90 posts tagged with "business"

Hiring has transformed into an exhaustive process that spans multiple touchpoints, from traditional interviews to hackathons and coding challenges. The modern recruitment cycle demands candidates navigate through various evaluation methods, each designed to assess different aspects of technical competency and cultural alignment. Companies now orchestrate elaborate screening processes that can stretch over weeks or months, involving phone screens, technical assessments, on-site interviews, and increasingly popular hackathon-style events. This evolution reflects the complexity of roles in technology and business sectors where a single misstep in hiring can cost organizations significantly in terms of productivity and team dynamics.

The traditional interview remains the cornerstone of most hiring processes, yet its format has adapted considerably to meet contemporary needs. Phone interviews serve as initial filters, allowing recruiters to gauge communication skills and basic qualifications without the overhead of in-person meetings. These conversations often follow structured formats with predetermined questions designed to eliminate candidates who lack fundamental requirements. Video interviews have become standard practice, particularly after remote work normalization, offering visual cues while maintaining cost efficiency. The progression typically moves toward panel interviews where candidates face multiple team members simultaneously, creating scenarios that test composure under pressure while providing diverse perspectives on candidate suitability.

Technical interviews have evolved into sophisticated evaluation mechanisms that go beyond simple question-and-answer sessions. Coding interviews now frequently involve live programming exercises where candidates solve problems in real-time while explaining their thought processes. Whiteboard sessions remain popular despite criticism about their relevance to actual job performance, as they reveal problem-solving approaches and communication abilities under stress. System design interviews have gained prominence for senior roles, requiring candidates to architect scalable solutions while discussing trade-offs and implementation details. These sessions often reveal depth of experience and practical knowledge that traditional interviews might miss, though they can disadvantage candidates who perform better in collaborative rather than evaluative environments.

Hackathons represent a relatively recent addition to the hiring toolkit, offering immersive experiences that simulate actual work conditions. Companies organize internal hackathons where prospective employees work alongside existing team members on real or simulated projects. These events typically span 24 to 48 hours, creating intensive collaborative environments where technical skills, creativity, and teamwork converge naturally. The format allows hiring managers to observe candidates in action rather than relying solely on interview responses, providing insights into work styles, leadership potential, and cultural fit. Participants often appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate abilities through tangible deliverables rather than abstract discussions, though the time commitment can exclude qualified candidates with other obligations.

The cumulative effect of these diverse hiring activities creates a comprehensive but demanding landscape for both candidates and employers. Job seekers must prepare for multiple interview formats while maintaining performance consistency across different evaluation methods. The process can be mentally and emotionally draining, particularly when companies provide limited feedback or extend timelines indefinitely. For employers, coordinating multiple stakeholders and evaluation methods requires significant resource allocation and careful process management to avoid losing strong candidates to competitors with more efficient systems. Despite these challenges, the multi-faceted approach to hiring continues to evolve as organizations seek better predictors of job performance and long-term success within their specific contexts.

The aspirational buyer has become one of the most important segments for marketers to understand. This group is not defined by what they currently own but by what they want to own and how they see themselves progressing. Their purchase decisions are shaped by the desire to move a step ahead in lifestyle, appearance, or social signaling. They do not always make choices based on affordability alone but often stretch budgets to align with how they want to be perceived. This makes them a critical audience for brands that are trying to grow beyond utility and into aspiration.

Behaviorally, the aspirational buyer is more active in discovery. They spend time browsing social media, following influencers, and comparing what peers are choosing. Their interest goes beyond product features into stories and experiences attached to the product. They are also more responsive to branding that signals exclusivity or achievement. Unlike purely price-sensitive buyers, they are willing to wait, save, or finance a purchase if it aligns with their goals of upward movement. The decision-making process is slower but more emotionally invested.

Where they spend time is a clear indicator of their intent. Online platforms, especially those that showcase lifestyle and success, attract them in large numbers. Offline, they visit malls, branded showrooms, and premium experiences even when they are not immediately buying. This exposure keeps their aspiration alive and fuels their sense of what to aim for next. The boundary between browsing and buying is thin, as their decisions are often triggered by moments when the desire aligns with opportunity, such as discounts, new launches, or peer recommendations.

For marketers, the challenge lies in decoding not just what the aspirational buyer can afford today but what they are preparing to afford tomorrow. Communication that emphasizes status, identity, and belonging resonates more strongly than pure utility. At the same time, the buyer is cautious about authenticity. They look for signals that a brand truly represents the lifestyle they want rather than just selling a product. Failure to connect on this level makes it easy for them to switch to another brand that offers stronger emotional alignment.

