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Recently, I have applied for a programming position at a small start-up and after a couple of interviews and a long technical task which took me a good portion of a week, I was offered a salary much lower (-25%) than what I had asked for during the first interview. I thought it was some kind of game to then get to my salary expectations or a little less, but after negotiating, it seems that the initial offer is also the final one.

How often does this happen? I would expect the company to just give up after understanding they can't match my salary expectation in the first interview.

In order to avoid this situation in the future, I am now thinking of asking explicitly how much any job can pay, before going ahead with the technical task etc. Is it normal to do so and expect/insist for an answer?

duff18
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    If it's a small startup, that can be the reason your salary offer is lower than what the same role would pay in a bigger company. – Omar and Lorraine Oct 25 '21 at 08:55
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    Does this answer your question? Does the first person to mention a number in a salary negotiation lose? – gnat Oct 25 '21 at 09:43
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    Was there any offer of equity? Start-ups often offer below-market salaries, but with the incentive of a possible windfall in the future. If not, there's not much reason for taking a lower salary unless you are desperate for work. – JamesPD Oct 25 '21 at 09:44
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    You should search the internet for salary ranges for your skill set. This will give you a base line to measure a company's offer. If you don't like the company's offer, then leave the interview and apply at another company (unless there are hardships where you need to start early). – Thomas Matthews Oct 25 '21 at 16:57
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    In some locales it's a legal requirement to have that information in the job posting. – Joel Etherton Oct 25 '21 at 21:28
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    Might be worth also asking them why they put you through the whole interview process after knowing your requested salary was too high? Their answer might be useful information for you. You've got nothing to lose by asking anyway. – rooby Oct 28 '21 at 08:12
  • @SiHa I'm pretty sure gnat runs a script suggesting questions as duplicates. If you look around the site enough you will see hundreds of similar comments. – Myles Oct 28 '21 at 13:09
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    @duff18 Not an answer but often people doing start ups will have less business acumen than you will find in hiring positions in more established organizations. Often this will be their first time doing various business processes so they are more likely to approach things in a broken way. – Myles Oct 28 '21 at 13:13
  • @Myles - Ah. Understood – SiHa Oct 28 '21 at 13:14

5 Answers5

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Is it normal to expect to know how much a job can pay when interviewing?

Not really.

If the job is advertised with a pay range, then you can get an idea. If you are working with a non-company recruiter, then they can give you an idea. But you won't really know what a job can pay. Sometimes a hiring manager has a target and a budget, but for a particularly good candidate can even go over that amount.

In order to avoid this situation in the future, I am now thinking of asking explicitly how much any job can pay, before going ahead with the technical task etc. Is it normal to do so and expect/insist for an answer?

You could take that approach. Just remember that it is likely to mean you would be excluded not only from companies that think you are asking for too much without first demonstrating your abilities, but from companies that don't want candidates who insist on talking money before both sides get to know the other.

If you are working with a recruiter, you can tell them not to waste your time with any company that won't pay you at least X. And that will likely lead to companies that could pay more than X only offering you X.

In the end, you can set whatever conditions you like. It will limit the number of interviews you get and the whole job hunt will likely take longer. But perhaps in the end you'll get a job you want at a salary you want, with less wasted time.

Joe Strazzere
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  • "it is likely to mean you would be excluded from companies that think you are asking for too much" I don't get this part, why would they think that if I'm simply asking for a salary range? – duff18 Oct 25 '21 at 15:05
  • I thought you meant "asking for too much (money)", now I get your point. – duff18 Oct 25 '21 at 16:18
  • If they don't give a range, you ask for one. If they don't answer, you move on. It's that simple. I give the interviewer my salary expectations on the first phone call, so if they can't match it we don't waste time. Its not a final negotiation, and it doesn't prevent me for asking for more when an offer comes in. It's a ballpark figure to make sure you're in the right range. – Gabe Sechan Oct 27 '21 at 05:57
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Yes, you should ask what the salary range is nice and early.

If it's not suitable, walk away. You're doing everyone a favour.

They may have been trying to get you emotionally invested before dropping the bombshell that the salary is a lot lower than you want. Or the salary situation may have changed on their end, hard to tell.

Gregory Currie
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Sometimes there is a cat and mouse game, where candidate does not share their current salary, to avoid a "$X + Y%" situation when the job duties and/or experience would warrant more at the market rate, and the company wants to avoid getting nailed down to a specific number in case they can land someone at less than what they're probably really worth, or in the hopes that they will love the opportunity enough to come on board for slightly less than they might, at the beginning, before knowing anything about the company or opportunity.

In this case, you actually seem to have communicated your expectations, and they still tried to offer you less. It seems like you have had the unfortunate experience of a company that doesn't understand the value of good employees (very short-sighted to quibble over X dollars when a good employee will produce many times more than that disputed amount in superior productivity). Or you are encountering a start-up on such a shoe-string budget that they're not going to be able to compete in the long run.

Either way, it's probably good that you won't be joining them. Job hunting, in general, can be a frustrating, irritating, ego-deflating experience, unless you happen to only really engage on those perfect fit situations. There are a lot of companies and HR departments that really don't know how to do this right, especially with IT professionals, just as there are many candidates who don't know how to be equally good partners from their end of the equation.

The only thing I can think of is if you tell them your expected range, and ask them, specifically, if this falls into their expected range (if that's not disclosed, up front). That does run the risk of alienating anyone who might have these weird ideas that good, obedient production-unit-producers should only be concerned about how awesome it will be to work for their company.

