How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews with companies that have no intention of paying you what you expect without disclosing some form of salary range upfront?
I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.
I have never had issues with this approach. Yeah you'll get a few people who think they're being cute about wanting to schedule a call or whatever, but when it comes down to it "I don't move forward without knowing the budgeted range for a position" gets me a number probably 19 out of 20 times, almost always the first time too.
It makes no sense at all for the company or recruiter to hide the range for you. Because they would be wasting their timing doing all kinds of meetings if your expected number is far above that range.
I don't think the company with the $120-150k range is trying to hide it from the person who wants $200k, I think they're trying to hide it from the person who wants $110k. If you tell them $200k they just stop talking to you. If you tell them $110k they write it down and carry along with the process and a little green $110k next to your name.
This kind of strategy seems a bizarre one for a company. "Let's figure out how to systematically pay our employees less than they're really worth." How is that any kind of long-term plan? To really move the needle you'd have to do it a LOT -- but then you've selected on employees who lack knowledge about their own power. Those are going to be systematically different (probably not in a good way?) from employees who are more proactive and entrepreneurial about negotiating. Wouldn't you prefer a whole lot of the latter type? Since they will presumably be better at solving open-ended problems, etc. etc.?
> This kind of strategy seems a bizarre one for a company. "Let's figure out how to systematically pay our employees less than they're really worth."
so we established that the revenue of the company belongs to the employees that worked for it, but the company has to skimm at least the operating costs before payout as otherwise it would make a loss.
but most companies have an obligation to make profit, so there is no other way than to pay the employees less than what they're worth (because increasing revenue would also increase the value of employees accordingly)
In this world employee value would be set by the market for their skills, not how their output translates into revenue when pushed through the context of the business' products.
> you've selected on employees who lack knowledge about their own power
Which is the majority of employees. Because...
> employees who are more proactive and entrepreneurial about negotiating
...aren't going to remain employees for too long; they are going to end up starting their own businesses because they realize that the upside is so much greater. Which means, first, that, to them, the job at your company is not a career; it's a temporary day job while they get set up to pursue their real goal. And second, that at any given time these kinds of employees will be a fairly small minority of all the people in the job market.
>>because they realize that the upside is so much greater.
the risks are also greater, I am 100% proactive about salary, I am 100% pretty aggressive and "disagreeable" (in the psych meaning of the term) about it as well
I however am not entrepreneurial because I have no desire to have that liability, or risk. I prefer working for a company instead of owning the company
Some companies seem to lie about their top range number as well. If you pass the interview and ask you for a figure and you come back with their top range number, suddenly there are reasons you shouldn't be making that. I strongly suspect they have no intention of giving out that amount but are instead using it to entice people that are willing to accept less than they are worth. It plants the idea that one day you will be making that much at the company if you accept less for now.
This happened to me, range was $x-y for a position I was very well qualified for. They wanted 6-8 YOE while I had 12, I had 5+ years familiarity with the business domain alone, experience in all the tech, demonstrable experience doing what they wanted to do in the next 2 years. Comes time for salary negotiation and their first offer is exactly in the middle of X and Y not surprisingly. I list all the above, say it's pretty clear to me Y is a fair offer not to mention a pay cut from where I'm coming from (which had the added benefit of being true).
Basically they refused to pay me Y because there were folks working there who had been at the company for a while and weren't making that, with very little other justification. We eventually settled on a signing bonus to make up ~80% of the difference, and I got a raise that surpassed that difference within the first year. But I probably wouldn't have taken the role without the bonus and probably would have left within the first year without the raise.
It's still not clear to me why they listed that range if their justification for not paying the top of it was a set of factors that would have been the same for any applicant.
It makes some sense to hide it, because they're not just hiding it from you. They're hiding it from all candidates, and a policy of telling everyone (or hiding from everyone) can have an effect on just what sort of candidates they get.
If, in exceptional circumstances, they would pay 30% more than everyone else, they might want to hide this. Instead of saying "we do 95% to 135% of what everyone else offers", they say "we do 95% to 105% of what everyone else offers"... and suddenly they get fewer cranks and weirdos. But they still have the option of offering that 30% more, if they stumble upon some diamond in the rough.
They might want to, even if showing would bring in a few more good candidates. Is it disturbing the signal to noise ratio so much that it takes far longer and costs more to go through the whole process.
Of course, just because it might work this way in theory, it doesn't mean that it does in practice, especially consistently. So, it could be them chasing bad strategy that they can't determine to be bad strategy.
If they have a few more bad assumptions (like "our stated range is still good enough to get the decent candidates"), then they might be even more inclined to hide the range.
