note to self: salary requirements up front
Last night, I dreamed that I quit my job to return to work at my previous employer. There would be lots of ups and downs to this, the two most important of which would be that I’d be closer to home and that I’d be developing in Visual Studio and its suite of languages. I got to my office, and it was pretty high-tech. I don’t remember just why, but the computer was running some evolved version of Windows that looked sort of Blackbox-y. (I used to run Blackbox on Win32, there.) My fellow developers and I shared a nice office space.
As I started working on my first day’s workload, I suddenly realized that when negotiating my return, I failed to discuss my salary. I didn’t know what I was going to be making there, which meant, of course, that I had no idea if I really wanted to be there. I informed my boss of this oversight, and then told my old employer that maybe I’d come back, if it turned out that I’d been rehired for an unacceptable sum. It was awkward.
So, a note to all job hunters: you don’t need to ask for the salary range when you sit down in the interview, but you better ask before you accept the job.