"Time and again, he says, employers seem to lose interest after he answers a question that they ask early on: 'What was your last salary?'"

I never answer that question.

Almost always it's been recruiters asking that (and only some recruiters, the less reputable ones).

This is a seller's market for IT talent. You don't have to give in to bullying tactics to get a good job. I've had to walk away exactly once when a recruiter wouldn't accept that I wasn't going to tell him my previous salary and refused to work with me on that basis. The other recruiters who've asked accepted my refusal to reveal that information. They're generally more interested in getting paid for recruiting you than in finding out what you used to be paid.

I also never reveal the salary I'm looking for and insist on doing my own salary negotiations with the employer. I let the employer make an offer they think is reasonable and go from there.

You do have to be willing to walk away in the handful of times when this leads to an impasse. Fortunately, the way the IT job market is right now, there are plenty of other fish in the pond, and not showing your hand prematurely puts you in a much stronger negotiating position.

    Sure, you can buck the system and gain an
    additional $10-20K, but that takes a lot of
    effort and I'd rather put that effort
    elsewhere.

I expect there is more than one factor at work here.

I've known folks who "grew up" in a single company; joined out of college, worked there 15+ years, got annual raises, then got laid off and then couldn't find work at their previous salary. And the expectation of an annual raise kept forcing up their salary but I don't think the company was actually evaluating whether or not the person was getting more valuable over time.

I once had an interesting conversation with a recruiter who wanted me to pony up my current compensation. I asked, "Why is that relevant? You are the one with the job, and you are willing to pay some amount for someone to do that job, isn't it up to me to decide if I would be willing to do that job at the price offered?" There are jobs I would do for free, and jobs that you almost couldn't pay me enough to take, and that has nothing at all to do with what I'm currently being paid.

And if someone insists, I really do think they are looking to have something on paper that they can point to which will give them a safe "out" for hiring someone else while minimizing lawsuits. So much safer than "we are looking for someone who has more time to spend in this position", or "we were really hoping for a masculine point of view", or "we don't think you could relate culturally to our customers." All of which would violate the equal opportunity guidelines.

The moral of the story: never, never, NEVER answer questions about your salary to a recruiter. It firmly pigeonholes your next salary to your current one, instead of the value you bring to a company.

Patrick MacKenzie's article on salary negotiations is excellent (I would maybe even say "required") reading on the subject.

"Say, ‘I’m open to a salary commensurate with the job,” recommended Blake Nations, a former recruiter who was laid off and then founded Over50JobBoard.com. “And if they keep going, ask: ‘What do you expect to pay someone with my experience and education for this position?'"

This. If you're asked early on just flip the question back to them.

Companies don't publish salaries for jobs because they're afraid of turning people off from applying to the job in the first place. They know applicants are more likely to take a lower offer after they've invested time into the process and maybe have a little rapport with the interviewers. You can use the exact same strategy as a job seeker. Companies can be more likely to accept a higher ask after they've put resources into interviewing you and gotten to know you a bit.

That said, an honest chat about expectations early on - where the hirer says roughly how much they're looking to pay and asks if it's something you'd be interested in - can be a really nice way to save everyone's time.

> After more than 20 years as an electronics engineer, Pete Edwards reached the low six-figure pay level.

Where is it that late-career engineers are barely pulling in six figures? Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of money (3x mean personal income in the US, and ~1.75x mean HHI, give or take), but I'd expect most senior folks in any engineering field to be in the mid 100k range if not pushing 185ish.

> Time and again, he says, employers seem to lose interest after he answers a question that they ask early on: “What was your last salary?”

Your last salary has absolutely no bearing on what you are worth or what the market rate is for the position for which you're applying. You have absolutely nothing to gain by sharing a previous salary.

> A survey by AARP last year found that of job seekers between 45 and 70 years old who found work after a spell of unemployment, nearly half earned less than before.

I don't think this is that surprising, is it? If I make $100k and lose my job, often with little notice, I will take $80k. If I make $100k and leave of my own volition, it's unlikely I'll entertain anything below $110 or $115.

I have been thinking about this phenomenon for awhile and how to hedge against it. My feeling is that employees are getting more and more exposed to broader economic trends, and not just the low-wage workers.

