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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

> 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

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