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 the…
Why not disclose it and also say "it's not up for any negotiation".
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 Freak…
> 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 compa…
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
> 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.
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 gi…
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 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 the…
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.
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 a…
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.
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.
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…
The person getting paid INT_MAX probably fooled a king with a chessboard.
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 the…
Why not disclose it and also say "it's not up for any negotiation".
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”.
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.
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 Freak…
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.