One of my negotiation principles is "Don't disclose your current or desired salary" during the negotiation. With persistence, the recruiter or hiring manager will usually just move on.
Another principle is that you should always counter.
So I'm _extremely_ surprised to hear that 95% of the time, people have refused to continue talking with you. I can't refute your experience, but I can say this has never happened to me or anyone that I've worked with to negotiate a starting salary.
Patrick's writing, which you alluded to, was a big inspiration for me to write and think more deeply about this subject. He knows what he's talking about.
If you watch the Salary Negotiation workshop (linked in my original comment), you'll see a section on "The Dreaded Salary Question" and there was a 15-minute discussion on it in the Q&A. (Both are linked in the notes below the embedded video.) You might watch those segments to see if anything jumps out at you that yo haven't' tried before.
I've wanted to share my thoughts and experiences regarding the "never be the first to quote a number" strategy for some time, but I usually see these threads when they're too stale to comment on.
My background: I'm a senior-level engineer in my early 30s, in SF. After a consulting stint, I interviewed heavily in 2013, and again in the second half of 2015, and currently speak with 1-2 recruiter cold calls per week to keep my options open. My sample size is many dozens of intro calls, across startups ranging in maturity from 1st engineer through some of the unicorns everyone knows.
In short, I agree with p4wnc6. A very relevant fraction of recruiters, say a third, will refuse to proceed until you quote a figure. This is true for internal and external recruiters. No amount of push back works with this group, they'll see you as difficult or otherwise not worth pursuing, and would rather end the discussion than proceed number-less.
This leaves the two-thirds of recruiters who are willing to play ball. Now there's another problem - not quoting a number is only a good idea if you want to avoid being low-balled - it's a tremendous waste of time if your desired compensation is above the expected range.
For transparency and knowledge sharing, I'll be specific: my background is in operations and infrastructure ("devops"). 90+% of the roles coming my way pay in the range of $130-180K base. My base is above this, and very few companies will be willing to pay a premium of 50% more than they expected to. No amount of wishful thinking about "your payroll is a drop in the bucket" will bridge the gap if it's too large.
Which brings me to a question I'd love the answer to: other than working for the big ~6 (Google, Facebook, Uber, Apple, etc), how can I push my comp up to $2X0 (or even $3XX!)? I feel like I'm near max, so I'm biding my time until the right VP/Director/etc of Ops role comes along. Is there anything else I can do?
When you make as much as you do, it's a huge waste of everyone's time for you to interview for roles that just can't go there. By stating your compensation up front, you effectively make the recruiter your negotiator before you ever interview. You're getting them to get the company to agree to possibly paying you that much, assuming you meet some bar in their head that's worth it.
More specifically to your next move, your base salary just won't have a lot of room to grow. So you have some options.
-become a consultant. Many are referencing Patrick's blog (kalzumeus.com), which is a great way to bump up your dollars.
-transform a recently funded startup that goes public. They'll throw money at you to build their team, then hopefully the stock makes you rich.
-Even outside the big 6 (Uber? Really?), at your level in your job most larger companies should be rewarding heavily in stock and performance bonuses. Take the time with the recruiter to truly understand what the total compensation strategy is. What is the vesting schedule for the initial reward? What about stock given as bonuses or for promotions? What % of possible bonus does the average employee actually receive?
-create the next big tech and run with it. AUTOMATE ALL THE THINGS. I hear there's money in that.
FWIW I am basically in the same situation. My base pay is in the same region you describe for yours, and I rarely see offers that are even 80% of what my salary expectation is, let alone other forms of compensation and other benefits.
I am in scientific computing and machine learning, and I actually love being an implementer and a coder. I don't want to be a people manager (mostly because I think all companies force managers to treat their subordinates in unhealthy ways, and no matter how good your intentions are, being a manager will ruin your humanity).
I worry about finding any job, and then further worry about what growth path there could possibly be.
> I rarely see offers that are even 80% of what my salary expectation is
I'm suspicious that this is a silent-evidence phenomenon. I'd assume that the duration a job listing is up correlates inversely proportional to the compensation. If that's true, all the great paying jobs are optically invisible.
This seems very, very plausible to me. Jobs in this experience level and pay range aren't generally posted publicly, and don't stay posted very long if they do go public. This reminds of the same sort of phenomenon with "the good houses"—they never make it to market because someone knows someone knows someone who wants a house like that, so they get first shot at it.
These sorts of jobs are best found through one's network. Not only does this open up better opportunities, but this sort of "back channel" opportunity usually comes with more details than a public job listing (such as the "I think they're probably paying $YYYk or so").
I think this is a major factor, but it has still happened to me even when interviewing for boutique jobs via a friend's reference or happening to know someone who already worked there.
A fair amount of the interviews I accept come from unsolicited head hunters seeking me out, and even then the reveal-your-salary thing is a huge sticking point. And even when it hasn't been, I've still been let down by the ultimate salary offers.
I heard once that you should budget 1 month of job searching for every $10,000 of compensation you seek, and maybe more once you are seeking high-level bonuses. That's easily been true in my case. You also have to put up with horrid HR people who are quite simply just rude to you, and lots of degrading "dance monkey dance" whiteboard and coding puzzles and hazing, and demoralizing cross country interview trips that you have to muster the ability to put your whole self into but which you cynically know in your heart of hearts that it's a waste of time.
