What is your salary expectation?

“What is your salary expectation?”

And I freeze.

I know that this question would come.

I was preparing.

But I still can only say “Ahm, mmm, aaammm, yeah”

There are a lot of tips around it.

→ “What is your budget?”
→ “My range is…”
→ “I am open to it…”

That’s BS.

I hate wasting time.

Mine or the company that hires me.

Did you know that you can just name your salary directly?

→ I want to have a 200k / year salary.
→ With the bonus part not exceeding 30K.
→ And I want to agree on a roadmap to 250k

(maybe make it a bit less harsh sounding lol :D)

Two things can happen:

→ It’s within their budget
→ It’s outside of their budget

If they continue talking to you after - it’s within the budget.

And you get bonus points for being direct and open.

If they don’t - congrats! You just saved yourself time.

But there is one important condition:

→ You need to be damn good at development.

Sorry juniors, this won’t work for you.

The demand for experienced developers right now is huge

Especially in US & Canada.

You can negotiate a good salary

… and you don't have to play any tricks to try to squeeze in an additional few thousand.

P.S. I started preparing something really awesome for you devs.