I had an interview once where, because I wasn't looking to leave my company, and I wasn't looking to move to another state, I was up front with the recruiter that it would have to be very attractive, opportunity-wise, and it would have to be a major improvement, financially.

I got to the second interview, and no one had told me anything about the specifics of compensation. Maybe they thought it would take care of itself, but when it came my time to ask questions, I did ask financial questions, which the manager dodged, and then he came back to the recruiter with negative feedback that it seemed like "I was preoccupied with money." I told the recruiter that he set me up to fail by leaving me in an information void about something I was very specific about as a "need," not "want," and told him to lose my resume, if he wasn't going to anyway.

PoloHoleSet
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    You really think that a 25% variation in salary can predictably lead to “many times” that benefit in output? In that case, people should be banging on your door to become their talent specialist! – Kevin Carlson Oct 26 '21 at 01:13
  • @KevinArlin - I'm saying that a person who commands 25% more in the marketplace is going to generate revenue many times that 25% differential, just like people are hired because they generate many times their salary and benefit cost in revenue, value or productivity. Not magically, "this guy is worth X, but if I pay him Y, just paying him will make him more productive." I'm saying "this guy commands X+10 on the market. If I hire him, and we use him properly, he'll reliably generate 5X + 50 annually, vs 5X for the person who's skillset is valued at X in the marketplace." Not a new concept. – PoloHoleSet Oct 26 '21 at 01:23
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    @KevinArlin - That's pretty much the entire and only reason (generating several times their cost in value for the company) why companies hire employees. If you are unaware of this, maybe you should consult with someone who understands this. Not a talent specialist, per se, because that would be overkill. But, rather, anyone with a very basic understanding of business. – PoloHoleSet Oct 26 '21 at 01:27
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    @PoloHoleSet Of course, companies try to hire people worth more than they cost. I'm deeply dubious that companies have anywhere close to that fine of resolution on predicting what a hire is going to be worth to them, unless you're hiring someone for a very well-defined and predictable activity. For a startup, the variance is huge--there's a high chance that the long-run value of any employee is going to be zero, if the startup fails, and some chance that all the early employees will have a long-term value of thousands of times their salaries. But some salary has to be chosen. – Kevin Carlson Oct 26 '21 at 15:59
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    Put another way, your argument would seem to indicate that companies should just try to hire the best people in the world for every role, at any cost, but of course that's not how hiring actually works. So presumably there's some optimal value for any given role, where overpaying gets you somebody overqualified, whose skills aren't fully utilized (assuming they're worth that salary!), and underpaying gets you someone who doesn't produce the full potential value of the role. All we know here is that the company judged either that OP is not worth their ask or the role is beneath the OP's skill. – Kevin Carlson Oct 26 '21 at 16:00
  • @KevinArlin - Yes, "some salary has to be chosen," and if you decide to lowball someone at below their market rate, you've chosen poorly. Startups have to generally pay ABOVE market rate because of the uncertainty and career risk people signing on take to join up.

    My argument is that when someone communicates their expectations, at the start, and it's what they command on the market, but's extremely deceptive and crappy to string them along, waste their time, and try to lowball them, in the end. If you don't need their skills and can't pay for them, then it's pretty easy to stop, early.

     – PoloHoleSet Oct 29 '21 at 15:54
  • @KevinArlin - "about 5X" is hardly fine resolution, it's very, very broad and general, and if it's not obvious that they bring that kind of value, then one shouldn't be hiring them. Employees have to make many times their compensation in value to the company. Otherwise the company is guaranteed to fail. It's a pretty simple concept. What you sell has to have more value, which is added by the employees, than your costs. Raw materials and physical overhead and costs can't add value. Employees do that. – PoloHoleSet Oct 29 '21 at 15:59
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In my experience (in Europe), if salary expectations are explicitly discussed and your initial ask is 33% above the target or the maximum that's been budgeted, you will get some pushback. In other words, an offer 25% below your stated salary expectation without any explanation or preparation doesn't happen often.

If the gap is smaller, it can play out differently but if the recruiter does have a number in mind and yours is widely off usually they will tell you right away because going through several rounds of interviews, taking the time to evaluate a technical task, etc. for someone who is very unlikely to accept an offer is a waste of time.

At the very least, I would expect the recruiter to hype other aspects of the job like how great it is to work at a small company, development opportunities or equity to soften the disappointment. On one occasion, a recruiter tried to claim some discount on the company's product was worth several thousands euros. Another time, they mentioned the tax rate in one of the potential locations (which actually wasn't that great and already priced in on my side). Simply ignoring a specific number and still following through has never happened to me.

Sometimes salary expectations are not discussed immediately and a recruiter is unwilling to engage, claiming they don't know yet, it depends on how you fare in the recruitment process, etc. In that case, you won't know how much the job can pay until later in the process but that's a completely different scenario from the one you describe in your question.

Relaxed
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Negotiating salary is always a game.
But after a while it can depend on how competent you are during the test/interview.
For a veteran full of background, the higher the test scores are the more straightforward you can be to insist salary. Or the salary just matches as it should.
Even you asked the company the reason it is 25% lower and the company didn't change the salary. The company doesn't care because you are blank. My suggestion is to keep rolling interviews until you get feeling that "this is the salary matches my skill."

JamaisVu
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