[cairo140]

I believe the way Google's hiring and compensation committee's work makes it so that short of bluffing your current compensation, not disclosing your comp is equivalent to saying you currently make $0.

In my case, I was already being paid well going into Google's offer process, but considerably below Google's band for the level I got approved for. I gave them my comp and they beat it by a large margin, to the point where they clearly weren't considering my existing comp. So I think if you just refused to answer, they'd give you the minimum in the band and wait for a counter or acceptance.

Two further points that I think are relevant for a minority of candidates:

For folks who are L3/L4 or L4/L5 marginal who may get bumped up a level based on existing comp, if anything you'd rather be underleveled to start. There's so much to learn at Google and so many of the folks around me are so damned talented that I'd feel like even more of an impostor if my comp history brought me up to a level I was not at. Some anecdotes from Quora are at [1].

Secondly, there is some lore about high compensation plans (HCPs) at Google. If you believe you are paid well towards the higher end or above what Google pays for your band, you can Google around for this to get some stories of what it's about. This didn't apply to me and I don't know of anyone in this situation so I can't speak to it.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-negotiate-a-higher-job-level-...