Note - I've always given my number first (and all consultants tend to) and it's worked out fine.
Note, most people don't like dealing with places that are not upfront with the number to purchase the item / time etc. So if you are selling your labor, have some sense of its value /price.
There is no objective measure and you likely underestimate what you are "worth" to some companies.
As a consultant it might be different because roles are different and you aren't really talking to HR at that point, e.g salary negotiation
The concept of your "worth" as the salary that you can manage to negotiate is so stupidly backwards that I cannot express how much it makes me want to burn everything to the ground.
"I've actually done a few of these calls at this point and i know what the best practice / right move / way to play this is, so instead of me telling you what i'm looking for i'd like you to tell me the range on your hiring document:)" and just be totally silent.
Worked twice for me now.
Most people want to fill the audio void and will talk. Extensively.
Usually that comes with the offer letter, or comes with the numbers that the recruiter reads to you before the offer letter.
But this is usually much before offer letter.
Now I ask back with “what is the total compensation for this position/role?”. I almost always get an answer, often above my expectations. I used to give my range (mistake)
When they answer "no, we want you to give a number first", I'm at loss about what to do, so I usually give them a number. Answering "no, you" feels kinda puerile.
I assume you have to be the first to do the power play?
Do your homework. These days it's not that hard to determine what a competitive rate for a job is. Then ask for the top end of that, or even a bit more. It shows that you know what you are getting into, what you are worth, and quickly surfaces that there's been a misunderstanding about the job, if there has been one.
Sure maybe push back a little to see if they'll throw out the first number. But don't dance around it too much. Have your number in mind.
I always just say stuff like "I assume that the compensation at amazing company xyz will be competitive enough to consider"
Additionally, remember that most independent recruiters work on some form of commission. It's in their best interest to get you more money because then they also get more money.
Most people ignore these contacts, so it does kinda work to match needy recruiters with underemployed IT pros. But when you're already at FAANG making 400k a year, it can take a recruiter phone call, two tech screens, and an onsite before compensation comes up, and you're now invested like 10 hours into a negotiation where your BATNA exceeds whatever budget they have written down. I've had one recruiter get a bit angry even over it, as if my number was unrealistic (I assume they were unprepared to make a competitive offer).
Since there are so many of these lowball recruiters, some people resort to screening them out up front with a salary negotiation.
If you don't set some kind of expectations with a recruiter then you might end up in processes where the 'negotiation' happens at the back-end, when you've been through the hoops, and the company has no chance in meeting what you're looking for.
This can waste a large amount of your time. Which is probably valuable if this is a situation you're concerned about :-)
It's not so much that as a negotiation technique it's outdated, it's more that you need to pre-select positions in some manner so you don't waste your time. If you are being paid X and a company pays their best employee X/2, but think they are paying 'really well', you're never going to not be wasting your time.
I admit it's not exactly applicable to salary negotiation, but IMO leading with a high number can help cement the counterparty's perception of your value. I think it really depends on what type of company (and what level of its food chain) you're applying for.
They may get more money total, but less money per unit time spent. Their ideal scenario is getting their commission instantly, even if it leaves some money on the table.
Why would I even bother giving them a number if they dont do it first? My way of saying, dont waste my time.
Dictating salary reqs up front does two things:
1. Reduces time wasted on folks or orgs that don't want to pay your rate.
2. Immediately moves discussion away from a dance around salary to salary _negotiation_. Any good HR org that can't meet your salary reqs and still wants you will try to compensate in other ways (stocks, RSUs, benefits, bonuses, etc).
At some terrible companies even, it's harder to hire someone outside of their defined salary band. Even if you don't care about being nice or paying fairly, your life is just made easier by paying them the bottom of the range rather than dealing with HR about salary bands.
(I also agree with many of the parents: you don't really want to be the first mover — it isn't advantageous — but recruiters are very rarely going to give you that, and will force your hand in naming a number first.)
Queue up yourself asking for 150 coz you make 100 right now and you did your research. The recruiter might just begrudgingly give you the 150 they were prepared to go to anyway coz you seem to know your stuff. Of maybe he's gonna haggle you down to 140. Big deal. But you set the tone of the conversation. This is not gonna work if you don't know your worth but either way either you are gonna lowball yourself and they will just accept or they are gonna lowball it.
Episode 10 here but the rest are awesome too:
I would imagine (perhaps unreasonably) that a relatively seasoned person on the job market would have a reasonable understanding of their market value within a few percentage points - so the recruiter might be willing to pay up to $105/hour, while you low balled it at $100/hour.
Just to have concrete numbers to work with, suppose initial offers exactly correspond to final pay and that you're currently making toward the lower end of that range (e.g. because raises haven't kept up with your increased skill and increased market demand).
If you're currently making $X/yr (total comp), you think you _might_ be worth $X+$50k to somebody, and you spit out $X+$50k as your target range, a prospective employer could generously offer $X+$60k and you'd be happy as a clam and none the wiser while missing out on a new Tesla per year in extra pay.
There's a separate argument that if you'd be happy with $X+$60k then you shouldn't try to squeeze your employer for more, but I'll let somebody else make it if they'd like. Regardless, that big of a spread really does exist, and I imagine it grows further into one's career.
Specially in small/medium companies, a lot of the times businesses don’t know what they are looking for.
I know of a place that was looking for a “hardware engineer with 10y experience”. The average salary for this kind of job posting is not that high, they offered way more, but that’s because the actual position was “we’re looking for someone to become COO, and we need him to understand hardware development because the rest of the team doesn’t”.
To my layman understanding, the larger the difference between expectations, the lower the value in this tactic of not revealing your expectations.
Negotiation is an adversarial game played between humans. Therefore there can't be any simple advice except to get better at the things that make you more competitive at negotiation itself. Instead of subscribing to basic rules like, "never give the first number!", put yourself in a position of being well networked, well informed and experienced. Then you can decide how to negotiate well on the fly according to the context. You will probably earn vastly more by focusing on those areas than you will by diligently following simple rules of thumb.
For example: I received an offer from Stripe and got them to add a $100k sign on bonus to it even though I previously gave the first number. Which party gives the first number doesn't matter.
To me that feels more complicated in Silicon Valley with equity. Once a minimum salary is met, I'll care about total compensation, not just the base salary. I'd be nervous that mentioning a low salary could lower an offer, and I don't a have reasonable number for salary I would accept if the company doesn't give much equity.
From my experience recruiters prefer to be told the salary ranges you are looking for to no waste their time neither yours.