to feel like a loser on €65k.

In tech it's easy to forget just how lucky we are with salaries.

Would you be interested in moving to the Czech Republic for a better salary?

The premise of this isn't really true is it, at least in the US? Don't most companies have your Equifax Work Number during the interview process?

What I personally do is two things.

Before I've even had an interview, I have an acceptable salary range in mind. I usually ask for the top end of that range and have room to negotiate down, so when I'm asked that question, I have an answer at the ready.

The other is that I never reveal my past salary. Revealing it is a trap in so many different ways, and it's none of their business.

One of the places I applied to had a required field with salary expectation. I almost backed out of the whole process.

I don’t think it was an accident that it was the very last field in the submission process. I forgot to write down which one it was in my notes. So that’s less data I’ll have if they call me back.

from the applications i looked at at least one third if not half of them had such a field

I'm sure as my sense of urgency and my sense of selectivity head in opposite directions I will think back to this comment. So far I've been picky and have seen more like 10% and most of that in the last couple weeks.

It may also depend which job site or application tool you're using.

Only talk about past salary if it was 20% above market.

X = desired salary

"If you offer 2*X I'm definitely in, I would have to do some soul searching if it is less than X, though."

this article feels like ancient history from the dark ages.

what job post today doesn't include salary range?!

A job posting in any state or country where it’s not legally required? Of which there are many?

The real important question is the subsequent one:

— What are your salary expectations?

— $X

— Ok! That means if we propose Y, would you envision it?

— Yeah, maybe, because I’m out of choice / No because I already have an offer at $X-1.

Source: I’m hiring (and yes, Y enters into consideration because most candidates overestimate their skills, but I always go for X if the candidate is as expected).

> most candidates overestimate their skills

In reality most candidate are just bad at estimating their own skills (in both directions) and of course they know almost nothing about the match between the skills and the position.

I don’t negotiate. If I’m already working and looking for a job because I want more money, I know my market value and the percentage increase it would need to be for me to leave.

I’m also at the point in my life where I know the amount of money I need to meet my short term and long term goals- pay bills, travel extensively with my wife and save for retirement. But after that I start optimizing for other things - fully remote, enough paid time off to enjoy travel, smaller company (I’ll never work for BigTech company again), interesting work that keeps me up to date with technology, etc.

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