The part of the discussion is not just about pay, it is also about company culture. I really don't want to work at a place willing to haggle and fill the position with the cheapest eligible person.

The problem with this approach is that while the team that is spending their budget on your salary probably doesn't give two shits about an extra $5-20k/yr the disconnected HR department has always been laser focused on pushing back on salary numbers for some reason.

I interviewed at a place where I knew someone who worked there and knew exactly the number they were looking to hire at, I named that number in my interview and they still tried to undercut me. I said, no I want $original_number in my response email and they caved in literally 5 minutes. Why?!?!? You found someone willing to take the job at exactly the team's budget. Shouldn't you be popping the champagne that it's painless and everyone's happy?

The hiring team and the HR team have different local incentives. The hiring team just needs a position filled within a specific budget. The HR team is doing its best to manage company wide expenses. So it is worth it to them to take a crack at reducing the cost of a hire.

If you can identify a company's inconsistencies in policies or behavior, you can identify different sets of incentives different parts of the company are under.

This attitude is common on Reddit and HN, but I think you misunderstand what the norm is. Comparative few companies "spare no expense" when shopping for their average employee. And yes, a developer is a average employee, a worker bee.

A few really big companies might have a different attitude, at least for their major players. I know for a fact that these big companies will offer less than $70k to work in silicon valley, which is a slap in the face to a new grad that was getting better offers in low COL areas.

So where are these mythic companies that don't care about money and give all new hires a fortune without trying to control costs at all?

There are often good teams but they need to work with a compensation department/committee to get actual numbers. IMO it seems a bit early to judge the company culture just by an interaction with the recruiter.

But maybe you consider that to be a part of company culture too. What I’ve noticed though is even fantastic engineering companies might crappy departments for other things.

At a point when they ask me my salary expectations, I would expect to be talking to someone who has the authority to speak about salaries.