They're working through all sorts of bad tradeoffs too, just like you.
I do think being proactive like you suggest is a good approach. It is pretty easy to couch it in a relaxed way that you are attempting to save everyone's time and it makes them show their hand first. That way you aren't reducing the possibility of making a higher than expected salary and you can hopefully short circuit positions with companies that are below your desired range or as you said, being secretive or weird about it.
I've had some success by saying a ridiculously high number, and then quickly adding that "This is what it would take for me to accept an offer on the spot. As I learn more about the role and team and how well this would fit me, I expect that number to go down significantly."
Once they've responded to that I ask something along the lines of "By the way, what's the budgeted range for this role?" or "are you forbidden from sharing the range for this role" or something along those lines.
For some reason, recruiters seem more willing to share the range after I've anchored high – perhaps because they get insecure about whether they've misjudged my qualifications.
Yeah given the author’s expertise in job markets I’m shocked she wrote this as well.
I don’t think there’s a single other profession with as much compensation variability as software engineer. I’ve heard it described as bimodal or trimodal, but I’m not even sure that captures it.
There was a YC company on the hacker news homepage recently looking for senior AI engineer for 60k. Even by international standards that’s absurdly cheap , but this is a YC backed company, I don’t think their head is in the sand (though I do suspect YC coaches founders to play moneyball with hiring as YC companies as a whole seem to pay far below average).
There’s many companies that consider 150-200k as “standard”.
And there’s still many companies paying 400-600k for senior engineers. I thought in the “tech recession” with the interest rates up this wouldn’t be available for a while but an acquaintance who got laid off from Twitter did the “grind interview prep and interview a dozen companies simultaneously” strategy just this summer in 2023 and got multiple competing 500k+ offers (all liquid) for staff SWE including from some companies I didn’t realize paid that much like HubSpot.
Despite many great offers he also encountered many companies that tried to lowball by claiming “salaries are going down for engineers” but that turned out to be wishful thinking and/or a bluff on the company’s part given his final result.
So basically there is no “market rate” for senior engineers but to the extent there is one a huge percentage look to massively go under it. I don’t blame them as it’s part of the game but just be aware many companies say things like “we want the best and are willing to pay for it” but then lowball and try to bluff engineers into thinking “the market” is much lower than reality. Which they do because many many engineers fall for it.
A lot of companies don't know what they want and how much that costs. The "senior engineer" at my FIL's 60-person company makes less than an inbound "junior" at a FAANG.
Obviously a silly example, but the caliber of folks is totally different. If I am a job searcher, I want to know the employer understands and is willing to pay for my caliber because otherwise our ideas of what the role is and what it should pay could be vastly off.
Because the marker is relative. What’s crap pay to you is a golden opportunity to others. Experience is relative as well. They may not have the experience and the company doesn’t care about that, only to fill the seat. Don’t take it personally.
Whether I am thrilled to take a $60k TC job or my absolute minimum is $400k that doesn't change the market in that 60k is insultingly low and 400k is well above the median (cue all the folks who think FAANG is the market chiming in about $450k TC juniors).
Probably not "junior" in the traditional sense of the world. Maybe some PhD holders researching very, very specific literature that the company wants to lock in pronto. You're not hiring a new engineer for that much to simply code.
Perhaps people who joined shortly before a stock rally. I was pulling ~$270k TC at 2 YoE, but it was really ~$175k TC at the time I actually joined the company. Equity is so variable, that's why it's better to compare TC at time of offer. Of course, when I negotiate I always cite the highest stock value in the last several months.
My understanding is that the game is usually about the money saved between the offer and the target salary band.
Companies have their review schedules and the new hires would be boarded before the reviews. This would allow to hire at low ball and then give a "raise", effectively leveling it.
Not only aiming at below market figure saves company the money, this also serves as a retention tool.
So, it does pay to know an approx of the target comp band AND your own "happy" target. The hard part is to formulate it as a package.
Only apply to businesses that advertise pay range, or at least a minimum pay, in their job listings. It is the law in CO/NYC/WA/CA, so all the highest paying businesses have to comply anyway, and any business that wants to compete with them will have to advertise pay range also.
Thus if a business does not advertise pay ranges, you can assume it will not be on the high end, at least not competitive with pay in the above regions.
Author here. These ranges are typically wide because your compensation depends on your interview performance and perceived seniority/value add to the company.
There's no way to tease this out before you interview, except that if you're looking for compensation that's significantly above the top of the band, it might be hard to get. (A little above the top is possible, and sometimes a lot is possible too... that's where the negotiation comes in.)
