[dangus]

> If you must divulge what you’re making

Never do that.

> Companies will ask about your current compensation at different stages in the process

This is not legal in many states, 44% of the US population lives in states where companies asking your salary is not legl.

Also, the exploding offer advice is terrible. It won't work. The company will just drop the offer. The actual advice is to decide quickly.

I also think that gaining some chump change during the negotiation is somewhat pointless as companies will just equalize salary bands over time.

Let's say you win $5-10k additional salary during negotiation. Great, now your second year's salary increase is only going to be 2% instead of 5%.

I think the real advice in the age of states having salary transparency laws is to not apply to jobs that don't have a salary range listed in the job description.

[ryandrake]

I've had a company actually halt the recruiting process because I wouldn't share my current salary. They asked (as they all do), and I did a standard polite "I'd rather not share my current compensation, please make an offer you feel is a good starting point." They then said, well we'd rather not make an offer without knowing this baseline. And that was that. Sure, I guess I could have just made up a fake (high) number, but I wasn't too thrilled about what I saw about the company during the interviews, so it didn't bother me at all. If a company is being shitty during the interview process, they're probably going to be shitty to work for.

[wrs]

The equalization thing may be theoretically true, but in a cumulative 25 years of managing at big companies, I’ve never seen anyone get equalized down, just get slower raises. You’re definitely better off getting overpaid at the beginning. If the offer is 25% high, it might take five years to equalize. And the present-value premium of money isn’t zero anymore!

[dangus]

Slower raises is exactly what I mean.

Perhaps it’s better to start high but I think the impact is moot. In reality every company has a budget range and it’s quite narrow.