alt Hacker News> the overlap between lowest salary employees will work for and the highest salary employers will offer
There is still an element of unknown because both parties do not know each others numbers, which allows employees to still negotiate. You are now talking about information asymmetry where the party with the information will now have all the bargaining power.
When I went from working a $150K job to getting offers from Meta at $300K, the initial number they offered was $250K, and we worked upwards. I absolutely would’ve taken the job even if they offered $200K and not negotiated. But they did, based on information asymmetry. Now imagine a world where meta knows exactly how much I make and all the other information about me. I’d probably get a minor bump over my previous salary.
Edit: I ended up taking a different offer. I don’t work for and have never worked for Meta.
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>Now imagine a world where meta knows exactly how much I make and all the other information about me. I’d probably get a minor bump over my previous salary.
Not necessarily. People don't change companies for just any value greater than current TC. There is a big cost to switching companies -- it's going to shake up your lifestyle, you might lose some relationships, reset your company-internal network and reputation, reset technical and organization context etc. Possibly even moving your home (even if a new job is in the same city, people often move to be closer to it anyway).
As a matter of policy I wouldn't switch companies for less than a 30% monetary premium over my current TC (I'm a SWE), and other soft criteria like type of work and company culture. In my early career I've gotten 50-100% premiums each time I made a hop.
You might want to rethink your example if the counterparty offers you 50% more than you wanted then you reject the deal; it makes adding the framing a bit pointless because it is clear you weren't ever going to accept the job for $200k.
And you're underestimating how much of an impact the broader market is having on Meta's thinking in this scenario. If your silver tongue or secret number was a factor here then everyone would end up being overpaid because they wouldn't reveal that they were happy to work for a reasonable amount. It doesn't matter how much or little Meta knows, they're only going to offer $300k if they have a reasonable belief that you can find a job for $300k somewhere else; informed by a pretty detailed analysis of the employment market. And in fact that appears to be exactly what happened in your story. Nothing about that dynamic has anything to do with your salary history or spending habits and them getting better information on those things doesn't change your negotiating position. Since a key factor is the future, even if they know you'd say yes to $200k, they'd still be best served offering you more money. I've had that happen to me 2 or 3 times because I'm a sloppy negotiator and don't try very hard to optimise salary.