I feel like it's not a great look to say "I don't know enough about the role to give you my salary expectations at this point" while also asking "but what is the salary range for this position, given you don't know enough about me".
This may sound quaint but I find that being forthcoming and asking the question you have works.
During the latest job search, I would just ask for a range and say myself that "obviously where I fall in the range depends on my candidacy, I won't hold you to it."
If they tell you the range is something like $120K to $150K, it tells you what kind of seniority they are looking for - whether they know it or not - and how much they value people of that profile. If they tell you it's like $150K to $750K - then you know they are really wide open to range of experience and impact. Someone may say that a $600K wide range is meaningless but I don't think it is. If you're more junior you can count on being towards the left but still know they can afford to give you a bit more if they like you, and if you're very senior you can recognize that they have room for someone like you and have an appetite to pay. You'd be totally self-unaware to go into the process hoping for $750 and then landing at $150 but that's more on you.
So I am fine asking for a broad range - it's way more meaningful than no range.
It is very helpful, the bottom of the range tells you almost everything you need to know. I don’t care if the top is $1B per year if I am willing to accept $200k in order to decide which jobs to apply.
I think that's true when you're on the more junior side of things. When you're more senior, you're more interested in the ceiling. the $200k may not be enough but if you know it goes up to say $500k - you can consider interviewing.
That's not "completely unhelpful" - if your current job is $99k/yr or $400k/yr it answers your "should I bother spending time interviewing here?" question quite nicely.
The fact that the range is 100k isn't that big of an impediment to utility.
It can be a valid range - I've seen plenty of postings (internal at least) where the the seniority is flexible. Also a flexible location could also lead to a big range depending if you are based in NYC versus Iowa...
I recently found out that i did not know the maximum. Only multiple offers and taking some risks allowed me to find out and it was well beyond what i had assumed.
You're spot on, and I don't know why people complain about "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is both a valuable skill and a good information discovery process - as you mentioned.
If you are doing a lot of interviews and not getting jobs - then you need more practice doing them. If you're getting so many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more demanding positions.
>I don't know why people complain about "wasting their time interviewing" so much. Interviewing is both a valuable skill and a good information discovery process - as you mentioned.
for me:
- it's long, often 3 stages minimum, but more typically 5-6 rounds. do I really want to take 5-10 hours per job out of my month just to "figure out my worth?". As long as I can pay the bills and I'm not miserable at my job, I'm fine.
- if you have a job, it is hard to schedule around all these rounds. In addition, it feels stressful since by most intents, a company does not react well to hearing you are shopping around
- it generally makes use of skills that do not reflect my performance in a job. I am 6 years into industry, I don't and never needed to invert a binary tree on the spot. Meanwhile, actual skills like proper coding practices/architecture, code review feedback, test coverages/edge cases, and the ability navigate through the company to find the person you need are barely even mentioned.
- it's a sterile, artificial environment that more or less makes you put on airs to show "your best self". "why do you want to work for this company" is asked in nearly every interview setting and we all know your real answer is the wrong one, as opposed to using the time to show off how much you researched the company. Even if you basically jut googled "X engineer" and applied because the salary range fit you.
I can understand testing in juniors, because there is no license exam for an engineer, and maybe on the other side of the hump you can get to a point where the companies are trying to impress you. But that middle hump feels like the worst of both worlds.
>If you're getting so many offers its boring, look for a way to interview for more demanding positions.
if you're at that point, you're probably not going to find your answer on the internet. those sorts of jobs are word of mouth.
The thing is, as an employee you tend to look for a new job only if you start to feel unhappy. This puts you in a slightly needy position and does set the tone. I used to be self employed and learned to enjoy the negotiations. It is kind of crazy to have this binary situation of beeing either employee or contractor but i dont have a solution either.
"Portfolios" in some form are often necessary. (In my space, writing samples.) If you have those ready to go, easier for everyone! But if you don't have a relevant portfolio, you'll need to either put something together or I'll pass. (I'm not really looking for a specific assignment but just something that's representative of the type of work.)
why would a software dev have a portfolio? The comparison to design or writing doesn't make sense. A graphic designer can point to logos or marketing material that is publicly available. I'm not going to put proprietary code on a portfolio nor am I going to spend multiple years building some open source project when I already have a full time job.
Software engineering must be the only profession where employment history means nothing. And yet... interviewers always want salary history to knock you down. If you don't care about the work I did in the past, then why do you care about how much I was given for that work?
