Item — HN Reader

> I always ask what their salary expectations are...

My reply is pretty much always "What's your budget?". If they tell me the budget, I say the top of what they said or sometimes a bit above it (because it's pretty much a guarantee that they're lying about the real budget), if they don't or try weasel out of it, I tell them I'm not comfortable answering without knowing what I should realistically be looking at (and they get negative points from my POV, because why be sneaky with this kind of info?)

It's a shitty question born out of the company trying to screw candidates if they say the wrong number unknowingly. Too high of an expectation? That's a negative mark. Too low? Great, we can fuck them over by underpaying them 20% below what we would've if we'd just posted the salary.

Same with all the other similar ones. Where am I in the process with others? None of your business, I just say I'm not interviewing with anyone else.

4 comments

I am a hiring manager. I don't have a budget. What I have are different comp levels that depend on the engineer's level. It's not in my interest to underpay an engineer and I'm not approaching the hiring process as trying to pay a candidate as little as possible. I'm trying to find a good hire and I want them to be happy working for me. I've worked for many tech companies and I've never seen anywhere there was some specific budget number attached to hiring an engineer.

That's not to say there isn't some element of negotiation but it's generally at the margins (definitely not 20%).

The reason I might ask about expectations is just not to waste people's time, not to screw the candidate. I ask about your process with others to know if I should try and get through the process faster on my side. Having a competitive offer might be relevant for the negotiation process but again it's at the margins. You also need to consider your compensation over time, you might be hired at a slightly higher comp but then it won't get adjusted as quickly.

Once we've interviewed a candidate and have a good sense of where we think they are in terms of their level, and decide we want to hire them, then there's no problem sharing the numbers with them, at this point that's an offer. Before we can estimate the candidate's level I don't really think it's useful to tell them that if they're a "level 10" (or whatever) then the salary range is 44,000 to 46,000 dollars (or whatever). If a company posts a range of 100-300k for a software engineering role that doesn't mean that every candidate can negotiate a 320k salary. It means they're ok with hiring someone relatively junior at 100k or paying a significantly stronger candidate 300k.

What I'm trying to say is that with a good employer there is actually alignment and win-win here. If you're dealing with a bad employer who is trying to take advantage of you there are probably better signals for that. The engineering manager who is hiring you into a large tech company is generally motivated to hire a good engineer and make sure they're happy.

It's the same on the candidate side. I know when I interview, what it'll take to bring me on board depends a lot on the company, the team, and what the position looks like. For something I absolutely want to be a part of, because all of the above are incredible, it's not going to take as much in compensation as a place that's not perfect in one aspect or another, but is otherwise nice at the right price.

But I won't know where the company sits on that spectrum until after the interview.

> For something I absolutely want to be a part of, because all of the above are incredible, it's not going to take as much in compensation as a place that's not perfect in one aspect or another, but is otherwise nice at the right price.

On the other side of this, there exist a compensation amount, above which I will accept a job offer knowing nothing about the company, am willing to suffer through almost any job or working condition, regardless of whether I believe in the company's mission, want to be a part of the company, where I'll simply say yes sight unseen. No company has even remotely gotten close to this number with their actual offer, but nonetheless I must admit the number exists. If a company just asks "how much do you want?" I don't see any harm in giving them that number. If they are OK with it, jackpot. If not, we negotiate way down from there after I learn more about the company.

In my experience (and I've been on both sides plenty of times) - There's always a budget. Call it a band, a range, whatever, the budget exists, and in many jurisdictions the world (and even within different states in the US) over you have to specify what that budget is for any given position. Some places are better than others, like settings a ridiculous range that tells you nothing (100k - 300k like your example) useful, to be fair.

Usually, a job post will be for a specific role. A senior, principal, medior, junior, L9, ABC123, doesn't matter, a rank is usually attached to the job description. At least from what I've seen (and I'm sure this part does vary a lot company to company and role by role, but IME it's pretty rigid with tiny allowances for things like mediors switching to a senior position and stuff like that), the business is pretty adamant on hiring for the advertised role, and not someone who's over/under the role. If you're hiring a senior, how often is it that you'll take a junior instead? Presumably there's a reason the posting says senior. I've seldom ever seen free-range postings, and I'd definitely never apply to one either.

> ...then there's no problem sharing the numbers with them...

But that's the problem, you're only informing them at the offer stage about what their compensation could be, and they still have no clue whether you're screwing them over. Many people don't realize/aren't comfortable with negotiating for higher pay, I've known a surprising number of people who take the offer as-is (or don't) with no follow up or negotiation.

