Hey everyone, I had a salary discussion with HR at EY for a Senior Consultant role in Bangalore. While I expected 23 LPA fixed, she offered only 18 LPA fixed, stating that Java is not a niche skill. My Background: • Experience: 5 years (Banking domain and Payments) • Current CTC: 15.5 LPA (15 fixed + 50K variable) •Tech Stack: Java 8, Spring Boot, Microservices, Kafka, REST API, PostgreSQL •Certifications: Oracle Certified Java 8 (Associate & Professional) Negotiation Points: •Found 23 LPA as the average salary for this role on Glassdoor & AmbitionBox •Highlighted banking domain experience & certifications •HR argued that the 23 LPA average includes Cloud, DevOps, Hadoop roles, which are more niche Final Offer: ✅ 20 LPA fixed(she told she will try for it) ✅ 4 LPA variable ✅ Joining bonus (not confirmed yet) ➡ Total CTC: 24 LPA + bonus Question to the Community: 1️⃣ Was 23 LPA fixed a reasonable ask? What’s the ideal package for my profile? 2️⃣ Could I have negotiated better?