That salary one is great, I’ve used similar strategies to help people negotiate pretty large bumps when interviewing. It’s funny to see the sophistication of the recruiter on the other side (while they’re pretending not to be).

One social thing I learned though is that some people are weird about it - not the recruiters but the friends you’re trying to help negotiate. They’re afraid to do it and instead rationalize how it won’t work and then get angry if you try to persuade them that it’s possible.

That is why I like those articles, they allow me to pass the links without trying to convince people. Folks tend to find it easier to borrow wisdom from people further from their network.

During my last round of interviews, I chose to spew out salary numbers. This is because I exclusively interviewed with recruiters who reached out on LinkedIn (sometimes you have to know your limits on how much effort you're willing to put in while employed).

I found a recruiter who was reasonably decent (placed a friend of mine). I asked what top-of-band for my YOE in my COL seemed to be, and he said $130k-$140k. I then gave $150k as my requirement to all future companies. Too many were saying yes, so I upped it to $170k, then $190k, then at $200k I only got one bite. (Caveat: of course I asked for numbers from them first - when the recruiter was unwilling, depending on my mood I would say I wasn't willing to proceed further without a comp range, or I would give out my desired number and see what they said.)

I might have missed out on companies willing to offer $200k while earlier in this process, but about half of the recruiters reaching out were positions offering $100k, and I was unwilling to waste that much time in interviews for jobs I didn't want.

In case anyone wants to know how it ended, I told my current company (paying $120k) that I was in final interview rounds for $200k and I wanted to quit to focus on studying for interviews. They offered me $200k to stay and I accepted.

TL;DR: Interviews take a long time. If you're some rando on LinkedIn and they're some random company you've never heard of, it's not worth assuming they'll be able to pay you enough and going through the process.

This is the pair of articles I thought of while reading the title. It's excellent advice.