It's not unreasonable if you don't care at all about working with the recruiter but assuming you're interested, why can't you just say:

Thanks for contacting me! That seems like an interesting position but please understand that I'm in a great situation and not actively looking to leave. It would take an equally great situation and an exceptionally strong offer for me to consider leaving - what kind of offer would I expect to receive if everything went well? A general range should be fine.

Two points - one, if you are interested, you have to show that interest, if not with the explicit language, then at least with the tone. Both the content and the tone of your response say, "I'm not interested" so why wouldn't they just move on? From the recruiter's perspective, you're one of 100+ people that they've contacted - you're not that special. The recruiter may be the middleman but eventually you're the one that needs to sell.

Two, don't forget that any interaction you have with the recruiter is being judged as well - given that our industry is full of people lacking in social grace, your response may cause the recruiter to fear that recommending you may leave them embarrassed. Recruiters don't have much to lose by recommending candidates that are technically underqualified but they are expected to screen out people whose deficiencies are more obvious. Different recruiters do different things for companies and some companies do care about what some recruiters have to say and leaving a negative impression could put you in a position where you have to play catchup.

You don't even need to answer the first part but you do need to able to name your price. It's not that hard for anyone to calculate their own market price and you can always add 10-20% depending on your level of interest. This whole make the other side name the price first thing is way overblown unless you make embarrassingly little and have no idea what your market price or you're simply not a commodity. The latter is extremely unlikely to be true. Even most professional athletes are commodities. Even Scott Boras has no problem making an opening offer.

In fact, the easiest way to screen recruiters is to have a firm idea of what your market price is and be willing to state it. Trust me, most of them will go away or come back with better positions if you name your price high enough.

Also, don't forget that his job is much harder than yours and he has to deal with teams wanting to accept his offers in a short time frame. Your estimate for what it would take to switch is not a firm offer and you could always change your estimate or simply not take the offer. You could say you got a raise/promotion or that you got put on a really interesting project, you could say the equity you'd be giving up is worth more now, you could add perks and say you were assuming that they'd be included, etc. You could say that you have another offer or that you realized that the market is much stronger than you thought. There are lots of ways to weasel out of the numbers you gave and you don't need to give a firm estimate in the first place.

There seems to be this weird fantasy among developers that if and only if you made the other side go first, you may end up with some kind of ridiculously large offer but that's just not true - you will be lowballed every time because they know they have to be conservative and once they name a price, that becomes a psychological anchor for the ensuing negotiation. It seems to me that developers who are afraid to name a price are afraid that naming too high a price will scare off potentially good job prospects but you can't have it both ways.

I'm a pretty big advocate of not stating an opening number for people that don't know their worth* - in particular developers w/o a lot of experience and those changing geographic areas. And these are the people typically asking for advice online.

But yeah, if you're a strong developer with a good sense of what you're worth - by all means you can take charge of the negotiation.

* Sometimes people think they know their worth, but don't. They shouldn't be saying an opening number either.

this contrast sums up the discussion. the essential content and demand of both are identical. but the first one comes across as abrasive, while the second one says, "i know how to play the game and have soft skills as well as technical skills"

thinking functionally is the obvious one, and probably the easiest to learn. thinking in objects is the other, but the problem is that truly thinking in objects is hard to learn, and the majority of resources out there, including most books or classes you're likely to take, will teach you a version of OO that's procedural programming in disguise, or is otherwise harmful.

let me know what language you want to learn in, and i can probably make more specific recommendations.

In a game-theoretical sense this seems reasonable but how do you expect this to play out? If you're so unsure of your worth that you can't state an opening number, I just can't imagine the conversation going well because it's going to sound dodgy and recruiters don't really have to be so accommodating to someone who is neither that valuable, nor helpful. Also, shouldn't the advice be, figure out your worth first? It should not be difficult to figure out the going rate - in fact, recruiters can help you do exactly that. Just tell a few of them (assuming they are not working for the hiring company) that the job they sent you doesn't quite fit, but you are looking and ask to see if they have other jobs. And ask what kind of offers you would expect to receive in general. That way, the recruiters don't have to worry about revealing their client's hands and you've kind of sold yourself as a potential long-term customer which means they are more inclined to work to meet your needs.

Remember that recruiters are doing the same thing when they are asking for your numbers - this isn't just for that particular job, it's also their way of figuring out where the market is for any given level of credentials.

