If you're in a position where you can not answer, you're in a position there's no reason not to give them your desired salary up front and let them tell you why they can't do it. Pick a high number of course!

If you're in a position where you can't afford not to answer, you should pick a reasonable number, and take whatever they give you, because you completely lack agency. This is the case where you might screw yourself out of money, but if you need the job that badly, do you really care?

A better way to frame this, and this is always what I do if I have the agency to not answer, is to give them the number I'd like or remain mum, but either way when they make the final offer just ask them a simple question: "Is there any way you can come up a little bit from that?". If they say no, you decide based on that first number. But they'll almost always say yes, and you'll get a small effortless raise.

I've done this about 10 times across my career and about 70-80% of the time I've gotten a bump in the 5-10% range. Which means that, collectively, about 30-40% of my current salary level is a result of that one question, applied consistently over time.

You won't get a raise outside the salary band, but you might move from the median for that band up a notch or two within it, and that absolutely matters in the long run.

It is true, of course, that when they give you the number that they leave money on the table for negotiation, that is standard practice. It's even factored into the offer amount at bigcorps, and chances are they have an amount they cannot go over and it's set. So you should always ask for more after they lay the money out.

In my experience, not talking about salary early kind of sets everyone up to waste their time. One time it ended up with a full interview process that went very well for a job I thought would be perfect in an industry that _should_ have outstanding pay, and the resulting offer that was lower than my current role, paid hourly without benefits with a vague promise to later be an FTE; not only did we all waste our time, I was pretty upset about it. When I sent an email to the hiring manager they said "well you never told us your expectations" -- now the guy was dumb, he _knew_ I had a good job already, the comp he was offering was well below industry standard, and he knew my background, but nevertheless that is where a lot of hiring folks heads are at and it makes total sense: they want to get a good deal just like you do.

Asking for salary band is good, especially earlier in your career, but to me it's now kind of irrelevant -- for the same reason you will go high, they will try to go low. I have a price I will be happy at, I say a number higher in the beginning but say depending on how everything goes there may end up being flexibility, and that I look at the entire package holistically. This is just to assess: "is it worth us continuing to engage". Not doing this would have wasted a colossal amount of time.

I'm now in a position where I know where salaries generally are in different parts of the industry, and I can set a price based on what I expect and what my current role is, and I explain my reasoning. But yes: it depends so much on the situation. Benefits good? Growth potential at a startup good? Do I believe in the mission and that the founder won't abandon for an acquihire and tank my equity? Etc.

Once you're at the offer stage, you can bargain about specifics.

So you exploit the flipside of the information symmetry. The company is obviously not telling me all their employee salaries, so I am not telling them mine. I just need enough of a sense of what the range is to figure out if a number I like is in there.

The company is not planning to blow you away with some big salary number, but I’ve gotten some pretty good offers. This happens sometimes because you’re stepping up to a higher role at the other company, or sometimes because you’re going to a company which just has higher compensation bands to begin with. Or maybe you just look really good to that company. I’ve gotten offers which were +50% above the number I had in my head, or well above that.

It feels like a waste of time and such a song and dance to some people, but the time spent is not wasted, it’s turned into salary dollars.

The irony is the information asymmetry exists solely because we, the employees, are taught to believe it's 'cultural inappropriate' to ask each other's salary. Sometimes even by our parents.

And obviously the C-suite will do everything in their power to make sure we never take a step down that road

But would you share your salary here right now?

If not, is it purely cultural? Or are there other motivations?

Sure, but the company hires you even less often -- at most once every 2N years and probably even less than that.

If you are interchangable with all their other hires... well, that's not a good position to be in for many reasons.

Yes, but you can tilt this in your favor (if you find it valuable information) by getting X offers per year.

I've applied these guidelines in my own negotiations and it worked very well for me. I would've undersold myself by at least 15% if I went ahead and answered the salary question first. I declined politely to give a number first—even saying "it's not in my interest to answer that first, as you most likely understand".

Those guidelines work for all jobs that have high added value, I would say.

[1]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Don’t antagonize your recruiter. You want them to advocate _for you_ when a prospective employer is drafting an offer. Work with them to give them the ammo they need to make that happen.

Yes, it's a polite way to brush off the question. But the end result is the same. A job offer way lower than what you're making, and now they have $20K in a bucket to go a little higher when you try to negotiate.

That said, what you say isn't as important as what you do. If you're interviewing, you should be interviewing at at least a few places to get comps. You will get lowballed if you don't have comps. Once you have a few offers, do one round of playing them off each other, decide which company you want to work for, and then say you'll sign today if they can beat the current best offer.