If you give people the range from the start (preferably before they ever even send the application in the first place), you're saving everyone's time and also setting expectations early on for all parties. People who'd balk at the range would just not apply, and you'd get more candidates who are more likely to accept whatever you end up deciding on.

> What I'm trying to say is that with a good employer there is actually alignment and win-win here.

And I think this is a bit of a naive viewpoint. The business has no reason not to fuck you over, and they in fact often do. And it makes perfect sense why they would, after all especially SWE's are expensive to employ, but regardless of if it's understandable or not, it's still a shitty and lopsided dynamic that heavily leans in the favor of the corporation.

The best compensation results I got in my job searching history was when I told all the companies up-front what my timeline was and what week I was going to be making a decision, right at the beginning of the process (month+ in advance). I told them I am doing so with multiple other companies, which allowed me to align timelines and negotiate with many offers-in-hand.

When did you last look for a job?

I know someone who was asked what the lowest they would take was, they answered honestly and then got screwed over by immediately being offered that exact number. The company had a much higher budget. If a company asks you that question, run. That's just a red flag for other problems lurking.

How is that screwing someone over? Maybe the company said that because the candidate was slightly underqualified for the role, and they would only hire if they felt like they were getting a deal and not taking too much risk. The low ball offer is better than a no. If I was being hired like that, I might view it as a foot in the door to prove how valuable I am. Besides you can always keep interviewing after you're hired to find better offers. Even if you don't take them, it'll give you more bargaining power.

I would say it is a completely underhanded way to negotiate and I love negotiating. The only good answer to that bullshit question is "The maximum you are willing to pay". Then you can start over with a real negotiation.

The best way to understand the company culture is by what is asked on the interview and what the person doing the interview is like.

This question tells you everything you need to know about the company culture and that it is not going to be a good experience.

Underhanded? Why don't you tell me what it means to you? If someone asked me what the minimum money I'm willing to take is, then I guess I might think they're the kind of company that would ask me questions like, "what's the minimum amount of RAM your program will need in production?" and stuff like that. Shrug.

> It's a shitty question born out of the company trying to screw candidates

Or a startup hiring for a job title they’ve never hired for before and they literally don’t know what the market rate is?

We just hired our first SRE. We knew what we wanted for in the role but had no idea how to price it. What are we supposed to do other than ask candidates what their salary expectations are? There’s no bible saying what “market rate” is for every given role.

You’re selling your services to an employer. It’s the candidate’s responsibility to know their worth and coherently communicate their worth to prospective employers. Just my opinion.

Market salary information is out there and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where you, as a company, want to place yourself. If you're going into interviews literally not knowing what the market rate is, you're wasting everyone's time.

Yes, it's a candidate's responsibility to know their worth and communicate it to prospective employers. If prospective employers are ignorant of the market, they just look like they're unprofessional.

> There’s no bible saying what “market rate” is for every given role

there actually is. there are multiple salary benchmarks available. you should be using one.

If you go after one (or a few) person in particular, it's ok to ask that question. In fact, if you go after one person in particular that you know is a great fitting, there is almost no power disparity and lots of things become ok.

But if you decide to just poll undifferentiated candidates to extract valuable information, well, that's really not ok.

Are you telling me startups don't have budgets predetermined before the role is ever even posted?

Yes, for roles we’ve never hired for.

In which case to find the market salary, we ask candidates (candidates are the market, we want to pay market rates. So, we ask candidates)

This isn’t just startups.

Some companies have “bands” that define the range of pay for given titles, but many don’t. Even those that do are constantly questioning whether they are the right ones based on a wide variety of factors: Are salaries moving up, or moving down? Are there few candidates, or many? Is the value of this role to the company increasing or decreasing? Does the company have the cash flow? Will it have the cash flow in six months or a year? Etc.

Sitting on either side of the hiring relationship it’s easy to simplify and vilify the other side. But it’s foolish to do so. Over time in your career folks may be on each, in turn.

I dunno, a two minute LinkedIn search or Glassdoor search will give you all kinds of metrics for all kinds of roles and for companies at different stages, so I don't at all buy this argument.

Especially for developers, you can get a crazy range of quality, experience and location at different multiples of cost. Like if I was buying a car I first determine my needs and money to spend then start searching in that band of prices. What if I just went to a cqr salesman and asked how much are you expecting to make from this sale? Is that a smart starting point for anyone?

If I ask my favorite search engine for "technology salary guide", there are several first-page results that at least claim to provide just this.

Are these less reliable that they look like they think they are, or... ?