Personally, I would not work for anyone who wasn't being honest with me, but I'm a bit old and gnarly like that. I believe integrity to be one of the key ingredients in any work relationship, and I regret all the time I've wasted working for and with people who lack it. Conversely, honest people are always a pleasure to work for.

The last job interview I went to, I took with me the attitude that "if this job isn't exactly right for me, I will say so and politely walk away." I put on the table what I wanted to do, what my aspirations were, and how much money I wanted. I made sure I was scrupulously polite and scrupulously honest. It helped with the negotiations, and it helped now I've started the job - it removes a lot of the confusion about my role, because we agreed it in advance. (I've found too many people seem to think "sys admin" or "programmer" means "general-purpose IT skivvy", which is another thing which ruins the work experience for me. It still happens, but less so because of the prior agreement.)

Still, things aren't 100% perfect, but I feel the way I conducted the interview for this job is one I will use again, whether it be full-time employment, freelance or contract work: be honest, be polite, and be prepared to walk away.

"I would not work for anyone who wasn't being honest with me".

The big point in the earlier discussion this week was that you don't know if the other party is being honest. They can do background checks on you, credit checks, employment history checks, etc (with your consent of course), but you have no idea about their background. With public companies you can read some info about them, but it's not personal, nor does it go in to departmental politics and budgets and such.

A potential employer saying "our hands are tied, we can only go up to $75k for this position" may be telling the truth, or they may be lying. You can't tell the difference. That was the gist of the earlier posts.

"Be prepared to walk away" is core negotiating advice for any commitment - marriage, car purchase, job search, housing, etc. Not having the guts to walk away means you will make decisions based out of fear, rather than out of a position of strength.

> "our hands are tied, we can only go up to $75k for this position"

If I needed $80k, I would then say "I'm sorry, but I have expenses to pay, a family to keep. I can't work for less than $80k." If he insisted, that's when I would shake hands and walk. It wouldn't matter, in fact, if he was being honest or not. That's my limit. In this case, it's no different to bidding on eBay: I have $80 for this purchase, if it goes higher I will maintain self-discipline and drop out of the auction.

The overwhelming majority of people won't just walk away. They get hyped up in to 'negotiations' and start panicing if they can't get what they want/need.

It's less so in the IT world right now, but in most other fields, there's much higher unemployment. People don't "just walk away", and often accept a situation that doesn't fit their wants/needs, because needing income ends up trumping everything else.

For someone not in IT right now, who needed a job, they're at a strong disadvantage because of the information imbalance during interviews. Congrats on you being a rather rare individual who actually does what is recommended (walk away) - most people don't. And it comes back to not being able to tell if the other side is lying. And in some cases, being desperate enough to work for/with someone who they suspect or know is lying, but needing the job bad enough.

It has occurred to me that being in IT is possibly one reason I can do this, but otoh I have noticed that companies increasingly want to "commoditise" IT workers, so repeatedly low-ball their offers until they get someone who is willing to work for low pay and goodwill. I must admit, that has sometimes been me, but it won't happen again ;) Also, I have been in situations where I needed work, and I think now it would have helped if I had adopted my current strategy. It's a bit like dating: look too needy, get neglected. Look confident, people think you're worth having.

If you can't just walk away, and most other candidates can't just walk away, then they've probably already figured out that you can't walk away, and there's really no way to recover from that. And no amount of clever negotiating is going to fix that.

I believe that Jeff addresses this point in such areas as:

Honestly, I haven’t tried it but I imagine it leaves the risk of getting a relationship off on the wrong foot. And, at the end of the day, a large part of your job satisfaction relies on the relationship between you and your manager.

If I had the feeling that my prospective employer was being dishonest, first I would try to find other employment. And if I couldn't at the time, I would build a bit extra into my request for compensation. Sure, sometimes extra money is worth less satisfaction at work. Usually, however, I'd like both fair compensation and a positive working environment.

Also, I don't want every decision at my job to be a matter of stating extreme options then settling for the commonsense one. I'd rather start with a sensible solution, whether it be in salary negotiations or in project responsibilities and timelines.