[usaar333]

It's only true to never give out your number if you have a nontrivial probability of being offered a higher salary than said number.

If you expect $X and only 5% of employers out there are willing to pay >=$X, it might very well be worth your time to state $X at the start to avoiding wasting countless hours in an interviewing process.

[hayd]

They should tell you their range before beginning, not the other way around.

Recruiters already have a massive advantage: they have much better knowledge of the market (many more datapoints), why give them for free an additional advantage they can only use against you?

[Consultant32452]

That may also largely depend on who the recruiter you're talking to works for. If it's HR for the company that's different than a third party technical recruiter like a TEKSystems or something. The third party technical recruiter, which is who I'm usually talking to, has no real incentive to low-ball you.

[hibikir]

It depends on the Tech recruiter. If you are going to contract through one of those companies, some scumbags will NOT give you the real billing rate, and thus have plenty of reasons to screw you. I have seen how a vendor might charge the same for three people, and then learn through other sources that those three people were getting paid differently by the vendor. A vendor can also ask for a rate increase, and just not tell your contractor a thing, and pocket the difference.

That space is full of very shady people, and that's before we get into immigration issues and foreigners. If you don't have the billing rate, and can confirm with the company that yes, that's the billing rate they are paying, beware.

[Consultant32452]

I've been consulting for years now and I almost never know what the consulting firm bills for my time. It's irrelevant to me. My rate is already above the rate in my market. If someone lands me a gig and they have 100% markup, then good on them.

[hacknat]

And if it's the company they actually don't know the market any better than you.

[crzwdjk]

Why do you think that's the case? A typical company is hiring at least one person per month, and depending on the size of the company, probably many more. Plus, if people keep telling them the numbers, they can get a pretty good idea of the state of the market just from talking to all the candidates, which gives them quite a lot of datapoints. Do you do a monthly salary survey of a random selection of 30 people in comparable job roles?

[Consultant32452]

I think it goes both ways. The employer may have talked to 30 people looking for comparable job roles in the last month but they almost certainly haven't ever talked to the 10 other companies in the area that are hiring for similar job roles.