A substantial proportion of jobs never even makes it onto job boards. And yes, higher paying jobs are often amongst them. I've been approached for jobs that have never been listed publicly several times. It's one of the reasons why it can pay to be on good terms with (the right type of) recruiters and (more importantly) have a good network of industry contacts.
Is there a way into machine learning without doing going and going an Ms or PhD?
Im working my way through a coursera course on it but I'm not sure that is enough. All the positions I see are looking for academic experience or 5+ years doing it. Neither of which are doable for me.
Chapters 1-7 are worth their weight in gold. This is one of the cases where the physical books are much better, as you'll need to flick back and forth to see the figures (which are one of the best parts).
The forgoing assumes that you already know some statistics/data analysis (the latter probably being more important).
If you haven't done this before, then I suggest that you acquire some data you care about, install R (a good book is the Art of R Programming by Matloff), and start trying to make inferences. And draw graphs. Many, many, many graphs.
If you keep at this, finding papers/books and reading theory, and implementing it in your spare time, then you can probably get a good data science job in 1-2 years. You'll probably need to devote much of your free time to it though.
I'm assuming that you can already code, given the context :)
I'm on that coursera course too! The course is pretty basic though. It'll help you get the concepts but there's too much spoon feeding in there to make you good enough to compete with people with MS and PhDs. Also that course doesn't cover deep learning and you should definitely study that.
I don't know how reproducible the approach is, but i'm working my way in from being a php developer previously. The company i work for is building a big data / machine learning platform from the ground up, and they bootstrapped the project from existing employees, including myself.
You're in a hard spot. I know, because I'm in basically the same one.
Jobs in the $2X0 range are basically outside the range where a company will trust the normal recruiter/interview process to bring in a good candidate. You must start working your network, and you must either go to one of the big 6 you mention, or you must find a company that desperately needs somebody really senior and where you have an "in" -- somebody who knows the quality of your work and knows you're work $2X0.
It's not that hard to be worth that -- that's about two senior-ish engineers in Silicon Valley. But it's very hard to prove you're worth it. You have to know somebody and they have to know you.
You'll see a lot of advice about becoming a "thought leader" and "noncommodity." And to be fair, that helps -- I give talks, wrote a book, etc. But those things won't usually let you interview cold and get $2X0. At this point, maybe $200, barely? Beyond that, it's networking or seniority.
I can't tell you about $3X0, that's out of my personal experience.
You'll occasionally see massively outliers, up to maybe $6XX (which includes stock, not just base.) But those are almost invariably people who rose in the ranks at very profitable companies -- either big 6 or a small niche company that makes bank. It's very hard to be hired into a role like that unless you're well-known by the company in question.
Most everyone I know who is primarily technical who's total compensation, ah, starts with a two has a base that isn't out of your range and the rest is bonus/stock. So yeah, on a good year? (like last year) a quarter million is completely reasonable, but that's not gonna hold if the company has a bad year.
also, everyone I know in that income tax bracket works for those big companies. Startups just don't pay that kind of money. If you want to get paid (I mean, paid now, not paid if you get lucky and pick the right company and it gets huge) - if you want to get paid, go get a job from a big company.
why don't you want to work at google, facebook, uber, apple, etc...? (amazon, btw, is on that list, too.)
Also, on another note, while I get "what is your salary expectation" a lot, (and I often return with "getting X now, need X+y if you want me to move" because maybe I'm a terrible negotiator?) I've never had any but the lowest of body shop recruiters actually ask me for a previous salary.
>I've never come across an ex-Amazon employee with good things to say about the company (though this is admittedly a small sample-size).
paying better is a good thing. It's certainly not the only good thing, but it's an advantage that amazon often has. Most of the people I know who currently work there[1] are like "The work is only okay, and they kind of treat you badly, but the pay is really nice"
I was out drinking the other weekend with a good friend who works at amazon, and we were comparing notes. As a contractor at google? My perks are way better. The free food at google (which I get to eat as much of as I want, and can even take home, even though I'm just a lowly contractor) is way better than the not-so-free food at amazon. At google, even as a contractor, nobody gives me shit about leaving my car at work while I'm on vacation. The contractor next to me has had his clearly inoperative vehicle parked at google for the last month or two. They asked him to verify it was his car, but didn't tell him he needed to move it. All my interactions with security and google corporate, and, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner, kind of made me feel how I imagine the coddled children of the super rich feel when they are on the campus of an elite college.
At amazon? even full employees get shit for just leaving the car there over the weekend.
But my buddy, I mean, he is a little better than me, but he's not, you know, amazing, like the guy from apple we were hanging out with at the time, but he's making a lot more money than I am. Really dramatically so.
[1]I'd expect reviews from current employees to be rather better than reviews from ex-employees; the current employees clearly aren't annoyed enough to find another job.
It's possible to work for a startup and have a base salary starting with a two. And even to be hired into the role at that level. I speak from experience. But yeah, that's the very high end.
You only need one job. It doesn't matter if you exclude 1/3rd of all recruiters to get that one job. If you are disclosing your salary requirements first you are restricting yourself on the high side, and each person has to weigh what that is worth to avoid lowball offers.
I don't want to be rude, but at that salary is it easy to survive, or hard? Do you rent, or own a home? That salary can buy you a castle out in Texas, Florida, or anywhere else. Looking for anything beyond that (IT Director in Santa Monica makes $180k, maybe more depending on where it is) -- at that amount of pay, not only are you close to being a dreaded top 1% person, you're getting paid out the butt for what everyone else already does. :|
I know a few directors making $250k base with big bonuses on top. Most of the senior devs I know make around $180k.
