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Comment by beachstartup | Hacker News Reader

LOL, of course it works. why wouldn't it? someone asks you a question, you give them an answer. to me all of this buffoonery around hiding your salary requirements sounds ridiculous.

i'm a startup co-founder, i hire all the time.

if i asked someone what their salary requirements are and they said 200k or 300k i'd immediately interview them to see if they're worth that much. i would take it as a personal challenge to see if i could stump them, and if i couldn't, i'd start negotiating their salary on the spot.

some people get paid MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! how the hell d'ya you think they got that much? they asked for it!

people who don't want to "reveal" their salary requirements like it's some big huge secret have probably never hired anyone in their life.

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There's an important distinction here though. This isn't a discussion about disclosing salary requirements, it's a discussion about disclosing previous salary, presumably so the company can make you an offer only marginally better than that. That's a big problem if you're already underpaid.

So you refuse the offer! I've been in the position where I was underpaid to the point where the next job almost doubled my salary. When asked, I told them what I had been making and what I expected to make.

They hired me. I would have refused any offer less than I was asking for. Lesson learned: if they want you they will pay at least market rate.

I also "negotiated" (negotiated, hell. I just asked for it) a raise well above what they offered a year later at my first review.

huh? what distinction? who says you have to tell them the truth? obviously if you make 40k you're not going to be competent enough to jump to 200k, but if you were making 150k and ask for 200k, just tell them you were making 190 before. who cares?

when it comes to this kind of topic on HN, sometimes i feel like i'm taking crazy pills.

Yeah, just lie, who cares? ...

If you want $200k but are making $150, just say you are looking for a salary around $200k. If they ask again how much you make presently, you can say "I negotiated my present salary years ago, it's not relevant to the value I provide now, I'm sure you understand".

I'm not going to be pushed into lying and making things up out of expediency. YMMV.

i engage people with my own self expectations in mind. i believe that's what makes me an effective leader. i could be wrong.

i have not, and i would never in a million years ask someone what they currently make. why would i ever do that? what's the point? you might as well ask them about the size of their genitalia.

the range of bullshit answers you will receive, even from the lowest level of positions, just means you're only fooling yourself if you ask these kinds of questions. just ask for what they want. lying about that won't benefit them, it will only benefit me.

I really do agree with you. But somewhere in my late 20's I made the conscious decision to acquit myself with honesty as much as I possibly can. If you find the question so outlandish why not just say "I'm sorry, I don't find that question appropriate."?

The reason you're a co-founder is because you take risks and are willing to push the limits of what's socially acceptable, and have face-to-face discussions about personally-difficult topics.

Most engineers want to "stay within the rules", which is why they get walked on.

(I'm not for one second saying you do that, personally)

well, no. the reason i'm a co-founder is because i want to make a shitload of money.

pushing social boundaries is practiced by all sorts of different people.

True enough.

Pushing social boundaries is typically not practiced by engineers.

They may not be getting paid that much because they can answer your "stumpers." You might be better served by using the interview to find out why they add so much value instead of trying to prove that you're superior in some way.

uh, well, my stumpers include, "why should we pay you 200 grand?" which should naturally flow into a conversation into the amount of value this particular engineer or executive will bring to my organization.

here's another one: "how will you pay for yourself in 6 months?"

i'm no longer technically competent enough to stump an extremely talented engineer on a technical question. not really sure where you get the 'superiority' language, since i would be out of business if i didn't hire employees who were 'superior' to me.

again - sometimes i feel like i'm taking crazy pills around here.

That makes more sense.

There's a lot of context that made me assume you were talking about stumping them on technical questions. This is Hacker News and the topic of how to do technical interviews is a frequent focus.

By providing 101k of value?

Do people know enough about what you do and how you do it to give this answer at interview stage?

yeah. when i hire sales guys, or product guys, they just tell me how much money they generated (or their products or teams generated) at previous companies. it doesn't always have to be a $ figure. sometimes it's, "my work at previous company X was used by Huge Company A, Huge Company B, Internal Division C, etc. here are my references."

these are just nuts-and-bolts dollars-and-cents conversations people have when hiring non-engineering professionals or executives.

you can talk about all of the above without actually stating how much money you made. it's moot. it's irrelevant. what matters is what they accomplished, if they are enthusiastic about doing the same for our startup, and how much money/compensation they need to feel good about it. i am trying to make people feel good about working for me! the first step is to have an honest conversation about everyone's needs (maybe requirements is a better word).

Seems reasonable! Thanks for the response

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