
“What’s your current salary?” is a trap question–Here's how to answer it - JoshDoody
https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/the-dreaded-salary-question/
======
madenine
A close friend recently related to me that during an interview process the HR
contact mentioned that they had just revoked an offer from someone who 'asked
for too much' during negotiations.

Director level position (non-profit, Washington DC). Candidate asked for
~100k, and they were willing to give it to them - until they got a detailed
salary history and found out their current salary was ~80k... so they would've
only offered ~85k.

So they were absolutely fine with paying 100k for the job (very reasonable for
the role and size of the org), until they learned it would be a decent pay
increase for the new hire. Insane.

It will not surprise anyone to learn this org has a bad reputation for
internal culture and holding on to talent.

~~~
dethswatch
Them: "We'd like to see proof of your salary history."

Me: "Sorry- we arrived at an agreeable number earlier. I don't see how a
salary history would change that."

Them: (stammers...)

Either way it's a win- you either get it, or they toss you and you dodged a
FUCKING BULLET.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
They won't stammer. They will without the slightest bit of shame attempt to
cajole/badger/guilt/etc you into revealing the information. Then they may also
engage in a background check / credit report goose chase to get or infer the
information.

You say "you dodged a FUCKING BULLET", and I agree in principle, but in
practice, a lot of employers do this, and a lot of people submit themselves to
this kind of crap which makes you stick out more (like a sore thumb) when you
don't.

~~~
southphillyman
They say former employers can only verify dates of employment, where else will
salary information show up? I wasn't aware that this information shows up in
background checks.

I wonder if you could just counter the request by saying you signed a NDA that
forbid sharing that information.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Well, if you work for a state college/uni/other entity like I do, then the
salary information is public. Former employers can say or do what they like,
they rarely do anything other than verify dates of employment, confirm a few
facts, out of a perceived fear of a civil suit, (I guess). Credit reporting
agencies OTOH, and other similar companies use all sorts of information to
build profiles about you / your habits / other demographic data, and I'd be
surprised if there weren't some of these companies who would sell either
predicted (and perhaps erroneous) salary range for you, or a factual (if
partial) salary history mined from various sources.

>I wonder if you could just counter the request by saying you signed a NDA
that forbid sharing that information.

Seems reasonable, or some version of "No thanks, I'd rather not."

------
jnwatson
I've used this technique to great effect for almost 20 years. The problem I
have now is that my salary is so high that, without presenting a desired
salary, there aren't any easy filter questions left to determine whether a
potential employer is remotely interested in acquired somebody of my
"caliber".

It is reasonable to expect a company to stretch their budget by 20%. However,
it generally isn't reasonable to ask for double their budget. The faster we
can get to no, the faster we can talk to other folks.

------
ilaksh
As I get older I (hope) I am slowly starting to understand how the world
works, and that is gradually changing some of my interactions from being nice
and considerate and open and honest, to being careful and calculated. Although
I still have a long way to go. I guess oftentimes I am open and nice at first
meeting people still and then realize I have to be more calculating. Which by
that time I probably have already given myself a disadvantage. I am almost 40
now so hopefully I will finally get this ?character flaw? ironed out pretty
soon.

When it comes to money, people look out for themselves. And unless you are
independently wealthy and maxed out your penchant for philanthropy, then you
probably have to do so also.

BTW this is a terrific article.

~~~
JoshDoody
My whole philosophy is to be nice/considerate AND careful/calculated.

In a nutshell, I see salary negotiation and interviewing as a collaboration,
not a competition. Working to get a good result for everyone involved is the
best way to approach it.

Glad to hear you're looking out for yourself - you're always going to be your
own best advocate!

Thanks for the kind words!

------
mywittyname
I've never had much luck with this approach. It sucks to get through the
interview process and find out that you're asking for $XX,000 more than they
are willing to pay for the position. I now prefer to state up-front how much I
want, rather than wasting time getting an offer for ten+ thousand less than I
want and only have HR willing to come up a few grand.

I'm sure many people have applied this technique to great success, but I have
strong doubts that it's universal. Maybe it's because I never bring much to
the table, or that I live in an area where "market" salaries are not
affordable for companies.