Coincidentally she just got back to me now with what can only be boilerplate recruiter "only part of a total package" bs with no numbers.

I think there are lots of good ways to have the conversation without seeming dodgy.

On a personal note, I would still try to avoid saying an opening number first. It really is a useful negotiating strategy to make the other person go first although I agree with you that its probably not as important as people make it out to be.

This extends to almost all human relationships but the more you treat any social or business situation like it's some kind of negotiation or a zero-sum game with rules, the more you're going to force the other person to retreat and treat you the same way. We do have to realize that the other person is an actual human being and human beings love to help one another. Within reason, it helps to be honest - obviously you do have to qualify to see if the other person opens up - and also be considerate of what the other person is trying to do. They have a job to do and it's hard.

If you're unsure, say you're unsure, if you don't know, ask, if you're afraid that you're gonna be lowballed, tell them that you're afraid. The moment a recruiter comes knocking, you're so far away from the actual negotiation that it makes you seem super-defensive to treat the situation like you're already in a negotiation.

candybar must have started the day out with a snickers, cause he's nailing every post!

So Candybar do you disagree with very often posted "never name a number first" blog post? I won't repost it but its easy to find and referenced a ton on tech forums.

Also it seems like you've had a bunch of great experiences with recruiters. I have never had that. They are always the same, semi-slimy people couldn't make it more obvious they're trying to get you to do something that may not always be in your best interests.

My main language is Ruby, but if you think there are better options for JavaScript, Python, or Objective C I use those fairly often as well.

ironically, i haven't learned these techniques from books on ruby, although i'm sure they exist. here's a short blog post on the idea:
http://blog.8thlight.com/kevin-bucha...-ish-ruby.html

For JS, I've recommended this on here before and think it's quite good: https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix

I've heard good things about this (more difficult) book, though I haven't read it (Bob Martin likes it): https://leanpub.com/fp-oo

And you can always learn elixir, which is basically ruby with forced immutability, or ofc haskell, but that's a whole separate journey, and i'm assuming you're looking for more practical resources.

EDIT: also, if you want to post or PM me a shortish, non-trivial, self-contained code snippet, i'm happy to code review it with these ideas in mind.

I agree - I kind of offered a template there and there are other ways but generally you'll waste way more time - it's only really advisable if you don't mind wasting time and you don't care that much about $$$. As in, you are willing to take less than market value for the right situation. And people who are more likely to benefit financially from not stating the opening number are less likely to be able to do this in a socially acceptable way.

For example, we're looking to hire someone and the actual compensation range is probably like 60K - 350K. But that range is not for any specific candidate - it's wide to accommodate the differences between raw, inexperienced devs out of school and an exceptionally talented, senior architect/engineer types who can get tons of lucrative offers. If you're a mid-career developer whose market value is around 125K-175K, how does it help your negotiation to know the full range?

But if you believe your market value to be ~250K, it may be worth saying, it will take something like 250K-300K for me to consider a move because that way, you don't waste time interviewing at places where you exceed the budget. Also if the recruiter doesn't say right off the bat something that indicates the employer's willingness to make it rain for the right candidate, they probably aren't going to make above-market offers. This is not rocket science.

Completely disagree - see above. The situation is different if you're running a business and trying to get enterprise contracts done btw because pricing can be entirely arbitrary. If you're not a smooth salesperson, you should not try to imitate their strategies. Even in enterprise sales, these days it's hard to get anywhere without at least offering a price range first. Everything is becoming commoditized.

I assume this is what you're talking about:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

Yes this is terrible. His advice is that you should not talk any numbers before you have a basic offer. If your market value is well-above average, you're going to waste a lot of time. You've already violated his other advice (get jobs by becoming a somebody and talking directly to decision makers and offering something unique beyond just being a programmer, instead of applying to "dev" jobs through middlemen and job listings). Not every random dev stuck in a low-paying job can act like a high-priced management consultant and get away with it.

If you're really good, you should spend time to get to know your value. If you're not, this will not work. As written, it's just engineer porn to get junior guys who are not that valuable ($5,000/yr is not a lot of money to anyone who's valuable enough to act the way advised in the article) to fantasize about being able to act like they are really valuable.

This is weird - just get two offers if your previously low salary is making your new potential employer make a below market offer. That's going to work a heckuva lot better than trying to pretend that you can't share your current salary. I've basically doubled my total compensation the one time I switched jobs because I had three offers (two of which I had to negotiate substantially up from the initial offer) and I didn't have to pull any weird trick like withholding salary information or not naming numbers first.

