Would be great if you could impart some offer negotiation advise! I was once interviewing with the fruit company. The HR guy was very aggressive, and insisted that I reveal all details of my current comp before we proceed further. This was after I was referred by an employee and already had an conversation with the team lead. After I revealed my comp, he acted very surprised about how high it was, and about how difficult it would be for them to exceed it.

How do you respond when they insist on knowing your comp details?

Step 1: you never reveal your comp data. At all. I will, and have, walked away from interviews when they ask this stuff and don't let up.

As fuzzy-logic said, just don't reveal your total comp, and be willing to walk away from it for real (walking away from such juicy offers requires the most determination, so it's important you do it from a position of power, for example if you already have a good job, otherwise they have you by the balls).

The only case where it can be beneficial to disclose something about your compensation is if you have deferred compensation (e.g. stock options) that you want your potential new employer to somehow consider in the offer. In that case, sharing a copy of the grant is the easiest thing to do, and doesn't hurt much

I see. How does one then approach the topic of compensation, and determine if the two parties at at least in the same ballpark?

Do you postpone comp-talk until an offer is on the table? Or is it safe to assume that large companies generally have an extremely elastic range?

Do you think it's a good idea say something like "If you can offer $OBVIOUSLY_EXTREMELY_HIGH, i will immediately accept. For lesser offers, i will evaluate them on a case by case basis."

I don't believe it. 1.8M - 3M in RSU grant at google/FB? I have never heard of such a thing for an engineer. It's director level MINIMUM.

One last data point for you and then I'll stop, since you don't seem willing to believe me anyway.

Did you ever read Chaos Monkey? (https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...)

The author was a founder of a very little startup (3-men shop) and after 6 months tried to approach Facebook to be acquired, and Facebook told him: we don't want your technology, but since you have proven to be capable of building something exceptional, we want you to join (and you can throw away your product), and we'll offer you $2-3M (don't recall the exact number) in RSUs with a 4y vesting schedule, which he clearly accepted.

Now, those "acqui-hires" happen all the time among those big companies. Since the acquiring company is clearly not interested in the product but just in the talent, how is that different than getting in the door as a really solid individual contributor with terrific experience in getting stuff done (of course, your resume and interview skills need to reflect that, and also, probably even more importantly, your negotiation skills). You can choose to not believe me, but the answer is that there is no difference at all.

If you live in the valley, I can't believe you don't have an acquaintance who followed exactly the path of being individually "acqui-hired" as a talented individual contributor (but not being part of a real acquisition, mind you), which is exactly what happened to my two friends described above (no direct reports, purely technical gig). They are very very good in their fields and managed to sell themselves very well to the right teams inside those big companies.

Now that all make sense... The acqui-hire situation is another topic. Millions of dollars are spent when it comes to people acquisition. And indeed, companies are usually willing to get what they need no matter what. Any random software engineer with 10 years of exp can't get that in the valley by applying at Google. That would cost Google a lot of money... Plus, there's no real negotiation when you sent out your Resume asking them to hire you... they have full control. You might get a 10k sign-on bonus just by asking. That's it

I would be grateful to hear their story and learn from it. If you prefer to keep that private, can i email you (your profile doesn't have an email)?