It's one thing to be at the low end of the totem pole, where anonymity and insecurity force you to hedge against the possibility of suddenly losing your job. But once you clear all that and find a bit of professional success, you're still not necessarily secure.

So you have to extend this hedging behavior further out. Keep building your skills, expand into other fields so that you are more employable. Complacency will put you into this position eventually, it's just a matter of time.

Don't leave a secure position to take one with more earning potential but less security. Constantly keep building bridges at your current job and don't give them a reason to fire you.

Above all, try not to hate your job. You may find 5 years down the road that it was the best thing you had going for you. As nasty as the work world can get, it's better than not working.

In my view the entire problem is that developers in general have been brainwashed into beliving that they are better off dealing with recruiters when in fact the best thing they could do for themselves would be to do their homework, that is, research companies that are hiring, figure out who to contact, and write a personalized introduction email.

If you do that then you have two things in your favor already..

1. you are cheaper to hire because there are no recruitment feeds associated with you.

2. you showed some initiative to zero them out, and you demonstrated that you have creative writing skills which are an important trait in software development

Finding engineers is soooo hard! There are no good engineers!

This is a surprise, said no one ever.

Sometimes companies will pay for experience but often they'll hire someone younger who screws up more because they cost less.

Companies that hire like this will typically be the first to layoff employees when shareholders are not happy. They often struggle to meet customer expectations over time. This is particularly true if they have never ending layers of management going up the chain. That's why startup culture is so appealing to many.

I recently found myself in a stale role, and hence I've been job searching lately, so I have recent experience. From my anecdotal experience, the local job market is hot for my skill set, so I'm looking for a 10% raise. I've gotten 3 offers from 3 companies. Two would not come up to my required salary so I walked. The third came up, but it was a W2 at a contracting shop, and wasn't too appealing for a couple of reasons. So I passed on that as well. I still get pinged multiple times per week, sometimes for the same job at the same company I've already turned down, which I find a bit amusing.

Now I'm continueing the search, but openly talk about what I'm looking for salary wise, I've wasted quiet a lot of my own time this past month.

Moving from engineer in financial industry to engineer in "regular" industry (same city) I just accepted and told potential employers I expected a pay cut. Sooo much money in finance, everyone is "over" paid.

The tendency to talk about salary upfront is a good one for both sides - it avoids wasting everyone's time when the expectations simply don't align.

It does need to be mutual though. I expect employers to include some salary guidance in a job ad. And if they claim to offer market rates, I expect them to live up to that.

I did something sort of crazy when the last recruiter asked me about my salary. I lied.

The number I told him I was being paid at the time was actually the number it would take for me to leave my job. He came back with an offer that was slightly higher than that and I accepted.

Perhaps that's not the best idea?

Sigh, paywall

I am only ever in the market for co-founder jobs, and not really looking at the moment, because I really like my current co-founder job. Besides good domain knowledge, and preferably an existing customer base, the non-technical co-founder will need to find enough money for the startup to survive until the inflection point. Otherwise, they are 12 in a dozen. If a potential non-technical co-founder wants to save money by not paying enough, it is quite easy to cut the discussion short and to move on to another candidate -- entire websites full of them. There is really no shortage there. Lather, rinse, repeat. Salary history? Sounds like a ridiculous concept. I don't even remember my previous salaries.

Wow, madness. So before we were told not to ask the question in interviews; but suddenly it's ok to be asked the question in interviews.

For me it's definitely negotiable. If you can't afford me then after negotiation then any gulf can be made up with a guaranteed longer contract or shorter hours; it's as simple as that.

Disqualifying off the bat is stupid, especially as some places pay extra because they need someone urgently for a short period.

Interesting discussion here about whether candidates and companies should reveal their range up front. Personally I would not quit freelancing except for something really exceptional, so I lean toward talking numbers immediately. That saves my time, but I feel like it's actually pretty unreasonable. In the freelancing world, we suffer from a "market for lemons" situation where the bad freelancers hurt everyone's rates. To charge a premium rate you need prospects to trust you a priori, which probably means referrals. I suppose candidates for full-time jobs suffer the same thing: asking for an "unrealistic" salary at the beginning of the process, when you are an unknown, just gets you thrown out. I suppose the way around this is to have an insider who will vouch for you. Any other advice on being able to ask for a high salary and not be dismissed?