$180k a year can not buy you a home in Santa Monica. Mortgage would be > half your take home even in a condo and the alternative is to commute an hour each way.
One technique I've tried that seems to get a particularly stubborn hiring manager or recruiter past the salary question is giving a generic number range. Before talking to anyone I usually do some basic research to get some idea of what a generally reasonable range is for the position, and adjust that based on my situation at the time. If pressed (I still don't give it up right away) I give that range.
Example: today I was talking with a recruiter about an iOS developer position. The salary question came up (in the form of: how much do you make right now?), and I gave the standard deflection about wanting to make sure the position was a right fit, etc... When pressed, I said that based on my research, the base for this position is $75k - $95k, and that a number in that range would be acceptable as a starting point for negotiation, but contingent on the details of the position.
This kind of response seems to give you some wiggle room without giving up all your leverage, while giving everyone a general idea if you're in the ballpark. I only use this as a last resort if I'm getting the feeling that there is little chance I'll be able to proceed with the opportunity if I don't answer. True, by not establishing salary up front you may be wasting each others' time due to different expectations, but that is a very small risk to take compared with the potential upside of a big raise.
You're suggesting less than 100 for iOS Dev, and above you someone is suggesting 150+ for devops/sysadmin.
That ratio seems quite skewed compared to other sources of data on the web.
Are you very junior, or talking about a non-prime job market/locality?
A little bit of both (I've been doing iOS for less than a year), but mostly the latter. I don't live near a tech hub or major city, and the cost of living is pretty low. So good data was hard to come by. I essentially just found the range for the closest major city and went from there, taking into account what I wanted with how the current market was going (salaries here are generally 20-30% lower than the major city, while the cost of living is much less).
Based on the assumption that the least you would accept is your current salary, it is safe to assume that the lower range is same as your current salary i.e. using your example, a recruiter can deduce your salary is $75k.
> Based on the assumption that the least you would accept is your current salary, it is safe to assume that the lower range is same as your current salary
"Lower bound you'd accept" != "Lower bound you SAY"
Exactly. The lower bound I'm prepared to give is always a raise from my current salary. I may be prepared to accept less if the opportunity is right, but my only purpose in offering this information in the first place is to get to the next stage of the process. It is a tricky thing to keep as much negotiating leverage as possible while still signaling that you can come to an agreement, which is why I only offer the number if I feel like I won't progress to the next stage without it.
In the handful of cases where the company was OK with my non-answer about salary, and I went on to get all the way to a job offer, the salary ended up being entirely miscalibrated to a candidate of my skill and experience, and the overall interview process (which usually included some technical screens, programming tests, take-home tests, and long on-site technical interviews) was a massive waste of my time, not to mention extremely stressful.
Places where I experienced this gross miscalibration: a large U.S. food retailer's digital analytics team; a small pharmaceutical research software company; a 25-year-old multinational scientific computing and supercomputing consulting firm; and an FFRDC research lab attached to a university.
In one of these places they even went on at length about how much the hiring manager liked me, how I fit all the skills they were seeking, and many team members remarked that I would "mesh instantly" with the team, and so forth. I had walked away from those interviews knowing that I had done a good job and feeling very confident.
Then they made a job offer than was around 75% of what I had been making before in a similar job in a similar cost of living area, and the new job's other benefits were far worse.
When I told them what I was making before, they just said, "it just looks like there's a bit of a gap here that we are unable to make up, but we think you'll be very happy on this team so we hope you'll consider our offer despite that." The people interviewing me in that company had even gone on at length about how successful their business unit had been recently, signing a new important contract, and how their biggest challenge was recruiting good people and staffing up to support some projects that had important deadlines looming towards the end of 2016.
I still continue to avoid sharing salary info, because I'm not convinced that sharing it would be better.
But I think what you might not be accounting for is that almost every single candidate in the tech world does share salary, freely and openly, from the very first minute they are asked, without even realizing it might have any side effects.
A lot of corporate recruiters are conditioned to expect this, and the minute someone fails to share salary, they flag them as "not a dope, can't hire them cheaply" and they just move on. Constraint number one, above any and all talent requirements, is that they must be cheap to hire ... for a lot of firms.
My reply to the 'our company is doing so well, you will ALSO do very well once you bed in' is to remind them that most notable pay rises you ever get during your career is when you switch job. So negotiate your pay NOW because for all you know, you'll be stuck to that sort of level for X years to come if you are unlucky.
As for 'shares' I flatly refuse to even consider that as part of a package. if they want to /add/ them it's wonderful, but I've been so many time multi-millionaire in 'options' that it's not even funny.
As for 'yes but the work/team is so rewarding' point I counter that it's a lot better if there isn't a sour note about being underpaid mixed in. Pay me well, and I'll be the one pulling the team to be all shinny and dynamic.
However, ultimately, you STILL get underpaid unless you go to the usual suspects like GG and such. That's why I gave up 'career' and went off contracting. Turns out being a mercenary is rewarding in many ways, including monetary !
Well, it's a matter of knowing a few people most of the time; a few agents you can 'trust', and then a small pool of returning clients who'll ask you to do stuff once a year or so...
The networking is always important, even as an employee -- always brush up your network, it might save your ass next time there is a shakeup at the company you work for, and might also give you the occasion to slam the door and move on if necessary.
