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Comment by jgilias | Hacker News Reader

I also feel very strongly about this. Many moons ago I literally got paid half of what a friend of mine got paid for exactly the same position, responsibilities, and output, and yes, I can gauge the output, as it was a position for which this is quite rigidly defined. Just because he said a different amount than I that he was willing to work for during negotiations.

From that point on I have consistently refused to 'name my amount'. Literally, I would say something like: "A company like yours must have a defined salary scale for the given position, why don't we start from there, and see how it aligns with my expectations?". If they push on, it goes something like: "So, are you saying that salaries at your organization are ad-hoc, and you're looking for the cheapest person who can fill the role?". In which case, I'm really not interested anymore.

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Criticizing the HR department I'm possibly gonna be working for, is not the approach I would take. Instead I'd try to get them to understand my perspective.

There's lots of approaches to this, but I usually go along these lines at the very start of negotiations:

* "I'm well respected and well-paid at my current job. I'd need to see a good salary bump though before I accepted any offer. Moving jobs during a pandemic is, well, risky..."

Honest and straightforward. You give them something to work with, and also what you're expecting.

* "I would like to see $X" where $X is just outside their zone of comfort.

Ideally they should be feeling pain or discomfort because your number is 10% outside their salary window. Usually you can make an educated guess about where $X is, and if you were way outside, you probably didn't want to work for that company anyway.

* "I don't want to waste anyone's time here. What's the range you're looking for?"

A lot of people in HR will give up the range if they're having trouble filling the position -- which many people are these days. And if the top is acceptable, be honest about it. If it's not, be honest about it with the expectation the call will end after that.

If you detect a dodge or resistance (1) to give any detail whatsoever, it's easy just to end the conversation at that point. There's no reason to get angry, frustrated, or to argue your case, you're just turning down a number at that point in time -- or in some cases a lack of a number.

(1) I would expect an investment bank (e.g.) to not give up their total compensation package. But they should still be able to say whether it's acceptable or not.

> * "I would like to see $X" where $X is just outside their zone of comfort.

How, exactly, are you supposed to know their "zone of comfort" if they don't even post a salary range?

"Look, I'm not comfortable at haggling, so I'm going to treat this question as a binary search: How about $1,000,000? No? How about $500,000?..."

An educated guess, but also a leap of faith. I've been friends with recruiters, so I guess that makes it a little easier. But you can certainly figure that out from looking at job postings.

But the easy answer is $200k/year is what most people should be aiming to make professionally (even if they don't currently). And so every job switch you make should be a jump in salary. If you're making $120k, there should be nothing wrong with saying you want $160k.

The big issue is just getting yourself psyched up to utter what you want to a recruiter. If you've been paid around $80k for five years with 3% annual raises, it's hard to say to a recruiter, "I want $140k". People tend to internalize that their worth is what that paycheck is, not what the market is willing to pay them. In that sense, it's just a leap of faith you need to make on your part.

The responses I wrote can (and should) be delivered in a friendly, half-joking, and easy-going manner. I don't believe you should ever get into a defensive and argumentative mode in a job interview. Well, not just job interview, ever, really.

However, I only agree with the last of your bullet points, as that's basically what I'm suggesting, just expressed in a more straight-talking manner.

Regarding the other points. The first bullet-point is not something I'd do. I mean, for the right position at the right place I might be willing to go for a salary reduction as well. The second bullet point is not really workable, as another commenter says, you can't know their comfort zone. Moreover, they will note it down that this candidate wants more than we are willing to offer, and therefore might soon start to look for other opportunities. Unless you go for a hyperbole, in which case this is pointless, and may be even worse than just not giving an amount. Depending on delivery.

So, basically, there is nothing to gain if you are the first one to state an amount.

Even joking doesn't always follow since I didn't follow it in your original comment. I just find it easier to be honest from my side, since it always makes you look professional. It also means you don't have to risk being a jerk.

Edited to add:

I think the issue is that if you're trying to "win" the one interview you're in currently, then yeah, odds are you're going to lose typically with this strategy. If you're desperate you're gonna take a lower offer.

But if you see the world as bunch of potential interviews, and start interviewing with a bunch of companies you'll figure out pretty quick what the salary range is gonna be, and you'll know that a startup is gonna pay less on average, and a fortune 500 company has more room to absorb labor costs.

You don't try to win every interview. You're winning the game of interviewing. Because if you try to win one particular interview, you might only be able to get an offer below your market worth, and waste a lot of time doing it just to get that offer. Instead you want to go after the jobs that are going to pay what you're worth.

It's not really that hard to figure out your own market worth.

> Usually you can make an educated guess about where $X is

Can you? I'm currently looking for a mid-senior level software job and don't feel confident at all I know salary ranges at any of these companies, except the huge ones on levels.fyi and Blind.

The goal isn't to get the most money that you can from the company. The goal is to get that premium salary compared with all other software engineers.

Yeah, you might work as a high paid prostitute at a shitty company for a while, but when you leave you'll leave richer than being paid half at a friendly mom and pop shop. But generally I've found the higher paying jobs are usually better anyway.