“I’m unemployable now as a result of getting to the top of the tree”

This shows a lack of understanding of the market and poor self-awareness for someone who claims to be at the top of the tree.

The average company is looking to employ someone who will do the same job cheaper.

In order to earn more, it's necessary to identify employers who are willing to pay a premium for convenience or for an unusually skilled or experienced worker, and be aware of those before getting laid off.

This man seems particularly aggrieved that he lost a role to a "young woman with five years experience". A white man should not and does not automatically trump a woman - if he costs more (which he doesn't actually know for sure) then that's his problem.

This is why for every thing I learn in IT/computer, I angle for a skill that I can use in freelance or 1-person company. Not interested in some proprietary skill that requires expensive hardware to stay current. Such as Cisco or storage stuff.

The article doesn't really address it directly but they seem to be mainly talking about people who are looking for jobs who are currently _unemployed_. They are in a position of weakness when it comes to looking for a job and especially when negotiating salary. I think this has way more to do with that than any alleged trend of talking about salary up front. It's been the norm for decades to ask framing questions about salary early on.

I find recruiters hurt this more than help it too. If you tell them your last salary, they'll just try to get enough % more to make it worth the transition.

IMO the whole situation could easily be avoided if employers provided salary ranges up front. I heard that's what they do in Japan, and several recruiter pings I have received from there did contain the ranges. Alas they were too low to justify the aggravation of moving to another country, but from what I can tell, they were very respectable by Tokyo standards.

As someone who keeps getting more and more money, I find other limit as well. Your only job is to be in-demand and don't tell recruiters everything. Let them tell you, how much they can get you (and this is often bull, so think and research).

TL;DR people who are unemployed aren't willing to take less than 100,000 a year and feel like the system is screwing them?

Off topic, but I've said I won't answer it because of commercial in confidence reasons before.

Regarding your first point, I think it's important to think about the fact that you may well be worth more to your current company than to another one, if you've been there a long time.

Your experience in exactly what your current company does, the way it does it, the relationships you have within the organisation etc may mean that part of your worth within the organisation is related to how long you've been there.

Both sides are interested in getting a price and, ultimately, it's the person in the weaker position who ends up revealing theirs. Imagine the roof of your house was getting old and started to leak, so you figure it's time to replace it. Upon contacting a roofing company and inquiring what it would cost, they say "You're the one who wants a new roof and are willing to pay for that being done, so you should be offering a price. How much is having a dry roof over your family's head and preserving your home's value by avoiding water damage worth to you? What's the current value of your home? Perhaps we can work on a percentage basis since we're protecting your investment for the next 20 years." Of course, you wouldn't accept such an "enterprise sales" tactic because they're in the weaker position (fairly close to being a commodity) and you have dozens of qualified choices so you'll insist they reveal their hand.

A job situation is no different. If it's a role requiring only "commodity" experience which dozens of qualified candidates are available for and wanting, they're going to pick the best combination of price and performance that they can find. If you have special talents that only you are uniquely suited for, you're the one who will be asking them about their offer.

Very true. Sometime back I interviewed a person for Java related work. He had roughly 20 years of experience. Unfortunately most of knowledge and skills were intimately related to his last employer. The said person was jobless for 1 year so. Apparently not much use of company specific skills.

Recruiter here. I think: "The moral of the story: never, never, NEVER answer questions about your salary to a recruiter." is pretty simplistic and naive. You simply have to figure out how to get what you want. If you want 180 and currently make 140 and a recruiter asks what you make, just say something like "my expectation for my next role is around 180". You say that and you both probably get what you want and save a lot of back and forth.

This one? http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

I've tried that (nicely), but it backfires too. Some companies are either old school or clueless on what to offer and have treated me pretty badly and called off interviewing further well into interviewing due not telling them that. E.g. "We've NEVER had someone be so stubborn about sharing their salary".

I realize those places were likely toxic, but it can be never-wracking to someone who needs a job.

Hmm, I would just say something in line with what I want out of the new company. They want a number, they can have a number. They might not like it, but that's life.

> Where is it that late-career engineers are barely pulling in six figures?

Almost everywhere in the Midwest, except Chicago perhaps.

Unless your remote working, low cost of living doesn't come without a big catch.

