6 ms·

> My general policy with third-party recruiters is to not tell them ANYTHING and to always deal directly with the companies they introduce you, once you establi

by nunez 3y ago

> My general policy with third-party recruiters is to not tell them ANYTHING and to always deal directly with the companies they introduce you, once you establish a point of contact there. You should assume that anything you tell your recruiter is going to get back to every company you’re working with. Why? Because their primary objective is to place your butt in the seat of one of the companies they’re working with, and they will do whatever they need to do to make the deal happen. Often, those things will run counter to your interests. While the OP has a ton of experience, I disagree with this advice unless you're just starting out and don't know what you're worth yet. I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're looking for up front. If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews. If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. If the number isn't realistic, they'll tell you. Last thing they want is to waste your time interviewing for a position you'll reject because of the package. (There are plenty of recruiters that only care about placement volume and nothing else. Inbound emails from recruiters that clearly look like a copy and paste job are probably one of these. Good recruiters don't leave money on the table like that.) I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making).

ShakataGaNai 3y ago
> I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're looking for up front. That assumes you know what you want and know what's reasonable/fair for the job and area. Most people don't know. Even if they've worked a similar job in the area, doesn't mean they know what the current going rate is. Once when applying for a job I asked for what was basically my current salary plus $20,000. The hiring manager said something to the lines of "Oh, we can do better than that" and ended up hiring me at my ask plus ANOTHER $40,000. I had way undervalued myself and wasn't up to the moment on the latest in pay rates. Needless to say I was lucky and that person was an excellent manager. But most people will not be so lucky and most managers are not that amazing.
- nunez 3y ago
  There is another side to this advice. If you don't know what market is, you can do one of three things: 1. Check out levels.fyi (overindexed on FAANG; not reliable), 2. Ask for a number that "sounds" high to you, and let the recruiter negotiate down (risky; recruiters might laugh you out the room if you go too high), or 3. Ask a recruiter, and then add a premium on top of whatever they tell you! Recruiters will be an excellent source of what a realistic market is for your skills in your area. However, as this article articulates, many people don't negotiate, so it's fair to assume that the market rate they give you is low.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    You left out: 4. Don't give a number at all. If you are interested in Company X, and you've gone far enough in the process to know they are interested in you, tell the recruiter that you would be interested in seeing a competitive offer from Company X, or something along those lines. At the end of the day, the best negotiating leverage you have is that if Company X actually does want to hire you, at some point they have to commit to an offer. You don't. You can always walk away and go talk to someone else.
    - pjot 3y ago
      > Don't give a number at all Can you give an example of how this plays out in real conversation? Answering “I’m not telling you” or similar to the recruiters question “what’s your expected compensation” seems like bogus advice
      - pdonis 3y ago
        The article gives explicit examples of what to say in this exact situation.
      - ryandrake 3y ago
        If pressed, I'd just say: "I would immediately say yes to the job for $1 million/year." Who cares if they laugh? Why negotiate against yourself and hand them your actual min value on a silver platter? They're not going to tell you their max value. EDIT: Oops, looks like another commenter already spelled out this strategy[1] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37241739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37241739
tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
Yep. Based on my experience with recruiters both as an employee and employer, following this advice is almost certainly just going to do you a disservice.
pdonis 3y ago
> If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews. Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article. I get what you're saying about knowing what you're worth, but that in itself doesn't give you very much help in knowing what potential offers might come your way. Unless you have detailed inside information about all of your potential employers (hint: if you do, you should already be leveraging that information to get a job offer without having to go through all the drudgery of interviewing like everyone else), you can't possibly know how the number you give compares to what they could potentially offer you. So you shouldn't give a number at all. In fact, the more you know what you are worth, the less inclined you should be to give a number instead of just waiting for an actual offer. What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place. Don't even bother talking to companies that you know can't compensate you enough. But you don't need to, and shouldn't, tell recruiters what your threshold is for "enough". Just tell them company X doesn't look like it would be a good fit. Nuff sed. > If recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. They want to place you at the highest comp package they can as long as it doesn't risk not placing you at all. They never want to walk away altogether. But you might. So your interests and theirs are not quite aligned.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  It might be different in the US but in Australia the way it works is: 60% of jobs will tell you a salary range either on the ad or via the recruiter. The rest wont play the “you tell me first” game and just pass on you. Since more offers is more leverage it might be better to play their game individually to have a better overall position (more offers)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Aurornis 3y ago
