What to say when recruiters ask you to name the first number

For startups or any companies who offer illiquid equity, the following is a good tactic I’ve been using that never fails.<p>Simply tell them (at the offer stage):<p>“Make me two offers, one with a higher cash compensation and the other with higher equity.”<p>Then, always take the position with higher cash to base your next negotiations. If it’s good enough, you might even take it outright.<p>This is a trick that exploits the fact that most startup founders and recruiters have an over-inflated “best case” view of how much their equity is actually worth, so it works in your favor when they use it as a benchmark against real money today. I’ve found they also fail to account how much it would be worth for you vs. them. Considering the risk is high you won’t make anything from those options even if you exercise them (&amp; stay long enough), the cash position is nearly always better. If the company becomes some run-away success there will be opportunity to get more equity but getting a cash raise in 6 months is infinitely harder I’ve found. Promotions at startups often times have an additional equity award and by that time you’ll have more information as to the chance of success or not.<p>Generally, based on my experience, it’s a good way to immediately get an extra $10-20k, with little emotional effort and without the other side feeling as if they were strong-armed, or that they had to give up something, since they offered you the choice. (This is important because you don’t want to start your position there viewed as an “expensive new toy”). They still feel powerful and in control. They may even be happy you took the cash option and let them “keep more” of their precious company. When I started doing this I originally feared they would think I don’t have faith in them, but I’ve never had someone feel insulted I took the cash option.<p>As an engineer I actually enjoy the negotiation process, it’s the best type of problem: pure tactics.

<i>So, basically, telling them something will only hurt you and never help you. So don’t do it. Now, here’s exactly what to say when asked to name the first number:<p>At this point, I don’t feel equipped to throw out a number because I’d like to find out more about the opportunity first – right now, I simply don’t have the data to be able to say something concrete. If you end up making me an offer, I would be more than happy to iterate on it if needed and figure out something that works. I also promise not to accept other offers until I have a chance to discuss them with you.</i><p>And they answer, &quot;Sorry, I cannot move forward without a number.&quot;<p>Stalemate.<p>I&#x27;ve been there and maybe I just don&#x27;t enjoy awkward silences enough but my strategy is to have two numbers ready:<p>1. My Public Number: the inflated number I give out when pressed. It&#x27;s grounded in reality but vigorously optimistic. I&#x27;ll often offer this up front just to anchor the discussion. I make sure it&#x27;s a number I will be more than happy with, even it turns out that maybe it wasn&#x27;t as much as they were prepared to offer. If the other side finds it out of the question, I&#x27;ve saved myself time and stress.<p>2. My Walkaway Number: in the event the offer is lower, which it often is, the number below which the offer gets rejected. I don&#x27;t share this publicly.<p>These vary based on other factors of the offer. But I have them ready. And I stick to the second number.

Using a throwaway, because of my position.<p>I recently withdrew an offer to a VP candidate because he negotiated too much (without being a jerk). He probably took advice from an article like this, and he wanted a) higher pay b) more vacation time c) special dispensation for items involving pay and time whose effect is even more pay.<p>He has been pursuing me to accept my original offer for the past 2 months and I have been lukewarm because I got turned off.<p>Summary: all successful negotiation comes down to leverage and it all comes to who has the leverage in a given situation. If you don&#x27;t have the leverage, you may want to think about how much you negotiate. I have been in situations when I had no leverage at all, like my first job - where I had only one job offer, due to a) irrelevant educational credentials b) tough economic times - and thankfully, I had not read articles like this and that job led me to life outcomes that today I am quite successful and wealthy.<p>One of my classmates negotiated hard for that same job, and while he got more money, he left a bad taste in people and eventually got fired (I won&#x27;t say he got fired because he negotiated hard in the beginning but he started out with a negative vibe, and I heard that from managers, and it went downhill from there). In fact, later on, when I became successful, he approached me for a job, and again negotiated hard with me. I passed him on.<p>So don&#x27;t just blindly follow advice like this article. In fact, don&#x27;t just blindly follow any advice, including mine. Negotiate if your situation permits, and know when your situation doesn&#x27;t permit.

