Man gets 27.5% pay cut in job offer, shares 5 reasons how company justified it

A jobseeker has sparked a debate about hiring practices after revealing how a company used five points to justify offering him a 27.5 per cent pay cut for a senior management role, despite his decade of experience and a salary expectation he says was disclosed from the very first interview call.

The candidate shared his experience in a Reddit post on r/IndianWorkplace titled, "Got offered a 27.5% pay cut for a senior role. Here's how the company justified it."

According to the post, the candidate, who has 10 years of experience in digital marketing, recently went through the hiring process for a Digital Marketing Manager position at a company with an annual marketing budget of 8 crore.

While he expected negotiations, he said he was surprised by the reasoning used to determine his compensation.

The first sticking point, he claimed, was his freelancing experience. The candidate said he had spent time working remotely for international clients, but the company refused to recognise that period as legitimate employment, instead treating it as a gap in his career.

According to the post, that decision then created a second problem. Since the company viewed the freelancing period as an employment gap, it allegedly declined to consider his freelance earnings as a salary benchmark.

At the same time, he also refused to use his previous salary as a reference point, leaving him, in his words, with "no salary reference point" at all.

The candidate further explained that he had spent eight years working in Bengaluru before relocating to Kolkata in 2024. He claimed his previous remote role already came with a 50 per cent reduction in pay compared to his Bengaluru compensation, yet the new offer was another 27.5 per cent lower than even that reduced figure.

He also said the company pushed back against his salary expectations, despite the fact that he was only seeking a package roughly 8.7 per cent higher than his last drawn salary, along with a performance review clause after six months. According to him, recruiters told him that his profile simply was not worth the amount he was asking for.

Perhaps most frustrating, he wrote, was being told that he was asking for "Bangalore money in Kolkata." The candidate argued that he had quoted what he believed to be the local industry standard and had communicated his salary expectations before every stage of the interview process.

"The part that stings the most isn't the money," he wrote. "It's that every policy they used was designed to find a reason to pay less, not to fairly evaluate someone's contribution."

In an update to the post, the candidate claimed the company's HR head later reached out with a revised offer and attempted to persuade him to accept a package that was still 5,000 lower than his previous salary.

He also wrote that the role was offered on a retainer basis and that the discussion reinforced his belief that many salary structures in the city favour employers rather than candidates.

Take a look at the post here:

The post attracted considerable discussion from professionals who shared their own views on salary negotiations and hiring practices.

Rather than focusing solely on the pay cut, many commenters took issue with the company's reasoning, arguing that telling a candidate their profile is not worth a certain salary is an unprofessional way to conduct negotiations.

Others suggested that candidates should focus discussions on the value of their skills, experience and current market demand rather than relying on past salaries as benchmarks.

Some users also advised the Redditor to simply walk away from the offer if the company appeared unwilling to recognise his experience, saying a difficult negotiation process can sometimes reveal deeper cultural issues within an organisation.