Forcing the company to name a number first works well when the person has absolutely no idea what market rate is. However, the idea that it’s the optimal strategy in every situation has been blown out of proportion online. When you force a company to name their price first, they will start with usually a number lower than their target compensation because most candidates will then want to negotiate up. Of all the salary negotiations I’ve done in the past decade, I can’t remember anyone who asked us to make a price first and then didn’t counter with a token $5K or $10K (or more depending on position) counter request. So the easy bet is to take your mid-range comp target, subtract $5K, and then most candidates will end up at your target after they “negotiate”. It’s basically a script that everyone who reads internet advice follows, and once you see it play out you can start to predict it. If you want to get the upper end of what companies are willing to pay, you often have to start by naming your price and letting them negotiate down. This is scary to people who don’t have a lot of data or who are afraid of being told “no”. It can also result in outright discontinuation of the interview process if the company doesn’t want to pay a lot, but that’s not really a big loss if your goal was high compensation anyway.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Don't forget that you have multiple axes to negotiate on: I would happily take a 25% pay cut if it came with a couple months worth of PTO. Then, when they're unwilling to budge on the PTO, you can leverage that back into getting the salary number moving again. I find that kind of haggling to work best as a synchronous, ideally face-to-face, communication. In that setting, it's very unlikely that you can't manage to smooth over any too ambitious of an ask and arrive at some sort of agreeable number.
grecy 3y ago
> If you want $200,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews. This article isn't about getting an amount that makes you happy, it's about getting as much as possible. If you say $200,000, you've taken $300,000 off the table, which may have been on the table before you opened your mouth. For many people, leaving money on the table is bad, and they want to get as much as possible.
ryandrake 3y ago
> I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making). I wonder how much of this information the companies already have access to. Like, they probably use ADP or Paychex as their payroll service, and I wouldn't be surprised if they can ask the payroll company or just look up what you currently make. The last time I interviewed (at a FAANG), they didn't do any kind of negotiation dance about pay. They didn't ask me what I make or what I wanted. After the interviewing, they said "Here's your offer, it is non-negotiable." and lo and behold it was about 0.2% or so above what I was currently making. Like a difference of under $500 for the yearly figure. Uncanny how they came so close! I tried negotiating but they were indeed unwilling to negotiate on anything.
- vkou 3y ago
  I was also told my FAANG offer was non-negotiable. After declining it, for reasons of pay and location, I got a call back 5 minutes later, with a better location, and ~12% more money on the table. (Junior position in 2012)
  - nine_k 3y ago
    That worked in 2012, but I highly doubt it would work in 2023.
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      Why not? If you’re truly willing to walk away from an offer, non-negotiable ones often turn out to be malleable.
      - nine_k 3y ago
        You will just walk away, and another from the large stack of candidates who passed the interview process will accept that same offer. Engineers just have become much more easily obtainable and replaceable.
lelanthran 3y ago
> If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. I'm pretty certain the article covered this exact point; even GOOD recruiters aren't going to jeopardize a deal with $1500k commission for an extra $150. We see the same thing with real estate agents, or sales anywhere a commission is paid - the sales person would rather have 10% less commission from a closed deal than 0% commission from a deal that fell through. Their incentives aren't aligned with yours: Their incentive is to close the deal, yours is to close the deal at the highest price. > Good recruiters don't leave money on the table like that. All good sales people are closers. That means they are always leaving money on the table. It's more important to close than to hold out for 10% more. There is no such thing as a sales person who only closes deals at the highest possible price; they'd starve.
- twic 3y ago
  I read "place you at the highest comp package they can" to mean "place you at the employer that will give you the highest comp package they can". So if they think you're good enough for clearlydoomed.io who pay 175k and GigaTech who pay 200k, but not Risk Securities who pay 300k, they will push you towards MegaTech.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    It depends. "they can" is doing a lot of work in the original claim. If A, B and C are the companies involved, with respective pay rates of 175k, 200k and 300k, it's still going to be better for the recruiter to try you at all three, because that is very little extra work for the commission involved. However, if B is more circumspect about hiring and always takes a month to make a decision while always A comes back with "go/no-go" in 2 days, then its better for the recruiter to take the 1.75k commission and move on to the next candidate, rather than hold out a month for a $2k commission that may not happen while the 1.75k commission is lost because A has a quick turnaround time. In order for them to do this, they have to mislead you about your chances with B, or have to completely hide the option of B from you, because they know that you, personally, would hold out a month for an extra 25k. Business and sales is all about cashflow. It's better to conclude your business today with a profit of $1.75k rather than in a month with $2k. As far as the $3k commission goes, the recruiter is almost definitely not going to wait a month either, unless, in their experience, you're so far and beyond the best candidate for that position that it's a slam dunk. That is highly unlikely.
shrimpx 3y ago
Yeah, the OP's advice makes sense only if you're looking to get the theoretically highest possible offer, to where you surprise yourself, like holy shit I didn't know it was possible for me to land this number! If you know what you want and have room to decline an offer below that, the OP's advice does not apply much. In fact, if you take the OP's advice, you're opening yourself up to wasting time with chumps who were never going to meet your internal number.
PUSH_AX 3y ago
faster and easier yes, as long as you're happy to leave money on the table.