&gt; Will my offer be rescinded if I try to negotiate?<p>&gt; So, if you’re talking to a super small company with one role that closes as soon as they find someone, yes, then they might rescind the offer.<p>This happened to me. I was perfectly polite, asked for a very modest increase from their severely low offer (after listening to a speech about how they couldn&#x27;t get any good help), and would have even accepted the position if their response was &quot;non-negotiable&quot;. They not only rescinded the offer, but they were ridiculous jerks about it.<p>&gt; But, to be honest ... an early startup punishing a prospective employee for being entrepreneurial is a huge red flag to me.<p>That&#x27;s exactly how I took it.

I like a lot of the information in this article. But after going through a gauntlet of 20+ interview pipelines with 3 offers coming in at the same time and an additional 2 on the way, here&#x27;s my advice... don&#x27;t give the first number, give the first <i>range</i>.<p>Say the market is showing you between $X-$Y.<p>Consider it a form of late-binding. You want to be dynamic. So make that range both realistic and wide.<p>This is beneficial to you for a number of reasons. It will eliminate companies that can&#x27;t get there. Win. It doesn&#x27;t commit you to a specific number. Win. You don&#x27;t have to ruin the rapport with an unnecessary game of chicken over who says the first number. Win. And most importantly, you have a wide open range to negotiate in when your offers come in. You can say... hey, I was upfront about my range, and I really feel like I&#x27;m &lt;here&gt; in that range for &lt;these reasons&gt;.<p>Using this strategy has worked beautifully for me.

I never understood this line everyone parrots about not giving the first number. That tactic works best only in situations where both parties have no clue what ballpark the other party has in mind. Which is definitely not the situation when you&#x27;re one of 1000 similarly qualified engineers applying for a well-established job role.<p>In situations where both parties have a reasonable idea of what ballpark they are playing in, it&#x27;s far better to toss the first number, because you get to set the baseline for the rest of the negotiation. Unless you&#x27;re a very experienced negotiator, that initial baseline plays an outsized role in where the negotiation winds up finishing. For example, suppose both you and your counterparty know that the negotiation is going to be within the 100-150k ballpark. You tossing out 145k as the first number, will play much more to your benefit than allowing the recruiter to toss out 105k as the first number.<p>Obviously this tactic only works if you&#x27;re well aware of what ballpark you&#x27;re playing in. But that should be achievable by simply talking to your classmates, or perusing the many salary aggregators and discussion forums online. The only caveat I would add is to wait until all interviews are over and you&#x27;ve received confirmation that the company wants to make you an offer. At that point, no one is going to reject you for being too optimistic with your initial offer. Worst case scenario: you&#x27;re going to get a much lower counteroffer. But at least you get the benefits associated with setting the baseline.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pon.harvard.edu&#x2F;daily&#x2F;negotiation-skills-daily&#x2F;what-is-anchoring-in-negotiation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pon.harvard.edu&#x2F;daily&#x2F;negotiation-skills-daily&#x2F;w...</a>

I recently went thru job search, and i found something that worked really well when companies ask for your number.<p>Basically say that when you have been talking with recruiters you have heard a wide range for your experience and they are better qualified to tell you what your experience is worth TO THEM. Then ask what is their range for the position?<p>And it&#x27;s 100% true. Salary is completely driven by how much an employer values your experience so they are more qualified. Also, I had more than a 40k delta between the lowest numbers I heard vs highest. So why would I throw out a number that has a high risk of being over &#x2F; under what they value the position at?<p>And make sure you ask up front. I had one company that said they had &quot;great&quot; salaries, and it turned out to be a really low number. Thankfully I asked and did not waste time with them.<p>Most times it is completely fine. Sometimes recruiters push back - just acknowledge and repeat yourself. If they absolutely will not move forward without a number then I would walk away.<p>Also sometimes recruiters will demur to share until later in the process. Up to you if you want to chance it. But definitely hold them accountable. Ask when in the process they can share, and hold them to that.<p>The one company that i interviewed with that was a stickler about all this is Facebook. They would not share any range no matter how much I asked. That said fortunately it&#x27;s so big you can get a decent idea from Glassdoor.