In this sense, studying the aspirational buyer is not just about immediate sales but about long-term positioning. The segment reveals how consumers climb through categories, moving from entry-level products to more premium ones as their means grow. Each choice is a statement of progress, and each interaction with a brand builds or reduces loyalty. For any marketer, these are the most important questions: what does the aspirational buyer dream about, how do they decide, and how can a brand become part of that journey.

Paying for exclusivity is at the core of many products and services, especially in travel and events. Business class tickets and VIP tickets are built on this idea. They offer more comfort, better service, and faster access, but the real differentiator is exclusion. By paying more, one avoids the crowd, reduces waiting, and shares space only with others who have made the same choice. It is less about the seat or the meal and more about the filtered environment that money creates.

This model works because demand is not just for utility but also for separation. The business class cabin on a flight does not exist in isolation—it is meaningful because the economy cabin exists alongside it. Similarly, VIP tickets at concerts or matches matter because they provide distance from the general audience. Exclusion creates value, and companies price it accordingly. The higher ticket price is a way to ensure that only a smaller set of people access that level of service, reinforcing the exclusivity further.

The psychology behind this is consistent across industries. People are willing to pay not only for tangible upgrades but also for a curated gentry. Traveling with fewer passengers, attending an event with a quieter section, or accessing a lounge with select entry are all experiences defined by who is kept out as much as by what is included. It reflects a broader truth about consumption—that satisfaction often comes from relative advantage rather than absolute need.

This also explains why these services remain profitable despite higher costs of delivery. The willingness to pay is not strictly about comfort but about the assurance of refinement. The food on a flight could be replicated elsewhere at a fraction of the cost, but the context in which it is served makes it feel different. The lounge access before boarding or the priority exit after landing are all part of creating a bubble. The same applies to VIP areas in stadiums or clubs, where the view may not be dramatically better but the filtered company makes it desirable.

Looking at it this way, exclusivity becomes a product in itself. The service is designed around scarcity, and the price ensures that scarcity is maintained. Paying for business class or VIP tickets is essentially paying for the right to limit access. It is not always rational in terms of value for money, but it aligns with how markets shape themselves around human preferences. The model is unlikely to change because the desire to separate and refine experiences is persistent. Businesses understand this well, and customers continue to reinforce it by choosing exclusivity whenever they can afford it.

Moving the office to Baani City Centre in Gurgaon feels like a practical step for Edzy. The location is not directly on the metro line, which can make daily commutes slightly less convenient, but it balances out with other advantages. The space itself is adequate for the team to grow, and the absence of congestion or crowding around the building makes it easier to settle in. For early stage work, the reliability of reaching the office without unnecessary stress matters as much as the office setup. Ample parking is another benefit, especially in a city where parking is often a hidden challenge. These small logistical details contribute to building a smoother work routine.

The process of setting up here has been gradual, and that has given time to observe how the environment affects daily work. In most startup offices, energy tends to come from the people rather than the space, but a functional and accessible workplace removes friction from the basics. At Baani City Centre, the quieter surroundings create a sense of focus, which is important when long hours and constant discussions are part of the workday. The team can come in and get started without the distractions of crowded commercial hubs. It is a trade-off between ease of transport and a calmer daily rhythm.

There is also a symbolic value in having a stable office after months of shifting between temporary setups. Even if the location is not central, it signals that the company is settling into a routine. For team members, it provides predictability in where and how they work, which in turn affects their motivation and comfort. A workplace is not just about furniture and connectivity, it sets the tone for how people think about their role in the organization. Stability of space often translates into stability of focus, something essential in early stages where the team is small and every contribution matters.

The choice of Baani City Centre also reflects the priorities of the company at this stage. Accessibility for clients or external visitors is less critical compared to the need for a consistent, affordable, and reliable base of operations. The office is easier to reach by those who prefer driving, and the availability of parking makes that option practical. While public transport connectivity remains limited, the current size of the team allows flexibility in managing this. Over time, as the team grows, this balance between location convenience and work environment may need to be reconsidered, but for now it works well.

Looking ahead, this space will serve as a base for building culture and execution habits. The early days of a startup are shaped as much by physical spaces as by the people who occupy them. A calm, functional office with fewer distractions allows sharper focus on hiring, execution, and daily collaboration. The move to Baani City Centre is not about making a statement but about creating the conditions where steady work can happen. It is the kind of decision that feels small on the outside but gradually shapes the pace and discipline of the company from within.