I think there is nothing worse in life than waking up realizing you have to go to work to a job you hate, with people who are beepheads for a product that is a failure and going to the wall.... while knowing you don't have the freedom to just go.
Perhaps one strategy would be to give them a baseline salary (higher than your current salary, of course). You could tell them that in general based on the kind of work you are doing, responsibilities, etc. you would expect more, but under no circumstances would you consider any offer less than that.
It's tough to decide where to leave this reply, and this seems like a good place to address a few things I've seen in the replies to my comment.
Usually, my advice is "don't share you current or desired salary", but the one exception I've discussed with some people is when they're concerned they'll be low-balled. In those cases, I've suggested it might be better to just disclose your desired salary.
I've been rethinking this lately. I think a better tack might be to ask the company to share the salary range they're offering for the position. (You're only doing this if you're concerned you'll go through the interview process and get an offer so low you can't even counter with anything reasonable.)
In this case, you have virtually nothing to lose: either they'll tell you the range and you'll know if you're wasting your time, or they'll refuse and now you're both refusing to disclose the "desired" salary component. In the latter case, you can choose to continue with the process or not, depending on your general feeling about the opportunity.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect you should _never_ reveal your desired salary because it can basically only cost you money. When you do reveal your desired salary, you're basically guessing and gambling. You're guessing at the range they're offering, and gambling that you don't undershoot and cost yourself money. (See this clip on why I think it's so important to protect the few pieces of information you have in a negotiation: https://youtu.be/ndrY2UI-fyU TL;DR, you have only two or three unique pieces of information that the company doesn't have; the company has oodles and oodles of information that you don't have; they have a significant informational advantage in your negotiation and this is bad for you, but it's worse if you give away the few pieces of unique information that you have.)
This is a worse gamble than simply interviewing to see what they're best offer is, IMO. If you go all the way through the interview process and find they can't afford you, you wasted a few hours of interview time. If you guess and gamble by disclosing your desired salary, you're risking thousands of dollars of base salary over several years. Odds are, the opportunity cost of your time isn't anywhere near the potential downside of guessing wrong with respect to the base salary they're willing to pay.
(I'm going to sleep on this, but it feels right) So, my suggestion is don't disclose your desired salary, even if you're afraid their offer will be way too low or if the recruiter says they won't continue without it. If you're dealing with a very persistent recruiter OR you're afraid they can't afford you, ask them to tell you the salary range they're offering so you can tell them if it meets your requirements. If they won't tell you, then you can choose to continue and possibly get a low offer, walk away, or the recruiter may end the conversation (this is rare, in my experience, but I'd be open to seeing data to change my mind).
All of these outcomes are preferable to the alternative, which is risking thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars of base salary by guessing at their range and gambling by disclosing your desired salary.
The bottom line is the company has something you need: a job. BUT you have something the company needs: skills and experience that can help them make money. Don't be fooled into perceiving a salary negotiation as a one-sided affair.
This is actually an excellent point, and I can't believe I didn't think of this.
If I am the first one to bring up salary, and I request a range because I want to make sure that nobody is wasting their time, then they clearly get the message that I am expensive to hire, and they can efficiently reject me if needed. If they give a number and it's too low, then I can politely tell them it's best for everyone to discontinue the interviews.
But, if they don't want to give a range, presumably because they might be willing to pay a high wage if they liked me, then it puts me in a much better position to avoid stating what I am seeking.
Then I could say, "OK, it's alright with me if you don't want to explicitly tell me the range ... I just want to be sure that the position is offering compensation in the range that I am seeking. If you prefer to leave the salary discussions for later, that is perfectly understandable."
Now, if they press me for salary info, I can say the same thing they said and refuse to answer.
A, but there's a catch! I've asked for a company's range many times, and they have yet another non-answer answer: "we don't have a firm range in mind, we're confident compensation won't be an issue for a top candidate".
It's a game of chicken. The best counter I have is "what is the top of your range if we have a perfect fit?", but even that doesn't always work.
At this point, I'm sick of games. If a company refuses to disclose a salary range and/or insists on getting me to quote a number, I lead with $2X0 and see what happens. 80+% of companies aren't willing to hit that high, and the other 20% have been more interesting roles at higher quality companies.
Honestly, I still don't see a problem with stating a high number.
In my experience, refusing to agree on a range will inevitably lead to some lowball offers.
The strategy I've been using is to give out a range that is 1.5-2x what I'd be happy with. This anchors the conversation and quickly sifts out the employers who are not serious about attracting top talent.
Realistically, I never expect to get that 2x number and am certainly not leaving money on the table.
There are a couple of us here in the weird position of being senior enough that companies don't recruit for us through normal recruiters.
On the one hand, that screws up the usual "don't give a number" advice, including this advice -- there's usually not a defined salary range for a startup's catchall "we want somebody who does backend" poorly-defined job req.
On the other hand, I suspect "don't give a number" isn't the biggest mismatch happening there.
In past I have asked "What's your budget for the position?". In companies usually everything is budgeted during planning phase from new hires to promotions, bonuses etc.
So lets say you've asked them what is the normal range for the job and they've replied. What if their "normal range" is below the amount you desire? What then?