by nunez 3y ago

ShakataGaNai 3y ago

> I think it is much faster and easier to ask what you're looking for up front. That assumes you know what you want and know what's reasonable/fair for the job and area. Most people don't know. Even if they've worked a similar job in the area, doesn't mean they know what the current going rate is. Once when applying for a job I asked for what was basically my current salary plus $20,000. The hiring manager said something to the lines of "Oh, we can do better than that" and ended up hiring me at my ask plus ANOTHER $40,000. I had way undervalued myself and wasn't up to the moment on the latest in pay rates. Needless to say I was lucky and that person was an excellent manager. But most people will not be so lucky and most managers are not that amazing.

nunez 3y ago
There is another side to this advice. If you don't know what market is, you can do one of three things: 1. Check out levels.fyi (overindexed on FAANG; not reliable), 2. Ask for a number that "sounds" high to you, and let the recruiter negotiate down (risky; recruiters might laugh you out the room if you go too high), or 3. Ask a recruiter, and then add a premium on top of whatever they tell you! Recruiters will be an excellent source of what a realistic market is for your skills in your area. However, as this article articulates, many people don't negotiate, so it's fair to assume that the market rate they give you is low.
- pdonis 3y ago
  You left out: 4. Don't give a number at all. If you are interested in Company X, and you've gone far enough in the process to know they are interested in you, tell the recruiter that you would be interested in seeing a competitive offer from Company X, or something along those lines. At the end of the day, the best negotiating leverage you have is that if Company X actually does want to hire you, at some point they have to commit to an offer. You don't. You can always walk away and go talk to someone else.
  - pjot 3y ago
    > Don't give a number at all Can you give an example of how this plays out in real conversation? Answering “I’m not telling you” or similar to the recruiters question “what’s your expected compensation” seems like bogus advice
    - pdonis 3y ago
      The article gives explicit examples of what to say in this exact situation.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      If pressed, I'd just say: "I would immediately say yes to the job for $1 million/year." Who cares if they laugh? Why negotiate against yourself and hand them your actual min value on a silver platter? They're not going to tell you their max value. EDIT: Oops, looks like another commenter already spelled out this strategy[1] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37241739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37241739

tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago

Yep. Based on my experience with recruiters both as an employee and employer, following this advice is almost certainly just going to do you a disservice.

pdonis 3y ago

> If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews. Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article. I get what you're saying about knowing what you're worth, but that in itself doesn't give you very much help in knowing what potential offers might come your way. Unless you have detailed inside information about all of your potential employers (hint: if you do, you should already be leveraging that information to get a job offer without having to go through all the drudgery of interviewing like everyone else), you can't possibly know how the number you give compares to what they could potentially offer you. So you shouldn't give a number at all. In fact, the more you know what you are worth, the less inclined you should be to give a number instead of just waiting for an actual offer. What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place. Don't even bother talking to companies that you know can't compensate you enough. But you don't need to, and shouldn't, tell recruiters what your threshold is for "enough". Just tell them company X doesn't look like it would be a good fit. Nuff sed. > If recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. They want to place you at the highest comp package they can as long as it doesn't risk not placing you at all. They never want to walk away altogether. But you might. So your interests and theirs are not quite aligned.

quickthrower2 3y ago
It might be different in the US but in Australia the way it works is: 60% of jobs will tell you a salary range either on the ad or via the recruiter. The rest wont play the “you tell me first” game and just pass on you. Since more offers is more leverage it might be better to play their game individually to have a better overall position (more offers)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Aurornis 3y ago

Forcing the company to name a number first works well when the person has absolutely no idea what market rate is. However, the idea that it’s the optimal strategy in every situation has been blown out of proportion online. When you force a company to name their price first, they will start with usually a number lower than their target compensation because most candidates will then want to negotiate up. Of all the salary negotiations I’ve done in the past decade, I can’t remember anyone who asked us to make a price first and then didn’t counter with a token $5K or $10K (or more depending on position) counter request. So the easy bet is to take your mid-range comp target, subtract $5K, and then most candidates will end up at your target after they “negotiate”. It’s basically a script that everyone who reads internet advice follows, and once you see it play out you can start to predict it. If you want to get the upper end of what companies are willing to pay, you often have to start by naming your price and letting them negotiate down. This is scary to people who don’t have a lot of data or who are afraid of being told “no”. It can also result in outright discontinuation of the interview process if the company doesn’t want to pay a lot, but that’s not really a big loss if your goal was high compensation anyway.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Don't forget that you have multiple axes to negotiate on: I would happily take a 25% pay cut if it came with a couple months worth of PTO. Then, when they're unwilling to budge on the PTO, you can leverage that back into getting the salary number moving again. I find that kind of haggling to work best as a synchronous, ideally face-to-face, communication. In that setting, it's very unlikely that you can't manage to smooth over any too ambitious of an ask and arrive at some sort of agreeable number.

