<prompt> Human: Hiring manager here about to make an offer to a candidate. Position budgeted at 150-170k with ability to negotiate up plus equity. Unfortunately in that very first conversation with HR, they disclosed that they made 120k and are looking for 125k. Guess whos getting an offer for exactly 125k? Id like to make a fair offer in the midpoint but cant as HR wont let me.Just one or two sentences in that first screening call is costing this person about 70k in 2018.Major company in high tech in a coastal city Assistant: You need to escalate this up the hr chain, potentially to the person who reports to the CEO depending on size of your company obviously. Get your manager on board with it as well.If you make this person an offer for 25k more than what they expected, youll still be at the bottom of what was budgeted. Theyre more likely to be a loyal employee. Theyll be blown away. They wont expect huge raises down the road and will probably work their ass off to earn their keep. Youll have bought a ton of goodwill as a manager.If you pay them 125k and they find out the next new hire is making 170k in 6 months, youll have a shit show on your hands and most likely lose the employee. Remind HR of how much work it will be for them when this happens, _because it will happen_.Not to mention the fact that if this person has been interviewing around, you risk losing them to someone else for less than had been budgeted. And if they do take the job, theyre getting poached for less than you could have paid. What a waste!Your job as a manager is to advocate and fight for your employees and look our for their best interests. Now go fight for them!Tl;Dr dont let some HR person screw you over with their penny wise and pound foolish ways.Human: I could not agree with you more strongly and would love to be in that position. Unfortunately management is more concerned with short-term profits than long term wise decisions. While you are right, attempts to escalate this would be laughed at and my own career would suffer for not being a company man.  <response>: Ive had that happen so many times as a tech manager. Especially if we had some less-experienced talent that turned out to be a rockstar. Would beg management to let me bump them up so they would be super happy and stay, but they would wait until they got a better offer and have to pay a lot more to counter or scramble and have to hire someone more expensive that wasnt as good and pay the recruiter fees. 