alt Hacker NewsHow not to answer the salary question
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The sheer amount of information asymmetry is the tricky part here. I think that’s the only relevant part of the equation. The company hires N people per year, you get hired by 1 company every N years. Maybe you work for a company that hired 100 people last year, and there’s someone who’s done analysis for salaries day in and day out. That person has a shitload of information about what the salaries are and what people will accept.
So you exploit the flipside of the information symmetry. The company is obviously not telling me all their employee salaries, so I am not telling them mine. I just need enough of a sense of what the range is to figure out if a number I like is in there.
The company is not planning to blow you away with some big salary number, but I’ve gotten some pretty good offers. This happens sometimes because you’re stepping up to a higher role at the other company, or sometimes because you’re going to a company which just has higher compensation bands to begin with. Or maybe you just look really good to that company. I’ve gotten offers which were +50% above the number I had in my head, or well above that.
It feels like a waste of time and such a song and dance to some people, but the time spent is not wasted, it’s turned into salary dollars.
I've used what I consider the golden guide of salary negotiation for a software engineer that has been linked on HackerNews[1].
I've applied these guidelines in my own negotiations and it worked very well for me. I would've undersold myself by at least 15% if I went ahead and answered the salary question first. I declined politely to give a number first—even saying "it's not in my interest to answer that first, as you most likely understand".
Those guidelines work for all jobs that have high added value, I would say.
[1]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
I tell them the number up front. Because I'm not spending a week in their interview loop to find out they're going to offer me 30% less than my current job. Benefits are never a decider, and equity is a lottery ticket.
Right now, this standard recruiter question is on the side of the table that's often being especially penny-wise and pound-foolish...
A weird thing I'm seeing is early AI startups lowballing both salary and equity, compared to a few years ago for generic Web/app developer jobs.
You're in a narrow opportunity window of a massive investment gold rush. You probably got funding with a weak/nonexistent business model, and some mostly vibe-coded demo and handwavey partnership.
Now you need to hire a few good founding engineer types who can help get the startup through a series of harder milestones, with skillsets less clear than for generic Web/app development. If you can hire people as smart and dedicated as yourself, they'll probably do things that make a big positive difference, relative to what bottom of the barrel hires will do.
So why would you lowball these key early hires, at less than a new-grad starting salary, plus a pittance of ISOs that will be near-worthless even if you have a good exit.
Is it so that the founders and investors can have a large percentage of... something probably less valuable than what they'd get by attracting and aligning the right early hires? (Unless it's completely an investment scam, in which genuine execution doesn't affect the exit value.)
I can’t see how it would possibly work in Polish market. Polish job IT market (at least for Go developers) is very specific. There’s very few companies actually building their own products and plenty of software houses/hiring agencies looking to hire cheaply. I’ve been doing Go for long enough that what I ask for is on the higher end, so much so that I probably refuse ~95% offers because they are significantly below my expectations. Importantly, I’m no public figure nor I’m 10x developer, I’m just a regular guy who chose Go very early in my career, just before it really took off.
Now, imagine that I don’t ask for a number nor share my expectations. With 3-4 rounds of interviews, even if we assume 1/10 is in my range, I’d have to SUCCESSFULLY do maybe 30-40 interviews on average to find a job that matches my expectations. Another thing is that benefits in Poland are pretty standard almost nearly everywhere: private medical care, gym card, 20 vacation days, 10 sick days… unless you’re willing to work in the big few companies that just have unlimited money.
(If someone in Poland has different experience, please share - would love to hear more.)
In limited experience, I've been unclear if this strategy changes when dealing with companies that actually list the salary range (generally when required per some recent state laws).
You can set some reasonably high expectation, not as a target but as an aspiration.
Case in point, once when I was asked it I was "I read in an study that one gets happier with more salary up until 85K€, so my aim is to go towards that range". In the end I ended up halfway between that and my then salary. BTW, the study was then superseded by another that happiness keeps increasing, just not as fast.
Of course your situation might be different, and you could take inspiration for 6 digits, $500K or any other amount that would be perfect for you if accepted because it's higher than what you would have accepted, and you can get something below that that would be a stepping stone.
In Spain, at least, salary needs discussing early, too many divergences between some companies and some people expectations on that. So I disagree leaving it for later.
It's not hard, just say you're looking for competitive compensation for someone with your experience and expertise and anchor on the high end of the range.
That said, what you say isn't as important as what you do. If you're interviewing, you should be interviewing at at least a few places to get comps. You will get lowballed if you don't have comps. Once you have a few offers, do one round of playing them off each other, decide which company you want to work for, and then say you'll sign today if they can beat the current best offer.
"What's your desired salary?"
"A million an hour, obviously (haha). But in all seriousness, I'd expect to be compensated commensurate with the responsibilities of the role, keeping in mind that the salary number is just one aspect of a compensation package as health insurance and other benefits are important to me."
There are only two reasons HR asks this:
1. possible leverage later in the process.
