Anchoring only works if the potential employer is ready to buy. Many, many organizations will simply use the number as yet another filter, and you won't even begin discussions.
By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number.
I do agree with the wasted negotiating time thing.
Pricing yourself out of a job with an organization that uses salary as an first-line filter is maybe not the worst thing in the world.
There are a lot of bad jobs in the world, you should be happy to turn down or be turned down by many jobs that you apply to. It's kind of a sad cultural trope that the employee is desperate for a 'yes' at every job they apply for, when that is often not true at all.
Unconventional opinion on this Valley bubble circuit, I'm sure, but I think you need to be mindful of what kind of business you're applying to.
Yes, salary is a filter, because money isn't infinite and the hiring budget is only so much. Yes, a certain category of hyped-up, massively funded startup may (temporarily) exist in an alternate universe where the laws of economics don't apply and all budgets are imaginary ("for the right people..."), but the rest of the universe doesn't work like that.
For example, a small company bootstrapped by the founder's limited personal funds simply isn't going to offer $250k pay packages to Full Stack JavaScript Rock Star Ninjas. In some cases, that's close to the entire gross revenue of the company. Yet there may be advantages to working for a company like that.
Likewise, large orgs and state agencies function in normal-law economics, not RockStar VC economics. There's only so much they can afford to pay, and that's that.
Negotiations aren't just a staring contest where, if you do the right things, you get paid like a banker, otherwise you toil in the lowly ranks of the unwashed proletariat. In theory, negotiation leads to compromise. Yes, employers have more leverage in these conversations often, but it doesn't change the fact that negotiation requires credible and bona fide compromise intentions from both sides.
Take the time to understand the nature of the business to which you are applying. Yeah, you might just be getting squeezed by MBA frat boys sitting on top of tens of millions in VC who are going to get rich off the sweat of your toil for peanuts, but in 90% of the country, that probably shouldn't be your first thought.
> Pricing yourself out of a job with an organization that uses salary as an first-line filter is maybe not the worst thing in the world.
"They try to filter people by salary" is not at the top of my list of reasons for why I wouldn't want to work somewhere. It's a reason, but it is dwarfed by many other ones.
I don't mean to imply that it's a primary filter of mine either, or even something I would attempt to find out to base my decision on. However, if a company makes a decision that we aren't compatible early on, they're probably right, for both of our benefit. That holds even more true the dumber the reason is.
It's an absurd example, but let's say you don't get hired because the hiring manager thinks your shirt is super ugly. That's insane and obviously completely improper and irrelevant -- but you're probably better off not getting that job!
There's an awful lot that's hiding under that word "often" in your last sentence. How often? How do we know?
Anecdotally, even as a software & full-stack web developer that's worked in half a dozen languages and has a math degree, I've been in both positions -- I've had the freedom to complain about people annoying me with unsolicited offers to interview while banking a third of my paycheck and treating another third as disposable... and I've been pavement-pounding in desperation.
The former has been more often the case than the latter for me, but I think it's probable that like a large portion of the audience here, I've been insulated by circumstance.
> By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number.
It doesn't seem to be a binary search in any sense of the computer science term. There is no half interval mechanics nor would that be appropriate. It seems like traditional bargaining.
In an otherwise excellent article, the missing negotiation calibration and example is glaring. The rest of the article would seem to suggest just as you will get your next big promotion from another company, if you find yourself considering coming down walk away. The heart of the approach is getting away from you becoming invested in being hired by a specific company.
Companies have a range they are willing to pay. Surprisingly, most companies in an area (and domain) usually have very similar ranges. Finding the top has a lot in common with binary searches.
Could your provide a specific example of how to use a binary search to find a salary? A binary search is dependent on boundaries. I don't see how it could be used effectively to find the boundary for a specific employer. Also, the flow chart shown in the article has no similarities to a binary search. The article describes the more reasonable approach: using networking to find out what a domain in an area pays.
You can't do it for a single employer because you only get one test per employer. You do the search across employers, in an area/domain. That gives you a rough idea of the prospect.
Yes, networking and insider information is much better than any of this.
