I found out the "default salary" for a position is higher than the offer I accepted. Should I feel cheated?

Question

I have recently accepted a job offer with their proposed salary offer.

However, after accepting the offer, I saw a written note of my offer details, which was meant to be used as a reference for the final offer letter built offline. In this offer letter, the position compensation is described as a ‘default salary’ which is £8k more than what I was proposed.

Also, an external recruiter has confirmed that the job was advertised to them as £8k more.

I know that I accepted the smaller offer, however I find this unethical and I don’t know what to think of it now. I have also lost my interest as I feel I have been cheated. Can someone please advise what is best to do in this situation?

I believe I should not have been exposed to this information.

Answer 1

It is not "unethical". It is just business.

They're in the business of making money. Simple as that. They'll pay their suppliers as little as possible, they'll pay their staff as little as possible. They'll charge their customers as much as possible.

The definition of "as possible" varies from company to company but the gist is basically the same.

This also applies (in a generalised way) to government organisations.

You weren't cheated, you just failed to negotiate your value. Learn from it and move on.

Answer 2

Let's put it this way: if you came by a store that sold your favorite candy for 10% less than other stores, would you think that buying there is somehow "unethical"? It's capitalism, right? You pick the best seller. That's not unethical, that's how the system works.

If you want to look at the bright side: maybe they hired you over the other candidate, because all things being equal, you cost less. You could have been the other guy, that wanted 8K more and did not get hired.

Answer 3

It's not unethical. They proposed an offer and you accepted it. That's the way it works. The fact that they would have paid you more if you had negotiated for more is immaterial.

Answer 4

Unethical or not doesn’t really matter, what matters is what you can do about it.

If you think you should get a higher salary, then look for a different job. Preferably one that offers more. If you find one, sign a contract, give notice, and say goodbye. That’s the problem for companies lowballing you: They get you cheap, but they don’t keep you.

If you’re confident you can get a job elsewhere for at least the same money, then you can talk to the person who made the low offer and ask why. It does happen that they looked for someone highly experienced for $X, couldn’t find anyone, and hired a much less experienced person for $X - 8000. So your salary would be fine. Or they get the impression that you would be unhappy and therefore unproductive with this salary and increase it. Good for you. Or they say “tough, you were stupid to accept it, but you did” - that means you know where you stand and it will make your future decisions much easier.

Answer 5

Employers rarely start out offering the most they're willing to pay. They go in with the expectation that the candidate will try to negotiate a better deal. The note you saw was probably what they expected they would end up paying or possibly the maximum they could offer without having to request approval for a larger amount.

Fair or unfair, it's the way the world works so instead of exhausting your emotional reserves worrying about whether or not you were cheated, treat it as a learning experience. When it's time to renegotiate your salary (typically at the end of a performance review cycle), don't be afraid to ask for a sizable raise. The fact that you somehow got hold of this note gives you an advantage as you now have a better sense of how they value your skills.

If you browse this site, you'll find a lot of good questions and answers on how to approach salary negotiations.

Answer 6

One point I don't see here is you don't mention your own skill level. Very frequently jobs are "XX-YY range based on experience" maybe in your case the range was 30-50k and the default was 40k and you're on the lower end of the experience expectations. In my current position the advertisement was 30-35k. When they finally came to it they put it smack down in the middle at 32.5 since I wasn't for a 35k offer but certainly wasn't for a low-end offer too.

Answer 7

You may have been "cheated on" in the sense that the hiring manager was a better negotiator than you were, and they managed to get you to accept a lower salary than the one they were ready to offer.

It's also possible that your skills were assessed during the interview and you were found less qualified than someone they expected to hire for this default salary. You were still hired because you were the best candidate they could get in a given timeframe, but the offer was reduced accordingly.

There's nothing to worry about here really: hiring managers are paid and trained to be good at salary negotiations, so it's safe to say that almost everyone gets hired for a lower salary at least once. E.g. when I was a consultant I once found out I was billed to the customer more than twice the money I was paid, including benefits. It only really bothered me when I was kicked out of a project I liked because "I costed too much".

People who lose the most money are not the people who get hired under market value, but those who stay underpaid. There are bright kids getting hired right out of the university at a salary which is great for a junior, and are so happy with it that some of them keep working for that salary (with moderate pay raises) for 10+ years. Then they decide to change jobs and discover they could've been paid twice as much.

If I were you, I wouldn't try to renegotiate an offer I just accepted. But I would certainly keep that amount in mind for the next pay raise discussion at an appropriate moment.

Answer 8

As others have said the company hasn't done anything unethical, and whilst it might feel unfair, that's the world of recruitment. You went in with an offer that, at the time, you felt was fair compensation for the work you were doing. The business had a guideline range of what they felt was fair. You both agreed that the amount put forward was the acceptable amount, it just so happens that in this instance the business got the better end of the deal.

I myself, as a younger person, fell into a similar bit of misfortune. I wanted out of business X, and when business Y asked what I'd want as a salary I told them the amount I was currently on - it was significantly less than what they were willing to pay - it was even lower than their lowest part of the range! However, all is not lost, you can re-negotiate up. This doesn't have to be left until a yearly review, if you feel strongly about it then you can raise this at any point.

