> I can't imagine a situation where they go "sorry, we really think we need you, but our job listing only goes up to this number, oops"
Lots of big companies have very well-defined salary bands, and you can only negotiate up to the top of that band. There are other things you can negotiate for, hiring bonus, time off, WFH, equipment budget, etc, but you don't get higher salary unless you get a higher title too.
> I just can't imagine a sustainable world where salary is proactively offered, raised, etc
Flex your imagination muscles a little harder. Companies already know how much they want to pay you, but are hoping you'll accidentally lowball yourself by quoting them a lower number. That's what the negotiation is. The average working dev only has so much power in a situation like this.
The problem comes from the non-standardization of titles and salaries across the industry. Two "senior engineers" can have widely varying salaries and sets of responsibilities. So if a dev can't or won't take any job that pays under $125k, it might helpful find out that the maximum salary for the role is $95k before going through the application process and speaking to a recruiter.
> Lots of big companies have very well-defined salary bands
It's true, but I'm not sure that it's good. That's going back to salary being weird. They are making themselves deliberately inflexible, locking themselves out of potentially good agreements (probably in response to public pressure). Perhaps big names can get away with it. Worth noting that the same "bands" probably don't apply to hiring consulting businesses. Ask yourself why, and how's that different from striking a deal with an individual.
> Companies already know how much they want to pay you
That's not true. They don't know how much they want to pay _you_. They know how much they want to pay an average abstract employee doing the job they vaguely envision in a satisfactory manner. Then when the actual _you_ come in, that abstract employee becomes a concrete advocate for themselves. They'll have to think about you specifically now, and it changes the whole calculus.
Lots of big companies have very well-defined salary bands, and you can only negotiate up to the top of that band. There are other things you can negotiate for, hiring bonus, time off, WFH, equipment budget, etc, but you don't get higher salary unless you get a higher title too.
> I just can't imagine a sustainable world where salary is proactively offered, raised, etc
Flex your imagination muscles a little harder. Companies already know how much they want to pay you, but are hoping you'll accidentally lowball yourself by quoting them a lower number. That's what the negotiation is. The average working dev only has so much power in a situation like this.
The problem comes from the non-standardization of titles and salaries across the industry. Two "senior engineers" can have widely varying salaries and sets of responsibilities. So if a dev can't or won't take any job that pays under $125k, it might helpful find out that the maximum salary for the role is $95k before going through the application process and speaking to a recruiter.