I know it's anecdata, but to confirm your experience I have had recruiters and hr reps tell me explicitly that either they will not continue without salary information or that the software their company mandated that they use would not allow them to continue with no salary or a $0 salary
"Strange, that kind of restriction must make it very difficult for you to find good talent. OK, how about you enter $999,999. It's an such an obvious placeholder that it won't fall through the cracks and it'll be easy to fix it later."
"Too open-ended? Then how about you just put in the lowest/highest amount YOU'D be willing to accept and we move from there."
Your experience with small to mid-sized firms does sound depressingly typical and I've experienced it too, but I think it's worth mentioning that Amazon specifically won't reject you for not saying a number.
State the one you want, not the one you're currently making. They won't (and legally should't be able to) check.
And if they do and somehow, your previous employer disclosed this to them (a big no no), you can always say "I was underpaid then and what I was making there is not relevant to the position I'm applying to with your right now. I also think I've learned a lot in my past position, which justifies this jump in compensation".
I've only ever done this (caveat: in the US, where they can't legally check by calling the company directly). Increase your previous salary by 20-30%, even more if it's the norm. I've even countered with "my current co just countered to keep me..." Gotta have some chutzpah.
Shoot thats a good one I need to add to my list! Fake counteroffer from own employer. (Fake competing offer from a different company probably wouldn't work, because they would ask for an "offer letter". A counteroffer from current company isn't going to require proof)
I always find it amusing when people refuse to lie on certain things based on some sort of moral-code or principle and then spew out lies for tons of others.
> I'm all for solid negotiating tactics, but if you consider telling an untruth, you are not welcome on my team.
Do you seriously think your team is made of 100% people who only ever tell the truth?
Let's get realistic, we all tell lies here and there. What matters is what you lie about and why you do it.
I couldn't care less if a developer joins my team and lied to get a higher compensation. All I care about is whether they are a good hire and if they'll do good work.
If I'm doing the hiring, I wouldn't expect a candidate to let me talk to their current manager--that's just insane.
If I thought the employee was worth the extra money they were asking for, I'd give it to them. If not, I'd let them walk. Whether their current job is considering matching their offer doesn't really matter to me.
If a candidate asks for a specific salary, I don't care why they want it. I only care whether I think they are worth it, and whether I can afford it.
I think the OP means they can't legally access this information other than by getting you or your previous employer to disclose it.
Most large companies won't give out your past salary information, so if they don't force you to provide proof, it's not very likely they will be able to verify it.
>via background checks
Background checks are normally done via a 3rd party background check company, and they don't have access to this kind of data.
When I was hired by Merrill Lynch, in Dublin, they asked for my bank statements for the last ten years in order to verify that I was indeed making what I said. (The only annoying thing was that I had to scan 75 pages... boooring.)
In the US, this is a legal minefield and when a potential employer calls a past employer for references, that past employer will very often not reveal anything more than "We can confirm that this person was employed by us from date1 to date2" and that's it.
They will not disclose your salary, what you did, your organization, who you reported to and who reported to you, your performance reviews and anything else of that nature because all of this extra information is grounds for you to sue them later if you don't get the job you're currently applying to.
The only way The Work Number has access to your salary information is if your employer has given it to them. If your employer is willing to give that out then yes a hiring company can verify your salary.
We are back to my original point that the only way a hiring company can verify salary data is by asking your employer (or having 3rd party ask for them) or forcing you to verify it.
Why is it that "What are you making are your current job, we will verify it." is acceptable but "What was this companies net revenue last quarter" is not. The game is so clearly rigged.
The company bears far less risk than the employee. The company can easily fire you if it doesn't work out, whereas most employees can't suddenly leave a job that treats them badly.
So employees can ask lots of questions about company financial health, as part of trying to reduce the far larger risk they are taking.
Meanwhile, a company doesn't need to know your salary history to make an informed opinion of whether they want to hire you and for what amount of pay.
That's true but far more than 1% of employees are employed by publicly traded companies. Most of the 27 million businesses have no employees at all--there are only around 5 million businesses with employees.
What do you mean that this is a big no-no? Can you provide a source for that? I was under the opposite impression and I'd be interested to learn more.
The reason I ask is I've certainly worked at companies that shared salary info if asked about your tenure there. In fact, it was one of the very few things they would share (in addition to start date and end date). Maybe it varies by state?
"I'm not comfortable sharing that information [my current salary]. I'd prefer to focus on the value I can add to your company and learn more about this opportunity.
I want this to be a big step forward for me in terms of both responsibility and compensation."
You can obviously adjust it for your own situation, but the idea is "I'm not comfortable telling you my current or desired salary. Let's keep going, please."
I call this "The Dreaded Salary Question" and you can see a better clip and a lengthy Q&A on this specific question in this salary negotiation workshop I did in Orlando last week: http://bit.ly/21zFG5q
I have practiced that part and read just about everything I can find about it.
Generally I say something like, "I appreciate the need to consider salary as an important part of the process, but since we have only just started talking about the position I feel it would be best to make sure that I really am the sort of technical and cultural fit you are looking for. If we can determine that I am the right fit for the role, then the salary information will fall into place at the appropriate time. But if it seems that I am not the right fit for your team, then no amount of salary discussions will be able to help us."
I have a few variations on that kind of description that I use. It's entirely possible that the way I say it can come off as rude, and I think that did happen to me especially a few times when I first started doing this.
But I have practiced it, asked friends for advice about how to say it better, how it sounds, etc., and researched a lot about this online. So I have some confidence that it is coming off as strong and assertive, but not rude, and it is communicated clearly in good-faith because I truly am primarily interested in whether the cultural fit is a good one.