At 45 you become untouchable. Too old to be young, too young to be old. How many 50 year olds do you see in SV companies?

I knew a guy who was about 50, brilliant, brilliant engineer working for one of the big IT players. Well respected and trusted advisor to many customers. He got vaporized in some big restructuring that hit his division.

Because of non-compete and what he did, he was basically out of work for almost a year, and was stuck in career purgatory for a few years doing random contract work.

Depending on what "electronics engineer" means it is perfectly viable that he was at a low six figure number. The electrical engineering field generally in the US has been dramatically outsourced to Asia which has caused obvious downward price pressure.

"Six-figure salary" encompasses everything from $100k to $999,999 (okay, that's a bit pedantic perhaps but you get what I mean). $185k is still low six-figures.

Could be in the uk. Tech jobs get sparse once you go over £60k outside London.

Europe, you will only be on 5 figures in most countries.

I work in the engineering department of a large electrical utility company. Although no one here really talks about salary, based on what I am paid and our corporate promotion schedule I assume that most late career engineers are in the very low $100k range. The only people exceeding that would be the managers of the engineering department.

Around here in the mid-atlantic states I know that's the norm - and actually can be lower than that. It's not until you start managing teams do you get near the lower mid 100s.

Text:

After more than 20 years as an electronics engineer, Pete Edwards reached the low six-figure pay level. Now, as he looks for a job following a layoff, he finds that salary success a burden.

Although his experience includes the sought-after field of 3-D printing, the 53-year-old hasn’t been able to land a permanent full-time job. Time and again, he says, employers seem to lose interest after he answers a question that they ask early on: “What was your last salary?”

That question comes up sooner than ever nowadays. Hiring managers used to broach salary history or requirements only in later stages, after applicants had a chance to make an impression and state their case.

Today, pay increasingly is mentioned early in the process, either as a required field in online applications—which are used more often—or during initial interviews, say recruiters, compensation consultants and job seekers.

The shift is vexing applicants, mostly those of a certain age and pay level, who are concerned that a salary they worked to attain now gets in the way of having a job at all. “I’m unemployable now as a result of getting to the top of the tree,” Mr. Edwards lamented.

ENLARGE Josh Rock, a recruiter at Fairview Health Services, a 20,000-employee health system in Minnesota, said that during the last recession, recruiters used compensation queries as a quick way to cull the large numbers of candidates for open jobs. The habit has stuck, he said. “Why not figure out what’s going on sooner in the process than doing a dance?”

Human-resources executives say asking about pay right off the bat helps contain compensation costs, ensures that candidates have reasonable expectations and spares recruiters from chasing prospects they can’t afford.

“Unfortunately, some clients use salary as a pre-screening question,” said Susan Vitale, chief marketing officer at iCIMS Inc., a provider of recruiting software in Matawan, N.J. “So if the role tops out at $55,000 and they say they want $60,000, it might knock the candidate out of consideration” even if the person would be open to salary negotiations.

Screening candidates this way may be a factor in wage stagnation, some analysts suggest. Average hourly earnings rose 2.5% in 2015, modest by historical standards. Wage growth has averaged only about 2% for the past five years.

Focusing on compensation history “holds down wages because now the jobs are being filled by people with lower salary expectations,” said Thomas Kochan, a professor of employment research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. “We have a whole generation of people who are permanently adversely affected.”

ENLARGE Though hiring tactics have received little attention in the economic debate about wage stagnation, Mr. Kochan said they could have profound effects: “The decisions of firms individually are…creating collectively this macro phenomenon of stagnation,” yet are hard to measure because they are shrouded in secrecy.

U.S. employers continue to hold the line on wages despite six years of economic recovery and an unemployment rate of 5%. Finance chiefs are “probably looking ahead and saying they want to keep the escalation of labor costs from going up in a way that will put pressure on earnings,” said Ajit Kambil, global research director of Deloitte’s CFO Program.

In Deloitte’s most recent quarterly survey, 47% of chief financial offers said they plan to work to lower or control labor costs this year, by taming compensation growth, reducing benefit costs or other means. Moreover, employers may feel they can lowball applicants because they believe there is still a surplus of qualified candidates.

“Workers are still a little discounted” in most fields, said Linda Barrington, executive director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s ILR School. “Employers won’t pay what the last person in the job was paid because labor is now on sale.”