Today in 2021, $175k-ish seems like a fair number for a mid-senior software job. If you're really good, you should consider $200-220k or higher.

>But generally I've found the higher paying jobs are usually better anyway.

This doesn't work if you have several years of experience and senior responsibilities, but are paid significantly less than entry level employees.

It's a catch-22, because getting paid more means being severely demoted.

And this has nothing to do with small companies, there are lots more people working as low paid prostitutes at big, shitty, but obscure companies.

It's not the companies job to make sure your salary is commensurate with your pay. It's your job to do that.

In fact it's your job to get the salary you want, not your company's. The best way to do that is to negotiate up front or leave for a job that will.

>In fact it's your job to get the salary you want, not your company's. The best way to do that is to negotiate up front or leave for a job that will.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. You shouldn't assume random strangers are in fact passive whiners. My comment was based on my experience demanding an decent salary and then leaving for an even larger raise. I've changed jobs four times since getting my degree.

The problem is your BATNA. You can't get a better deal than what someone thinks yours is. Flat out lying or even misleading someone is bound to come back to bite you in the job market, more than say, buying a car.

Another option is to study the market, interview at multiple places, and give a high but realistic amount. This way you will get ~highest possible offer

The part of the discussion is not just about pay, it is also about company culture. I really don't want to work at a place willing to haggle and fill the position with the cheapest eligible person.

There are often good teams but they need to work with a compensation department/committee to get actual numbers. IMO it seems a bit early to judge the company culture just by an interaction with the recruiter.

But maybe you consider that to be a part of company culture too. What I’ve noticed though is even fantastic engineering companies might crappy departments for other things.

At a point when they ask me my salary expectations, I would expect to be talking to someone who has the authority to speak about salaries.

Doesn’t change the point I’m making unless you’re saying this is a manager you’d be reporting to. In which case your stance is justified. Otherwise my point stands.

The problem with this approach is that while the team that is spending their budget on your salary probably doesn't give two shits about an extra $5-20k/yr the disconnected HR department has always been laser focused on pushing back on salary numbers for some reason.

I interviewed at a place where I knew someone who worked there and knew exactly the number they were looking to hire at, I named that number in my interview and they still tried to undercut me. I said, no I want $original_number in my response email and they caved in literally 5 minutes. Why?!?!? You found someone willing to take the job at exactly the team's budget. Shouldn't you be popping the champagne that it's painless and everyone's happy?

The hiring team and the HR team have different local incentives. The hiring team just needs a position filled within a specific budget. The HR team is doing its best to manage company wide expenses. So it is worth it to them to take a crack at reducing the cost of a hire.

If you can identify a company's inconsistencies in policies or behavior, you can identify different sets of incentives different parts of the company are under.

This attitude is common on Reddit and HN, but I think you misunderstand what the norm is. Comparative few companies "spare no expense" when shopping for their average employee. And yes, a developer is a average employee, a worker bee.

A few really big companies might have a different attitude, at least for their major players. I know for a fact that these big companies will offer less than $70k to work in silicon valley, which is a slap in the face to a new grad that was getting better offers in low COL areas.

So where are these mythic companies that don't care about money and give all new hires a fortune without trying to control costs at all?

Every company is looking for the cheapest person who can fill the role. The question is how skilled does the applicant have to be to be accepted.

That's a fair point indeed, and it's what these laws are supposedly made to counter. I mainly wanted to raise awareness to the fact that tipping the scale in favor of people sharing the same concerns as you do will also tip it to disfavor others.

But transparency doesn't necessarily mean no wage disparity. You can still have bonuses and raises.

>From that point on I have consistently refused to 'name my amount'

You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don't see why you can't just ask for what you want. When you found out about your friend why not just ask for the same from your manager?

If you don't ask you don't get, your problem of being paid less is self inflicted by your refusal to tell them the price you're satisfied with.

>and see how it aligns with my expectations

You clearly have a concept of your worth, just ask for it with a few grand more, the worst they can say is no and you can just go elsewhere.

Based on my past experiences with the above strategy, both my proverbial face and nose are fine, thank you! Before that though, I have done both - named an amount too high for a job that I really wanted, which I got passed on, and then named an amount too low for a different position leading to the aforementioned situation. So, yeah, YMMV, but for me just not playing the game works great.

Definitely can understand and sympathize how you'd end up in that situation after being passed over for a job you really wanted. But please never lowball yourself, the price you walk through the door with defines your entire worth during your time at that company.

It can take longer if you ask higher but at least the company you end up with you'll know they're happy to pay more.

I think this sums up whats wrong with pay transparency perfectly. You feel cheated because a company didn't pay you the same as another employee.

But your value should not be measured by how much somebody else is getting paid, but by how much another company is willing to pay you.

Your value to the company is also constrained if the company pretend they can't afford your real worth, while they pay that worth to comparable employees. You don't know the worth you should be demanding because there's no transparency. The person was being cheated by their employer here.

That's the point, you never have any grounds to demand more unless you have another job offer on the table.

When companies say they can't afford to pay you x, they mean they don't want to pay you x.

