@Da' Man said:
<font color="#0000ff" face="Verdana" size="2">I do not believe we can make a competitive enough offer that would interest you. <font color="#000000"> </font>All the best,</font>
Er, did I miss something? I didn't even talk about money so far. In fact, I (stupidly) even made it clear that I am willing to work for less if the work is interesting enough. What are they looking for? An idiot who is willing to work for next to nothing - well, then I already disqualified myself by showing off with my experience :-)
In my experience, though, most experienced developers (web or otherwise)
will have a good clue about how much they are worth (we get job offers
from certain headhunters from time to time :-) and it will be relatively
difficult to find somebody who is willing to work under value.OK, that was a bit fresh, but I had to get back into the game. I also suggested an "informal" meeting one of these days just to see if there is any way to see if there is any posibility to cooperate.
The HR person who wrote back had a different opinion:
<font color="#0000ff" face="Verdana" size="2"><font face="Times New Roman">I feel as though we would be wasting our time as I said before I do not believe that we can make you an offer which will swipe you of your feet .</font></font>
The above is all code for "Hmm, yeah. You sound like you've done this before and are going to ask for things like comp time when we start asking you to work Saturdays and, a month or two later, Sundays, too. We're looking for someone who will just sign the boilerplate offer of employment, work for a year or two until hopelessly burned out, and then quit before we have to start paying for things like vacation time."
You weren't, by chance, applying for work with a company that makes beverage distribution software out in the microbrew capitol of the world, were you? I received similar treatment a year ago while looking for a job, except I specified a salary range and was later told that my 9.5 years of experience was really only worth 2 years, but they would graciously start me at a junior-level position for 60% of my asking price (and only 75% of my current salary, disregarding that I was moving from a very small market that paid well below industry average into a larger market with a real tech sector). Except, they never made that offer, just told me what I was worth to them and stopped responding to any further calls. It's amazing how the guy who had time to call me two or three times a day leading up to my interview was suddenly "in meetings" from 7AM to 7PM.
The best part, though, is that even 16 months later that company is still looking to fill the position I interviewed for.