For the same reason artists do -- to show a potential employer what you're capable of and what your style is. Look at it from the employer's point of view -- they have very little to go on when judging ability. If you can provide examples of your work, then you're reducing their uncertainty and giving yourself an edge for the position.
> I'm not going to put proprietary code on a portfolio nor am I going to spend multiple years building some open source project when I already have a full time job.
You don't have to do either of those things. Your portfolio doesn't have to include large, complex projects. A collection of smaller ones will do nicely. Or, even easier, is what I do: I just bring in the code for the most recent hobby project that I've completed.
> interviewers always want salary history to knock you down
You don't need to provide that history. At least, I never do. When I'm asked, I respond with what my salary expectation is, not what my salary history is.
They're asking more how it would happen, less for what purpose.
Artists automatically accumulate portfolios by doing work that gets displayed in public. Programmers who work on closed-source programs don't—unless they supplement their work-for-pay in ways that artists aren't expected to. The artist's history of work itself is how they get more work; the programmer's isn't.
>They're asking more how it would happen, less for what purpose.
open source projects in a relevant industry. IME it's never been required to have sample work to show off, but many agree that having some OS contributions or even small pet projects is one of the most valuable things to leverage, outside of actual work experience.
>The artist's history of work itself is how they get more work; the programmer's isn't.
No one is really going to care behind closed doors, but _technically_ there's plenty of concept/scrapped art owned by the company that they can't directly point to on their public portfolio. It's not quite as easy for artists either to show off what may have been their best work.
As I said, how I do this is to bring in the code for my hobby projects.
> The artist's history of work itself is how they get more work; the programmer's isn't.
It's just a recommended strategy, not a requirement. In general, it's a great idea to identify a customer's pain points and reduce them. When you're looking for a job, the companies you're talking to are the customers. The easier you make things for the interviewer, the more you can reduce their pain points, the better your chances for the position.
The person you replied to is annoyed they have to do that when it seems like others don't. They think they shouldn't have to and it isn't fair they do. Explaining how to do it fundamentally does not address their point.
If you're trying to explain how they can do it with the least amount of extra work, to minimize the impact of the extra expectation, please consider that not everyone has hobby projects. Even fewer people's hobby projects are presentable, and even fewer still can trust the other person not to draw some wild conclusion based on anything that might be in there.
I think everyone is clear on how the situation works, but not everyone is happy with it working that way.
>Software engineering must be the only profession where employment history means nothing
Nah, Artists have it the worst when it comes to that. Especially early on.
SWE's for the most part leverage titles and company names a bit too much IMO. No licenses + very little way to verify actual contributions = tons of potential false positives.
> interviewers always want salary history to knock you down.
That's pretty much every single job in the history of ever. if it's not a minimum wage job, they are trying to minimize your compensation somehow.
Sure, employment history matters. But, if you're in a field where some job-seekers can point to relevant concrete work products they've created they may have an advantage over those who can't. Maybe that's not fair but it's the way it often is.
If I understand things correctly, current comp shouldn't be part of the equation or talks as far as your recruiter and company that you're interviewing with are concerned. The position will have a comp range. That is not related to what you may be currently earning.
That's not the point. The point is that most people wouldn't leave their current role without a bump, so if they'd known that up front they wouldn't have bothered with the interview.
You'll still be glad you asked up front, because that kind of BS tells you something about the company. Sure you wasted your time in the interviews, but you now know not to push back on their initial offer because you don't want to work for a company that'd pull that on you.
The sunk cost goes both ways. The company has likewise spent a lot of time and effort interviewing you and if they are extending you an offer and you say no, the process starts over for them.
Especially if you have a job already, when they want to hire you is when you have the maximum leverage.
That's only when most of the interviews aren't automated via codility and similar atrocities. If they built or contracted a process that is scalable, interviewing you will cost them like $5 and almost no time outside maybe the final call with your future boss whereas you'll waste a lot of time.
for big companies a lot of salary/comp data is out there. I didn't discuss comp at all for the last 4 companies I interviewed at, since I knew they'd all beat my current comp by quite a lot.
If it's a well known company, I've found sites like levels [1] to be very informative and accurate. Otherwise I always just ask in the initial calls, no reason to beat around the bush. If you know what you want, you can ask what the salary range is and decide if it's worth it from there.
I ask in the initial calls even when I already know what the answer is. Sometimes, there's a discrepancy between the two that can be a clue that you should look more closely to see if the company is a straight-shooter or not.
> How do you avoid wasting your time doing interviews
Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in the company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them that their offer is "a good starting point for discussion" and then make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation, bonuses, or whatever you value.