~~~
averageweather
Very much agree. Just get the salary discussion done with up front. Saves both
parties time IMO.

------
fecak
I have a bit of a different theory on this, based on my experience as a
recruiter for almost 20 years. I should clarify that I don't even ask for
current salary anymore in dialogue with my candidates.

If you know your current market value, there is no harm in providing your
current salary.

As a real-world example (and a bit of an edge case used to illustrate the
point clearly), if you know the typical salary for an entry-level developer in
Philadelphia is 70K a year, and $NEWGRAD is currently making 35K while working
during school, saying "I'm currently making 35K and looking for 70K" is
entirely appropriate, as both sides are aware that is the going rate for
entry-level developers in Philly. You can't offer NEWGRAD 38K and expect
him/her to accept the job.

This applies to anyone, whether you are overpaid or underpaid in your market.
If you have strong data on what the market will bear for your services,
whether you make half of that figure or twice that figure currently has little
bearing on your actual market value.

The challenge is that most people do not have that data, and it's tough to
figure out for many. As much as people hate recruiters, an experienced and
specialized recruiter should be pretty good at telling you what your market
value is - and most should be willing to provide this info to you without any
strings attached.

Based on my own recruiting practice and my tendency to allow (encourage) most
of my candidates and clients to negotiate directly much more than most other
recruiters, I tend to find that candidates who are the most dodgy about their
expectations or history are more likely to face a more difficult negotiation
from the client.

People who are honest and transparent are perhaps viewed differently by
employers than those who fight the question.

I think employers appreciate a healthy negotiation as long as it is done in
good faith, but I think the value of being transparent in the negotiation may
outweigh any benefits of secrecy, based anecdotally of course.

~~~
scarface74
I agree with all of this.

I have recruiters from 20 different local companies in my contact list. About
6 months before actively looking for a job, I reach out to them to get market
information - both on skill set and salary range for my experience. I also
unashamedly talk to former coworkers about salaries.

When it is time to start actively looking, I reach out to the same set of
recruiters. They only send me jobs within the salary range I want and I know
where my application is in the process. There are no black holes.

Usually within two to three weeks, I'm actively engaged (phone screen/in
person interview/ waiting for an offer) with 15 - 20 companies.

Once I get 3-4 offers on the table. I'm tired of interviewing, stop the
process and accept a job with the right combination of
technology/money/commuting distance.

At most, I'm leaving $5000 on the table. Eventually, within two or three
years, I will either be within market value range or change jobs.

------
aeturnum
>They ask you to guess what that budget is, and you decline to guess because
you read this article[.] So you move on to the next stage of the interview and
do well.

In my experience, when I decline to state my current or desired salary, that's
the end of the interview process.

------
novia
I have an entry level position at my firm, and I was applying to other
internal positions that more closely match my skill set, but which would cause
me to have a huge increase in pay. One interviewer/screener asked me how much
I was currently making, and I said I'd prefer not to disclose that
information. Their response was, "That's ok, I can just look you up in our
system. Ah, you make $x." It was so infuriating.

~~~
dv_dt
This behavior is telling you (maybe not intentionally or consciously), that
you need to look outside the company for a large pay bump. Unfortunately, many
companies do this.

And honestly, there is a middle ground that a company needs to walk, otherwise
on the far side, they can be a ship full of very well paid employees on a trip
where a few thin years could sink it.