Steve Carpinelli recently applied for a public-relations position with a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. The role called for a minimum of five-to-seven years of experience. He has more than 14.

RELATED

How to Field Questions About Salary Expectations Mr. Carpinelli’s pay reached high five figures before the 45-year-old switched to the generally lower-paying field of nonprofits. While preparing for a phone interview with the Washington organization, he discovered that the last person in the job earned $101,000. So when asked early on about his salary expectations, he put his range squarely around what the last employee earned, seeking $85,000 to $110,000.

“After that, the conversation was very robotic, not a two-way conversation about what they’re truly looking for,” Mr. Carpinelli said. “I definitely got the impression that I’d priced myself out.”

In his experience, “there has been a definite shift or emphasis on beginning the conversation with: ‘What is your salary range?’” Mr. Carpinelli said. “I was always told you never talk about salary until you’re given an offer. But I’ve noticed the salary-range question comes up far earlier in the conversation.”

The organization ultimately hired a young woman with five years’ experience. Mr. Carpinelli is still looking for a permanent job.

Older job seekers sometimes see such outcomes as evidence of bias. But “employers can make financial decisions and it’s not necessarily age discrimination,” said Raymond Peeler, a senior attorney-advisor at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “What an employee would have to prove…is that the employer is using the salary level as a proxy to disqualify all the older applicants.”

Businessolver Inc., a benefits-administration firm in West Des Moines, Iowa, recently hired more than 100 people for its Denver office. Human-resources staffers ask about compensation in the middle of a six-step hiring process and use the answers to gauge applicants’ “level of reality,” said Marcy Klipfel, senior vice president of HR. “A lot of times what you’re looking at is are we going to waste time and get to the end of the process, and it turns out the person is way out of our range?”

A majority of workers take a salary cut when they get a new job after a stretch of unemployment, but those over 45 usually take a bigger hit than workers under 35 years of age, according to research from Ms. Barrington and a Cornell colleague, Hassan Enayati.

A survey by AARP last year found that of job seekers between 45 and 70 years old who found work after a spell of unemployment, nearly half earned less than before.

Some employers hesitate to hire at far below a past salary, concerned that the employee would resent earning so much less. “If someone wants $100,000 and settles for $75,000, they’re not going to be happy,” said Steve Gross, a compensation specialist and senior partner at consulting firm Mercer.

Workers, however, say they would like the chance to decide for themselves.

“The presumption that I would walk into a job and get $150,000 is not there,” said Rosemary Lynch Kelleher, a baby boomer who has earned at that level during her 25-year career in international trade policy, and has been looking for a permanent job for several years.

“I realize very clearly that it’s not there. And I would take something for $100,000 or $75,000.”

In Austin, a woman who lost her six-figure position as a data architect in 2014 but recently landed a job, said she had been tempted to say she earned $60,000 to improve her chances of getting hired.

While she was searching, the 63-year-old said: “I hate putting down what I want” in salary. “If you put down too much, they think you’re expensive. If you don’t put down enough, they think you’re undervaluing yourself.”

Much of this ambiguity could be avoided if employers published a pay range for positions, but they don’t want to tip their hands. So experts suggest job seekers research market rates for particular positions and try to finesse salary questions.

“Say, ‘I’m open to a salary commensurate with the job,” recommended Blake Nations, a former recruiter who was laid off and then founded Over50JobBoard.com. “And if they keep going, ask: ‘What do you expect to pay someone with my experience and education for this position?’ ”

Some applicants, faced with a salary-history question they fear would exclude them from the start, have toyed with putting a bogus number in a required field in an online form.

Mr. Edwards, the electronics engineer, says he tried that once. Not hearing back from the company, he contacted its HR department and was told he was too expensive. That baffled him because he had listed $1,000 as his previous pay. It turned out HR had changed that to $100,000, assuming it was a mistake.

I copied and pasted the link into a private window (Firefox) and it worked ok, just FYI for anybody that wants to read it like I did. Searching for title and clicking through Google didn't do it for me this time.

Since the google thing doesn't work anymore, I deleted my cookies and it worked like a charm.

Click the web link below the title, then click the story in the google results. Pay wall goes down.

Clicked link on mobile, chrome, and got me in. Thought that was strange since its WSJ.

Incognito