The unwritten rules (till now) of negotiating with Meta
At interviewing.io, one of the services we offer our users is salary negotiation. Even though I’m the founder, I still do many of the sessions myself because they give me an invaluable insider’s perspective on what’s actually going on in the engineering market, what different companies’ offers look like, how companies extend offers, what kinds of deadlines they give, and how much they go up in compensation, under what circumstances.
Access to this kind of data is great because it helps me make better business decisions. But sometimes I see questionable patterns of behavior among companies. Recently, I’ve observed a string of practices at Meta that I find reprehensible, and that’s what this post is about. I’ve seen the same practices with enough candidates, and across enough different titles and positions, that it’s become clear to me that they are not isolated incidents or a rogue recruiter’s doing but rather a consistent implementation of a deliberate strategy that comes from the top.
I’m writing about this for two reasons. First, if you’re negotiating with Meta, you need to know how they operate and understand the unwritten rules of the game. If you do not know the rules, you will fail — long before you even start negotiating.