Even so, these kinds of HR-approved ways of talking only ever result in about a 95% chance of immediate rejection.
Whenever I have made it past the initial question about salary, and eventually salary comes up again towards the stage when an offer is made, I have a different way of talking about it.
At that stage, if they ask me again, I will usually say something like, "I have spoken with the team and had a great chance to learn about your company and how I could fit in with this role. If you have a particular salary range that you'd like to share with me, I can definitely let you know how it will match up with my expectations."
Again, I have some slight variations on that, but it's more or less the same idea of changing their question asked of me into my question asked of them. They can't keep coming back and specifically asking me for a number without seeming very awkward, and if they do that it's sometimes a red flag and I would usually be happy walking away if they were to heavily press me at that point.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, when people have been OK with all of this and they have actually come back with their offer, it has been not just a tiny bit below my ideal, but way, way off base from what I was previously earning, let alone what I was actually seeking to earn in the new role.
Never "decline". I say I consider the entire compensation package because I realize they are a startup and need to sweeten their offer with stock because they don't have the revenue to pay a market rate.
It's important to neg them a little when you guess what they will offer. Male them self consious about lowballing you without insulting them.
I actually am beginning to think that its weak to ask them to throw out a number. Why not state a deal that's 10% better than what you want? Are you really going to be heartbroken if you get more than you want?
> Why not state a deal that's 10% better than what you want? Are you really going to be heartbroken if you get more than you want?
Because you might be leaving money on the table. What if the company was prepared to offer you 20% above your desired rate? Once you tell them +10% is your floor, they have no reason to offer above that.
That's why I think its weak. It's driven by fomo rather than going for what you want. Throwing out the first number let's you anchor the negotiation. It puts you in control.
Actually, contrary to popular belief the party that makes the first offer could have the upper hand. This advantage is due to what psychologists call "the anchoring principle" [1], which is one of many cognitive biases.
I really agree with this. As a business owner, I definitely find if I'm talking to someone good and they confidently state a number that's above my intended range (but not completely nuts) I'll start thinking along the lines of how I could make that work, or at least make an offer that wouldn't be completely out of their expected range. It only works if you're someone they really want to hire though, and if you know what's a good amount to ask for. If I'm at all on the fence about someone and they quote a crazy high number, there isn't much point in continuing. (Whereas if they'd held off, perhaps they could have convinced me they were worth hiring, and then negotiate a bit.) But if you're a great candidate, anchoring high can definitely be a good move.
Yes, "don't say a number" is more applicable to those who are under-compensated. Since this is the case with most people, it is generally good advice. I'm not the best negotiator, but I have put myself into a position of making a pretty good salary and this is what I would suggest for someone that is trying to get a big bump higher: give them a range where the bottom number is the minimum you will accept. For example, say you're 2 years out of school, making 80k and you hear on hn and elsewhere that you should have a 100k base. When numbers come up, don't be afraid to say one first, but say "I'm looking for a base in the range of 100 - 120k.". Say that even if they just asked "what is your current comp?". If they press forward with needing to know you're current comp, eventually you will have to say it, but reiterate your required range immediately after telling then your current/history.
The most important part here is that this will end the conversion with many recruiters. This helps you to know that those recruiters were not trying to help you. Just repeat with more recruiters.
I take the opposite approach. The last time I moved, I made a secure web page that had my current comp package, in detail, and the minimums on my required comp package, in detail. This I sent to every recruiter that had contacted me in the previous 18 months. Scores of them.
Before I would speak to any of them on the phone, I'd get a soft confirmation via e-mail that they had a position that could meet my requirements.
The web page also had information about what areas I was willing to commute to.
I've used variants of this approach for more than 20 years, and it's working exceedingly well.
I've done things like this before with recruiters I've worked with in the past.
They have only ever said that every position they are working on would offer a salary too low to compete even with what I currently made, let alone the larger amount I was seeking.
Yet at the same time, I have friends and colleagues who already are earning the higher level I am seeking, and who say it is a common amount to be earning in certain places.
My opinion is that recruiters focus a lot on whether it would be easy to get you hired. If your salary is high, few recruiters will bother because it means you are picky and you're looking to work at companies that are picky and so lots of times it doesn't work out.
Recruiters are a lot like crappy stock analysts. They are always looking for a story about something being undervalued, to hook someone on how they can get something great for an amazingly cheap price.
If you are justifiably expensive, most recruiters scatter like roaches. They can't sell things at their true value, and view it as wasting time even to try.
Personally, I think it's worthwhile to include, as social proof. If another company was paying $X and was perfectly happy with the employee, $X plus a modest / reasonable $Y doesn't seem so crazy. It shows that you're not just pulling an unrealistic salary out of thin air.
Right, though I would put "scare quotes" around "proof", since from their perspective I could be making it up. (:
When things get more serious, I sometimes go over my history of compensation with them.
To me, it comes down to the question: does company X need me more than I need company X? For the right people with the right skills and the right experience, the "power" is with the potential employee.
> One of my negotiation principles is "Don't disclose your current or desired salary" during the negotiation. With persistence, the recruiter or hiring manager will usually just move on.
Honestly, discussing desired salary is a good screening tool and when following advice like this I find ~50% of job applications are a waste of my time.
So desired salary is an important filter if a job doesn't state the salary range.