While waiting for the article to load i was thinking - was zero or one the first number? Or was it two, because you need at least two to start counting?<p>Then i realized that i was offtopic in a kinda funny way

I cringed reading this article. It is so much in the bubble of Silicon Valley startup culture it’s ridiculous.<p>Most developers don’t work for startups or one of the FAANG companies. Most will be working standard corporate jobs where you get a salary, paid time off, maybe a bonus, and somewhat likely a 401K match. That’s it. No great equity stake, nothing.<p>Depending on your market, it’s quite easy with the right networking, research, and talking to enough recruiters, you can find what your market range is.<p>Statistically, you’re probably not a special snowflake. Everyone thinks that they are and deserve way above what the local market is paying. You probably don’t.<p>The only time that I’ve been “underpaid” was when I either stayed at a company too long, or purposely made less than I could because I was learning a new technology or otherwise building my resume.<p>It’s not that difficult. Work with local recruiters, tell them what your minimum well researched jump number is and make sure you are keeping your skillset in line with the market. If I’m off by a few thousand, so be it. I’ll become aware of it in two or three years when I’m looking again.<p>But from looking at salary surveys, talking to friends in the industry, and talking to recruiters, I don’t think I am.<p>Yes I could make more if I wanted to be a manager (no desire) or a consultant (don’t want the travel or the stress right now).

These days I usually start the conversation with a recruiter saying I&#x27;m looking for total compensation above $300k.<p>Some don&#x27;t respond, which is fine because it saves us both time.<p>Others will shoot back with something about equity. Then we can talk about cash &#x2F; equity split and there&#x27;s plenty of room for negotiation there. I&#x27;ve never felt like my $300k number limits my ability to negotiate (beyond putting a halt to some discussions).<p>Where did I get $300k from? My peers at FAANG, my friends in recruiting, recruiters who state salary bands upfront. Basically, I&#x27;ve done my market research.

If you are in California, this is a completely moot point. The new comp law (AB168) requires employers to disclose the pay range for a job upon request.<p>So if a recruiter asks you to name the first number, you should ask them for the pay range and they are legally obligated to disclose the range.<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leginfo.legislature.ca.gov&#x2F;faces&#x2F;billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB168" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leginfo.legislature.ca.gov&#x2F;faces&#x2F;billTextClient.xhtm...</a>

Between me and two friends who are all early in our careers, we’ve had very difficult times getting companies to move on salary. This was in SF, all within in the last 6 months.<p>On the other hand, all three companies increased our starting bonus substantially with hardly a fight.<p>For two of us the reasons were more or less “you’re already at the top of your salary band” and for the last the reason was they pay all new grads the same (only one of us is a new grad).

Can’t remember where I read it (and I’ve never tried it), but you could try this: name a ridiculously high number as a joke. Laugh about it a little. Then try to move on with them by saying something like “no seriously, what are you offering?”<p>You’ve fulfilled their demand for a first number and pivoted back to them for a response.<p>Anyone else think this might work?

This is good advice about naming the first number if and only if you don&#x27;t have good market data. If you have good market data, and you should with sites like levels.fyi, you should use that data to your advantage. Why? Well, first off it signals value. If you name a number that is a bit of a stretch for the prospective company, but still within a realm of reason, they start to wonder if they have undervalued you. Second, it demonstrates that you have done your homework. Third, it shows that you have negotiation skills and willingness to use them.<p>This technique is referred to as anchoring. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pon.harvard.edu&#x2F;daily&#x2F;negotiation-skills-daily&#x2F;what-is-anchoring-in-negotiation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pon.harvard.edu&#x2F;daily&#x2F;negotiation-skills-daily&#x2F;w...</a><p>Use anchoring to take control of the negotiation and to maximize your compensation.

