It's one of the (dirty?) pleasures in the work-life, isn't it? I still treasure getting to the stage in my life when I could afford to stop saying what my salary expectation was outside of "fair in relation to the market and my experience".

Recruiter H/R: "We need to hear your salary requirements to move forward with this position".

me: "I would like to hear your offer".

Recruiter / HR: "We won't be able to consider your candidacy without your salary expectations"

Me: "Then, despite my interest in this outstanding company, and the high value I believe I can contribute to it, I will be forced to go with the employers that make a salary offer first".

Best fuck I ever had.

Or, better yet, instead of sinking that negotiation 100% of the time after your last sentence, you could give obviously large sum and tell them you are open to negotiation once you had your chance to present yourself and the company present themselves.

Not only this shows a little more negotiation savvy, but once in a blue moon this could give you an offer you have not expected. For example, they could just say "OK".

If you have the luxury of affording spending time on multiple interviews, very sound point!

Who do you think you are screwing by cutting off your opportunities at the root? :)

As the other reply pointed out, you are cutting yourself (a) out of the conversation (b) out of finding out what your actual range is.

Here's a dirty secret for you - very often the recruiters don't share the range because the range is broad, they may fill the role with a mid-level or a super-senior at 2x the comp. If they tell you the range, it's likely a more cookie cutter mid-level role and you don't even get to learn where you could land (or what your level doesn't hit and maybe you want to work toward)

> because the range is broad

You make it sound like if they don't tell you what the range is, they are somehow doing you a favor. No, if they don't tell you the range it's not because they're nice or whatever, but because they're trying to get you to sign on for the lowest amount possible. If you hear the range is larger than what you were expecting, you're gonna try to hit that upper bound. Both positions are understandable from their own points of view, no hard feelings here. But, in general, the recruiter is not your friend and not there to help you. Them not disclosing information is to their advantage, not to yours.

>> But, in general, the recruiter is not your friend and not there to help you. Them not disclosing information is to their advantage, not to yours.

I think that's an unhelpful point of view in any but most commoditized-labor situation.

The more rare and hard to find your combination of skills and experience, the longer the recruiter has spent looking for you, and the more motivated they are to get you the best offer possible to get you in the door. It's not in their or your interest to lose you to save a few tens of thousands of dollars.

>> You make it sound like if they don't tell you what the range is, they are somehow doing you a favor. No, if they don't tell you the range it's not because they're nice or whatever, but because they're trying to get you to sign on for the lowest amount possible.

Again that kind of only works in the most commoditized situations (eg: "hire anyone with 6 months experience with React" or whatever.) The more specialized the recruiting search, the broader the range becomes: for example, "we need someone who knows technology X and Y, has been in industry A and has shown attributes B and C" they recognize they may end up hire a more junior or a more senior person and expect different things from them. So the role may pay 250 or it may pay 500 based on who you are. If you're in the 250-level experience range, it's meaningless for you to hear that it can go up to 500.

In California they are legally required to tell you the range if you ask.

Would you happen to know if this is a) for california-based employers, regardless of seeker status b) for california-based job seekers only?

The text of Labor Code 432.3(c) is:

An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment. For purposes of this section, “pay scale” means a salary or hourly wage range. For purposes of this section “reasonable request” means a request made after an applicant has completed an initial interview with the employer.

Based on the wording, in that it appears to be addressing employers in the law's jurisdiction, I believe the answer is a).

Thank you for taking the time to look that up!

By divulging the higher end of the range, the company instantly looses with less experienced candidates that could be content with their work if not for the fact, now there are two posibilities:

1. The candidate will ask closer to the upper end of the range but will get declined. Both company and candidate lost because divulging the upper end created unrealistic expectation by the candidate.

2. The candidate will or will not ask closer to the upper end and if he asks, the company declines and proposes more realistic rate. Now, both still loose because the candidate is "tainted" by thinking the company did not think he is worth the money and that he could get so much more.

The alternative is to have very narrow range but this is also suboptimal, because it is better to be flexible and once you get to know the candidate figure out where he/she fits.