At least two of my past jobs were jobs where the employers stated range was substantially below what I was finally offered, so this can backfire. In one case I negotiated my way up 50% over the initial offer, and the initial offer was already at the top of the advertised range. In the other I got 30% above the top of the range + about twice the options. Both cases it was the situation where they realised I was overqualified for what they'd spec'ed, but they decided they wanted me anyway and upped their budget.
I know it can often mean wasting time, but focus on whether it's a company you want to work at. If it is, see it as a way of getting on their radar, and if you can't agree for that position, ask them to keep you in mind if they get something more suitable.
Here's my only question with the negotiation technique of not disclosing a desired salary. So is it expected that the other side should state the salary offer? That was my only problem with all these negotiation techniques saying "never mention your salary." Eventually, one side or the other needs to mention and at the end of it all, most articles online never closed it off with saying either side would state the expected salary.
The candidate could put their minimum acceptable salary in an envelope. The employer could put their maximum acceptable salary in an envelope. The two parties could agree with a third party arbiter that if the maximum from the employer is larger than the minimum from the candidate, the salary will be set to the midpoint between the two numbers, and otherwise, no deal can be reached so both walk away.
That's one way, at least, where neither party has to concede the information advantage.
In fact, I'm surprised there aren't already 37 start-ups that offer this as a service. You could have a cute little envelope logo like the MS Outlook logo and give a TED talk about how you're totally disrupting information asymmetry in recruiting, and eventually be pressured by techtopus to provide data about what candidates are asking for to perpetuate information asymmetry.
You don't need the trusted third party. You could share the hash of the numbers so they couldn't be changed during the process, then do the millionaires problem [1] to find out which number was bigger, and finally and only if the right one is bigger, share the figures (setting the salary at the midpoint is the same as sharing the figures in terms of information transfer) and calculate it that way. The only way to not reveal the offers after a successful round would be to introduce some randomness, maybe choose a number at random from some agreed portion of the range between the numbers. I don't know if there is a zero knowledge protocol for selecting a number at random from a range where the extremes are set by two different people.
Yes. Wait for them to make you an offer. It can be difficult, but the reward for your persistence will be more money in the form of a higher base salary (the gift that keeps on giving).
You have very little unique information when you enter the negotiation (you know your current salary, your desired salary, and how badly you need the job—that's about it). They have tons of information that you don't have (what they're willing to pay, what they're already paying others to do the job, how badly they need to fill the position, how badly they want you in particular).
By waiting for them to make an offer, you retain the unique information you have AND you wait for them to reveal some of the information you didn't have. When they make you an offer, you now know approximately what they're willing to pay you to do the job. This is a very big gain for you and allows you to negotiate much more effectively and increase your salary.
I interview techies, and I always make a point to ask them to give me their expected salary range. The purpose behind this isn't to one-up them and pay them as little as possible. It's just in both parties' best interest to avoid wasting time if the expected pay is too high. Neither we nor the candidate want to go through several rounds of interviews for something that ultimately won't work out.
And at the opposite end of the spectrum, if a candidate gives a number that's too low, we ignore that and offer them what we think they are worth (which is a higher number). Our reasoning is simple: if we treat people fairly, they will be more loyal and less likely to jump ship at the earliest opportunity that pays more.
A lot of recruiters say that it's not about ensuring the candidate gets the lower end of their expected range, but that's just what they say.
I actually have a friend who worked at one of the aggressive boutique recruiting firms who mostly focus on the New York investment banking jobs.
He told me that almost always, their client companies would tell them that if they were able to get a candidate to come in with a salary below X, the recruiting firm would get an extra bonus on top of their commission, and the bonus was priced to make sure it was more lucrative to try to suppress candidate wages than to adequately represent the candidate's higher-end expectation.
Whenever I hear a recruiter say anything like, "Look, I don't get paid unless you do so clearly I'm trying to get you the most that I can..." it's an immediate dealbreaker. They are probably being paid a bonus precisely to ensure I come in at a lower salary than what I could otherwise command.
Agreed. I had two different recruiters offer to increase my contract rate when I told them I had accepted another offer. That suggests to me that they're paid amount $X and were offering me $Y < $X, with their commission being the difference.
I hired developers into investment banking for 18 years. If we gave somebody a low number, the next bank would poach them in 1-2 years, wasting all the time we spent training them. After I learned this the hard way, I always went as high as I felt able to on the initial salary, because raises were much harder later on.
That was my experience as well. If you want to pay your team well, the best option is to bring people in at the highest number you can justify.
Raises were always harder to arrange, but it was a lot easier when we had evidence that new hires were costing us 20% more than our existing high performers were paid
This response makes me wonder why you don't just tell the candidate the range you're willing to pay and let them tell you if that works for them.
I definitely understand the need to be efficient with everyone's time, but "have the candidate share their desired salary" is only one way to do that.
I have heard this reasoning from recruiters many times, but haven't heard a good explanation as to why they don't just tell the candidate the range they're willing to pay.
(This is a genuine question) Why not just tell the candidate your range if your concern is to respect everyone's time?
We do that too. We don't have a preference either way, because for us it only serves one purpose, which is to determine if we should continue the interview process.
Surprisingly, very few candidates ask us upfront what the position pays. In fact, we've only had one candidate who tried to play the "salary game" (if you will) and turned the question back on us when we asked what their salary range was. Like I said though, we just reveal it. To us, it's not a game, but rather two parties exchanging information in a fair and transparent manner.