Also a random dev hire isn't going to negotiate with some kind of master businessman/negotiator who's going to judge for poor negotiating skills. You're more likely negotiating with a developer who got promoted to management who's wondering why someone not nearly as good or experienced as he is, is demanding almost as much as what he makes. The vast majority of people in management at any company don't think like businesspeople - they think like bureaucrats.

The point isn't to ask for a full range. The point is for them to pick a spot (or sub-range) in that range before you pick one. This is actually a good example of why its beneficial for you to get the other person to say a number first.

Different people are going to have different ideas of the range that's appropriate for a person. And in the cases where you believe your worth is lower than the employer - you're going to do better by having them say a number first.

This is pretty standard sales/negotiating. I don't see why tech interviews would be fundamentally different.

But the person you're talking to at this point is not the person who will determine where you fit in the range. It's almost entirely irrelevant what the recruiter thinks here for the purposes of the negotiation. You're not negotiating - you're just asking for the recruiter's opinion of your market value. Which you can already get by asking other recruiters.

Again, the recruiter will happily volunteer the information, for example, if the employer they are representing tend to make financially strong offers. Otherwise, what they are saying is not really about the job but what they personally think of your resume/profile, which you can trivially get by asking a bunch of other recruiters. Nothing they are saying is binding, nothing they are saying is reflective of what the actual decision makers think of you and "but this is what you said" is not actually something that's going to be meaningful during salary negotiations.

Ok, we're kind of talking about two different things here.

I'm talking about negotiation in general and assuming you're talking to someone from the company directly. And I think so is the blog post referenced above.

If we're talking just about the cases like Grue, I completely agree with you. And agree that its pointless to try to negotiate with a recruiter. Even if they give you information you have no way of knowing if its accurate because they're clearly biased towards moving you forward in the process.

Right, I meant that if you're dealing with unqualified leads and you're being asked for your price, you should use that as an opportunity to weed out the leads that aren't going to work out. But if you're working with some kind of trusted referral where both sides are comfortable spending a bunch of time without having discussed economics, that's different but I don't see how any advice about this situation is worth generalizing because the average underpaid developer is almost never getting to this point without having divulged information about their salary, expected or current and what you do here depends greatly on the nature of the referral and the implied relationship. When most people hear "don't give the number first" they are thinking of situations like the recruiter asking for your salary expectations.

I've only had two dev jobs and one of them I got through a recruiter (and got three other offers through recruiters that I've rejected) and I don't really understand what you're saying here. Would you rather apply to every job yourself and manage everything yourself? Nothing forces you to deal with recruiters. I've always loved how recruiters make it so much easier to look for a job when I'm looking. I love that they can essentially do market research and tell me what's going on in the job market. Recruiter spam is much more annoying when you're trying to hire btw.

In regards to recruiters trying to get you to do something that's not necessarily in your best interests - doesn't that describe basically everyone in business? When you're interviewing for a job, isn't that exactly what you're trying to do? You're trying to get them to make an offer, the best offer possible for you, regardless of whether that's in the company's or the interviewer's best interests.

Not really. Just last month I encouraged one of our co-op students to finish school instead of joining us full time. He was awesome but finishing school was clearly better for him.

I mean sure generally we're all working for our own interests. But an employer has more motivation to be honest and treat you well than a recruiter does.

I'm more on jj's side with this - I don't think I know what I'm worth, even after doing this for awhile, but I also don't really know how to know what I'm worth, and I think that makes it very difficult to throw out an accurate, reasonable first offer that's also good for you.

re: Scott Boras, every professional athlete's salary is known to the whole world. It's therefore very easy (relatively) for him to value the player he's representing and be able to aggressively argue his side.

I have no idea what the guys sitting next to me make. The people with the information (aka, employers) have all the power in that negotiation, I think. And that information is crazy valuable - the first time in my career I learned what one of my coworkers made (the leader of my team was leaving, I was taking most of his responsibilities, he told me what he was making over lunch as we discussed the transition) was also the moment I learned how undervalued I was at the time. That was just 3-4 years ago and my salary has gone up like 40% in that timeframe as a result of me getting a better handle on what my value is, but by no means do I think the picture I have of myself is complete yet, and as I continue to grow in my career and keep taking on bigger things and continuing to excel at them, I wonder if I'm still undervalued.