On reverse car salesman - use this on the company you know for sure you want. Likely the company you know for sure you want will remain that company even within a 10k range price difference (speaking to software engineers here). That being said, you can start throwing all sorts of weird shit on the table, if you&#x27;ve already negotiated your salary up. PTO is usually the first thing that comes to mind, but I&#x27;ve also seen &quot;guaranteed right to wear flip flops in the office, forever, no matter what office dress code becomes&quot; put in a very picky qa engineer&#x27;s contract (which is funny because he showed up to his onsite in a suit and tie... And I haven&#x27;t seen him in anything but flip flops since). There&#x27;s a hardware laboratory here so I got &quot;access to laboratory&quot; put in my contract, and since then I&#x27;ve learned to solder by just hanging around in there. Remote work stuff comes to mind, maybe some sort of time-bound access to powerful servers, just see what you can think of.<p>Reason being, if the company has to give just one more thing to nab you, they&#x27;ll feel like they really worked hard to secure the perfect candidate, there&#x27;ll be no doubt in their mind, the recruiter&#x2F;decision maker will always tell the story about how you were looking at other offers &quot;but we finally secured her by putting the Foosball table right into her contract.&quot; And on the other side of it, you get that warm fuzzy feeling that you negotiated all there was to negotiate.

With recruiters there&#x27;s simply one rule to go by: Either you&#x27;re feeling the pain, or they are.<p>If there&#x27;s a trick in this, it&#x27;s to make the recruiter feel just enough pain that they hate to say no, because they lose their commission.<p>So when you&#x27;re asked salary first, go ahead and answer it and highball it. Either one of three things will happen:<p>1. They will tell you it&#x27;s fine (and it might be), in which case, you didn&#x27;t ask high enough.<p>2. They will say you&#x27;re way too high and hang up.<p>3. They will reveal what their highest salary is for the position (or something close to that).<p>Number 3 is what you&#x27;re looking for. Because then you can negotiate off your high ball answer and look like you&#x27;re being reasonable, if they refuse to come up, then it&#x27;s time to hang up the phone.

I don&#x27;t like how this starts out. Ratcheting up the pressure on how critical it is for you to negotiate from the get-go in your career, as if it&#x27;s going to somehow compound down the road.<p>That&#x27;s <i>only</i> true if you&#x27;re planning to stay at the same company forever. You can ask for whatever you want in your next interview. It&#x27;s nobody&#x27;s business how much you made in the past.<p>I&#x27;m not saying that you shouldn&#x27;t negotiate, I&#x27;m saying it&#x27;s okay if you didn&#x27;t.

&gt; as you get more senior, more of your comp comes from equity<p>Maybe in SV? Or if you buy options or discounted shares in a publicly traded company you work for? But I don’t feel like this is the norm nowadays.

I&#x27;ve gotten bolder and last time job hunting my answer the first time the recruiter asked for my range: &quot;if you offer $300k right now, I&#x27;ll take the job today.&quot;

Couple of things I’m wondering about....<p>What constitutes an exploding offer? Is it a 3 day deadline? 1 week? 2 weeks? 3? Personally, anything less than 2 weeks seems rushed to be making a decision that could cost me $10K or more over the next year. I feel like 3 weeks should be enough to wrap up any open recruitment processes, and 6 weeks is downright absurd, but I don’t have a good sense of the issue overall.<p>Also, if merely mentioning having an on-site can get me a $5k increase, why not just bluff?

Maybe this advice is good when applying to the big four, but otherwise it&#x27;s a wonderful way to waste one&#x27;s own time. From having conducted hundreds of in person interviews and probably thousands of calls with recruiters or phone interviews, I find that figuring out the band a company is willing to pay is fairly easy. Also, it&#x27;s not a wide band even at senior levels. In fact, the acceptable range is usually quite narrow. I save a ton of time by not interviewing with companies who can&#x27;t even pay the low end of the range I&#x27;m looking for. This is the situation most of the time, in fact. I&#x27;ve done interviews and take home assignments only to find out the company&#x27;s range and my range don&#x27;t overlap at all. That&#x27;s just stupid and a waste of time. These days, I discuss salary first if it comes up and definitely before dedicating any major amount of time to an interview. Is there a chance that I&#x27;m leaving money on the table? Maybe a very tiny one. Usually, I&#x27;m just saving myself hours or days of interviewing for a job I will never take. For almost all jobs, I find this advice to be wrong and a waste of time.