Moving into a new office in Gurgaon for Edzy feels like a small but important step. For a company at an early stage, the space is less about walls and desks and more about creating an environment where work can happen consistently. Location matters for accessibility and daily commute, but equally important is the sense of belonging that comes with a shared workplace. After months of remote calls and scattered interactions, having a physical base provides both structure and accountability. The decision is as much about signaling seriousness to ourselves as it is about preparing for growth.

Hiring continues to be a slow and deliberate process. It often feels tempting to speed things up, but early hires shape the culture for years to come. Skills on paper are easy to check, but the real fit shows in how a person approaches problems, collaborates under pressure, and communicates with the team. Conversations with candidates take time, and references sometimes add clarity that resumes do not. In an early stage company, each person joining is not just filling a role but building a foundation. Misalignment at this stage can cost far more than delayed progress.

The office itself helps in this effort because face-to-face interactions make cultural fit visible faster. A person’s working style, their response to ambiguity, and how they handle feedback become clearer when observed over shared workdays. For Edzy, this is crucial because the problems we are solving do not have ready-made solutions. Everyone needs to be comfortable with uncertainty while still keeping execution steady. The office is where ideas get tested in real time, and where the team learns to handle both successes and setbacks. It is the testing ground for resilience and patience.

Building a team in Gurgaon also connects us with a wider talent pool. The city offers a mix of young professionals and experienced people who have worked in larger organizations. For a startup, striking the right balance between fresh energy and seasoned judgment matters. Some roles demand quick learning and adaptability, while others benefit from prior exposure to scale and structure. The hiring decisions need to reflect this mix without tilting too far in either direction. The goal is to find people who understand that they are not just employees but partners in creating something new.

As the office takes shape and the team slowly builds, the reality of early stage growth becomes more visible. Progress feels uneven, with stretches of waiting followed by sudden leaps. Setting up a workplace is simple compared to setting up the right team. Tools, furniture, and internet connections can be arranged in days, but trust and culture take months to establish. The process demands patience, careful judgment, and the willingness to accept that not every decision will be perfect. Yet, it is in these choices that the long-term direction of Edzy is being set, one hire and one conversation at a time.

Conducting interviews for the Gurgaon office has become an exercise in managing expectations against a predictable pattern of attrition throughout the hiring process. A significant portion of this attrition manifests as candidate ghosting, a phenomenon where individuals cease all communication after initially expressing strong interest. This disappearance occurs at various stages: after the application is acknowledged, following the scheduling of a video interview, or, most frustratingly, after a verbal offer is extended. This behavior has become an accepted, albeit inefficient, part of the recruitment landscape. The process demands a substantial investment of time and resources from the organization, from screening resumes and coordinating calendars to conducting multiple rounds of discussion, and its abrupt termination by the candidate without notice renders that investment void.

A particular nuance of Gurgaon exacerbates this issue, namely the geographical expectations of candidates residing in Delhi and Noida. Many applicants confidently assert their willingness and ability to commute, viewing the distance as a negligible factor during the initial stages of discussion. However, as the prospect transitions from abstract possibility to concrete reality, the practical implications of a daily inter-city commute appear to settle in. The significant time commitment, the cost of travel, and the unreliability of traffic often lead to a reassessment. This realization frequently does not result in a formal withdrawal but in silent disengagement. The candidate simply stops responding, perhaps finding it easier to avoid the discomfort of declining than to confront it directly, leaving the hiring team in a state of unresolved suspension.

This pattern highlights a broader space for improvement in professional courtesy among a segment of the candidate pool. The process of applying, filling out detailed forms, and booking video meetings represents a mutual investment of time. A candidate's participation signals a serious intent, and their subsequent unexplained absence represents a breakdown of that professional contract. While individuals are undoubtedly free to pursue or decline opportunities, the method of withdrawal is telling. Ghosting reflects a avoidance of difficult communication rather than a conscious decision to prioritize one’s own needs. It indicates a development area in professional communication skills, where providing a simple, timely notice of withdrawal is a basic expectation that is often unmet.

From an operational standpoint, this behavior necessitates building buffers and contingencies into the hiring workflow. It is imprudent to consider any role filled until the candidate has physically joined and completed initial onboarding. This means maintaining a pipeline of active candidates for longer and managing internal expectations about time-to-fill metrics. The emotional investment in any single candidate must be tempered, as the likelihood of last-minute disappearance is a real variable in the equation. This is not a reflection of cynicism but a practical adaptation to a consistent market behavior. The process becomes less about finding the perfect candidate on the first try and more about systematically navigating through attrition until a reliable match is secured.

