[tptacek]

Prospective employers want your current salary so they can get a bead on what the negotiating floor is. Most prospective employers hear "$80k" and immediately assume "we can get this person for $88k". You might be worth $90k, $95k, or $110k, but once you said "$80k", you gave the prospective employer's HR team an excuse to play hardball: they know they're not going to insult you, even if their opening offer is $20k lower than what they expected to pay the role.

Don't tell people your current salary unless you know it's going to help you, and be wary of taking negotiating advice from anyone who thinks you should disclose it as a matter of course.

Your current salary has nothing to do with how much you are worth to a new employer.

[patio11]

Without implying any bad will about the author of this post, who is a recruiter, recruiters are incentivized to close deals, not to get you the best possible package. It is possible that this background would convince a recruiter that advice which is against your interests is still a good idea, because if he adopts advice which will predictably results in employees underpricing themselves, his conversion rate from interviews to paychecks will improve, possibly dramatically. If his placements are routinely leaving $10k on the table, that only costs him $3k per placement, which might on a subconscious level either a) not be motivational or b) might be a totally rational decision because of the increased volume of placements he gets by advising people to take any reasonable deal.

My father is a real estate agent, and real estate agents have demonstrable blind spots (seriously, academic literature exists on this) for negotiation when negotiating for clients versus when selling their own homes. When they're selling their own home, five hours of extra work might add $5,000 to the sales price, so of course they go the extra mile. When they're selling a client's home, five hours of extra work might add $5,000 to the sales price but their commission check only goes up by $300, so they'll generally opt to tell you "That's a really fair offer. You should take it. Can we close this today? I have a young couple who I'd really like to meet with now about buying a brownstone, and the expected value of my time with them is way higher than the marginal value of my time with you. Oh whoops did I just say that out loud?"

[mikeinterviewst]

The topic that patio11 mentioned is covered pretty well in chapter 2 of Freakonomics. The actual text doesn't seem to be part of the official sample excerpt, but somebody posted the relevant portion in a forum here: http://www.nachi.org/forum/f11/exerpt-freakonomics-book-rega...

This is not an endorsement of other portions of the book as a whole.

[Peroni]

I can see where you are coming from but ultimately I disagree. The strong counter-argument in the comments here has prompted me to write a follow-up post clarifying my position in detail so hopefully that will help eradicate the notion that I would weaken a candidates negotiating position for my own benefit regardless of whether I do it consciously or otherwise.

[tptacek]

But you're just one out of tens of thousands of recruiters. You have to believe something pretty radical to think that recruiters on the whole are immune to incentives.

We can safely assume that you're conscientious and that you go out of your way to defend the interests of candidates. Then we can move on to telling developers how to deal with normal recruiters.

This particular debate, just remember, is about whether you should disclose your current salary to a recruiter or prospective employee. The answer is: you simply should not do that, full stop. If you disagree, it would be helpful if you disagreed directly and provided evidence for your view; that would be more constructive than centering the discussion on your own professionalism and ethics, which nobody wants to call into question.

[Peroni]

I had originally included a lengthy argument against disclosing your salary to recruiters specifically. That element was removed due to the fact that the post was aimed at graduates who most likely won't have to deal with recruiters for a number of years. In my follow-up post I am dealing with both topics specifically. Not negotiation but purely the facts as to why I think it's best to withhold your salary from a recruiter and disclose it to an employer.

Fortunately I am not just one out of tens of thousands of recruiters. I've been in this game for three years, prior to which I was on the other side of the fence managing a team of 8 people, regularly interviewing potential employees and entering negotiation battles as an employer with a strict budget.

[roel_v]

I don't think the article said 'current salary', it was talking about 'how much do you want'. Those two are different - when you're the first to name a number of how much you want, you can anchor the discussion.

Of course when you run into a company who feels they should pay you according to what you made in your previous job, they'll think the two are within 10% or so of each other. I think it's fair to never name how much you make now, but being the first to say a number isn't always a bad thing, I think, especially in today's market (and assuming that one has a good insight into one's market value).

[prof_hobart]

"but there is a common misconception that if you disclose your salary to an employer, it will limit the potential salary offered. It’s your experience that is indicative of your ability, not your current salary"

[tptacek]

Which is just a flatly false statement. Disclosing your salary doesn't so much "limit" the potential salary offered as "determine it entirely".

Obviously, you can negotiate yourself back from that horrible starting position --- but devs are such terrible negotiators in general, why on earth would one advocate for anything that makes negotiation harder?

[prof_hobart]

Maybe so - all I was pointing out was that the article was definitely talking about current salary at some points.