Oversaturation in the job market prevents job seekers from being able to negotiate

In my opinion, the market right now is not conducive to salary negotiation at all, other than in extreme conditions.

First off, you need to realize you can only negotiate if you have leverage. If you have no leverage, then you can’t negotiate at all. Leverage goes one way. Either the company has leverage, or the seeker has leverage, it’s not possible for them both to have it (it cancels out). If the company has leverage, they’ll ask the job seeker for a number, and then they will negotiate them down from that. If the job seeker has the leverage, then the company will start with a number, and then the seeker will negotiate up from there.

Back before the market was oversaturated, companies would put up a job ad, and then 2 weeks later maybe get their first qualified applicant. In that scenario, the company is eager to hire you, and they know it may be a long time before they get another qualified applicant. In that scenario, you can negotiate, because the employer’s desperation works as leverage.

But these days that doesn’t work because the market is oversaturated. Companies put up a job ad, and within minutes get 100 qualified applicants. They then reject 50% of them right off the bat, and then interview the rest, rejecting anyone who doesn’t completely ace every single interview question. When they’ve rejected 99% of applicants, they’ll offer a job to the last remaining candidate. In that scenario, the applicant has absolutely no leverage. This only option is to take the offer. Even if the applicant say “Another company offered me 10% more”, the company can just respond with “Well then you should take that offer, because we don’t have the budget to offer you any more”. The company can walk away because they have hundreds of other qualified applicants, and the job seeker can’t walk away because it may take them weeks before they get their next offer.

The only programmers that have leverage these days are celebrity developers like Linus Torvalds and Guido Van Rossum. When those guys switch jobs it’s literally front page news, and companies are willing to outbid each other to get that kind of publicity.