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Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
1010 points by Carrok on July 21, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 523 comments
At the start of this year, Colorado has changed to require every job posted to list a salary range. Other states are also beginning to follow suit.

I am currently job hunting. I started looking locally, everything lists salary ranges, perfect. I can know which positions to skip and which ones might be a good match right away. No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.

Now I've begun widening my search to remote work, as the idea of commuting to an office in 2022 is completely insane to me.

Most jobs on nation-wide job boards do not post a salary range. I will not even click on those job postings. It's simply not worth it.

Further, after seeing so many positions listed _with_ salary ranges, when I see one without a salary range it makes me feel like you have something to hide and are trying to trick me.

So the next time your team starts discussing why you can't seem to hire, maybe ask if you are publicly posting salary ranges on these positions?




More anecdotal evidence: a few years back I wanted to get out of the work situation I was in. I looked around, had some interviews, had some offers. None of the postings had salary ranges, as is common where I live.

My eyes, however, were set on a specific small company because I liked their product. The process was long and involved multiple meetings, a take-home problem, and stretched over 2 or so months. I was upfront about what my salary expectations were (wasn't looking for a raise, just a lateral move). They said we discuss salary when you meet the founders, i.e. the last step before getting hired, but they also didn't tell me that my range was way off.

Turns out I had played this 9 week game and turned down other offers just to be severely low-balled by them. Maybe they saw that I really wanted the position and thought they could get away with a low offer.

Obviously, I rejected their offer on the spot. I also promised myself to never, _ever_, be fooled like that again. We talk money before I invest any significant amount of time or I walk.


I seriously don't get how slow firms hire anyone. Surely the people you want will vanish quickly?

I recently found a new job, had a backup offer after a week, and the job I actually wanted 4 weeks later, after about 7 working days post contact.

After I signed, several of the firms I'd interviewed with got back to me with interest. This is weeks after initial contact, and weeks after the last interview, so if course I thought they weren't interested.

I'm happy with with long thread time, but not long wall time. I don't mind people bringing me into 6 or 7 hours of interviews over a day or two, what I mind is doing those calls over the course of several weeks. It really bothers me to do an interview every week with a firm for a month.

For people who go for firms that are known for long processes, how do you do this? Just hang in there with your old job? What if something better turns up faster?


It depends entirely on priorities and circumstance. Some folks are willing and able to wait to work somewhere they feel is a perfect fit for them, or special in some other way; others may be interested in transitioning to new work ASAP (or need to, for financial reasons).

When I left my last job, I quit without having anything lined up, and was fortunate enough to have a bit of buffer to take some time off to recuperate and search for new work. I got some promising interviews, but none were like my interviews with the company I work for now. I rejected a number of offers while still in the process with my current company (with the full understanding that there was no guarantee of anything waiting for me). My priority at the time was finding somewhere where I knew I would love to work, and not getting back to work as soon as I could. For me, it paid off to wait.

Our interview process is pretty involved, and not for nothing — we get a lot of applicants, screen heavily, and put in a lot of time and effort into each individual candidate at every stage. We don't have dedicated recruiters, and besides our ops team, we've got individual developers, designers, product managers, support folks, etc. involved in hiring for their respective domains. Our interviews are humane, first and foremost, and a good number of candidates I've gotten to speak to have described the process as refreshing (well, relative to the general hell that is interviewing). The general process is: written questionnaire, two interviews (one technical/skill-focused, one non-technical), and a chat with execs.

It's completely understandable if this process doesn't work for all candidates; we've made great progress tightening up the process, shortening it without compromising on quality, and have invested a lot of time in tooling to help us out to speed things up. But it also works exceptionally well for us and the folks we're lucky to work with (~0.1–1% hire rate depending on position) — since I started a few years ago, the company has more than doubled in size (from a small to a medium company), and in that time, we've had a total of 2 individuals decide it wasn't a good fit for them. The company culture is like nothing else, and it's an amazing place to work.


