Hacker News Reader

Comment by brunooliv | Hacker News Reader

In my experience this never worked for me for the simple fact that I never had the skill and time to even GET a second offer to bargain against. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad developer, but I’m definitely horrible at interviewing and having to jump through several different steps at different companies just to bargain for a higher end of the range makes me feel like either the market is the problem or the expectations from companies are way unrealistic

View on HN

I too have never been in situation where the timing would possibly work out to get companies to compete. Some employers take months from start to finish while others can wrap things up within two weeks. Then you get an offer that requires a decision within two-three days.

Sure, make an ask for more money, but I have never had any leverage.

I found that behavior would change a lot once I had an offer from a decent company. Suddenly all the scheduling/matching delays and processes that supposedly were delaying me would be resolved when I revealed that. It was even worth emailing recruiters that ghosted me because they would respond again. Also, offer deadlines are usually just pressure tactics and would go away if there actually was a risk of me not signing.

Caveat that I haven’t interviewed in the last couple years and this may not be the case anymore.

I’m also awful at interviewing and this last time I just went all in on practice, paying for advice, and practice, an unrelenting amount of studying and coding. I hated it for weeks and then after a month or so I started to enjoy the drills, like exercise or something. Either way, all the practice paid off, I encourage you to just try 175% harder than you think it’ll take, if you can. I’m not a CS major, I hate l33tcode, you can do it too… and then negotiate like a champ.

I can totally relate to that feeling but after a few rejections, and having to work 9-5 during the day and prepare in the evenings with a drained battery, it just totally kills the motivation. Maybe it's the type of circumstance when if I'd really need I could do it, but to try to "suffer" through the process just to be rejected is quite hard.

I think expectations are often realistic in the sense that companies are generally able to hire sufficiently many people at acceptable prices. But I think it’s also the case that there are fashions in interviewing such that companies are mostly all trying to hire the same subset of candidates that do well at the current thing. So if you’re bad at the current style of interviewing it’s going to be more work than someone fortunate enough to do well at the current fad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com