> Someone I know joined a company where the recruiter told her that they give all their employees at that level this same salary so there's no room for negotiation unfortunately.

Oh wow. this happened to me recently. I foolishly believed that it was true since I've heard of companies like Reddit that have policies like these.

People encountering this need to name and shame more. This is straight-up using asymmetrical information as a zero-sum weapon. It is hard to find salary information ahead of time, Glassdoor notwithstanding; and it is also hard to know how sleazy they are to employees.

It isn't hard to write a comment about it that will show up in a search engine, and while that is far from perfect, it will allow employees who have freedom of motion to steer clear of slimy firms and those who don't to at least be able to negotiate from a slightly less-weak position.

This is likely also a bigger problem for women, who tend to be less savvy and less aggressive about negotiating for salary to begin with.

If you don't negotiate the salary it's your own problem. I honestly don't get it.

Tend to be less savvy?

The data hints that they negotiate less, yes.

There is some data suggesting that but you, and the original commenter, are jumping to conclusions that it's caused by lower “savviness”.

One commonly mentioned alternative explanation is simply that people will quite reasonably not risk negotiating aggressively when they perceive their negotiating power as being lower. Given the number of women or non-Caucasian/Asian men who've reported being paid less or held to a higher standard than peers, I would seriously consider the possibility that the data is showing us a symptom rather than the cause of the pay-gap.

Yes, I am aware of that and thank you for saying that so clearly. Savvy was perhaps not the best word choice, but I was attempting to be succinct and trying to avoid writing multiple paragraphs. Perhaps disadvantaged would be a better term here, given that we do not know the exact cause. But I do suspect one factor is that women have less access to important information via having a beer and shooting the breeze with the guys type acticities. I have seen online discussions that suggest to me women have less savvy -- which comes from the French savior meaning essentially know how -- because they have less access to group knowledge of such things.

One of the problems is that when women lack such knowledge, they come across as less confident because, in the statistical sense of the word, they literally are less confident. In other words, in an absence of hard information, you cannot be sure if the figure you are asking for is too high, too low or just right. But when they evince this lack of confidence, people usually try to give them pep talks rather than hard data. It gets treated like a lack of self esteem rather than a lack of information.

I do think you are correct that women simply cannot afford to negotiate as aggressively and this is a factor. But I also think they lack access to knowledge that a lot of men are exposed to casually simply because they are male and this makes it easier for them to hang with the right crowd and get anecdotes, etc. And that piece is what I was trying to capture with the word savvy.

I am a woman. I know a lot about negotiating. I remain poorly equipped to negotiate on salary because I lack information. Having general savvy about negotiating technique is insufficient. You cannot play hard ball if you do not have hard information particular to the problem space in question.

I like your suggestion of “disadvantaged” — it covers both the information asymmetry and the real or perceived differences in negotiating strength.

Also women who try to negotiate can get retaliated against.

At this point I'm always going to fall into one of two boats:

1) I don't need a job. You'll pay me what I want or no deal. In those cases things like what this recruiter pulled won't work.

2) I need a job. In this case it doesn't really matter to me.

I've been in both situation. I first encountered (2) when I was looking for my first fulltime job back in college. I had little idea of how much I'm supposed to get paid so I told the recruiter: "I had no idea how much I worth, but one day I'll find out. And if I realized I'm low-balled, I'll left for another company immediately and all the resource your company spend on training me will go nowhere." It worked for me. But I guess it won't work for those really sketchy recruiters since all they care is take their commission.

Little ballsy, Raises a good point as well. I'll need to keep that in mind when I go for my first FT job

Interestingly enough, recruiters get paid a % of the salary as a commission most of the time. This means they actually have an incentive to get you higher pay.

But they also can't keep bringing in people above a company's ask. It's a balance that has to be managed.

The biggest gap for the recruiter is between no and yes. The tiny increase they get for themselves for negotiating hard on behalf of their placement rounds to zero in most cases. If it costs them a placement, the opportunity cost is huge.

This is also often referred to as the "realtor problem", for those who've run into that one.

Point taken. For engineers, I can see this being the case.

I have always been in (1) or (2), but can think of (3) I'd love to be at this job (because of company mission, etc) . Maybe it is a subcase of (2)?

I think that would be a subcase of (1). Would be "give me what I want" which would be other reasons than "pay me what I want".

Absolutely, I should have phrased it that way from the start. I don't view salary as the end all be all, however I'll be the one to choose what I'm willing to take a discount for, not them.

> I foolishly believed that it was true since I've heard of companies like Reddit that have policies like these.

A lot of large companies have tiered salary levels that are not in any way tailored for the individual. In Germany, we have a Tarifvertrag in virtually every large company, which fixes the salary.

Salary tables are typical for unionised environments. Majority of software developers and their workplaces are not unionised, even in Europe.

Not really. This is typical in consultancy, where you deal with averages when you create a budget. Extremities would make the bidding risky.

>For example, I’ve told recruiters about my salary expectations and had them laugh and say “no one gives that kind of [salary/equity/vacation/benefits].”

I had a similar experience looking for my first job in Chicago a few years back.

I met with a fairly large general recruiting firm in the area just so they could feel me out.

I named my expectation of 50-60k to which the recruiter replied.

"You know... when I moved to Chicago I was living on 18k"

Not exactly the type of response I expected.

"Wow, you came to Chicago as a software engineer too? Tell me about how you got into recruiting?"

Ugh what one should even say to that? "sucks to be you"?

I would have walked out after hearing that. How could a recruiting firm be of any help to you if their goal is to get you to accept a low paying job asap. They'll be fighting with you every step of the way. I would rather search for a job on my own, even if it means eating ramen every day for months.

> “no one gives that kind of [salary/equity/vacation/benefits].”

Everything is negotiable, including when you hear things like that and "that's not our policy", etc.

This is super common. You just have to know it is something recruiters say to try and get a prospective recruit to accept a lower compensation package and work around it.

I clicked on this thread by accident. Was worth it.