I played exactly this script during my first interviews interviews, never giving the first number, etc. It worked well for me exactly one time: the very first job I had out of academia where I did actually have to negotiate a salary. All the other times it resulted in waste of time and loss of sanity.

I am now very upfront with my expectations, or at least my non-expectations: "My current salary is X and I have Y perks, and I am in a good team; I wouldn't even consider moving for less than this, regardless of how cool your team is, and if you don't beat these numbers substantially I already know that my current employer will make me a counteroffer, and then you lose time but I win regardless." (of course not literally, but the message is this).

Less interviews, less time wasted.

Case in point, once when I was asked it I was "I read in an study that one gets happier with more salary up until 85K€, so my aim is to go towards that range". In the end I ended up halfway between that and my then salary. BTW, the study was then superseded by another that happiness keeps increasing, just not as fast.

Of course your situation might be different, and you could take inspiration for 6 digits, $500K or any other amount that would be perfect for you if accepted because it's higher than what you would have accepted, and you can get something below that that would be a stepping stone.

In Spain, at least, salary needs discussing early, too many divergences between some companies and some people expectations on that. So I disagree leaving it for later.

Now, imagine that I don’t ask for a number nor share my expectations. With 3-4 rounds of interviews, even if we assume 1/10 is in my range, I’d have to SUCCESSFULLY do maybe 30-40 interviews on average to find a job that matches my expectations. Another thing is that benefits in Poland are pretty standard almost nearly everywhere: private medical care, gym card, 20 vacation days, 10 sick days… unless you’re willing to work in the big few companies that just have unlimited money.

(If someone in Poland has different experience, please share - would love to hear more.)

"Talent Report™ Income and Employment Provides verification of employment plus verification of a candidate’s income." https://theworknumber.com/solutions/industries/pre-employmen...

Opt out: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

The question is baked and mandatory in most forms, and there's no "cant say" - only about 20% do not ask it, all else.. have it. And it is the easiest filter for the above 100 candidates, so.

Negotiation phase? hah. You are lucky if you get a rejection e-mail. Most don't bother with even that, regardless the importance of the role. And you never know if the number was too high, or completely irrelevant.

But, I've also seen ranges that span hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like "Software engineer: $150k-$250" which is a ridiculous range that makes it almost meaningless. I mean, what are they thinking - any candidate worth their time is going to aim for the $250 end...

If you are not comfortable, then I'd be clear why, with data, upfront. "I saw the range on the website and it seems low based on X, Y, and Z. Is that range flexible?"

Whether the answer to that is yes or no, you'll be in a better spot whether to decide to move forward.

You have to be careful to not be led into this, as if you can follow OP's self-help advice and skip the failures. You will, in fact, fail in a different way.

Is this cynical? Yes. But it's how self-help advice works.

"A million an hour, obviously (haha). But in all seriousness, I'd expect to be compensated commensurate with the responsibilities of the role, keeping in mind that the salary number is just one aspect of a compensation package as health insurance and other benefits are important to me."

There are only two reasons HR asks this:

1. possible leverage later in the process.

2. attempting to not waste time if the candidate's expectations are way out of line with the amount the company is willing to pay.

Either way, there is no good reason to name numbers prior to the company making an offer with compensation package details.

I agree that a candidate shouldn't name numbers until after an offer.

But I think the company should give a range as early as possible. This is because of point #2 above. As an engineering manager I've had at least one heartbreaking experience where we took a candidate through the hiring cycle and then found out we and they were way out of line re: comp. Hiring sucks enough without that curveball.

That's why, for all the warts, I'm a fan of salary disclosure laws (like those in Colorado, USA). Yes, it's hard to have an accurate range, because jobs and skills are squishy. Yes, candidates anchor towards the top. Yes, it's weird for a buyer of a thing (labor) to state a price.

But companies have more power in the hiring process (there are, after all, many employees working for a company, but usually only one company an employee works for). Companies, or the hiring managers, also have a budget.

If you are a hiring manager, I'd encourage you to have your salary range shared with candidates as early as possible in the process.

Good reason for them to say what they're willing to pay before I bother reading their job advert

Site was hugged to death

I went through this a few years ago and wrote about it. https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2565

RIP, looks like the site got hugged.

Find out the range up front by reading the job posting, making the recruiter tell you, asking a friend who works there, or asking after applying if you have no other connections.

No company is going to refuse to share the information because they are secretly planning to blow a qualified applicant away with a top of market offer.