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Comment by AstralStorm | Hacker News Reader

Companies do not work on empathy, but on maximum reward for acceptable risk and investment.

This would be true if your offer was negotiated with a distant bureaucratic committee (or board), but most of the time, regardless of who they represent, you're just dealing with people.

Many companies, particularly the larger organizations, have pretty strict boundaries though. Case in point: in a large corporation we tried recruiting an incredibly talented developer, but because of company rules, we couldn't offer him what he asked for despite us thinking he was definitely worth it (and really, it wasn't outlandish in any way) but HR would never let it fly because rules. His problem then, I think, was that he mentioned what he'd earned elsewhere, so some policy dictated we couldn't offer more than 20% than that, or whatever. Stupid, silly policy, and just goes to show you should never divulge information the other party just isn't privy to. (I've never told recruiters what I earned before, that's not their business.)

> His problem then, I think, was that he mentioned what he'd earned elsewhere, so some policy dictated we couldn't offer more than 20% than that, or whatever. Stupid, silly policy, and just goes to show you should never divulge information the other party just isn't privy to. (I've never told recruiters what I earned before, that's not their business.)

Actually, that sounds like a great reason to volunteer my current salary. As long as I'm not desperate I don't want to work for a company that maintains such an idiotic policy, because it tells me something about how they view and value their employees.

If I didn't know better, I'd agree with you. Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department – for reasons I guess – and they just seem to throw spanners around for a living, especially into works. HR acts largely as their own separate entity, which isn't uncommon with these kinds of organizations, and play more or less by their own rules. What they do isn't indicative of the rest of the organization. It bugs me a lot that we couldn't offer him what he wanted, and for no good reason either.

> Thing is, this organization is quite good, but HR is useless. Unfortunately, all hires have to go through this draconian and incredibly difficult HR department

If HR is that bad, and the organization gives HR that kind of power, how can you say the organization is "quite good"?

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