7 ms·

Anchoring only works if the potential employer is ready to buy. Many, many organizations will simply use the number as yet another filter, and you won't even b

Anchoring only works if the potential employer is ready to buy. Many, many organizations will simply use the number as yet another filter, and you won't even begin discussions. By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number. I do agree with the wasted negotiating time thing.

pc86 10y ago
This is why we publish salary ranges with our job ads but also require a desired salary within that range from candidates.
- sheeshkebab 10y ago
  That's how us government jobs work too :)
  - pc86 10y ago
    Unfortunately the negatives around government jobs far outweigh the benefits of having the salary a known quantity when you are applying.
- sitkack 10y ago
  If only the rest of the industry was so mature.
- davemel37 10y ago
  Every time I ever tried this, the candidates hover around the top of the range regardless of qualification and experience.
  - jjnoakes 10y ago
    Which is fine; if you can argue that their experience may not merit top of the range, you just negotiate down a bit...
    - dbancajas 10y ago
      or you don't hire them
    - davemel37 10y ago
      This might just be me and my own immaturity, but in my experience, employees often count their eggs before they hatch, and once I start negotiating them down, I create a scenario where I can't get them fully aligned with my goals. They become a simple exchange of cash for labor and not someone who grows loyal or feels a sense of fairness, ownership and excitement about the role. Maybe I am naive, but I feel like this creates a dynamic that hurts otherwise promising prospects.
      - chongli 10y ago
        They become a simple exchange of cash for labor and not someone who grows loyal or feels a sense of fairness, ownership and excitement about the role. You've hit upon a fundamental tenet of Marxism: alienation [0]. You haven't said whether or not you offer equity as part of your compensation. If not, then it is somewhat unreasonable to expect that sort of loyalty from your employees. If so, then you have a challenging task of convincing people to buy in to your vision at a potentially high personal risk. Today's economy is rife with alienation. So many people are constantly changing jobs or dropping out of the workforce [1]. Meanwhile, they're struggling inside a system that produces rampant cost disease [2] and staggering inequality, as illustrated by the dreaded "elephant graph" [3]. Overall, I think there's a growing sense of discontent with capitalism and this can manifest in suspicion towards employers. Now I'll grant you that it's entirely unfair to lay all this at the feet of just a single employer such as yourself. I don't intend for this to come across as some kind of blame game. I merely hope to provide a larger context for ideas that many people may not even be consciously aware of but contribute to their feelings and instincts nonetheless. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio... [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/02/03/what-we-know-and-dont-know-about-the-declining-labor-force-participation-rate/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/02... [2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-... [3] http://voxeu.org/article/greatest-reshuffle-individual-incomes-industrial-revolution http://voxeu.org/article/greatest-reshuffle-individual-incom...
  - hamandcheese 10y ago
    Maybe try posting a minimum salary only? "Roles for this position start at $x for qualified candidates, negotiable based on experience" or something like that.
    - davemel37 10y ago
      Interesting idea
    - Scea91 10y ago
      I don't think thats a viable strategy. I get lots of semi-spam offers. I usually just skim through them in 5 seconds and if I see salary figure way below what I would expect then it's 100 % I will not be replying.
  - majormajor 10y ago
    Wonder how it would work out if you listed the top of the range at actually midway through the range. Maybe that would be the desired result - this is kinda similar sounding to my employer, where our "bring them on at" range is lower than the "expected pay at this role" range, because we want people to have room for nice raises even if they're not promotion-ready.
- bunnymancer 10y ago
  Thank you for doing that. I try to only ever apply to jobs with salary range posted. Although as a developer is becoming increasingly hard to find those posts
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    you can find plenty in italy, all sounding like 'in most expensive city x, lead architect, full time, 6yr experience, 30k$ RAL' rip market.
- komali2 10y ago
  Problem is even with that I would wait for an offer from your company before saying a number, and then I would ask for more, because over the course of my career this has enabled me to consistently be paid more than average. So your "maximum" would be my minimum, and if I were to work there, I'd want more. Maybe that means I don't work there, that's fine, but it'll work somewhere else, eventually!
  - pc86 10y ago
    > So your "maximum" would be my minimum, and if I were to work there, I'd want more. Oh, the "I better be the most well-compensated person on the team or I'm going to get upset" mentality. If our strategy weeds those folks out, all the better.
    - komali2 10y ago
      I don't care at all what other people at the company make. I just know for a fact that on average, across all the companies I apply to (don't forget, you see a lot of candidates, but at the same time we are seeing lots of companies), I will get more money if I push back on an offer.
imsofuture 10y ago
Pricing yourself out of a job with an organization that uses salary as an first-line filter is maybe not the worst thing in the world. There are a lot of bad jobs in the world, you should be happy to turn down or be turned down by many jobs that you apply to. It's kind of a sad cultural trope that the employee is desperate for a 'yes' at every job they apply for, when that is often not true at all.
- wwweston 10y ago
  There's an awful lot that's hiding under that word "often" in your last sentence. How often? How do we know? Anecdotally, even as a software & full-stack web developer that's worked in half a dozen languages and has a math degree, I've been in both positions -- I've had the freedom to complain about people annoying me with unsolicited offers to interview while banking a third of my paycheck and treating another third as disposable... and I've been pavement-pounding in desperation. The former has been more often the case than the latter for me, but I think it's probable that like a large portion of the audience here, I've been insulated by circumstance.
  - imsofuture 10y ago
    Yes, sometimes, many times, maybe even 'often', the job applicant is more desperate for a job than the hiring party is. But it's not a rule that applicants are desperate, and hiring parties aren't. It's absolutely a stereotype of the hiring process though.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Hiring parties are desperate. Ever been at any startup or any hiring committee?
- vkou 10y ago
  > Pricing yourself out of a job with an organization that uses salary as an first-line filter is maybe not the worst thing in the world. "They try to filter people by salary" is not at the top of my list of reasons for why I wouldn't want to work somewhere. It's a reason, but it is dwarfed by many other ones.
user5994461 10y ago
> By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number. And that's why salary is a binary search! https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-negotiations-move-early-and-move-often/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-ne...
- lloydde 10y ago
  "Basically, you need to perform a binary search. When you get an offer, you know that you can get at least that. Then you repeat the process a bit higher." https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-negotiations-move-early-and-move-often/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-ne... Except that isn't a binary search.
  - abalashov 10y ago
    But it sounds cool when you call it a binary search. Poetic licence.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    It's not a perfect binary search. Not all companies have the same top number and you're not equally valuable everywhere.
    - lloydde 10y ago
      It doesn't seem to be a binary search in any sense of the computer science term. There is no half interval mechanics nor would that be appropriate. It seems like traditional bargaining. In an otherwise excellent article, the missing negotiation calibration and example is glaring. The rest of the article would seem to suggest just as you will get your next big promotion from another company, if you find yourself considering coming down walk away. The heart of the approach is getting away from you becoming invested in being hired by a specific company.
MR4D 10y ago
A couple thoughts on that.. First, do you really want to work for the lowest bidder? I have before, and it was a complete waste of my time. Second, Name a number that you can be happy with. If they meet it, then you should be happy. Third, many companies use banding for salary range, and if you're below the median, then you're raises will be bigger than if you're at the top of the range. In effect, naming too small of a number is often nullified within 2-3 years. I do agree that it's a psychological game, but don't play it. Name a number you want. If they are reasonable and they like you, they'll negotiate. In one case, I was too high for the position, and they created a new position (title, really) to put me in. I thought that was good faith.