But to be clear, it's absolutely not in your personal interest to receive low
pay for the benefit of the firm - especially in an entry level position.

~~~
novia
Yeah, I have been focusing 100% on external positions since then.

------
josephorjoe
I have found that almost any decently sized company uses some sort of online
form as part of the application/interview process.

These forms usually have a current or desired salary field and often has
fairly strong validations on it (e.g., must be filled in, must be a number
between x and y, no non-numeric characters allowed).

So you either have to fill it in or not submit the application form at all
(the rest of which is usually perfectly reasonable), which is not going to
impress anyone.

I suppose you could also hack their javascript and take out their validations
and hope they don't have server side validations as well. That _should_
impress them :).

 _edit for sense /grammar_

~~~
dhd415
I despise these forms and their presence almost always results in my deciding
not to submit an application. The best companies I've worked for have either
(a) not had these employment history forms at all or (b) asked for them to be
filled out in minimal fashion after the offer had already been extended and
accepted.

~~~
josephorjoe
I have stopped applying to companies that require these forms for an initial
application submission, but recently I was asked to fill one out after a few
email exchanges, a phone interview, and an online coding test.

We were about 2 weeks into the process at this point, and I was interested in
the position and they seemed interested in me.

Next step was a technical phone interview, but before doing that they just
needed me to fill out a formal application...

In this case, it doesn't matter much as I did not do well on the technical
interview (got hit with a tricky algorithm question that I didn't know the
trick for).

But it also probably didn't help my case much that I put down a fairly high
number in their 'desired salary' field on the form -- basically I put down the
top number I thought I could expect them to pay for this position.

~~~
pryelluw
Mind posting the algo question? I enjoy solving those :)

~~~
josephorjoe
It was a variation on Max Subarray, but instead of finding a contiguous max
subarray you could (but didn't have to) skip every other number (but cannot
skip 2 consecutive numbers).

So for [1, -1, 2, -1, 3, -1] you could take [1, 2, 3], but for [-1, -1, -5,
-20, -10, -1, -3] you would end up with [-1, -5, -10, -1]. Input values and
ranges are large enough that brute forcing won't work.

~~~
colorint
Well, the answer for an array of all negative numbers is to choose no
elements, or if you must choose one, to choose the maximum single element. But
presumably you solve it with the normal algorithm but with one level of look-
behind. Something like,

    
    
      function maxsum(arr)
        local max2 = function(a, b) if a > b then return a else return b end end
        local max3 =
          function(a, b, c)
            if a > b and a > c then return a
            elseif b > c then return b
            else return c end end
        local best = 0
        local best_here = 0
        local i = 2
        while i <= table.maxn(arr) do
          best_here = max3(0, best_here + arr[i], best_here + arr[i-1])
          best = max2(best, best_here)
          if arr[i] > arr[i-1] then i = i + 2 else i = i + 1 end
        end
        return best
      end
    
      print(maxsum{1, -1, 2, -2, 3, -3, -4, 4, -5})
    

Assuming this algorithm is correct (it worked for my couple of test cases),
the main trickiness is that you have to skip two elements if you choose the
current one, to make sure that you don't double-choose.

~~~
josephorjoe
My understanding of the challenge (which could have been wrong...) was that
you had to use at least one half of the array (every other number).

So if the array was [-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6], the 'max sum' would be -9 ([-1,
-3, -5]).

I can't think of a non-brute force solution for an extended sequence of
negative numbers...

~~~
colorint
If by half the array you mean your solution must include either the first or
second, and either the last or second-to-last, then the problem seems a lot
simpler. This ought to work:

    
    
      function maxsum(arr)
        local max = function(a, b) if a > b then return a else return b end end
        local best = {arr[1], arr[2]}
        for i = 3, table.maxn(arr) do
          best[i] = max(arr[i] + best[i-1], arr[i] + best[i-2])
        end
        return max(best[table.maxn(best)], best[table.maxn(best)-1])
      end
      
      print(maxsum{-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6})
    

This prints -9, though it's not set up to track which numbers it used. (It
wouldn't be hard to modify it to make it do so.) Note that Lua uses one-
indexing.

------
southphillyman
Philadelphia is trying to ban this and is getting major push back from the
likes of Comcast. HR departments keeping procedures like this in place
suppresses the wages of minorities, women, and people who may have graduated
from lower tier schools. Basically anyone who may have had to accept a job at
below average wages is screwed going forward.

