Don't poison the well you'll drink from
Median IT salaries dropped 5.4% in six months. A good moment to remember how people collected offers as leverage — and why I never did.
The median salary of a developer lost more than 20 thousand roubles in six months: 370k in Q3 2025, 350k now. Down 5.4%, according to a SENSE report.
It seems employers have started to suspect something and adjusted their hiring plans.
I remember different times 😄 HR would happily buy you a new iPhone just to get you to accept the offer.
Plenty of people back then treated it as leverage: go through interviews, collect offers, then come back and ask for a higher salary. The scheme works, I won’t argue with that.
But I stick to certain principles.
You never know how the situation will change or where you’ll end up later. You have to stay human about it.
A reputation is hard to win back. Trust in candidates like that disappears fast, and our market is small: the same people will be interviewing you a couple of years later at a different company.
As the saying goes: don’t poison the well — you may need to drink from it.