Asking for rate at the beginning also allows to fine-tune the recruitment process. The company should NEVER propose less than what the candidate stated as their minimum. That's just a way to get an unhappy employee from day one. So, by specifying your rate you also specify minimum requirements you have to pass for the company to be interested in you. If you say you are expensive, that's the standard you are going to be evaluated against.

It seems to me that knowing what a position a company looks for fetches on the market is the recruiter and HR's job. No one said it would be easy. If the range is too wide and the position can be filled by a variety of people then maybe the offer is defined and presented incorrectly.

Again, having a flexible rate but not letting the candidate know is better for the company, not for the candidate. Keeping the range a secret instead of defining the range correctly and specifying the job correctly seems like laziness on the part of recruiter/ HR.

Excellent points! A note: for some, in HR/R, there is a material incentive to get a candidate to take a lower range, i.e. the lower the one doing the value-generating job gets paid, the higher the commission bonus /imaginary career bonus points for the HR/R.

I've spoken with (drunk to be honest?) recruiters that got a lower overall commission the higher the salary for the recruited person got.

> I've spoken with (drunk to be honest?) recruiters that got a lower overall commission the higher the salary for the recruited person got.

Not to be an asshole, but that wouldn't suprise me. Maybe I got more cynical with age but anytime someone I don't know tries to tell me, implies, makes me feel that he/she is my friend and wants what's best for me, without a clear reason or incentive for it being so, I get real suspicious real fast.

As a counter example, I am working for a large bank now and I am regularly interviewing candidates. We interview candidates first and then figure out if there is a role that would feel the candidate well.

I personally like it much better than having rigid positions and have to pass on a candidate just because he/she does not fit a rigid set of requirements.

That does sound like an interesting approach but I think is only applicable in first-job or entry level positions right?

What kind of seniority are we talking about here?

> Who do you think you are screwing by cutting off your opportunities at the root? :)

Which would that be, if you have multiple offers, where they name the first number, and then you offer them the opportunity to bid higher against each other?

That sounds complicated and unnecessary. I am honest with recruiters about what I make, some of them to "oh shit that's 3x what we are looking to pay" and some go "oh ok cool that's probably doable." Then you go down the road with the second set and depending on how well you interview they make you an offer you can take, negotiate or leave. So I am in a position of strictly more options than if I had a rule of not speaking to folks who didn't state a range.

I just give them the salary I want to make (which is easy because what's on my paycheck + stock opts is a good enough value) so either they go for it or they will decline. It's a good way to see if they mean it or not

So yeah sorry, not moving for a lower value

Would that strategy perhaps be excluding a higher salary with those willing to pay more than your maximum ask? (genuine question, no sarcasm)

No strategy is perfect if you have imperfect information. You just choose between different risk profiles.

Probably the simplest strategy would be to always ask for the amount you curently make, plus 30% or 50%. And keep interviewing once in a while even if you are okay with your current job. If you asked for less than you could get, the next jump will fix it.

Then don't increase your expenses, save the extra money, retire early.

Good grief do I ever work in the wrong part of the world.

I’m well established in my career (and I don’t have SV costs of living to be fair) - but anywhere even in the galaxy of $200 an hour would be life-changing for me.

Shoot, the $45 an hour mentioned up this chain would be life changing for me (yes, I live in the U.S.), after 15 years at my job I make 17.26 an hour. It's why this talk of $15 minimum wage mildly terrifies me, I know people need it but man, it suddenly thrusts me nearly to minimum wage (minimum wage is currently 7.25 here).

You can feel secure knowing if you lost your job, any other job you find would at worst pay $2.26 less than you're receiving now, so you wouldn't suffer an awful drop in living standards (and you'd hope it would also pressure your employer to give you a raise..)

You should see an increase in your wage when the minimum goes to $15. A rising tide lifts all boats. Inflation is virtually zero, so rising wages are a good thing for the vast majority of wage and salary earning employees.

I am not sure it's given that inflation will stay at zero with rising minimum wages.