0.1-1% hire rate based on applicants, or based on candidates interviewed? 0.1% hire rate of candidates interviewed doesn't seem compatible with your described growth rate, even if you very conservatively assumes you spend 1 hour interviewing each candidate, thats 25 weeks of straight interviewing per candidate hired. And thats 1 hour of time across the whole company, if you have 2 interviewers spend an hour each, thats now 50 employee-weeks, or an entire year. To double the company size in 5 years, you would have needed to spend 1/5th of your entire tenure interviewing. If you go up to 10 total hours spent per candidate (including all interviewers, recruiters, and time spend in discussion and negotiation) it becomes straight up impossible.


Surely it's not based on interviews. You'll lose the will to live if one in a thousand interviewees gets the job.

Based on applicants it's ok, went all seen how any job ad attracts piles and piles of spam applications.


Oh, for sure, that would be nuts. 0.1–1% of applicants.


So to be clear for a given position you get 100 to 1000 resumes, then interview how many of those before deciding on 1 person? I am curious what the funnel looks like.


It depends entirely on the size and quality of the candidate pool, but I'd say very roughly:

* Initial candidate screening reduces the pool by 85–95% (leaving 5–15% of the initial pool) * Interview #1 reduces the pool further by 50–66% (leaving ~3–4% of the initial pool) * Interview #2 reduces the pool further by another 66–75% (leaving ~1–2% of the initial pool) * Final chat usually doesn't reduce the pool, but it's one last pass for additional signal * We choose a single candidate of whoever remains

For a position with 400 applicants, it could look like

* Initial screening leaves 40 candidates for interview #1 * Interview #1 leaves 15 candidates for interview #2 * Interview #2 leaves 4 candidates for final chat * We pick from those final 4


I'd like to know what company this is. There's an email in profile if you like.


small anecdote but the small startup i work for has been having a really hard time with candidates accepting other offers part way through our hiring process. We took some steps to make our entire hiring loop 2-3 days total and it has had a great improvement.


Thinking motivated by self-preservation, plus overweighting the “we want people who WANT to work here.”

When the quality of a hire isn’t easy to determine, this enables nearly every company (especially those where people are collegial) to think their people are the best.


Depends on the company. I took three months with current company which took a month for a background check. I gave notice before getting this position as I was done and wanted time off.


This is exactly why.

Interviewing can easily eat up 2-3 days of your life.

You only get 15-30 days of vacation per year.

Theoretically, you are working to have free time.

This is maybe 1/5th of your free time per year. You can't waste this on unknowns.

Give me the salary up front or p#$$ off.


> You only get 15-30 days of vacation per year.

This is why I'm glad to have "unlimited" PTO (subject to manager approval + must be requested at least the duration in advance, e.g. 2 weeks notice for 2 weeks off), along with a few annual company-wide breaks and an earned month-long break every 3 years.


I am opposite, I like limited PTO, because in my state your employer has to pay you for the unused time when you leave..


Unlimited PTO is often abused as way to prevent workers from feeling like they have the ability to take vacations when they need them.


Other benefits for the company (not the worker):

- don't have to pay out employees who didn't take their vacation - nobody taking vacation to use expiring vacation days - employees take less vacation in general


So really your PTO is subject to the discretion of your manager. Unlimited sounds good, but in practice, I think it is better to have ownership of your time off. I remember like 20 years ago having unlimited sick time, which in reality just meant your manager was rated on how much sick time their team burned through.


I'm a manager at a place that has "unlimited PTO"- and I've never rejected anyone's request for time off, and the only reason I do keep track of it is to encourage people to take time off. I need my developers to be at the top of their game, and that requires them to take a mental break so they don't get burned out.

That said, I need to take more PTO so I don't burn out...


If that's the way a company wants to have unlimitedly PTO, then they should be clear that there is a minimum amount of time that everyone must take off each year


That’s refreshing to hear. Good on you!


If you're taking time off for interviews, you're doing it wrong. Everyone I know either 1) calls out sick, or 2) if remote, just does it during their work day.


>Give me the salary up front or p#$$ off.

Good to see someone do this. I do this.