While Waiting until the article has loaded, i tried to figure out if Zero or One came first ... doh

I&#x27;m probably too late, and I am probably too far outside the core interest group (the US developer market) for this one. but anyway: What would you say, if I hypothesized a fairly narrow but structural pay grade for years of experience, qualifications and perhaps a more variable quality for domain specific knowledge or above-competent?<p>Seriously: if the entire industry moved to a different model, would the fact <i>some</i> of us were significantly worse off, but most of us on average were better off be acceptable?<p>Thats basically what Unions, and Unionized negotiating achieves. If (like me) you worked in the tertiary education sector as a researcher, this is how it worked.<p>Could any of you people go there? If not, why not?

One can also do this... When asked what your compensation requirements are, simply say you need to research what realistic salaries are in the current market before answering the question. If pressed for an answer, just say doing that research is important to you, and that if they really need an answer before continuing, you&#x27;ll come find them when you have an answer. This allows you to plainly state your preference, respect their process, and it gives you time to come up with a number you&#x27;d actually want. The recruiter may just back off and let you proceed without asking for a number until much later in the process.

The response to the exploding offer is incorrect.<p>The correct response is &quot;No thank you.&quot; For extra style points tack on &quot;But it was great talking with you, I&#x27;ll be sure to tell my colleagues about you.&quot;

On the hiring side here.<p>Who hires &#x2F; works like this?<p>&quot;I&#x27;ll be happy to iterate on what I need when I get an offer&quot;!! I&#x27;d move along politely at this point. Reality is, our best hires have approached us even when no job posted - but know what we do. They don&#x27;t seem to care about salary - and I&#x27;m eager to give big raises fast to keep them - 15-20%+ at 6 mo, 15-20% at 12 months + bonus. The market is tight at this point and managers want to keep staff.<p>Thankfully not doing tech hires, if this article is the way these guys work - I&#x27;m grateful not to have to hire in that space.<p>My life is more boring. screening resumes, only 40% of which are minimally qualified. Quick phone screens after two of us go through the stack (we use an online tool to manage this). What are salary expectation is a question in that first call. I&#x27;m happy to share ranges with folks as well. Saves us all time to chat this out early - and I find I enjoy working with people who can talk about money in a rational manner.

If it is a contract to hire position let the recruiter pick the number for you, because their commission is a percentage of that number and they know the client&#x27;s (hiring company) target range and exceptional range. You will want to max out that contractor rate, because that rate is a factor in your conversation negotiation.

Another aspect which is often missed during thinking about own number, or discussing the offer with a recruiter is that even if one&#x27;s skillset is worth X, it is not always the case company will need the whole set of skills applicant posses. Hence their market price for that position might be lower than what an applicant is looking for, yet still fair. This kind of mismatch of honest numbers is the case where things will just not work out. One thing is being underpaid, the totally different thing is doing something too simple for one.<p>When I was searching for a job, I used to ask straight their salary range, since I always assumed business is pricing job fairly and that number would tell me what kind of skillset their business need. (And no, one&#x27;s extra skills are not gonna give an edge to business, and usually these extras worth nothing to the business, hence lower offer)

The best way I&#x27;ve found to avoid this problem is to have multiple offers on the table at the same time. And to be sure the employers are aware they have competition.<p>It seems to create the same dynamics as a blind-bid procurement process, which works in your favor.

As someone trying to build a brand new team, I am happy to pay people whatever they think they are worth. I wonder if there is a way to do this without offending the engineers I am trying to attract - I mean, if they are not to answer the question how much do you want, how do I pay them what they want? I am not at all worried about over-paying because any engineers that don&#x27;t meet the performance bar I set won&#x27;t last long enough for it to matter.