I don't think most people are thinking of a recruiter asking for salary expectations. I think most people are thinking HR person. But this might just be our own background biases coming out.

I think you're being too simplistic and saying it's either a recruiter or trusted referral. We have lots of people come in without a recruiter or with a recruiter that's connected us but not talked at all about what our compensation or their compensation looks like.

Just talk to a few recruiters - they will tell you all that you need to know. Play them against one another. For example, ask one recruiter what your salary range should be (after declining whatever it is that they are selling, but showing interest in other potential jobs they may have). Check what another recruiter thinks of this range, something like (after some rapport is established): "Hey man, another recruiter I'm considering working with told me that I should expect somewhere between X and Y for salary but a friend of mine told me it seems kind of low based on offers he's seeing - what do you think? Is this reasonable or do you think you can get me more?" And so on. There will come a point where recruiters will either stop talking to you or at least tell you that the other guy is full of ****. Or start adding qualifiers that you can't possibly meet - you should know for example what kinds of interviews you can pass, what industries you're willing to work in, what kinds of hours and work conditions you find acceptable, and other strengths and weaknesses that will be apparent during interviews but not on paper. That should give you the range.

Take a bunch of hiring managers in the same industry and have them make offers to mid-career candidates in their industry and they will be much closer to one another than general managers will be to one another in their offers to free agents.

Your employer is not the market. This is like saying that you as the employee have all the power because you can directly check your market value by getting multiple offers but the employer can't possibly know exactly how much other employers are willing to pay you. Don't engage in magical thinking - if you don't want to do the hard work of gathering information, not giving the number first is not some kind of magic wand that neutralizes the information disadvantage. Also, employers and hiring managers don't feel confident about how much they should be paying people or how much employees are worth and this leads to lowball offers and minimal raises. Taking the initiative, stating your range and showing confidence and honesty in regards to your worth after having done your homework will not merely earn you extra $$$ but also respect.

40% over the last 3-4 years seems like it's due to the increase in your skill level and experience and a better job market. I could be wrong but you seem young/inexperienced enough that 3-4 years make a big difference in your market value and I probably don't have to elaborate on how much the job market in technology has improved over the past few years.

I think it's more like whether you're a commodity or you're a somebody. If you're a commodity, you will get a lowball offer if they don't know the #'s to aim for. If you're a somebody, you're dealing with more of a true negotiation and some gamesmanship may make sense and you may genuinely have no idea what your worth is to them even if you know your market value is in a general sense.

Take a hypothetical 30-year old developer. Say he's a good developer with solid experience but not extraordinary and his profile is such that he should get a salary somewhere between 125K and 175K, given his location. His current salary is 115K. If he refuses to state his expectations or his current salary, he can probably expect an offer between 130K to 140K. And once the offer is made, people will tend to retroactively justify the offer made and see him as a 130-140K kind of guy. Don't forget that usually more than one person has to sign off on something like this, which makes it even harder to change opinions. The hiring manager doesn't want tell his boss that 135K should get it done and go back and say that the candidate actually needs 165K. He could probably get another 5K or 10K but getting a lot more is going to be difficult if he's seen as a commodity, unless he has another offer that's substantially better. And if he doesn't know his value, this whole talk of negotiation is kind of moot - how does he counter a 135K offer, which is better than what his current job pays, if he has no idea what his market value is? So this ends with him accepting the 135K offer, thinking that he got a strong offer by not stating the number first, after all he would've taken a 125K offer!

But if he has a good understanding of his value, he could give a range at the upper end of his market value, even slightly exceeding it, something like 160K to 185K. This will probably lead to a 165K-170K offer and he can probably hit 175K after some negotiation.

Candybar, I'm not saying a candidate shouldn't know his/her value. But the thing is it's an imperfect world and some times the people you're negotiating with will overvalue you. If you give a number based on your true worth you will hurt yourself some of the time.

Further, they have a number in their head anyway. They're not a blank slate just waiting for your number. So making them reveal what they're thinking is absolutely going to help you.

Anyway, like I said this is pretty standard negotiating and sales strategy and I don't see any fundamental difference that would explain why it's useless in this specific case.

Edit: And to be clear, while the information has value - that value is pretty oversold. If the cost of getting the information is a super awkward or uncomfortable conversation it might not be worth it.