You may think it is not a game, and I don't doubt your intentions, but it still is a game.
At the beginning you are not invested in the candidate. A candidate that wants to work for you, but wants to maximize salary would be foolish not to try to get you to invest more before starting to talk salary, as it's far harder for you to walk away over 5% or 10% or even 20% once you've decided you have a candidate you like and face the prospect of spending time on another candidate instead.
You have the power advantage that passing the candidate over has less impact for you than it has for many/most candidates, so to a candidate it is far more important to spend the effort of selling you on just them first before talking price.
See my response... this isn't the reason we do it. In fact we try to put the position's salary range on the job posting if we can come up with an agreement internally (our hiring is very informal). Or we put "market rate; negotiable" or something along those lines, and put the onus on the applicant to research what their market rate is.
Basically, I have a checklist for the first phone interview, and the relevant item on that checklist is "make sure pay range is agreeable". It doesn't say "get desired pay range from candidate" or "let the candidate know what the pay range is". We have no preference.
This, to me, indicates that if I was interviewing with you my priority would be to not give a salary range, nor to agree that your salary range is acceptable.
Because when you say "if we can come up with an agreement internally (our hiring is very informal)", that to me means that if I get through interviews and you like what you see, I'll be able to work with you to get you to fight for a bigger budget if I expect more than what you had in mind.
It's easy to get people to push their numbers up once they know you and like you and believe they need just your skills, and it's easier to do that if you've not revealed that you'd be willing to settle on their range earlier in the conversation.
My best results in getting good offers have been when I've deferred all exchange of salary information until the very end: Get them to agree that they want me to join, and it's "just" the formality of getting me to agree to a salary. At that point the interview process has gone from me courting them, through a "it looks like we both like each other", to them courting me, and the power balance has shifted substantially because the hiring manager is invested, and everyone has spent lots of time getting to that point.
This doesn't necessarily work as well at low end position where you're just one of many cogs, but it makes a big difference when people are looking to slot in just that one important (to the hiring manager, you might still be inconsequential to the overall business, depending on size) position.
So in talking in generalizations, it might not apply to you specifically. But broadly, over the industry, I think its slanted this way for the reason I described.
Even here, you ask the candidate for their salary range, instead of just stating what yours is.
If the salary isn't posted, it's a negotiation. There isn't a hiring manager alive that will blow off a potential hire because they ask for 5-10% more than the initial offer. They might not give it to them, but they won't walk away because of the question. Naturally, as a hiring manager, you might very well offer 5-10% less than your maximum in order to either give you bargaining room, or come in under budget for the position.
It's lightly adversarial, sometimes unpleasant, often annoying, but a part of life unfortunately. Some places more than others for sure, but I think it'd be hard to escape it fully.
Personally I have never taken only 10% more than the initial offer. I've also as a hiring manager never offered so much that I didn't have much more than 10% to give up in negotiations... Usually I'd have at least 20% wiggle room, and if I really like a candidate I'd fight to be able to offer more if necessary.
For my own part, usually I end up negotiating up at least 25%-30%. My "record" is 50% over the initial offer. Usually I also end up asking for more options etc.
The most unpleasant and adversarial negotiations have been ones where I had to give up salary information at the beginning or have the conversations cut short. They're the only negotiations I've entered into where I've sometimes ended up being lowballed, and the only ones that have failed over salary, and in one case led to me telling a recruiter to fuck off and never me call me again over it. As a result, these days I will tell them flat out that if they need my salary details up front, that indicates to me they are unlikely to be able to afford me, and to call back when they have more budget flexibility.
Candidates don't know this about you and have no a priori reason to trust you or believe it. Since most other corporate negotiators are far more predatory than you, it means candidates are better off adopting a unilateral strategy in which they just believe all negotiators are behaving badly.
On my phone interview with an US company in 1999, they asked me what salary I wanted. I told them "in my previous remote job, I was making $3.25 an hour; I would like $4". They replied "we'll give you $6". (Romania, Eastern Europe - this was about 8 times the average salary.)
This was the only time someone offered me more than I was asking :)
I've been on the hiring end of similar conversations. Often the thought process is that you're dealing with salaries so small compared to what they're used to that it's worth quite a bit extra to get someone who is so happy with what they're paid that you increase retention and don't have to spend time hiring replacements as often.
It can be one of the great parts of negotiating with someone located in a much higher paid location.
With startups, I disclose a target comp that's in the mid $200k range (I truly believe that's market rate at BigCo). They then make their best salary offer and try to convince me that the equity makes up for the difference. Since equity is funny money, they tend to overvalue it and it's really easy to discount its value and say the offer isn't high enough. I get a serious offer plus lots of negotiating wiggle room.
Another principle is that you should always counter.
So I'm _extremely_ surprised to hear that 95% of the time, people have refused to continue talking with you. I can't refute your experience, but I can say this has never happened to me or anyone that I've worked with to negotiate a starting salary.
Patrick's writing, which you alluded to, was a big inspiration for me to write and think more deeply about this subject. He knows what he's talking about.
If you watch the Salary Negotiation workshop (linked in my original comment), you'll see a section on "The Dreaded Salary Question" and there was a 15-minute discussion on it in the Q&A. (Both are linked in the notes below the embedded video.) You might watch those segments to see if anything jumps out at you that yo haven't' tried before.
Thanks for the question!