First, do you really want to work for the lowest bidder? I have before, and it was a complete waste of my time.
Second, Name a number that you can be happy with. If they meet it, then you should be happy.
Third, many companies use banding for salary range, and if you're below the median, then you're raises will be bigger than if you're at the top of the range. In effect, naming too small of a number is often nullified within 2-3 years.
I do agree that it's a psychological game, but don't play it. Name a number you want. If they are reasonable and they like you, they'll negotiate.
In one case, I was too high for the position, and they created a new position (title, really) to put me in. I thought that was good faith.
Maybe try posting a minimum salary only? "Roles for this position start at $x for qualified candidates, negotiable based on experience" or something like that.
I don't think thats a viable strategy. I get lots of semi-spam offers. I usually just skim through them in 5 seconds and if I see salary figure way below what I would expect then it's 100 % I will not be replying.
This might just be me and my own immaturity, but in my experience, employees often count their eggs before they hatch, and once I start negotiating them down, I create a scenario where I can't get them fully aligned with my goals. They become a simple exchange of cash for labor and not someone who grows loyal or feels a sense of fairness, ownership and excitement about the role.
Maybe I am naive, but I feel like this creates a dynamic that hurts otherwise promising prospects.
They become a simple exchange of cash for labor and not someone who grows loyal or feels a sense of fairness, ownership and excitement about the role.
You've hit upon a fundamental tenet of Marxism: alienation [0]. You haven't said whether or not you offer equity as part of your compensation. If not, then it is somewhat unreasonable to expect that sort of loyalty from your employees. If so, then you have a challenging task of convincing people to buy in to your vision at a potentially high personal risk.
Today's economy is rife with alienation. So many people are constantly changing jobs or dropping out of the workforce [1]. Meanwhile, they're struggling inside a system that produces rampant cost disease [2] and staggering inequality, as illustrated by the dreaded "elephant graph" [3]. Overall, I think there's a growing sense of discontent with capitalism and this can manifest in suspicion towards employers.
Now I'll grant you that it's entirely unfair to lay all this at the feet of just a single employer such as yourself. I don't intend for this to come across as some kind of blame game. I merely hope to provide a larger context for ideas that many people may not even be consciously aware of but contribute to their feelings and instincts nonetheless.
at-will employment basically guarantees a lack of loyalty. You have no loyalty to me, so why should I have any to you? Everyone is a mercenary out to maximize their personal gain at the expense of everyone else. Not a world I particularly want to live in, but it wasn't my choice and it's a hard thing to change.
Luckily, most people out there aren't purely capitalistic, do-whatever-it-takes-to-make-a-buck sociopaths, but they're definitely out there, will play you like a pawn, and it might be a while after (or never) until you realize what happened and what role you played in their twisted little game.
To me, it's sad that we have humans literally dying because they can't afford better health insurance in this country while others play pricing games having ships full of oil sail around to manipulate the market into paying them more, or toiling to shave off a tenth of a millisecond for their high-speed quote stuffing system. The idea of money has become so remote and intangible in some cases that I hate how it's also used for things people actually need.
Wonder how it would work out if you listed the top of the range at actually midway through the range. Maybe that would be the desired result - this is kinda similar sounding to my employer, where our "bring them on at" range is lower than the "expected pay at this role" range, because we want people to have room for nice raises even if they're not promotion-ready.
Problem is even with that I would wait for an offer from your company before saying a number, and then I would ask for more, because over the course of my career this has enabled me to consistently be paid more than average. So your "maximum" would be my minimum, and if I were to work there, I'd want more. Maybe that means I don't work there, that's fine, but it'll work somewhere else, eventually!
> So your "maximum" would be my minimum, and if I were to work there, I'd want more.
Oh, the "I better be the most well-compensated person on the team or I'm going to get upset" mentality. If our strategy weeds those folks out, all the better.
I don't care at all what other people at the company make. I just know for a fact that on average, across all the companies I apply to (don't forget, you see a lot of candidates, but at the same time we are seeing lots of companies), I will get more money if I push back on an offer.
By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number.
I do agree with the wasted negotiating time thing.