Most employers are not actually all that interested in what _you want_, but in what _you can provide them_. If necessary, they will pay for that. A great many applicants that come by our company have as motivation "to develop myself" and similar. That won't get many employers excited. If you come by and tell us: "I have a great idea to make/save you X euro/month (and are credible)", that would make employers much more likely to hire you.

Imagine if a grocer told you: I want you to buy this cucumber because it would make me feel great about my sales skills. Would you buy the cucumber just to do the grocer a favor? Now compare that to a grocer who tells you: "These cucumbers are delicious, healthy and will make you feel great about yourself for eating healthy food." IMO, the second grocer is much more likely to sell a lot of cucumbers, because he focuses on what his customers want instead of what he himself wants. The same is true for selling your labor.

In answer to "where do you see yourself in 5 years" question, I once told a potential employer that I would be CEO of his company.

I didn't get an offer :-)

I know somebody who did the same, and he ended up being the boss of a plant. Not the CEO, but still a lot of responsibility. And not from the start, he worked on all factory machines first and slowly he was given more responsibilities. It all depends on what they are looking for. This company looked for a local to replace the expats. It was a match.

Likewise, most applicants are not interested in what _the company wants_, but in what _the company can provide them_. They are going to be working a minimum of 8 hours a day 5 days a week for your company. This is why the applicant pool is so awful. Companies don't care what candidates want, candidates don't care what companies want.

the best answer is just to repeat back the position description or the company mission to whoever is asking

> Say you are actually interested in earning money for your work, a truly novel idea nowadays.

Last month I was ruled out at screening stage because I "focused too much on money" (that was the recruiter's feedback to me from the company's HR). They wanted to pay £35k for a developer who also can build statistical models. In London.

They're on a road to disappointment.

Yes as I am in the market at the moment and that sort of role in London your looking at 50k at that rate your be lucky to get a newbie grad.

They're on a road to outsourcing.

I don't mean saying that will help with your application, but that is probably on the list 'things you rarely hear during interviews'.

I also don't think good boy points help that much either, I'm subscribed to the idea we tend to hire people similar to us, effectively turning hiring into a numbers game without much influence over over that bias.

Indeed, once a technically challenged HR included a whole spreadsheet of applicants in her reply, which basically confirmed her company rejects applicants for arbitrarily stupid reasons, so one might as well focus on the money.

> Indeed, once a technically challenged HR included a whole spreadsheet of applicants in her reply, which basically confirmed her company rejects applicants for arbitrarily stupid reasons

Is this an imaginary situation, or did it actually happen? If the latter, link?

Indeed it happened. Won't share, it is full of personal information (it is not even in English), some of the reasons they list include talks weird, too confident, looked at the clock too many times, too many previous jobs etc.

Rejecting for too high expected salary was a non factor basically (also they strictly did not try to negotiate that), lacking technical skills were rarely mentioned too.

I know this isn't your point, but thought I'd share: for me being too confident is always an enormous red flag. Almost never makes sense rationally, unless you're talking about your tiny corner of super-specialization. And even then I'd like to see if you talk like that to the world's top expert in that area.

It's a reasonable response. Some companies simply can't afford to pay higher - if you don't have VC money, for instance.

It may well be that they can't afford someone who can build statistical models, but they can probably get someone more junior who's willing to learn. The new hire gets paid and gets experience, the company gets the job done. There are plenty of (experienced) people for whom money is not the prime motivator.

I would look at it a different way: if a company offers you a below-market rate, would you get paid a lot more if you can add significant value to the company in a year or two? Is the gamble of being underpaid in a small company worth it for you?

> It's a reasonable response.

How is the response "you're too focused on money" when trying to get a job to make money a reasonable one?

> There are plenty of (experienced) people for whom money is not the prime motivator.

There really aren't. This is a myth of the highest order. There might be some, but certainly not many. If they have families or debt, that number basically goes down to zero. And for the record, £35k in London for a software engineer is a laugh-out-loud joke; a bus driver's starting salary is £25k.

This seems to have provoked a rather angry reaction.

The company have stated what they're willing to pay, if that doesn't meet your expectation then look elsewhere. It's not a personal slight. On the flip side there are plenty of jobs which will pay more, and plenty (no doubt) which pay less. You can laugh at the job adverts and get angry when they won't pay you what you think your market rate is, but does it really matter? If you're that good, then you'll find a job which pays you what aspire to.

Note that the OP indicates they were rejected at a screening stage, which implies that there was no wasted time on interviews. I have no idea what the job is/was beyond that it involved statistics. The OP provided no details, although a followup post suggests it's not a small company. I used that as an example of a situation where you might see this sort of salary, and some logical justification for it (the morals are debateable). If it's a big corp then obviously you might expect different standards of pay.

I would give you academia as the obvious counter-example to your second argument. There are thousands of talented people, globally, earning peanuts compared to what they could in industry because they enjoy the work they do. I'll admit some compared to the hundreds of thousands of hungry developers, but it's not insignificant. Starting postdoc salary in London is around £35k for instance, with annual progression up the national spine point scale.

Academia is one field which has historically had excellent benefits for staff including regular travel, very flexible working hours and freedom to work as independently as you want. You also tend to get more holiday than industry e.g. 30 days is standard. That's a pretty good tradeoff to some folks.

Is it a laugh out loud joke? Public sector employees don't earn much more than that initially. To take a fanciful example, SIS/MI6 are currently advertising a software engineering role with a range starting at £32k.

Wrong. This is a naive thought which is thoroughly divorced from the market reality. There's no free lunch, and no qualified candidate below market rate -- if you don't pay in one form, you will pay in another form. Companies which do not allocate budget properly to hire competent employees pay for it with their bottom line.

If someone wants me to not be focussed on the money, they had either be paying so much I don't have to think about my bills, or they had better give me so much power that I can spend every day working on my own projects.

Offer anything else and I'm going to be thinking about how I can pay my bills by doing work on your projects to the detriment of my own.

You're assuming this is a small company. It's not.

I completely agree that good software engineers are able to provide value significantly above the standard salary ranges for the profession. That said, I’m pretty pragmatic about it — I don’t want “a job”, but I respect that there is a price for which I would do the work. In the past, I’ve been direct and honest that the price is about $2M/yr + significant equity. Sends a message, and gets the wrong recruiters off your back. :)

But — if you are applying for jobs for which there are common salary ranges, you are signalling that you’re likely willing to work for something in that general range.

I think part of the larger situation is that the leaders of many small businesses (including many startups) don’t know how to effectively apply good engineers.

Effective managers are in short supply compared to the number of founders running startups with no experience. I suppose this is because if you’re an effective manager, why would you lower your comp by working at a startup instead of at a larger established business that can properly compensate you for your valuable skill set (while anyone with some combination of an idea and some cash can be a founder).

I'm not really complaining about salaries though, just the fact that unsurprisingly honesty is not on anyone's list.

Let's be frank, people want to pay their bills and suits are worried about bottom lines.

Ever had anyone offer you $2M/yr?

"Sorry, we don't do that here."

I have a foolproof technique that everyone is welcome to use: I don't apply for positions that I know will pay less than what I think I'm worth. Otherwise, if the interviews go well and I'm happy with them and they're happy with me and they want to move forward and make me offer, and the offer seems to low, I ask them to increases it. If they don't, I don't take the position. If they do: voila, mission accomplished! Crazy, I know, but this one crazy trick really seems to do it.