It really depends on what kind of company you are negotiating with. Companies of a certain size will have salary bands and they can't pay above a certain amount otherwise they risk salary imbalances within teams.
Small startups may be playing with their runway and so need to know where you stand in order to know whether your salary expectations will impact the runway too greatly.
You might be able to play this game if you are personally being recruited for something specific and/or working with the founder or a senior enough person in a large co who can break you out of the bands. But otherwise you risk the recruiter simply not qualifying you for consideration.
Hah! I just had this happen to me last month. My wife accepted a position (at her dream company) on the other side of the state. That means we're no-questions-asked packing up, selling our home, and moving for this opportunity.
I told my manager the news and gave him the choice: The company can transition me to full-time remote or they can have my resignation (which I had typed, printed, signed, and brought with me).
So, that afternoon, I'm in the HR managers office. They (HR, not my manager -- he is an amazing, caring, understanding person who laughs at this story harder than I do) literally pulled "The Book" out and pointed to some section of text while stating, "ENGINEERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WORK REMOTELY!" at me.
I'm still there, we made it work, but it took almost more effort than it was worth.
The book is definitely not based on the local job market. I get emails from recruiters and have a sense of what the proper salary range is for my position. The book is usually on the bottom of that range.
Yeah but even those bend the rules when they love the candidate... It happened to me once, got a completely out of band salary because the Architect and client liked me a lot and just said "Fuck it, pay him" to the HR and the rules.
I had a situation where I asked for a certain salary and they said it was out of the salary band for the job title. The solution was to change the job title to one where the salary was in-band.
Yup. And btw, it would have taken you two years of busting your ass to get that job title promotion otherwise. Exactly why it's so important to negotiate hard up front, before you start.
Small startups may be playing with their runway and so need to know where you stand in order to know whether your salary expectations will impact the runway too greatly.
You might be able to play this game if you are personally being recruited for something specific and/or working with the founder or a senior enough person in a large co who can break you out of the bands. But otherwise you risk the recruiter simply not qualifying you for consideration.
(I've hired many, many engineers in my career)