Yes, sure, perhaps the employee was being cheated, but pay transparency is not going to fix that, that just insures everybody is being cheated evenly.

The cheating happens when the profits of the company are not distributed to the people that run it, but to the people who own it.

> But your value should not be measured by how much somebody else is getting paid, but by how much another company is willing to pay you.

Who are you to say that? Is the invisible hand prescriptive now? What if I value fair treatment over marginal nominal compensation? What if I don't know how much to ask for when I'm looking for work because I'm so underpaid that my perception of the market is fucked?

Same way you work out how much your house is worth, you get two or more companies in a bidding war for your time.

What is "fair" treatment? Are different levels of negotiating abilities unfair?

The initial value could be measured this way. Market price discovery. Without external influences (collusion, etc.) the market will generally define price bands. The stock market is an example of this (to a degree). The job market is also an example of this.

Over time, employees show their value or not. The higher value employees should be appropriately compensated for what they deliver, e.g. more market price discovery, but for rarer assets.

The danger of transparency is that you will discover the presumed market value difference, without seeing reasoning behind those differences. Which, honestly, will result in many angry people.

I think another option when naming your amount is to name an amount that would make you happy, not just one that you are willing to work for.

So let's say you name an amount that would make you happy, and you get it. Someone else names their (higher) amount, and they get it.

You're both happy!

Two months later you find out their amount.

Why does their happiness amount affect your happiness? Would you be happier if they were paid less? Maybe they should be paid the amount that would make you happy instead of what would make them happy? Why? Their circumstances are different, they are different people, whose requirement for happiness is different than yours.

Surely you'd be happy making more, as much as they do, but we already established that you were already happy two months ago.

Sure, I’m unhappy in this scenario, because my previous happiness was due to an information asymmetry. I don’t know how high HR is willing to go; apparently they were willing to go higher, and if I had that information I would have specified a bigger number because, while there is certainly a lower bound on numbers that make me happy, there is no upper bound.

> there is no upper bound

This is essentially saying that you're not happy unless you're being paid the maximum the company is willing to pay, now and in the future rather than choosing to be happy with an amount that fits your own needs. This means your happiness changes based on the circumstances of an external entity, rather than changing based on your own circumstances, which seems strange.

I am happy if I am paid what my labor is worth. I accept being paid slightly less, because the entity purchasing my labor needs to make a profit.

I am not happy if I am paid significantly less — essentially this means that my employer has found a way to arbitrage my labor, and instead of sharing this information (and the value I create) they've decided to simply pocket the difference.

Yes, this is more in line with what I meant in my original comment. Thanks!

But you could continue to be happy: you're being paid what you were happy being pad, and now you have information that you are worth even more, which you can now leverage.

> name an amount that would make you happy

This doesn't really exist. What people want is the most they can get, and this will make them as happy as is possible in the market. They would be as happy as anyone could possibly be about wages if they were offered an infinite wage.

"The amount that would make you happy" is a pragmatic minimum amount that would tempt you away from your current employment (or from further looking for other employment.) It's a buyer's price, not a seller's price.

> Why does their happiness amount affect your happiness? Would you be happier if they were paid less? Maybe they should be paid the amount that would make you happy instead of what would make them happy? Why? Their circumstances are different, they are different people, whose requirement for happiness is different than yours.

This is the problem with reifying the concept of an "amount that would make you happy." You've fallen into abstraction and spiritual condemnation. It's not illogical or irrational to not be happy with being paid less than you could be paid doing the same job, and it's insulting to treat employees like fools with this backwards logic.

If the employer is happy paying that other employee twice as much as you, why wouldn't they be happy paying you just as much? If they're happy with the deal with the other employee enough to continue it, why wouldn't they be happy with giving you that same deal? Really silly reasoning.

> This doesn't really exist. What people want is the most they can get, and this will make them as happy as is possible in the market.

Well I think it does exist. You can be happy with what you have regardless of what others have, can you not? Otherwise you're doomed to unhappiness, unfortunately.

> It's not illogical or irrational to not be happy with being paid less than you could be paid doing the same job

Agreed, it's not illogical or irrational, but it is sub-optimal if one is concerned with being happy with what they have rather than comparing against external entities and adjusting happiness downward unnecessarily.

> treat employees like fools

I don't think it's backward or disrespectful to ask someone what would make them happy and then give it to them.

I think it would be illogical to say "I want to make more than, or just as much as, anybody else doing what I do". Actually, I think maybe it's emotionally childish, rather than illogical. Not that I've never though that way myself. It's just that from a personal growth perspective, I don't think it's a mentality that leads to happiness in the long run.

Most people have an innate sense of fairness. If two people are doing the same thing, and one is getting compensated more for it, unless that person is deliberately kept ignorant of this fact, they are likely to feel that it is unfair.

Even if they were happy with the amount they were making before, that unfairness is likely to make them feel unhappy: not just because they could be making more, but because this says "we value this other person more than we value you, for reasons we're unlikely to ever tell you."

If, instead, this whole scenario started out with full pay transparency, it is vastly less likely that the company would be willing to allow this level of disparity in the first place, thus avoiding any party feeling unhappy.

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