Ultimately, this recurring experience serves as a reminder of the inherent uncertainties in building a team. While ghosting is an operational inefficiency and a minor professional frustration, it is also a filter. A candidate who lacks the professionalism to communicate their decision, regardless of what it is, is likely not a suitable cultural fit for an organization that values accountability and clear communication. Their disappearance, while momentarily disruptive, is a form of self-selection that prevents a potentially more costly mis-hire later. The process continues, therefore, with an understanding that a certain volume of interaction will be lost, but that the successful outcome is ultimately determined by finding the individual for whom the opportunity is the right fit, geographically and professionally.

Purchase decisions accelerate dramatically when buyers have clearly defined parameters and sufficient understanding of available options in the marketplace. This phenomenon occurs across various categories from consumer goods to enterprise software, where the traditional lengthy deliberation process compresses into rapid decision-making once specific conditions are met. The speed of these transactions often surprises sellers who expect extended evaluation periods, negotiation phases, and multiple stakeholder consultations that characterize most sales cycles. Understanding when and why buyers shift into accelerated purchase mode reveals important insights about decision psychology and market dynamics. The convergence of clear requirements and comprehensive option awareness creates a decision environment where buyers can move from consideration to commitment with remarkable efficiency.

The foundation for rapid purchase decisions lies in the buyer's internal preparation work that occurs before active engagement with sellers begins. This preliminary phase involves extensive research, requirement definition, budget allocation, and stakeholder alignment that establishes the framework for subsequent decision-making. Buyers invest significant time understanding their own needs, constraints, and success criteria before entering the market, creating detailed specifications that serve as evaluation filters during the selection process. They develop decision matrices that weight various factors according to organizational priorities, timeline pressures, and risk tolerance levels, essentially pre-processing much of the analysis that typically occurs during formal vendor evaluations. When this groundwork is thorough, buyers enter sales conversations already knowing what constitutes an acceptable solution rather than discovering their requirements through vendor presentations and proposals.

Market transparency and information accessibility have fundamentally changed how buyers approach major purchase decisions across both consumer and business contexts. Online reviews, comparison websites, industry reports, and peer networks provide unprecedented access to detailed product information, pricing data, and user experiences that previously required direct vendor contact to obtain. Buyers can independently research technical specifications, implementation requirements, total cost models, and performance benchmarks before engaging with sales teams, arriving at conversations with sophisticated understanding of available options and their relative merits. This information gathering extends beyond basic product features to include vendor stability, support quality, upgrade paths, and integration capabilities that influence long-term satisfaction and success. The availability of comprehensive third-party analysis and user-generated content allows buyers to develop informed opinions about solutions without relying exclusively on vendor-provided materials.

The psychological shift that enables rapid decision-making occurs when buyers achieve confidence in both their requirements and their understanding of how available options map to those requirements. This confidence threshold varies among individuals and organizations but generally requires validation that key criteria are well-defined, available solutions adequately address primary needs, and the decision process includes appropriate risk mitigation measures. Buyers must also feel comfortable with their ability to evaluate vendor claims, assess implementation complexity, and predict post-purchase satisfaction based on available information and past experience with similar decisions. Time pressure often acts as a catalyst that forces buyers to declare when they have sufficient information to proceed, particularly when delay costs exceed the potential benefits of additional research or negotiation.

The convergence of clear parameters and comprehensive option understanding creates decision momentum that sellers can recognize and leverage through appropriate response strategies. Buyers exhibiting rapid decision behavior typically demonstrate specific characteristics including detailed questions about implementation and support rather than basic product functionality, requests for references or case studies that match their specific use case, and discussion of internal approval processes and timing constraints rather than budget availability or solution requirements. These buyers benefit from streamlined sales processes that focus on validation and reassurance rather than education and persuasion, requiring sellers to adapt their approach from information provision to decision facilitation. The most effective response involves confirming requirement alignment, addressing specific concerns or risks, and providing clear next steps that match the buyer's accelerated timeline while ensuring all necessary due diligence occurs within the compressed decision window.