pc86 10y ago

This is why we publish salary ranges with our job ads but also require a desired salary within that range from candidates.

sheeshkebab 10y ago
That's how us government jobs work too :)
- pc86 10y ago
  Unfortunately the negatives around government jobs far outweigh the benefits of having the salary a known quantity when you are applying.
sitkack 10y ago
If only the rest of the industry was so mature.
davemel37 10y ago
Every time I ever tried this, the candidates hover around the top of the range regardless of qualification and experience.
- jjnoakes 10y ago
  Which is fine; if you can argue that their experience may not merit top of the range, you just negotiate down a bit...
  - dbancajas 10y ago
    or you don't hire them
  - davemel37 10y ago
    This might just be me and my own immaturity, but in my experience, employees often count their eggs before they hatch, and once I start negotiating them down, I create a scenario where I can't get them fully aligned with my goals. They become a simple exchange of cash for labor and not someone who grows loyal or feels a sense of fairness, ownership and excitement about the role. Maybe I am naive, but I feel like this creates a dynamic that hurts otherwise promising prospects.
    - chongli 10y ago
      They become a simple exchange of cash for labor and not someone who grows loyal or feels a sense of fairness, ownership and excitement about the role. You've hit upon a fundamental tenet of Marxism: alienation [0]. You haven't said whether or not you offer equity as part of your compensation. If not, then it is somewhat unreasonable to expect that sort of loyalty from your employees. If so, then you have a challenging task of convincing people to buy in to your vision at a potentially high personal risk. Today's economy is rife with alienation. So many people are constantly changing jobs or dropping out of the workforce [1]. Meanwhile, they're struggling inside a system that produces rampant cost disease [2] and staggering inequality, as illustrated by the dreaded "elephant graph" [3]. Overall, I think there's a growing sense of discontent with capitalism and this can manifest in suspicion towards employers. Now I'll grant you that it's entirely unfair to lay all this at the feet of just a single employer such as yourself. I don't intend for this to come across as some kind of blame game. I merely hope to provide a larger context for ideas that many people may not even be consciously aware of but contribute to their feelings and instincts nonetheless. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio... [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/02/03/what-we-know-and-dont-know-about-the-declining-labor-force-participation-rate/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/02... [2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-... [3] http://voxeu.org/article/greatest-reshuffle-individual-incomes-industrial-revolution http://voxeu.org/article/greatest-reshuffle-individual-incom...
- hamandcheese 10y ago
  Maybe try posting a minimum salary only? "Roles for this position start at $x for qualified candidates, negotiable based on experience" or something like that.
  - davemel37 10y ago
    Interesting idea
  - Scea91 10y ago
    I don't think thats a viable strategy. I get lots of semi-spam offers. I usually just skim through them in 5 seconds and if I see salary figure way below what I would expect then it's 100 % I will not be replying.
- majormajor 10y ago
  Wonder how it would work out if you listed the top of the range at actually midway through the range. Maybe that would be the desired result - this is kinda similar sounding to my employer, where our "bring them on at" range is lower than the "expected pay at this role" range, because we want people to have room for nice raises even if they're not promotion-ready.
bunnymancer 10y ago
Thank you for doing that. I try to only ever apply to jobs with salary range posted. Although as a developer is becoming increasingly hard to find those posts
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  you can find plenty in italy, all sounding like 'in most expensive city x, lead architect, full time, 6yr experience, 30k$ RAL' rip market.
komali2 10y ago
Problem is even with that I would wait for an offer from your company before saying a number, and then I would ask for more, because over the course of my career this has enabled me to consistently be paid more than average. So your "maximum" would be my minimum, and if I were to work there, I'd want more. Maybe that means I don't work there, that's fine, but it'll work somewhere else, eventually!
- pc86 10y ago
  > So your "maximum" would be my minimum, and if I were to work there, I'd want more. Oh, the "I better be the most well-compensated person on the team or I'm going to get upset" mentality. If our strategy weeds those folks out, all the better.
  - komali2 10y ago
    I don't care at all what other people at the company make. I just know for a fact that on average, across all the companies I apply to (don't forget, you see a lot of candidates, but at the same time we are seeing lots of companies), I will get more money if I push back on an offer.

