> Lots of big companies have very well-defined salary bands It's true, but I'm not sure that it's good. That's going back to salary being weird. They are makin

> Lots of big companies have very well-defined salary bands It's true, but I'm not sure that it's good. That's going back to salary being weird. They are making themselves deliberately inflexible, locking themselves out of potentially good agreements (probably in response to public pressure). Perhaps big names can get away with it. Worth noting that the same "bands" probably don't apply to hiring consulting businesses. Ask yourself why, and how's that different from striking a deal with an individual. > Companies already know how much they want to pay you That's not true. They don't know how much they want to pay _you_. They know how much they want to pay an average abstract employee doing the job they vaguely envision in a satisfactory manner. Then when the actual _you_ come in, that abstract employee becomes a concrete advocate for themselves. They'll have to think about you specifically now, and it changes the whole calculus.