Tell me your story of salary negotiation. Did you straight up ask the band? Did the HR ignore or take offense at your audacity to ask how much this role could pay?

I had posted this on an earlier post in Salary discussions. Hope it helps. --- Never ever reveal your salary at the start of these interviews. If they ask for it, just say my expected salary is in this range. If it's out of budget, they won't get back to you. And you would have saved your time as well. Once they proceed with the interviews, you also need to understand how ur interview is going. Do you have any leverage (on target experience, specialization, early availability, their need etc) Once you understand your leverage, you can use that to justify your ask. Don't be afraid to ask, if you don't, you will mostly undercut yourself. But while asking, don't be arrogant. Be polite and respectful, say you want total comp to be this, which can be split as fixed + variable + joining bonus. And you need X amount of RSU/ESOPs etc. Justify your ask. It they really like you and want you, they will come back with a reasonable offer

There is no straightforward answer to this. A lot of this also depends on your current situation and desperation to get this job. If you can’t risk losing it then obviously you need to be a lot more conservative in your approach. But if you have the leeway to walk away from the offer, it just gives you a lot more leverage in the negotiations

Hey @ScarfaceX @NoCodeNoLife thanks for response. Here are my questions/thoughts Most companies when applying have mandatory questions that ask you your existing pay. There's no way to skip this folks. And after so many years of bad tackling this conversation, out of exhaustion I admit defeat and straight up just share my current pay . Recently at a well known tech company, first HR clearance round, HR asked me for my current pay. Which I shared. Then my expectations . I tried to dodge this question by saying idk the responsibilities enough to come up with a number yet. I'm of course expecting a competitive industry standard salary and now you know my base as well. I asked the HR what their band was for this role and he I think got a stroke because of that question. Started saying weird things like well our overseas band is different. We have not hired for a sr pn in this team yet so idk the payrange. Kept pressurising me to give a number. When I didn't back down HR just said let me get back to you next week with our payrange. And cut the call. Now I know that call is never coming. And I think I'm okay with the outcome. But I just realised i suck at this conversation. Hence trying to see how other people handle this.