imsofuture 10y ago

Pricing yourself out of a job with an organization that uses salary as an first-line filter is maybe not the worst thing in the world. There are a lot of bad jobs in the world, you should be happy to turn down or be turned down by many jobs that you apply to. It's kind of a sad cultural trope that the employee is desperate for a 'yes' at every job they apply for, when that is often not true at all.

wwweston 10y ago
There's an awful lot that's hiding under that word "often" in your last sentence. How often? How do we know? Anecdotally, even as a software & full-stack web developer that's worked in half a dozen languages and has a math degree, I've been in both positions -- I've had the freedom to complain about people annoying me with unsolicited offers to interview while banking a third of my paycheck and treating another third as disposable... and I've been pavement-pounding in desperation. The former has been more often the case than the latter for me, but I think it's probable that like a large portion of the audience here, I've been insulated by circumstance.
- imsofuture 10y ago
  Yes, sometimes, many times, maybe even 'often', the job applicant is more desperate for a job than the hiring party is. But it's not a rule that applicants are desperate, and hiring parties aren't. It's absolutely a stereotype of the hiring process though.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Hiring parties are desperate. Ever been at any startup or any hiring committee?
vkou 10y ago
> Pricing yourself out of a job with an organization that uses salary as an first-line filter is maybe not the worst thing in the world. "They try to filter people by salary" is not at the top of my list of reasons for why I wouldn't want to work somewhere. It's a reason, but it is dwarfed by many other ones.

user5994461 10y ago

> By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number. And that's why salary is a binary search! https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-negotiations-move-early-and-move-often/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-ne...

lloydde 10y ago
"Basically, you need to perform a binary search. When you get an offer, you know that you can get at least that. Then you repeat the process a bit higher." https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-negotiations-move-early-and-move-often/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/01/23/career-advice-and-salary-ne... Except that isn't a binary search.
- abalashov 10y ago
  But it sounds cool when you call it a binary search. Poetic licence.
- user5994461 10y ago
  It's not a perfect binary search. Not all companies have the same top number and you're not equally valuable everywhere.
  - lloydde 10y ago
    It doesn't seem to be a binary search in any sense of the computer science term. There is no half interval mechanics nor would that be appropriate. It seems like traditional bargaining. In an otherwise excellent article, the missing negotiation calibration and example is glaring. The rest of the article would seem to suggest just as you will get your next big promotion from another company, if you find yourself considering coming down walk away. The heart of the approach is getting away from you becoming invested in being hired by a specific company.

MR4D 10y ago

A couple thoughts on that.. First, do you really want to work for the lowest bidder? I have before, and it was a complete waste of my time. Second, Name a number that you can be happy with. If they meet it, then you should be happy. Third, many companies use banding for salary range, and if you're below the median, then you're raises will be bigger than if you're at the top of the range. In effect, naming too small of a number is often nullified within 2-3 years. I do agree that it's a psychological game, but don't play it. Name a number you want. If they are reasonable and they like you, they'll negotiate. In one case, I was too high for the position, and they created a new position (title, really) to put me in. I thought that was good faith.