recruiter thought he could lowball me.
This is some bullshit.
Six rounds over three weeks, senior backend role. Coding was clean. System design the interviewer stayed 20 minutes over to keep talking. Behavioral was real conversation, didn't even need to lean on STAR stories, they liked me.
Got the offer call this morning. 135k base, 10k sign on, zero equity. My current comp is 168k at a smaller company. I asked if there was any room to wiggle and the recruiter said, and I quote, "honestly we feel you might be overqualified for the role we're hiring into, so we're trying to be fair by not over-committing."
Are you serious? Translation, we hope you take less. The posting said 140 to 180 by the way.
I declined on the call. She asked if I'd "consider being flexible." I asked what flexibility looked like from their side. She stopped talking. Then she said she'd "circle back."
She's not going to circle back. They wanted a bargain, I'm not the bargain. What is it with these recruiters thinking they can scam engineers like this?
I mean I did use cluely because I couldn't bother to learn their company stack, api conventions and other company specific structure, but still that much of a lowball is too much. Also was kinda suprised that the coding stayed clean, system design aswell was nicely structured, even on behavioral did good. Next loop starts tuesday, cluely stays in the stack, and the next recruiter who tries this is getting hung up on faster.