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At the higher end of the market (i.e you can get hired at the majors in a senior role or equivalent at a smaller company), I generally see three types of people: I see people that truly understand their market value, have data backing it up, they are professional (I always tell people how I appreciate the time / offer, and I'm polite to recruiters), demanding about information (I have little tolerance for ambiguity in compensation, define everything, this is how I pay the mortgage and save for retirement / my kids college). Some managers think that is spoiled (not that you are necessarily saying that), but this is a business transaction, I ask for market and turn it down if it's not that, or if the compensation is ambiguous. Then I see those that don't know their value and just sort of take whatever because they don't like interviewing / negotiating. I don't see many of those at the high end. The third group are who you are talking about, total babies. They complain about recruiters, or how much everyone wants them, place crazy demands on companies (I worked with a guy who literally had a rider like Van Halen in his LinkedIn profile, he ended up being a total prima donna who got fired because everyone hated him). Most people in this third group think they are in the first, and they aren't worth recruiting, even if they are strong technically. Sometimes people believe this means startups / small companies can't compete, but the issue is, startups / small companies really aren't offering any sort of market comp, they don't give enough equity to employees to make the risk worth your while. You don't necessarily need to pay me what AmaGoogFaceSoft do, but you need to give me a significant chunk of equity and give me enough visibility into how that is cut up (preferences etc.) in the company for me to value it, otherwise its worth 0, even if I believe that the company will be successful. If you can't trust me enough with that sort of transparency, then it's not gonna work out. With a huge public company, I know what my stock is worth roughly. |
I usually tell companies that I really do not like to negotiate compensation because this is logistics to me and is not worth the effort. Either a company is good and gives the right pay or I pass. I tell this early enough so that there is no expectation of haggling. So far it worked.