I think GP is worried this may not be the case, and he would lose purchasing power.

Nothing may happen, but I think we'll have to wait and see if this is the case or not.

My annual merit based increases are often at or just below inflation levels and the cost increase of insurance, I wouldn't hold my breath on my employer upping my pay a comparable amount - shareholders aren't fond of shrinking profits.

I think the largest pay bump I've ever seen in a year was right at 2% or possibly even less.

Why would inflation stay at 0? That is extremely unlikely.

I would love to see you prove that with actual labor statistics. Employers do not do that, plus now you need to deal with higher prices.

It “suddenly thrusts” you absolutely nowhere. You still earn exactly as much as you do now, but it is interesting to observe the psychological effect of being surrounded by people who are more miserable than oneself.

>You still earn exactly as much as you do now,

And one would assume you'd see rents and housing prices very rapidly start going up, then presumably other prices over varying levels of time.

Perhaps. But why wouldn’t the same apply to salaries then?

What would happen if we were to set the minimal wage at 100K so that we eliminate the poverty in one swift move and everyone is either equally rich, or as you are worried - equally poor :)

Having people only make slightly less than you terrifies you? Why does knowing someone else might be getting a tiny raise terrify you?

The problem with minimum wages is that they don't do anything. There is a mild psychological effect that forces people below minimum wage to find a new job. However, if the economy doesn't have enough jobs above minimum wage, then it does nothing.

If the government offered jobs at the minimum wage there would be an effective price floor for wages. Better yet, if those government workers spend their income they can drive economic demand which ends up creating jobs above minimum wage. Eventually every job pays more than minimum wage and nobody is dependent on the jobs guarantee.

And if there are enough jobs, then it does something, and does it well. It forces companies to spend a bit more on their employees and in some ways, redistributes wealth.

Your solution isn’t better. The government cannot be everywhere the way that Walmart is.

I really don’t think its impact is going to be that big. Low skilled labor will still find ways to get hired for less, off the books if the need is great enough...it happens all the time.

The government is already in more places than Walmart is though?

The government already offers jobs like that too, just that it's through the prison system and the floor is much too low

Look, as much as I hate Walmart, they exist in places at levels that the federal/state does not. Either way, that's not the only thing my argument stands on. I'm as liberal as they come, and would never suggest expanding the government just to fit that capacity.

I work as a Senior Software Engineer for big international corporation in the 2nd world country and $45/hour would be life-changing for me and most of the people I know.

I live in the US in a metro of less than 2 million, and my very first contract job as a self-taught developer who barely knew JavaScript was $45/hour. The guy didn’t even blink when I asked for that much. It was life changing for me too, going from desktop support to doing dev work.

I remember meeting a taxi cab driver in the US that told me about his experience coming on a tourist visa, getting married to stay and working towards starting to work as an engineer.

There are ways to move anywhere you want, and ways to get remote work at us companies, especially now, if you don't want to move. They are not easy, but they exist.

You don't have to move to the US to make 200. That's easily available for remote people. For the big bucks, moving maybe helps but it's unlikely you make it from driving Uber to 1k/hr unless you run your own business.

> That's easily available for remote people.

Not easily at all, clients usually avoid working with offshore freelancers directly, and established freelance platforms tend to cap the overseas rates (because they want their cut and also clients expect offshore devs to cost much less)

Or am I totally wrong here?

My experience is, as I read the job ads, they want US based remoters for the easy accounting. So at the minimum, one would have to set up a US company. At the "easiest for the employer", one would have to bill/apply and work through a US resident.

If someone has other solutions for out-of-the-US, non-US-tax-reporters to applying to US remote jobs that list "US based" as a requirement I would love to hear about it.

You don’t present as a freelancer, but as a remote employee to get access to these sorts of things, for the exact reasons you correctly stated

A good idea in most parts of the world is not to measure $$$ but to measure compensation in sq. ft. of real estate per year. At my lowest-paid job (professor at top-30 school), i was paid 107 sq ft of take-home pay per year. I quit that tenure-track job @2y and took another job that paid 1800 sq. ft. per year. I currently earn about 300 sq. ft per year.

