[bobcostas55]

Without a second offer in hand, you're always going to be in a very bad negotiating position when it comes to salary. Avoiding the stress of multiple interviews is almost certainly costing you tens of thousands per year. Over your entire career we're talking about millions of euros.

[rglullis]

By that logic, we should always be looking for another job, even when already working. It stops being a game of "having a second offer" and it becomes a "look for who wants to pay me more than what I am making at the moment".

[high_priest]

Yes, you always should be available for work outside your current company. Staying in one bubble for long periods of time leads to brainwashing.

[ghaff]

Which probably describes how a lot of the people who hop from job to job every couple of years operate. That's never been me admittedly. And basically every job I've had since grad school has involved contacting someone I knew and ending up with an offer. I've done fine but arguably haven't maximized compensation though that really hasn't been my goal.

Obviously I'm not the target for something like this given that I've applied to three jobs in the past 25 years and none of those were through a regular application system.

[danwee]

I don't think this logic is solid.

> Avoiding the stress of multiple interviews is almost certainly costing you tens of thousands per year

If we are still talking about Western Europe, where almost no one reaches the 100K eur/year salary, saying tens of thousands per year (e.g., 20K? 30K?) implies a power of negotiation of 20%-30% (or even more if we are talking about base salaries of < 100K/year which are the most common ones) when negotiating a salary. Maybe in the US you can negotiate that when applying for a job, but around here I think asking for more than 10%-15% already is basically forcing your employer to pass on you (unless you are the Michael Jordan of software engineers).