Now I Fear Exploratory Interviewing While Employed

The offer was 20k more than my base salary already. Asking for even more seemed crazy to me. I have controversial opinions on how much money developers make already, probably stemming from my imposter syndrome. Asking for more money did not make me comfortable. If they had offered, I would have had to reconsider. I expected more of a conversation after I declined, but it didn't happen.

Everyone in this story seems to have acted reasonably.

Guy interviews new job, weight up the pros and cons, decided against it.

This post sounds like every interview cycle I've ever gone through. The self doubt during the process, the surprise at their interest, the pleasantness of the new company, and then finally, the hard part: making a decision. Not sure why this is worth even writing about. Also, I wonder about the sensibility of writing about it under your own name when your current employer now knows you are interviewing around.

> Asking for even more seemed crazy to me

Until companies start offering the salary that they are expecting to pay for the position in their initial offer, you're always going to have to ask for more to get it.

There are a few startups (Buffer or maybe Zapier?) that are doing this. Offers are very one-sided, the company has all of the information and you have none. By not negotiating a better offer, you're leaving money on the table. It doesn't help that there's a taboo in our society around negotiation and bargaining.

This. Recruiter's daily job is to talk to people to convince and pressure them for positions that are potentially undesirable (otherwise, the roles will be handled by an internal recruiter or filled very quickly); it is a cold-calling sales job where rejections and cold feet are common, and the final closing are far and between.

Their emotional response to rejections should be equivalent to a programmer's emotional response to debugging a difficult trace-stack error.

However, their job is also to elicit emotional response from their applicant-side to further pressure them if the applicant is sitting on the fence, sure most of you whom have experienced the sales cycle have heard the following: e.g.,

* "I need to feed my family..." (everyone has to make a living to feed their family)

* "[The hiring manager] told me specifically 'make sure to get this guy', we worked really hard on getting this package ready for you..." (every car sales involve printing a standard package, the sales person didn't handwrite a love letter addressed to you)

One time, I've received a particularly nasty call from a recruiter because I made up my mind, turned down a job offer and addressed the e-mail directly to the hiring manager cc'd to recruiter instead of just to the recruiter. The recruiter was upset and said that "[I] burned all bridges now for any alternative negotiations... and that's why I make the big bucks."; never mind that the hiring manager was very polite and replied that "next time, if you are interested; feel free to e-mail me directly". The whole experience taught me that most of the time, the recruiter (agency) is not on your side and some of the time, they're not even on the hiring company's side either; they like everyone else, is frying the fish for themselves.