My "never again" story was around a decade ago. Thoughtworks had me interview with roughly a dozen people over half a dozen or more interviews, lasting ~20 hours (if you include the proctored Wunderlic test they administered to me on premises). At the end of that lengthy process, they said they would have loved to bring me on but "didn't have any open positions that fit my set of skills". You know, that set of skills I listed next to my work experience on my 2-page resume.

I no longer submit applications to any job until I've spoken to someone who works there to ask hard questions of them before I interview. I also no longer consider any job that lacks clear articulation of the platonic ideal of a candidate.


I hadn't heard of the Wonderlic test before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_test

Interesting and a bit creepy.

I think here in California for nerds who have been around for a while, companies have at least some concept of what competitive rates are, so I hadn't worried about posted salary ranges. If they waste your time leading up to a lowball offer, they at least have wasted their own time as well, so they have an incentive to not do that. That of course assumes you didn't do a take home assignment ;).


Pretty sure I got made to do this one when I got my first job in the UK (at a sports betting company, that turned out to be a pretty terrible job overall - I misinterpreted "gaming company" to mean video games...)

One of their investors came in to run the test, it was his thing, apparently. Weird industry full of weird and corrupt people.


It’s famously administered to all nfl quarterbacks. Tom Brady got a 33.


All NFL players, not just quarterbacks, right?


Yes, all positions, there's a little more info about it in the linked Wikipedia article.

Apparently Frank Gore had one of the all time lowest scores with a 6. He is a borderline Hall of Fame caliber running back.


Thoughtworks also screwed me like that. They gave me a take-home assignment which took few hours. At the end, their feedback was - my code is not cloud scalable and their were some values that I used directly and not from a configuration :-).

How can those people claim to be interviewers?


My (albeit limited) experience with companies like this is that their interview process is far more hurtful than helpful. The processes are so long and so narrow that I can't see how it wouldn't be more effective to just say "come work on this thing for a day with me" and we'll see how it goes?

They must be leaking so many great makers arbitrarily. I assume that this helps the kind of work they do in some mysterious way?


My team has thoughtwork contractors in it and I'm not surprised by your comments. Their actual ability to get things done is pretty bad


By mistake - I used the wrong 'their'. Apologies


I passed a Nearform interview years back when they didn't have employees, just contractors.

They said "Good, you passed the assignment, we'll call you when we have clients for your range". I kept my old job and I'm still waiting for a client from them.


It's foolish for the founders' part as well. They were wasting their programmers' time and effort as well. When I'm interviewing candidates, it's time that I'm losing. Why waste it on candidates who won't work for the salary?


Based on my experience, I'd say what happened here wasn't a deliberate decision on the part of the founders but rather a product of disorganization / disfunction in the company - probably recruiting has no incentive to avoid this type of thing, the engineers actually doing the interviewing don't have clear authority, and the higher ups don't want to take ownership.


If they don't respect candidates, maybe they don't respect their employees either.


Sometimes I wonder if the long interview process isn't a psychological game. Maybe they think they can leverage sunk cost fallacy against you just so they can low-ball you. Yeah, the pay might not be great, but if you walk away now, you'll have wasted 9 weeks of effort! You can't give up now. You're invested. ;-)


I had similar experience, which ended up working well for me. I interviewed for a job that I wanted and after they liked me they offered me something that wasn't up to my expectation. I rejected the offer and kept my current job. Two months later they reached out to me again, saying they have another exciting project for me and whether I would like to be interviewed. I was like, I don't even want to talk to you if we aren't talking salary first, it will just waste your time and my time. So we agreed on the salary first and then I had couple of interviews before they hired me.


Any company with a competitive salary is willing to talk money anyway. If they don't, they don't have the budget


As a manager, I have the salary conversation in the first call. Not specifics, but make sure we're in the same range. The last thing I want is to burn hours of my team's time evaluating someone only to find out a candidate we're all sold on wants 50% more than I can offer. I'm always confused by these stories - the hours and hours of wasted company time can add up to tens of thousands of dollars of effort, opportunity cost, etc. Figure it out ASAP so you're only spending time on people you can actually hire.


