this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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I’m of two minds. If it’s a crappy recruiter, I open with a ludicrous salary request to compensate for the wasted time - if I get it, I retire 20 years early. If I don’t, no harm done.
In an interview situation, I’d lead them along. Let them get to an offer and then explain that I’m not available to stroke their ego. Waste their time some.
Every recruiter that has called me over the last three years when I tell them my salary requirements, they ask me if I'm serious, and they tell me that there's no job in the world that would pay me that amount of money, and I'm like, I'm already working a job that pays me that amount of money within a few percentage points.
Why should I take a pay cut to come work for you? And they never have an answer.
More explicitly, I'm making mid-six figures, and they'll call me up and offer me a job that pays like $60,000 a year, and I say, sorry, if you want me to come work for you, I'm gonna need mid-six figures, plus a little bit extra to make it worth my while, and they realize they have called the wrong person.
And it's always some dipshit recruiter who is trying to hire me for a starter position in the field that I have 14 years of experience in.
I've found that a lot of recruiters who reach out are offering really mediocre jobs, and probably have one themselves. I had a recruiter email, text and call me within 2 hours for a role he had, which would be paid about half of what I'd been making when I was recently unemployed. Starting at 8:30am my time. When he told me what the role paid, I basically told him I'm not desperate, but he clearly is.
I think I've had one recruiter reach out in the last year about a role that isn't at least a 30% pay cut, and that was one with a step up in responsibilities, with a small pay cut.
At first I was offended that they were even bothering to reach out for super entry level roles, when I'm clearly not at that level, but I think they're just spraying and praying, and probably paid mainly based on how many people they get into jobs.