However, it is worth noting that you will no doubt have to prove you're 'worth' the additional pay. Having a copy of the original offer would help, or being able to show that you do the same work as your peers - but for less pay - will also help. However if the company was in desperate need (hence 8K higher), and you're currently on the same as your peers, then you may struggle to make up that shortfall.

What you most definitely shouldn't do is go into the role with an attitude about it, that will serve no purpose and only harm you (not saying that's what you would do, but just calling it out) and harm your long term prospects.

As a final note: If the external recruiter was somebody you were dealing with for this role then you should be annoyed with them, if they were aware of what kind of money was on the table then they could / possibly should have told you.

Answer 9

Use the document to negotiate a future pay rise, either now or at a later date.

This may or may not be the correct option for you personally but you should consider it before some of the more radical options.

Answer 10

It's hard to know for sure without the specifics of your company and position they're hiring for, but as someone who's been responsible for hiring at small companies, there are explanations that have nothing to do with your negotiating skills or anything of the sort.

We were looking to hire a number of people to cover a certain set of skills and were fairly flexible experience levels. Someone who covered more of those skills would be worth more to us because we'd have to spend less time training them and bringing them up to speed.

In job postings, there is no sense in low-balling the number listed because you might just miss out on candidates that search by salary levels, so you put the highest amount you could pay the perfect candidate.

The "draft" could easily be a copy of another offer letter that has nothing to do with you. In a perfect world you'd have clean templates to fill in, but in practice people take shortcuts. One of my colleagues almost sent out an offer letter that was an edited version of one for another position and had an exhibit of responsibilities that made no sense for the position.

Finally, there is some art to it. When it comes to hiring engineers I'd lean towards making a "best and final" offer up front. On the other hand, negotiating skill is very much part of a sales person's job so I'd leave some room for that for that position.

Answer 11

I actually just had this happen to me a few weeks ago. As part of the conditional offer packet they sent me, HR had accidentally printed out the internal job description which showed that I was being offered $20-$30,000 less than had been allocated for my position.

As many have noted, companies will often try to lowball you to begin with, but I was cautioned by my recruiter, who was friends with the hiring manager, that I shouldn't try to argue salary. He said the number was lower for me because of my experience (I had 1-2 years less than was in the job description, but met or exceeded the other requirements). I knew that it wasn't going to work because I was going to walk in the door on day 1 resentful at my employer already.

For a number of reasons, I decided to go with another offer. The non-compete agreement was the main reason I did not want to commit to the job, but they asked what my new salary was and I told them I was going to be receiving $135,000. An hour later the recruiter called me up again and they had "magically" received approval to give me another $15,000, but it was too late already and it wasn't about the money anymore at this point either.

I go with Murphy's law. The HR rep who was sending out that e-mail to me probably just wasn't paying attention and just added every document in the folder without pause. The recruiter actually confirmed that they investigated internally and proper procedure was not followed. But it was more incompetence than malice.

By the way, I was called arrogant, unrealistic, unprofessional and many other things for demanding the salary that I did. The recruiters and companies who responded like that I found to be rude and unprofessional and that was generally the end of our relationship right then and there. I finally found (or rather they found me and reached out to me) a company that respected my skills and paid me more than I had asked for!

It's frustrating, but you know what you're worth and pursue it to the best of your ability. Depending on where you live, it might not be possible to make that kind of money. You may have to move somewhere else to get your targeted salary, but don't give up just because a recruiter told you to.

Answer 12

Salary is up to negotiation. There is a minority that sees this as unethical due to the potential for abuse, but it is accepted by a vast majority as ethical because there are no clearly superior options.

Letting you see the higher default salary, and therefore informing you that your poor negotiation skills cost you a lot of money isn't unethical, it's incompetent. Mistakes happen, but this is one which will have a lasting effect on your morale. It's rarely possible to make up for a lower starting salary with pay raises (you might get the same raises if you had started higher), but this depends on the company and how it controls its salary structure.

Your choices are as follows:

1. Accept the feeling of being underpaid while you're at this company, until/unless you get a new position and a big raise.
2. Try to restart the already concluded negotiations and risk losing the offer (and possibly burning bridges). Chances are 50:50, if you manage a good delivery of your message.
3. Look for another opportunity elsewhere, either instead of the current offer, or during probation.

Answer 13

It's not unethical, but it does tell you something: You are worth £8k more than you are being paid. They budgeted for £8k more and were apparently willing to pay that, but ended up getting you for less.

So when asking about a raise you can point out that you are paid well below market rate, or just start looking for a job more in line with your worth.

A lot of people underestimate how much they are worth and don't ask for enough money. You may be surprised when applying for a job that if you just confidently ask for more you may get it.

Answer 14

Assuming from your name that you are a woman, you might want to think about possible gender discrimination issues. They can be very hard to prove, but it seems that there may be some evidence that you saw.

You could talk to your boss or HR, telling them that you feel like you are being paid less than other people doing the same job and are concerned that you were disadvantaged because of your gender. Since you are in the UK you have a right to ask for the situation to be reviewed to make sure that women are not being systematically paid less.

It's not an easy path to go down. Is there a union you could join to help you with it? Or any groups for women in your industry?