Experienced sales professionals who have spent decades in the field sometimes develop counterproductive habits that stem from taking customer interactions too personally. This tendency becomes more pronounced with age as salespeople accumulate years of rejections, difficult negotiations, and changing market dynamics that challenge their established methods. The emotional weight of repeated setbacks can shift their focus away from understanding genuine customer needs toward protecting their own financial interests and time investment. What begins as natural human psychology gradually transforms into a barrier that prevents effective customer relationship building and ultimately reduces sales performance. The irony is that seasoned professionals, who should theoretically possess the most refined sales skills, often become their own worst enemies by allowing personal emotions to override customer-centric thinking.

The psychological mechanisms behind this shift involve multiple factors that compound over time in the sales profession. Older salespeople have typically invested significant emotional energy in building relationships and developing expertise, making rejection feel like a personal attack on their competence rather than a simple business decision. Their accumulated experience can become a double-edged sword where past successes create expectations that current market conditions may not support, leading to frustration when familiar approaches fail to produce expected results. Years of quota pressure, commission-based compensation, and performance reviews create an internal scorecard that measures personal worth through sales metrics, making each lost deal feel like a reflection of their value as a person. This psychological framework gradually transforms customer interactions from collaborative problem-solving sessions into win-lose scenarios where the salesperson's ego becomes invested in the outcome regardless of whether the solution truly serves the customer's best interests.

The financial pressures that accumulate throughout a sales career often intensify this personal approach to customer relationships. Older salespeople frequently carry higher fixed costs including mortgages, family expenses, retirement savings goals, and healthcare considerations that create urgency around every potential deal. This financial reality makes it increasingly difficult to maintain objectivity when customers express hesitation, raise objections, or decide to work with competitors, as each setback directly impacts their personal financial security. The time investment factor becomes particularly acute for experienced professionals who recognize that they have fewer working years remaining to recover from lost opportunities or market downturns. Consequently, they may rush customers through decision processes, apply excessive pressure, or become defensive when prospects request additional time or information, all of which undermines the trust-building that effective sales relationships require.

Customer needs assessment suffers when salespeople become overly focused on their personal profit and loss statements rather than maintaining genuine curiosity about client challenges and objectives. This inward focus manifests in several observable behaviors including shortened discovery phases where salespeople jump too quickly to presenting solutions, selective listening that filters customer feedback through the lens of deal closure probability, and resistance to exploring alternatives that might better serve the customer but offer lower commissions or longer sales cycles. The experienced salesperson's knowledge base, while valuable, can become a limitation when they assume they understand customer needs based on pattern recognition rather than conducting thorough current-state analysis. Their efficiency in identifying common problems and matching them to existing solutions can prevent them from uncovering unique requirements or emerging challenges that might require different approaches, ultimately leading to misaligned proposals that customers reject not because of price or timing but because of poor fit.

The path forward for addressing these tendencies requires conscious effort to separate personal validation from professional outcomes while rebuilding customer-centric thinking processes. Experienced salespeople must actively work to reframe rejection as information rather than judgment, viewing lost deals as learning opportunities that provide insights about market conditions, competitive positioning, or solution gaps rather than personal failures. Regular self-reflection about motivation during customer interactions can help identify when personal financial pressures or ego protection are influencing behavior, allowing for course correction before relationships suffer. Developing structured discovery methodologies that force comprehensive needs assessment regardless of apparent familiarity with customer situations can help combat the tendency to make assumptions based on past experience. Most importantly, successful veteran salespeople learn to view their role as consultative partners whose success derives from customer success rather than transaction completion, realigning their personal interests with long-term relationship value rather than short-term commission optimization.

It is strange how in a time when AI can write reports, summarize meetings, and predict trends, simple human coordination still slips. Tonight at 11 pm, while reviewing the week’s tasks, I realized the TDS filing had not been done. It was not a complex calculation or a matter of missing data. The responsibility was assigned, the process was known, and the deadline was fixed. Yet it sat untouched. In the back of my mind, I had assumed it was taken care of, partly because I have trained myself to believe that reminders, alerts, and automated systems would catch such things before I needed to. But the reminder never came, and the task stayed dormant until I happened to notice it by chance.

I reached out to my CA’s team immediately, knowing it was late but hoping someone would be available. To their credit, they responded quickly, acknowledged the oversight, and acted promptly to complete the filing. There was relief in knowing the penalty could be avoided, but it left me unsettled. This was not a case of ignorance or incompetence. It was the same problem I have seen across teams and industries: when people are on leave or focused on other work, deadlines can vanish from collective attention, even when technology exists to track them. AI tools do not replace the need for someone to actively own a task, and if that ownership is diffused, the system becomes fragile.