Conversely, if interviewing for unattractive positions that pay well is motivated by non-negotiable financial considerations (mortgage, kids in college), then by all means, be up front about it.
This may seem like I'm being dismissive but I don't want to work anywhere. I work because I have bills that need to be paid. I don't derive enjoyment from making other people wealthy. I legitimately cannot think of such a state as enjoying work nor enjoying working at any given company in particular.
Do you, and if so how did you cultivate that? If you don't mind answering.
Neither do I, but within the scope that I have bills that need to be paid and thus need to work, there are organizations where that work is enjoyable, others where it's acceptable and even more where it would be unpleasant.
I want to not dread going to work, so I only entertain offers from outfits where the job and its environment appear enjoyable. "Acceptable" is below the bar I set unless I somehow end up desperate for money.
The attitude in my case wasn't cultivated. It stems from the fact that I like what I do and I'm very good at it.
Consider, thoroughly, the hypothetical lottery jackpot. What is it you would choose to do, pursue, aim for, if money were no object and you had nothing except your inner volition to drive you. Would you spend your days reading, exploring philosophy and knowledge? Or would you travel and see the world you've yet to traverse? Maybe you're an individual striving toward community and you want to focus on family, friendship, charity. Maybe a bit of everything?
Design, intentionally, the dream you would live if you could. My friend often responds cynically, saying if he is asked about his dream job he would be a space explorer like some Marvel movie. I hear him as flippant and he's clear he thinks it's a dumb idealistic pontificating exercise. . I go toward the path of okay, what would it take to BE that thing or pursue it...
If you can visualize and reason your way to how something might happen, you can reverse engineer it. You can think of it like chess. Position yourself with strength, understand openings midgame and endgame, but know there are many, many, undiscovered lines left in many positions. Now expand from 64,64 squares and so many moves to the infinite variability in Life. You have levers and positions you can exploit and transpose.
Circumstances will always have a hand as will pure luck, fate, or Higher Power, but... you have immense power to craft your reality and I mean this in no woo terms. You change your thoughts, your words, your actions and most crucially, your influence and environment.
I want to respond and thank you for taking the time to reply. I want to put that here first because what I am about to say will seem flippant.
But I literally want to do nothing. I don't want to do anything - I want to not exist. Life is suffering. I derive no enjoyment from anything. I just make other people happy and wealthy and then go home and suffer until I go back to work and suffer.
Hello, I work in the games industry. You basically need some self-fulfillment to not burn out, be it in designing/implementing gameplay features, digging deep into some graphics/hardware level instructions to optimize, or simply working alongside non-programmers (artists, sound designers, VA's, writers, etc. Very diverse environment) to get something beyond a technical project finished.
How to cultivate that is pretty straightforward. I like games, and I can tolerate making games by leveraging my existing skills. I want to make my own games one day, but I need more financial stability for that. Of course, I can't say I feel as passionate about making someone else's game as I would my own, but industry gives me experience, lets me meet other kinds of talent, and lets me prepare savings for that day I try to do my own thing. That's how I keep motivation going.
I'll grant you, "enjoying work" is rarely, if ever, a thing. The choice might come down to "less bad", but there's still a range of work situations. By "companies you'd like to work with" I mean companies shipping products or services that resonate with you, using tech your interested in, and development processes you don't hate. I don't like working in fintech, for example, so that's a place I wouldn't interview unless I was in need of money. Others might really love the idea of working as staff at academic institutions, and be will to accept less money in exchange for other things.
This might come as a shock, but some people aren't motivated by money beyond the basic need to afford to live in the market the way they want. Some would be willing to take that offer if the position included a variety of attractive intangibles.
To put it another way, "total compensation package" for some people includes things that aren't money but have a value roughly equal to some amount of money for that person.
>Simple. Only interview with companies you'd like to work with so much that you'd be willing to negotiate from a starting offer 2/3rds of what you want. When your interest in the company is sufficient, you'll be motivated to tell them that their offer is "a good starting point for discussion" and then make a counter-offer or ask for additional vacation, bonuses, or whatever you value.
This would only work in a hot market, for a desirable candidate. Not everyone has the luxury of interviewing places they really want to work at any cost.
> This would only work in a hot market, for a desirable candidate. Not everyone has the luxury of interviewing places they really want to work at any cost.
Yes, that would be an example of "non-negotiable financial considerations". I'm going of the statement of the original comment, implying they had the luxury of choosing only those positions that meet their compensation criteria.
I've generally taken what I want to make in the role and added 20% to it as a starting point. While this might limit me, it also keeps me from doing 100 onsite interviews only to discover their max is 2/3 of my expected comp.