It's not fine to say it if it's not true How about the example where the hiring manager says "this is all we can afford to pay for the position" when there are

It's not fine to say it if it's not true How about the example where the hiring manager says "this is all we can afford to pay for the position" when there are other employees at the company making much more for the same job? Shouldn't the employee feel equally taken advantage of? I was in this situation early in my career where I was told $55k was the highest they could go for this position, that's all they had in the budget, etc. This was a large publicly-traded tech company (at the time, private now). I knew for a fact it was a lie, but I took the job because I needed experience to put on my resume, so I wasn't totally naive. At my 1 year review, I later found out that other developers on my team were making $70-80k, so I used some of the techniques described in the pastebin post to get another offer for $65k, get my employer to match, then I got the other company to beat my employer's match with $70k. I stayed at that company for 3 months and then left to go to a better company for $80k. In this case I was completely honest about my salary, but my company flat out lied about what they could pay. After a year at $80k I switched companies and was able to jump to $110k by exaggerating my salary. I didn't lie about it, but I reported my $80k plus 20% bonus (that I had a good chance of getting), perks such as 401k match, free concert tickets, etc as a "total compensation" of $100k.