I don't understand your argument. I never said any value is fixed. Of course a person's value changes from role to role and from company to company. Part of doing your research is understanding the pain points for the company and the value you bring by fixing those pain points.

If you disagree with "a professional knows their value," what are you arguing? That "a professional doesn't know their value?"

I think they're arguing that you can't really be sure how valuable you are to a company since there's a significant amount of information disparity. Given your typical company that doesn't discuss much about internal issues or pain points publicly how do you do that research needed to understand those things?

Fair point--you have no idea what happens behind closed doors and what the available budgets are. And you never will. Perhaps the hiring manager decided they are willing to pay 2x the market rate because their pain is quite high. But how likely is it, due to your refusal to name a number, that the company is going to reveal the top of their range? So, yes, there is an information disparity.

But I still think that refusing to name a number shouldn't be the number one point in all of these discussions and blog posts about salary negotiation. You're right, when there are huge amounts of information disparity, either because a company's pain point is significantly higher than market rates would imply, or because a candidate has a rare and unique skill that cannot be easily found, then all of the entry-level negotiating tactics go out the window. But for fair-market jobs and candidates, I think you should be able to know your value well and refusing to name a number is a waste of time and energy.

> But how likely is it, due to your refusal to name a number, that the company is going to reveal the top of their range?

Well, in the podcast, he mentions that this one action is part of a larger strategy. The goal of it isn't to get the company to reveal the cap, but to defer the question until you've demonstrated high value to them, see where they start, and try to find their cap from there.

> If you disagree with "a professional knows their value," what are you arguing? That "a professional doesn't know their value?"

A professional might know their value abstractly or concretely to some companies, but in general value is relative to the company's needs, funding, and priorities. The recruiter has too many data points that you don't have to argue that going in with a fixed number is wise.

I actually would suggest that, in many (most?) situations, someone may not know their value, and that's not a negative reflection on their professionalism. You can do all the research you want, but there are many situations where you can't discover enough of the company's pain points or match your skill set(s) to their needs to figure out what you are worth to them.

And even if you can do all that, there's no reason why the dollar value you put on your worth to them has to be similar to the dollar value they have in mind. You could argue, in that situation, that you may not want to work for a company that doesn't value you "properly", but I hesitate to believe that there's always (or even often) an objective version of "properly" that disinterested observers could agree on.

Having said all that, I am still not sure I buy into the idea that the best negotiation tactic is to evade (even "professionally") providing a number.