No hyperbole. Seriously, I was as shocked as you are. It was a very humiliating experience.
A few interesting things that I’ve experienced:
- Companies tend to like me enough that they keep asking me back to “meet more people” - a very time-wasting process that often ends with silence (and no returned emails or calls)
- When rejected from a particularly interesting company, I will sometimes offer to work for free or a discounted rate initially, just so I can prove what I can do. No one has ever taken that offer.
- I have even offered to work at a very discounted salary, on par with a new grad salary. My rational is that I’ll still make more than I would at Whole Foods, and I’m confident that they’ll be impressed enough to bump me to my normal salary. No takers. Although one company did say that by hiring me, I would “cause more harm than good”. WTF?
Definitely never offer to work for free or a reduced rate. It just shows that you are desperate and don't value yourself. If you want to work for free, give speeches or contribute to open source or write a book. There activities will get you respected by other people. Working for cheap makes you lose people's respect.
Never lower your rate. If you want to make yourself cheaper for the company, offer to work fewer hours, or on a fixed-term contract rather than permanent employment. For those options, you should also actually be raising your hourly rate, because you'll then have to cover more of your own costs, like taxes and insurance.
And don't let anyone squeeze you to make your actual rate lower. I once went to an interview where I was told that the expectation would be for 45 hours of billable work per week, and so I immediately told them that my salary expectation for that would be 20% higher than for a 40 hour work week. They could raise the salary, or lower the work hours, because on a per-hour basis, their pay range was suddenly no longer competitive.
They declined to negotiate that. So I eventually went to work for someone else more willing to pay me what I think I'm worth.
Don't work for free; it just encourages those who try to scam free work out of people. The only person for whom you should be doing unpaid work is yourself.
When I was a contractor the only customers who changed their mind when I put in a lowball offer were people who like to take advantage of other people, definitely not the ones you want to work with. Most other people will reject you not because of your price but because of other factors and price is just an excuse.