2. attempting to not waste time if the candidate's expectations are way out of line with the amount the company is willing to pay.
Either way, there is no good reason to name numbers prior to the company making an offer with compensation package details.
Related ("what is your current salary"), you should know about "the work number"
"Talent Report™ Income and Employment Provides verification of employment plus verification of a candidate’s income." https://theworknumber.com/solutions/industries/pre-employmen...
Opt out: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze
reading comments so far.. seems from people who have not tried how the current situation is. Yes most of these "cant say" worked 3+ years go. But it is harsh employer-driven market now. 100 candidates for 1 position.
The question is baked and mandatory in most forms, and there's no "cant say" - only about 20% do not ask it, all else.. have it. And it is the easiest filter for the above 100 candidates, so.
Negotiation phase? hah. You are lucky if you get a rejection e-mail. Most don't bother with even that, regardless the importance of the role. And you never know if the number was too high, or completely irrelevant.
The author thinks they made the wrong move a few times during their career, and now they're replaying it in hindsight as if their present experience has a measure on previous performance. They are only able to write this post because they did some things badly in the past, but after a load of other steps they got to a point where they could write a post or a book and basically skip all of the hard bits they don't want to talk about.
You have to be careful to not be led into this, as if you can follow OP's self-help advice and skip the failures. You will, in fact, fail in a different way.
Is this cynical? Yes. But it's how self-help advice works.
How are folks navigating the sheer rate of inflation in the last 5 years?
In job listings, I’ve seen salaries for Senior or Staff remain about the same as they were (thought usually edging a little lower), but adjusted for inflation, they are way lower.
If I were to insist on my 2021 salary with inflation adjustment, I’m often blowing past the listed range by anything from 15k to 30k.
With the market the way it is, how are y’all handling that?
I don’t get this, I’d rather talk about money upfront, I have a number I know I need to be at and I ask for at least that. Imagine spending the time and energy interviewing etc and then finding out that salary is far far below expectations?
I have helped a lot of people earn more money. The best advice I have for anyone doing salary negotiations: you cannot negotiate without options, so step 1 in any negotiation is to gather options.
They write as if there is unlimited budget but it is never is. There is a range and you'd better fit into it. Also if you think you are at the top of a market range already and the hiring company thinks it's too early to discuss - run. Unless you don't have a job or want to switch in any case.
Sorry, this is utter BS, or at least it doesn't apply to all situations.
I played exactly this script during my first interviews, never giving the first number, etc. It worked well for me exactly one time: the very first job I had out of academia where I did actually have to negotiate a salary. All the other times it resulted in waste of time and loss of sanity.
I am now very upfront with my expectations, or at least my non-expectations: "My current salary is X and I have Y perks, and I am in a good team; I wouldn't even consider moving for less than this, regardless of how cool your team is, and if you don't beat these numbers substantially I already know that my current employer will make me a counteroffer, and then you lose time but I win regardless." (of course not literally, but the message is this).
Less interviews, less time wasted.
I don’t give prospective employers a number. I just tell them that I pay rent on a 2BR in NYC. Then the ball is in their court.
> "Error establishing a database connection"
RIP, looks like the site got hugged.
I’m not sure this article really applies to my experience. There are lots of companies who have extremely rigid pay ranges, and if you ask for wiggle room on a low salary they just move on to the next applicant. You should apply to jobs because you’d rather work there, and should come in with minimum salaries you’d accept. Thinking you’re going to negotiate 50k more after holding an offer in your hand is a good way to have the offer taken back
Terrible advice if you value your time or sanity, especially if you are experienced or not desperate for a job.
Find out the range up front by reading the job posting, making the recruiter tell you, asking a friend who works there, or asking after applying if you have no other connections.
No company is going to refuse to share the information because they are secretly planning to blow a qualified applicant away with a top of market offer.
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The least helpful possible framing for this, I think. Refusing to answer altogether has all of the risks of giving too high/low a salary, and none of the benefits of actual negotiation.
If you're in a position where you can not answer, you're in a position there's no reason not to give them your desired salary up front and let them tell you why they can't do it. Pick a high number of course!
If you're in a position where you can't afford not to answer, you should pick a reasonable number, and take whatever they give you, because you completely lack agency. This is the case where you might screw yourself out of money, but if you need the job that badly, do you really care?
A better way to frame this, and this is always what I do if I have the agency to not answer, is to give them the number I'd like or remain mum, but either way when they make the final offer just ask them a simple question: "Is there any way you can come up a little bit from that?". If they say no, you decide based on that first number. But they'll almost always say yes, and you'll get a small effortless raise.
I've done this about 10 times across my career and about 70-80% of the time I've gotten a bump in the 5-10% range. Which means that, collectively, about 30-40% of my current salary level is a result of that one question, applied consistently over time.
You won't get a raise outside the salary band, but you might move from the median for that band up a notch or two within it, and that absolutely matters in the long run.