I too spent a lot of my life being wrong about what the word &#x27;diatribe&#x27; means. This is not nearly angry enough to count as a diatribe.

If you tell them how much you previously made, and it was a lot, is there a good way to prove you&#x27;re telling the truth?<p>Or should you not want to work for them if they don&#x27;t believe you (and they shouldn&#x27;t hire you if they don&#x27;t believe you)?<p>Is it acceptable to offer a copy of previous job offers or contracts to document salary history, sign-up bonuses and relocation plans, or would that be weird?

Unless it&#x27;s a really small company the job has been graded, which means that they already know the title and level of the job and the salary range that has been approved.<p>When they ask for the number I always respond by saying, &quot;Please tell me the approved salary range for the position.&quot;<p>If they won&#x27;t tell you the salary range it&#x27;s probably not a company worth working at.

“My wife is a compensation consultant specializing in tech jobs, so I’ll ask her to run an analysis on your open position”.

Not saying up front what you are looking for is completely wrong and really bad advice.<p>I&#x27;ve negotiated thousands of salary deals and it never works like that.<p>Consider this simple scenario - employer is looking for a mid level developer, wanting to pay around $80K. You, however, know that you would never accept a role for less than what you got paid in your last job, which is $110K.<p>So how is this going to play out? 3 interviews, everyone invests their time and effort and codes coding tests and assessments and at the end of it they say &quot;we&#x27;ve got $80K in mind for you&quot;, and you are outraged.<p>The correct advice when asked your salary target is to know the range you are after. It should be neither too high, nor too low. Ask yourself the question - &quot;what is the salary I would feel happy with to stay in this job for the long term?&quot; - that number is the bottom of the range you present. You can add $5K to $10K to that range to give yourself some negotiating upside.<p>So your answer in the above example might be &quot;I&#x27;d like $110K to $120K depending on the responsibilities of the role&quot;.<p>That&#x27;s the right way to do it. It&#x27;s ridiculous to go into a recruiting process hoping to negotiate at the final stage - that would waste everyone&#x27;s time.

I realized recently that companies that have asked me upfront what my salary expectations are have never made me an offer of employment (regardless of whether and how I answered that question.) As a result I don&#x27;t give them a number and I also expect that to be our last conversation.

Give a number, if they don&#x27;t accept it, leave. If I want to play games, I go to an arcade.

This would be helpful if it were 1994 and there was lots of what economists call asymmetric information, but now you can price-check a company&#x27;s offer in seconds.<p>Besides, companies can also easily see what the going rate is and normalize their budgets accordingly. I recently went through the job search process and almost all companies offered similar rates.<p>If you&#x27;re north of 100K (and I assume most experienced software engineers are) realistically 10-20K more will not make a significant impact on your quality of life. We&#x27;re talking an extra $500-1K a month. Nice, but doesn&#x27;t exactly catapult you into the 1%.<p>As long as your salary is in a competitive range it&#x27;s more important to focus on finding the right fit of industry, company, people and projects. Wouldn&#x27;t over-weight salary negotiations, especially in a day where both employers and job-seekers can quickly ascertain market rates.

Something not often considered is playing on an awkward silence between the tit-for-tat. If you let things stick in the air a bit longer sometimes signaling from the other party can help you find that sweet spot.

How about &quot;From my research and experience, I believe that I can get $X&quot; (name your most optimistic realistic expectation), &quot;but I&#x27;m willing to negotiate if that number is a problem.&quot;

I have no problem giving a number, but I know how much I&#x27;m worth. I really don&#x27;t want to get paid more or less.

I always ask for $5 or $10 more an hour then I&#x27;m currently making. That works for me to get more money each time.

any good links to understand how to negotiate stock&#x2F;RSUs (or how all that stuff even works)?

aleph null

OK, I know this doesn&#x27;t contribute to the discussion and I apologize in advance.<p>But based on this title I thought this would be a short blog post about recruiters using phone-screen questions to probe whether a candidate uses zero-indexed or one-indexed counting.