Last time out I just flatly refused to provide the information, some
recruiters refused to move forward and it is what it is. This is just another
reason why it's better to be interviewing while already gainfully employed.
Gives you some leverage when dealing with BS like this

------
jasonkostempski
Too many words and moving pictures just to get to:

"I’m not comfortable sharing my current salary. I would prefer to focus on the
value I can add to this company rather than what I’m paid at my current job. I
don’t have a specific number in mind for a desired salary, and you know better
than I do what value my skillset and experience could bring to your company. I
want this move to be a big step forward for me in terms of both responsibility
and compensation."

------
ThaiWood
I've seen a lot of people including recruiters talk about how this is a
terrible idea. But then I see this and folks like patio11 talking about
similar negotiating strategies. How do I know which one is right?

~~~
JoshDoody
How you decide what's right for you is a personal decision. But when it comes
to salary negotiation, you can be sure the company is very much working to do
what's right for itself and its shareholders, and I think you should similarly
be just as focused on doing what's right for you.

Negotiating your salary is better for you. Disclosing your current salary or
desired salary when asked is worse for you and better for the company.

I wrote this article specifically to help folks understand the interview and
negotiation processes better so they could make a more informed decision about
what's right for them.

Does this help? I'm happy to clarify - just let me know!

~~~
tnorthcutt
_Negotiating your salary is better for you._

1000000% agree with this. My first job, right out of college, I got an offer
which was fine, and I had no problem with the amount. But, I asked for more,
because why not? And got 15% more just from asking.

Always. Negotiate.

~~~
JoshDoody
A pretty good summary of my "Why you should always negotiate" speech.

"Because why not?"

I love it.

------
averageweather
Apparently in MA, USA, where I live, it is illegal to ask this[1]. It is
brought up on Business Radio often (sirius xm 111). Although strangely, the
host always thinks the law applies just to woman, which I'd find very odd.
However, I am not sure people abide by it.

1\. [https://qz.com/749476/massachusetts-salary-history-job-
inter...](https://qz.com/749476/massachusetts-salary-history-job-interviews/)

~~~
e1ven
The bill doesn't go into effect until next year - July 1, 2018.

~~~
averageweather
Well that'll do it.

------
donovanm
The worst part about this question is they try to get you to answer it before
you've even really figured out what the role is.

------
joeax
When asked this, I've countered with "I was hoping to make $X" (where X is
much more than I make now). Then I follow up, but "I'd like to learn more
about the company before I make any decisions on salary."

This establishes that you are a high-value candidate, and you are flexible and
not an egomaniac that only cares about money.

------
pilom
I've definitely run into a few cases where interviewers definitely would not
proceed with the conversation without a number. Usually they want "what you
made" but really they want "what you'll take" so I've had great success just
switching the scale from "Salary" to "Total Compensation." Usually a recruiter
or HR person who won't move on without a number isn't smart enough to think
about the difference and just proceeds as if the number you gave is a salary
number. Doing this twice has moved my salary to the very top of the pay scale
for my position and location.

------
scottshea
I had a horrible phone interview with a company where the recruiter refused to
continue until I told them how much I made at my current job. I suspect that
they were more interested in a salary survey than actually hiring someone.

~~~
Joeri
It depends on how desperate I was, but I would wrap up the conversation in a
situation like that. If you can't be amicable before hiring me, you definitely
won't be after.

------
misja111
Very good article, but I'm not sure if their advice for the answer to the
salary question will always work:

>I’m not comfortable sharing my current salary. I would prefer to focus on the
value I can add to this company rather than what I’m paid at my current job. I
don’t have a specific number in mind for a desired salary, ...

Now what if they will offer you some salary, and you find it too low? You have
just said that you didn't have a specific number in mind. To me it looks like
that sentence threw away your opportunity to disagree with the offer and ask
for a higher bid?

~~~
mombul
You also said that you want this to be a big step forward in both
responsibility and compensation. This tells them you're expecting a market-
accurate offer (so it will probably be good enough for you) and gives you a
way out if they don't.

------
no_protocol
To the author:

> You’ve told them your uncomfortable

your -> you're

~~~
JoshDoody
Fixed, thank you! (Typos that evade spellcheck are tricky!)

