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When they aren't lowball, they are fake high-ball in order to get more buzz from investors and more applicants coming in from AngelList. When the offer is handed over for real, they low-ball. Of course not all startups do this.

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I experienced this first hand. After interviewing with a company I met on Angelist they said their best offer was 80% of the bottom of their advertised range. It was a tremendous waste of time for everyone involved, and I'm not sure who thought that was a good idea. Even if I'd accepted, they would have landed a candidate who felt misled/disgruntled on Day 1. Not a great way to build a company, in my opinion.

That's a really bad hiring strategy. What the company doesn't realize is that they are still paying 80%. If the company flipped their position and added an extra 10% to the 100%, it's conceivable that the motivation could actually make the employee 30% more productive and engaged with making the company successful.

Great companies are not built this way. And sorry to hear you went through this - though you are probably better off not working there.

Yeah. Case by case.

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