"Don't say a number first" is a popular belief, but is probably wrong in general, and irrelevant in some situations.
There's research that shows that in certain situations, the first mentioned number acts as a strong anchor. So you might want to be the first.
But then, you're not really following your own advice when you mention your approximate current salary. That is mentioning a number first. But you're helping the other side by setting a low anchor. After you've said "90s", you're bound to get an offer in the 90s.
In any case, having a "BATNA", best alternative to negotiated agreement, is often way more important than the first number. If you have a job with salary s and you're otherwise happy with it, you can always refuse offers below (say) 1.10s. And if the company has another candidate who asks less than s, it doesn't matter how well you negotiate.
I've seen that, but that hypothetical game isn't even close to a good model for the typical real life negotiation. Basically, it models a negotiation that stops at the first disagreement!
The argument also implicitly depends on several dubious assumptions:
-- that the odds of the company choosing L is only 50% when going first;
-- that I will accept an L offer (not the case if I'm currently employed, then I just want to go for H or bust);
-- or that I value H significantly more than L (not the case when I'm unemployed, then I just want to increase the chance of getting the job), etc.
> There's research that shows that in certain situations, the first mentioned number acts as a strong anchor. So you might want to be the first.
I believe I read the same research (Robert Cialdini? though he might have been citing other people's work).
The effect is certainly real, but the keyword here is "certain situations", I don't quite recall this research to include salary negotiations among these certain situations.
Though I'd love to be proven wrong, do you have a citation?
But let's say it works (I could easily be wrong on the above), this number anchoring effect also works when the number mentioned is not strictly related to the quantity you're trying to make higher (or lower) in the response. So you could passingly mention an hourly rate (or yearly income) of an unrelated profession, or even something like "activity/service X costs 90k yearly". In this case you can also safely name a much higher number than you're aiming for (as long as it's on the same order of magnitude, I suppose), which was shown to strengthen the anchoring effect. That way, you're still framing the "bigness" but without mentioning a possible salary first. So you get to have your cake and eat it too.
There's research that shows that in certain situations, the first mentioned number acts as a strong anchor. So you might want to be the first.
But then, you're not really following your own advice when you mention your approximate current salary. That is mentioning a number first. But you're helping the other side by setting a low anchor. After you've said "90s", you're bound to get an offer in the 90s.
In any case, having a "BATNA", best alternative to negotiated agreement, is often way more important than the first number. If you have a job with salary s and you're otherwise happy with it, you can always refuse offers below (say) 1.10s. And if the company has another candidate who asks less than s, it doesn't matter how well you negotiate.