I genuinely feel bad for talented people that get suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if recruiters try and do this.

I think talented people will not take it unless they're between a rock and a hard place. Sadly what this does is it attracts only the most junior or unqualified hires who (are great if you got time/budget but if not) will need to be trained by the few seniors left holding the place together.

I'm not surprised Intel does this and the telecommunications side I have seen from them in Europe was rotten to the core. I have several anecdotes here just one: A friend got poached from Intel in a cushy job with great pay in a key role a lot of niche knowledge, they had to know how valuable he was, after the first week on the new job with Intel he got told that the department decided to reduce the headcount due to a restructuring and so he was the first to go.

If it sounds like "business as usual" let me add nobody else was fired, he had a 3 month long negotiation, 6 months notice period on the old job, 3 kids, and in his late 40ies in a specific market. What he was promised would have justified taking the risk. Later I heard they do this all the time from a guy who recruits for Intel. Also this was not in the enterprise market with lot of talent but telecommunications O&M (operations and maintenance plane). He eventually went to go beg to get his job back. He'll never have the same standing in the company tho.

It's not uncommon for those types of problems to be contract law violations. "Reliance" is a thing, random url: https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1778

I don't understand:

> A friend got poached from Intel in a cushy job

> after the first week on the new job with Intel ... he was the first to go.

He got poached from Intel or should it be by Intel? Since his new job apparently was at Intel

> Later I heard they do this all the time

Why do they do that? Sounds like a waste of time for the recruiters (and him but apparently they don't care about that)

thanks yes should be by Intel.

Yeah, don't understand the story. He got poached from intel, or by intel? Where was he let go from? You need to.. maybe edit the story a bit.

It was by Intel, see this reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25872393

Being slightly underpaid is a great lifehack, but only if your bosses know it. Less stress, more work/life balance. Let people work themselves to the bone for 30% more money. That isn't for me.

Money in the bank is a great lifehack. Money in the bank is the greatest stress reliever in our society. The ability to say "this ain't for me" and walk away free of consequences. And knowing that no matter what happens next your expenses are still covered is the best hack.

This. Calculate your pay per hour of actual work. Include the hassle and costs require to recharge. Maximize total pay or pay per hour. Rarely are they the same.

Really?

If nothing else, making 30% more and saving it would allow you to retire 30 percent earlier. Is half assed slacking for 10+ extra years really that good a proposition when instead you can actually crush it now and then be fully free?

Also, to be honest I've never seen the "he's underpaid so we expect less" dynamic in management. What I see much more often is "this guy is bad, not quite so bad that we can fire him but almost. We can't justify raising his comp so let's give him shit work that others would rather not do." Maybe your situation is as you say but seems odd.

You'd be right if we aged like Benjamin Button.

But you're glossing over the downsides of trading your youth away for a hopeful payoff at a later date. Not all of us like that bargain.

I make a fraction of what people in this thread are saying they make. But what price do you put on being 30 and single on a beach in Mexico, happy, with a low stress job? You could look at it as if I paid half my salary to buy back my time.

We all value things differently, but notice that it's your youngest self that's most eager to bargain your youth away.

This is accurate, only if you're say underpaid by 20-30%. In my experience, a lot of high stress jobs pay way more than that. Otherwise attrition is a problem. Golden handcuffs aint cheap.

Some people don't care so much about the money. I'm barely over the six figure mark in the bay area. I could probably make a lot more money somewhere else, but I wouldn't get to do anything nearly as interesting as my current work.

I don't think is about not caring about the money... it seems to me that the salary is just the manifestation of the value the company places in the individual, and thus a company that pays 1/3 of the industry average shows very little care for their engineers, at least in my book

The salary is the most tangible and measurable manifestation, but it's not necessarily complete. Companies can make efforts in other ways e.g. ensuring good work-life balance (which could entail hiring more people), providing allowances for mental health, parental care etc... . All these things can become relatively very valuable once the salary crosses a minimum threshold.