The irony is that AI excels at the kind of pattern recognition that could prevent this. A well-integrated workflow could flag the absence of activity before a deadline, send escalating alerts, and even prompt alternative assignees if the primary person is unavailable. But such systems require setup, maintenance, and a culture that treats them as more than optional tools. In reality, many professional relationships still depend on a chain of human follow-ups, verbal nudges, and unspoken assumptions. When a link breaks, the whole chain fails. And no AI, however advanced, can automatically rebuild the chain unless it has been given that authority in advance.

The other challenge is timing. People still think in terms of work hours, even in roles that could, in theory, operate asynchronously. At 11 pm, I did not know if anyone from the CA’s office would be reachable. In the past, missing the window would simply mean waiting until morning. Now, the expectation is that someone should be reachable because digital tools make it possible. This expectation works both ways. I could reach them, but it also meant they had to react immediately, regardless of their own time zones or personal schedules. This is where technology can create subtle tension—it removes technical barriers but increases social and psychological pressure to always be on call.

As the filing was completed and I closed my laptop, I found myself thinking less about the task itself and more about the process. The tools are available. The capability exists. The problem is alignment—getting people, processes, and technology to work in sync, without depending on chance observations or last-minute interventions. It is easy to talk about automation, AI integration, and predictive systems, but unless they are embedded deeply into the daily operational culture, the reality is that we will keep catching these things at 11 pm, hoping there is still someone awake on the other end.

Expectations with salaries hardly ever deal with figures only. It's an amalgam of financial requirements, personal benchmarks, market conditions, and value within the company. For instance, employees tend to develop views based on the combination of historical salary increments, inflation, and industry averages. Previously, most of these inputs were gathered from classmates, from professional recruiters, or an organized professional circle. This has changed with the new boom of LLMs (large language models) which allows for an easy generation of salary expectations based on massive datasets, fetched texts, and even estimates. This has the advantage that more people using AI to corroborate their salary expectations. However, the quality control for these estimates is very low or untested. While LLMs shine at giving well-structured and confident outputs, that is very very far from the reality of most company budgets, internal organization, or corporate compensation culture.

The biggest problem stems from the way people understand salary figures AI provides. LLMs have the capability of generating figures that may sound reasonable but are the result of averaging across locations, roles, levels of seniority, fields, and more, resulting in either optimistic or pessimistic figures. Since these models do not work with verified salary databases and instead with patterns in text, they are at the mercy of biased, outdated, or unreliable texts. LLM outputs are not grounded in reality and can include outdated, biased, or simply inaccurate information. One party may think the figure given is authoritative, while the other party is aware that the number does not apply to that role. This discrepancy can take what ought to be a simple negotiation and make it a difficult conversation because both sides are starting from completely different starting points. The lack clarity stems from a lack of how the information was gathered, not bad intentions.

Managing raises expectations rooted in AI technology becomes a burdensome responsibility for managers. Trust can be harmed as conversations are avoided or data is dismissed. Walk away from the conversation and trust is lost. Give too much information on the internal processes and trust is lost too. Trust can be built or eroded with salary decisions. AI tools are increasingly common but acknowledgement of their generalizations helps. AI errors can be generalizations; admitting to inaccuracies helps employees feel heard. Number validation is not the goal. Dialogue fueled by clarity is better when free of defensiveness. AI determinism is not the goal. Trust can be built with the right tone.

From an employee’s perspective, treating information generated by LLMs as a starting point instead of a conclusion holds merit. While AI tools can showcase emerging trends and highlight midpoints, they disregard the specifics of a person's role, contribution, and the overall company context. AI can offer some insight, but it should be augmented with recruiter, industry, and HR conversations for a fuller picture. The problem is putting too much weight on a single figure, particularly one generated by an algorithm with no transparent methodology. During salary negotiations, focusing on the company’s point of view usually results in better long-term value than fixating on an externally determined number.

As of now, both employees and employers are trying to make sense out of the overlap created by AI suggestions and salary expectations. LLMs are great for collecting information, but they do not specialize in producing truths related to a specific company. There will continue to be gaps in understanding until both parties make an effort to provide the necessary context and discuss the right framework before numbers are laid on the table. Transparency as an AI concept revolves not just on numbers, but reasoning and decision making processes which led to them. The more this becomes a culture in the workplace, the more unlikely tensions caused by AI-informed salary expectations will arise.