This is also why you should not agree to do coding interviews.


I feel like in the last years the level of arrogance of developers has reached a peak - somehow the market being full of opportunities, people seem to forget that there are others out there getting paid way less, doing critical things for society and going through way more stressful situations than the pain of not knowing what new shiny language to chose for your next microservice.

As having a developer background that switched more towards management now, how do you expect companies to hire? From what I see take at home tasks are not ok, making everyone loose their minds, technical interviews are also not ok, then what? The attitude of developers now is: 30 minute interview in which the company needs to offer 100% salary increase compared to previous job, pay the developer a full day as he took 30 minutes for you and then just hire him based on his CV in which he lists all possible technologies in the world that he read about once in an article or wrote a to-do app 3 years ago.


I don't have a general solution, but one thing this industry may consider is licensing. If we are going to be job hopping every couple years due to the way raises are done now, we should at least make it more efficient.

> how do you expect companies to hire?

At least in my case, if I have 25+ years of employment history on my resume doing the same thing that I'm interviewing for (and this can be verified), the interview process should be a lot simpler.


Does this work at any of the big companies? I'm coming up on something like 15 years of experience. I have a leetcode account and I've dabbled, but to be honest I'm just not that interested in playing that game, even for difference in comp it would likely bring.

That said, I am not all that averse to a respectful-of-my-time take home or having a discussion about a particular piece of code with a bit of prep, etc.

I've seen programmers far better than me get chewed up and spit out by the FAANG interview process because they hadn't prepped their leetcode skills enough. Anyway, I'm sure we could debate the interview process to death, but my original question stands: Can you just straight up say no to a coding interview at any FAANG or FAANG-like companies and actually get to an offer without having massive online reputation points?


Only if you know a VP or above. This isn’t a hurdle that can easily be overcome.


> Does this work at any of the big companies?

I've had coding interviews at big companies but always on their premises, with the interviewer there talking to me while I code. So I'm ok with that. They've never asked me to do a take home. I did a few of those for smaller companies before realizing that it's better to refuse.


Or, you simply ensure you get salary bands relayed up front before continuing.


Personally, I refuse to work for companies that don't explicitly evaluate programming ability when interviewing engineers.

I want to know that the people I'll be working with are at least baseline competent in that regard.


coding interviews do not test what matters.


That’s OK if you’re a junior engineer with less than ten years experience but I would feel insulted if you question my credibility.


I’ve interviewed more than a few 10+ years of claimed experience engineers who couldn’t write a function to sum a list/array of integers.

There are incompetent charlatans that you’re competing against and if you’re not willing to engage to demonstrate that you’re not, some will (not entirely unreasonably) assume that you might be one.


This 100%. Some years back I joined a company with a significant amount of low-quality engineers. In hindsight, the interview process was a breeze.

That's when I realized what should have been obvious: the less rigorous the interview, the less effective it is at keeping out unqualified folks.


I've found there's zero correlation between interview difficulty and compensation.


that is because most positions in our industry underpay anyways


Respect. Any time burned is more valuable than anything, and that's what they deliberately tried to do.


I had a similiar experience. After what felt like a long journey, and then receiving an offer that was less than my then base pay, I refuse to talk to companies that won't give me a pay range.


We just went through a large hiring cycle. We posted two versions for every job posting- one with salary ranges and one without.

The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

And... before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't. Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit. In my opinion, salary is a sign of respect from you employer.

If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work. I promise. Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list. [0] It is important, it makes it possible to pay bills, but it isn't what makes people happy.

Meaning, if you are looking for a place you will enjoy working, do not start with salary.

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/12/15/the-top-...


>Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.

You're conflating multiple things here. People aren't focusing on money because it's the most important part. They focus on money because it's one of the few things that's relatively easy to make tangible ahead of time. Similar goes for things like remote/hybrid, secondary benefits, etc.

Many elements on that list, while important, are incredibly difficult to equate in practice without speaking with employees or reading up on the company. Take the following:

>1 Appreciation for your work

How in the world are you going to evaluate this pre-interview or even post hiring process? Both parties are showing their best selves. It's incredibly abstract and difficult to measure.