------
rhapsodic
It's been a decade since I have been an actve job seeker, so things may be
different now. But my response to that question was always "I'm not going to
say what I'm currently making but I'll be happy to say what the minimum amount
I'll consider is." If any of them balked at the number I would get up and
walk. Some backed down immediately, and we continued the conversation, and
others did not. Either outcome was fine with me.

------
onion2k
I do this. It's a good strategy in most circumstances, but you do need to be
careful. On one occasion it killed the whole process because the company
refused to go further with the interview on the basis they assumed they
wouldn't be able to afford me. I think they just wanted cheap developers. If
you don't have other places to apply to or you're applying somewhere you
_really_ want to join, it does come with some risk.

~~~
icc97
He does answer this question:

> _If they discontinue the interview process because you won’t share two of
> the three unique pieces of information you have, then they’re extremely
> motivated to get a bargain on your skillset and experience, and they’re not
> focused on finding the right candidate for the role itself._

> _That’s bad news for you even if you get the job. Do you really want to work
> somewhere that is so myopic that they ignore perfectly qualified candidates
> simply because the candidate won’t make the negotiation easier?_

------
acconrad
If you live in Massachusetts it's now illegal for a perspective employer to
ask this question as part of your interviewing process:

[http://www.mass.gov/governor/press-office/press-
releases/fy2...](http://www.mass.gov/governor/press-office/press-
releases/fy2017/governor-baker-signs-bipartisan-pay-equity-legislation.html)

~~~
kbrosnan
> Pay Equity, which will go into effect on July 1, 2018 for Commonwealth
> employers and employees.

A year and 3 months to go before it is illegal.

------
hopeless
I've always hated this question and the best I've managed is to pick what I
thought was a biggish number and tell them that.

~~~
JoshDoody
Picking a biggish number is better than just telling them the actual number
(in terms of "What's your desired salary?"). Better to give them a big number,
all things considered.

But giving NO number is MUCH MUCH better.

------
kxr
Related discussion on a previous, similar thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11832613)

------
holydude
In my country i am not legally allowed to share my current salary.

When I am negotiating I always say what is my absolute minimum and
specifically make clear that it is just s bottom line and i would prefer more.

~~~
QuinnyPig
Why on earth would you do that? There's a great chance you just shaved a giant
pile of money off of what they would have otherwise offered.

~~~
holydude
While you are right i know the current market in my area pretty well. Would it
be in a different country i would pick another strategy.

------
utnick
I don't really see the point of not telling them, if the company has no idea
about your previous salary, they aren't going to be tricked into offering you
some huge number, they are going to come in at the average wage in your
location for that position.

What you should do instead is identify the number you want to get paid before
hand. ( Which should be higher than the average ) And then honestly tell them
, I'm currently paid X, but am looking for a job that pays Y.

If they say they can't do that, its too big of jump or whatever, just say that
you understand and thanks and move on to the next company

~~~
dhd415
If you're going to do this, you should leave out X. The larger the
differential between X and Y, the higher the unconscious (or perhaps even
conscious) bias will be against you. "This guy wants a 40% raise to come work
for us" vs. "This guy wants $Y to come work for us."

------
nazakc
i never used a strategy in negotiating a salary before and i got burned during
my last job interview because even though i landed the job with a salary
higher than what i was earning in the previous job, i found out i could've
gotten more out of them. exactly the scenario depicted in this article. i am
thinking of ways to renegotiate with them now and would love to hear about any
such strategies.

------
nsxwolf
"That's proprietary."

------
glasz
it's another problem but related: for me it's much more difficult to find an
employer i'd even really like to work for regardless salary. _that's_ hard.

------
Pavelcz
Very, very long article. TL;DR: "I don't want to tell you, make me an offer
instead" is the suggested answer.