grecy 3y ago

> If you want $200,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews. This article isn't about getting an amount that makes you happy, it's about getting as much as possible. If you say $200,000, you've taken $300,000 off the table, which may have been on the table before you opened your mouth. For many people, leaving money on the table is bad, and they want to get as much as possible.

ryandrake 3y ago

> I DO agree with OP that you _shouldn't_ state what your current salary/comp is (unless you don't care about negotiating on comp but want to ensure you maintain what you're making). I wonder how much of this information the companies already have access to. Like, they probably use ADP or Paychex as their payroll service, and I wouldn't be surprised if they can ask the payroll company or just look up what you currently make. The last time I interviewed (at a FAANG), they didn't do any kind of negotiation dance about pay. They didn't ask me what I make or what I wanted. After the interviewing, they said "Here's your offer, it is non-negotiable." and lo and behold it was about 0.2% or so above what I was currently making. Like a difference of under $500 for the yearly figure. Uncanny how they came so close! I tried negotiating but they were indeed unwilling to negotiate on anything.

vkou 3y ago
I was also told my FAANG offer was non-negotiable. After declining it, for reasons of pay and location, I got a call back 5 minutes later, with a better location, and ~12% more money on the table. (Junior position in 2012)
- nine_k 3y ago
  That worked in 2012, but I highly doubt it would work in 2023.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Why not? If you’re truly willing to walk away from an offer, non-negotiable ones often turn out to be malleable.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      You will just walk away, and another from the large stack of candidates who passed the interview process will accept that same offer. Engineers just have become much more easily obtainable and replaceable.

lelanthran 3y ago

> If GOOD recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can. I'm pretty certain the article covered this exact point; even GOOD recruiters aren't going to jeopardize a deal with $1500k commission for an extra $150. We see the same thing with real estate agents, or sales anywhere a commission is paid - the sales person would rather have 10% less commission from a closed deal than 0% commission from a deal that fell through. Their incentives aren't aligned with yours: Their incentive is to close the deal, yours is to close the deal at the highest price. > Good recruiters don't leave money on the table like that. All good sales people are closers. That means they are always leaving money on the table. It's more important to close than to hold out for 10% more. There is no such thing as a sales person who only closes deals at the highest possible price; they'd starve.

twic 3y ago
I read "place you at the highest comp package they can" to mean "place you at the employer that will give you the highest comp package they can". So if they think you're good enough for clearlydoomed.io who pay 175k and GigaTech who pay 200k, but not Risk Securities who pay 300k, they will push you towards MegaTech.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  It depends. "they can" is doing a lot of work in the original claim. If A, B and C are the companies involved, with respective pay rates of 175k, 200k and 300k, it's still going to be better for the recruiter to try you at all three, because that is very little extra work for the commission involved. However, if B is more circumspect about hiring and always takes a month to make a decision while always A comes back with "go/no-go" in 2 days, then its better for the recruiter to take the 1.75k commission and move on to the next candidate, rather than hold out a month for a $2k commission that may not happen while the 1.75k commission is lost because A has a quick turnaround time. In order for them to do this, they have to mislead you about your chances with B, or have to completely hide the option of B from you, because they know that you, personally, would hold out a month for an extra 25k. Business and sales is all about cashflow. It's better to conclude your business today with a profit of $1.75k rather than in a month with $2k. As far as the $3k commission goes, the recruiter is almost definitely not going to wait a month either, unless, in their experience, you're so far and beyond the best candidate for that position that it's a slam dunk. That is highly unlikely.

shrimpx 3y ago

Yeah, the OP's advice makes sense only if you're looking to get the theoretically highest possible offer, to where you surprise yourself, like holy shit I didn't know it was possible for me to land this number! If you know what you want and have room to decline an offer below that, the OP's advice does not apply much. In fact, if you take the OP's advice, you're opening yourself up to wasting time with chumps who were never going to meet your internal number.

PUSH_AX 3y ago

faster and easier yes, as long as you're happy to leave money on the table.