>2 Good relationships with colleagues

Again, difficult to measure. Establishing good relationships takes time. Additionally, most places (at least here) have people who are decent to get along with, they aren't filled with horror individuals. At least, I'd hope hiring processes would at least filter the most obvious nutcases out after all those hours spent.

>3 Good work-life balance

Here's one you can measure much more easily. Few core hours and a "do whatever whenever" mentality outside of core hours attracts individuals. Still I don't see most companies post it. It goes far beyond hybrid and remote work, and even that is already hard to pull out of them. Then at the end of the interview, you get a "yeah we have a flexible schedule. Our hours are from 7 to 7." Great.. I guess.


I agree on that and we had similar observations on the job boards that we manage (each of them has mandatory salary brackets if you want to post a job[1])

Obviously, salary is not the only criteria for picking a new role, but by publishing it upfront, you quickly sort out the expectations (which leads to less churn at later stages) and also contribute to a more inclusive and fair job market.

Some other points that we got as feedback from the tech communities:

- publishing tech stacks & engineering methodologies is quite useful too

- it's nice if a company provides a contact person for questions BEFORE applying

- you should act swiftly and not let candidates wait for weeks for your decision

[1] https://swissdevjobs.ch/

https://devitjobs.uk/

https://devitjobs.us/

https://germantechjobs.de/


Getting that good work life balance issue settled usually takes 2 or 3 rounds to pry some useful info out.


Great. We're talking about responding to an ad. Your response equates to just dealing with 1-4 hours of work, often requiring some juggling from the candidate's side (= more time), just to get some of the most important information.

Not only are you supporting my argument, you're also showcasing how ridiculously inefficient the hiring process is from the candidate's side. Without it being obvious whether this is a net gain for the employer.


>Not only are you supporting my argument, you're also showcasing how ridiculously inefficient the hiring process is

I don't think the GP was arguing with you; was the poster's first comment on this article.


Not really.

I'm paid to work 40h/week.

Am I going to be expected to be working more than that? If so, I'll pass.

If there's occasional overtime, sure, fine. But do I get paid extra for it? Does it get banked into extra PTO?

And so on, stuff I ask prospective employers in the first conversation.


This isn't how salaried position work though, not in the US anyways. You will get paid X if you work 10 hours a week or X if you work 50 hours a week. There is no difference in pay. Would you be open to losing pay? Do you want to be accountable for every single hour of work you do? Most don't.


I'm not in the US, but I work for a US based company.

My contract specifically says I work 40h/week, have X days off/year (outside of statutory holidays) as PTO, etc.

This means that 5 days a week, I am at my keyboard, available on Slack, etc for 8 hours per day.

Hours are logged in a time tracking application (including time spent when there was nothing to do), and overages get added automatically to holiday time.


Thats a contract position, not a salaried position. Most tech job in the US do not pay hourly. A salaried position says you will make X per year including benefits like unlimited PTO, 401K matching, reserved stock units, discount stock purchasing program, life insurance, medical insurance, etc... There is also no logging of time because your pay cannot be raised or reduced on a weekly basis.


jobs on salaries still have an expectation of how many hours you will work and some provide PTO comp for "overtime". tracking this often does mean filling out a time sheet or punching a clock, even though those times don't directly figure into your paycheck.


This is just simply not true for most tech workers, especially here in California. I'd argue most companies have moved to "unlimited PTO" so that workers are not accruing vacation. Businesses no longer want to have millions of dollars outstanding on their books when it comes to vacation time. I've worked for two Fortune 15 companies, done an IPO, and have consulted with all the big names in the valley, no one is clocking in or filling out time sheets, in fact doing so would put the employer in a precarious/legal situation.

Maybe it's different elsewhere, but where all the tech companies are, it just doesn't work the way you're describing it. If you're being forced to punch a timecard and salaried, I would contact an attorney.


> Maybe it's different elsewhere, but where all the tech companies are, it just doesn't work the way you're describing it. If you're being forced to punch a timecard and salaried, I would contact an attorney.

