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> "OK, we can do that. But we have a policy of always making the lowest possible offer to candidates who won't share their compensation information. I just want the best for you."

This makes absolutely no sense to me. "Oh, we can't use previous compensation to effectively lowball this candidate we like, so we'll ineffectively lowball them instead."

When I read that I immediately pictured a (very) pissed mob boss. What an asshole.

Because that person values you jumping through hoops to train you to accept future hoop jumping you will inevitably do, and test your hoop jumping ability.

If you dont play ball with bureaucracy, you are punished in the only way they have available.

It makes perfect sense. If an applicant doesn't want to disclose their previous salary and disclosing it is the cultural norm, that indicates a) they're troublemakers (very privacy conscious or what have you), or b) their previous salary was very low.

You probably don't want troublemakers so there's no point in making them a generous offer. And if the previous salary was very low the lowest possible offer is probably not too far off.

It actually incentivises disclosing your previous salary because unless it was lower or as low as the lowest offer, you'll have a better bargaining position.

I'm not saying the reasoning is particularly ethical or nice, just that it is entirely rational.

That's interesting, I hadn't considered it that way. I was looking at it as, "We want this person to work here because they passed our tests, now we wreck the deal for no reason." You're saying the salary disclosure is just one of the tests. Makes sense.

If it's penalised, I'd say it's likely a "test" (or more of a checkmark). But I wouldn't go so far as to say every employer that asks for your previous salary is testing you.

That said, even if you disclose your previous salary that could affect how you are perceived:

* disclosing it at all without hesitation might mark you as either very open (positive) or untrustworthy (negative)

* if the salary is much lower than expected it might indicate you're not as good as you claim (negative) or that you're bad at negotiating (positive?) or that you left because you wanted a bigger salary (negative)

* if the salary is much higher than expected it might indicate you'll make unreasonable demands (negative) or that you're a strong negotiator (negative?) or that you are underselling yourself (positive?)

Again, it entirely depends on the employer and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

How//Why is being privacy-conscious troublemaking?

I'm not sure you're aware I'm speaking from the hypothetical position of the kind of company that would penalise candidates for not disclosing their previous salary.

From that perspective it should be obvious: if you're a privacy-minded individual, you'll be a bigger hassle to deal with than someone who's blissfully oblivious to privacy concerns. You might call out technically illegal practices others might be willing to put up with, for example.

I have blind-spots of dense thinking. I appreciate your response. In particular...

> You might call out technically illegal practices others might be willing to put up with, for example.

It routinely still amazes me that companies want armies of Yes Men to willingly go forth into that good night at the drop of a paper-clip without so much as a "yes but".

You know what that is? An army of dumb-AI robots, which we already have but not to grand-high scale.

I have experienced this as well.

Quick story. Before I took this advice, I made the mistake of telling a recruiter my salary, and then the recruiter said, yeah I'm not going to give you a 20K raise. The guys on that team were great and the compensation was actually viable, but it was not a good fit overall.

I think any negotiation where you want to walk away with the best deal you have to be willing to let a job go. It's when you want something so bad that you start to loose perspective and take a really bad deal. I say this from personal experience. When I have wanted something really bad I negotiate poorly, but when I come at it from a take it or leave it position I am almost always more happy with the result. It's really hard advice to follow when you really need/want a job especially if it's a big name like Uber.

This advice is also VERY dependent on you being able to negotiate. If the market is down and you can't find a job, you may end up in the 5th interview you don't get because you refused to disclose and guess what? This tactic isn't working. Adapt to the market, but use any leverage you have to secure the best position you can for yourself at a place you will be happy.

I've gone through 4 employers in 4.5 years and I have loved 2 of the last 4. Those were the ones I took because I had time to decide and really vetted them out. I had the power in the negotiations and I stacked the deck in my favor. They were also the biggest pay bumps I'd received.

If you don't mind my asking, if you "loved" two of the places you have worked why have you been through four employers in 4-1/2 years?

I love my current employer, which is why I have stayed there 19 years.

The tech jobs I've worked have ended roughly thus:

  Company went under
  Short-term contract for specific task
  Department downsized
  Short-term contract for specific task
  Department downsized
  Short-term contract for specific task
  Short-term contract for specific task

I have never quit a job since finishing school. I'd have loved to stay on at several of those places for the rest of my career, but that's not how most of the industry works these days. If you've been able to stay at a job you love for 19 years, you're very lucky.

Even with quick promotions, you are much more likely to end up with a higher salary by moving jobs every 1.5-3 years. I'm 30 and the longest I've been at a job is 21 months. It's never been brought up as a negative and I've got plenty of experience across multiple business domains and companies.

Yeah, it's pretty much taken as normal these days. I'd still rather have job stability than a sky-high salary, if I was given the choice.

One the contract ended. The other I'm still at.

I used to be super intimidated by negotiation. I recently took a Coursera course that I highly recommend https://www.coursera.org/learn/negotiation. It's not specific to negotiating job offers, but it helped me become a lot more comfortable with the process just to have a framework to think about the whole thing in. It's a really well put together course too.

Wow. It could be 20 years from now and all that's left in tech is Amagoogleapplesoft and I'd still walk out when that was said to my face.

Yeah fair. It was definitely a very negative sign. Having participated in hiring elsewhere, my assumption was maybe it was just a bad recruiter. Generally, engineering managers have a big input into the offer process and I thought I'd give the process the benefit of the doubt over the bad salesmanship. Plus, at that point, it costs me nothing to hear their offer and make a fully informed decision. Even if I knew I wasn't going to take it, waiting a day for a number is a valuable data point.

I agree. It's not easy to gracefully walk out of that kind of situation. At that point it was better to just go through the motions and maybe end the interview prematurely.

> "OK, we can do that. But we have a policy of always making the lowest possible offer to candidates who won't share their compensation information. I just want the best for you."

"OK, you can do that. But I have a policy of always turning down offers that are too low for the role and benefits involved. I just want the best for me."

Or alternatively (esprit de l'escalier):

"Sorry, I do not negotiate with terrorists."

> we have a policy of always making the lowest possible offer to candidates who won't share their compensation information

What does "lowest possible offer" even mean? Lowest wage that you can live off? Lowest wage that anybody else in the company makes? Lowest wage that you'll accept?

It probably means that they have salary bands and you're starting at the bottom

That's what they meant. And probably said. You can take my quote as a (close) paraphrase.

Positions (titles) have salary bands. If you're at the top, you typically need a promotion to get anything beyond a COLA.

They're saying that whatever your offered position is, you are at the bottom of the salary band as a matter of principle.