> the salary is just the manifestation of the value the company places in the individual

My experience confirms this. The least paid jobs I had were also the most stressful.

What if I told you that, more often than not, you could do your current work and get much more money? People, especially tech people, are quite awful at extracting their full value.

Fully agree. For some reason people assume that you get paid more in order to deal with less interesting work or a worse work environment.

This is completely false.

You get paid more when the company values you more.

The company values you more, when they make more from what you are able to contribute, on average.

Highly paid engineering work environments are strongly correlated with interesting work and with good working conditions.

> For some reason people assume that you get paid more in order to deal with less interesting work or a worse work environment.

> This is completely false.

I wouldn't say it's completely false. For example, I'm guessing many enterprise software developers make more than many CS professors. Said professors are obviously qualified to make CRUD apps but they would rather do research or teach curriculums based on their interests.

> The company values you more, when they make more from what you are able to contribute, on average.

Yes, this is true. But your conclusion does not follow from that:

> Highly paid engineering work environments are strongly correlated with interesting work and with good working conditions.

There is probably some correlation between interesting work for the engineer on the one hand and profitable work for the employer on the other, but it's not nearly as strong as you make it seem.

Game studios pay their developers poorly, precisely because there is a flood of people who find that type of work interesting. I'm doing a "boring" job and I get paid more than a game developer.

Thanks wikibob, somebody I know really needed to hear that.

But would you rather work 40 hours per week for €100k or 4 hours a week for €50k?

You would be wrong. The number of places you can work where your code literally goes to the moon is very, very finite.

I would say I'm in a somewhat similar boat where I believe the work and problems I get to work on are very unexplored and super interesting but the company and industry doesn't "value" software engineers at the moment. Tbh, in a capitalist society, I cannot accept that and am looking for a change. Give me cash or give me stocks in the company, neither and you just take me for a fool. I am sincerely curious what your thoughts are on this, why would you accept a massive paycut to work on something interesting for a company that makes $$ off your work?

Some things can not be easily purchased with money. Getting paid twice as much may let me retire faster. But what if I don't want to retire? What about people, who actually love their jobs?

Intel engineers design chips, used by billions of people. There is a certain value, placed on such jobs. And it appears, that Intel management is happy to exploit that value.

People agree, talented people do not.

Underpaid people aren’t talented? That’s harsh.

It happens temporarily all the time of course such that there are plenty of talented people underpaid at a given time but long term most will not be. I along with friends went through bouts of shitty jobs, but it is rare to stay that way. Hiring from the pool of low rate workers is not a suitable standard practice at a place that isn’t a shithole.. as we see here with Intel.

People get paid what they ask for. No one is underpaid or overpaid.

Simply ask for more in salary and benefits. When they ask why, state all the reasons why the increase is warranted. If they deny the request, look for another job that pays the higher amount.

This I can get behind (note this has nothing to do with talent).

You're assuming that markets are perfect.

The markets are never perfect. That's why you have to ask for what you want.

A lot of people do not understand their worth and let get hired/exploited for peanuts.

When I was hired for my absolute first job, over two decades ago, I was asked how much I want. I did not know how much I can ask so I asked some minimum that I thought would pay for my expenses. The guy who interviewed me, who was to be my manager, said he shouldn't be telling this but I can ask twice as much.

Then that underpaid employee gets easily poached for x3 their pay a year in, when they have all the valuable knowledge and work responsibilities.

Sounds like what happened at Intel, from the top comments.

Yes, your first job. Not your second. You need to be deeply unpleasant to work with for no one to tell you you've been exploited when you leave.

He probably told you that because that was the minimum salary range for that position.

Then, they will make the case there is a "talent shortage" and attempt to hire overseas workers at salaries that barely pay bay area living costs.

I do not live in CA and have never took any contract jobs from CA, its contract hourly rate is not competitive at all and to make it worse, its state income tax will take another cut(~13%), there is no way CA's contract rate can be competitive, CA is in decline in general as far as I can see.