When I was salaried at a FAANG, they had us start clocking to pay OT when we exceeded 40h, which was most people much of the time. It was a way to keep the pay competitive. This was ten years ago, so no idea if that’s still a thing.


notwithstanding the norm in big tech, what nibbleshifter described is pretty common for salary-earning employees in other industries.


I've been in the workforce for more than a decade and every salaried job was a minimum of 40 hours. At best you could comp time for the next week, but only up to so many hours.

If you were putting less than 40 hours a week in your timesheet, you had to use some form of paid time off (holiday, vacation, sick) or simply not get paid.


This is a difficult topic. We evolved to the 40h/week mentality. This is a big luck for us.

I think things should be more based on goals than on time itself, honestly. What I mean is: if you work 40h but you do not deliver anything, how is that good compared to someone that in 32 delivers more? We have to put ourselves on the side of the employer also, even if some people hate them.


This is a management problem, not an employee problem. Figuring out if I can be outperformed by someone working less hours than me is irrelevant to my relationship to my employer. I'd go further to say that it's irrelevant barring frequency of the event having an impact on the broader job market. For any team, you will have a range of performance. For any individual, you will have different work styles.

This is normal. This is OK.

Asking an employee make this a consideration when negotiating with an employer is a dereliction of duty on behalf of the hiring manager and difficult for the candidate to judge due to information asymmetry. If you're building a team, you should know what kind of talent fits on it and make an offer on those merits. That's what being a hiring manager entails.


There is always a feedback cycle also I think. You can tell your manager why something could work or not. The manager is the responsible from the direction POV but it is also true that we are responsible to some extent of how we perform. Maybe not from an executive or strategic POV but yes from a deliver-what-you-are-asked for POV.

What I mean, all in all, is: we all should care. That's why it is called an organization.

I agree with job about the job of a manager. I am just telling you that each one has her responsibility. All of us.


I don't disagree with the fact that we should manage our performance (and career growth!), but this is a problem for after one is hired. I'm not even sure how you'd go about putting reasonable or realistic expectations on somebody's performance until you interview them and make them an offer for a specific title or role.

Even then, expectations of what a role does vary from one org to another. I don't think it's realistic to have someone outside of an organization say "I'm a senior/staff engineer" and for that person to have consistent expectations on what that statement means from for a potential employer from one interview to the next.

> I agree with job about the job of a manager. I am just telling you that each one has her responsibility. All of us.

No disagreement there. My intended point is what appropriate expectations are at various points of a potential employees tenure at an organization. A interviewee has no responsibilities: they have no employment contract and no expectations on them other than those a hiring team or manager brings into the room. The responsibilities come after the interviewee agrees to their job responsibilities and signs an employment contract.


Work Life Balance is purely subjective & depends on personal preferences. Your balance in life != mine.

It also depends on :

1. How creative/smart we are in achieving outcomes with less work.

2. Would my company provides a platform to accelerate this?


Whether it's subjective or not doesn't matter to the topic at hand.

The status quo is, you're not getting that information upfront. It would very much be useful for you to know before sinking in several hours of effort and accumulate stress, only to figure out it doesn't at all match your preferences and the remainder of the package doesn't make up for it.

It is also one of the few things that companies can do which won't increase costs when practiced properly. That's the whole point of the root comment, and it falls flat given most job ads are secretive about almost everything.


Sure, your life balance doesn't equal mine. That doesn't mean that either of us should be expected to work more or less. If you want to work more, get a second job or invest time into a structured hobby.

It doesn't generally depend on how creative/smart we are, nor even our outcomes with less work. You working on a task that is easy for you doesn't mean that I should work more and you should work less. It really just means that we can expect different things from you than me, which is realistic so long as they aren't vastly different on the same task.

Work-life balance doesn't really depend on anything the company does other than having policies that allow for it and then actually following through.


OK, but... some places think a "senior software developer" should make $70,000, and other think they should make $250,000 or more. And everything in between.

I don't care how nice the a place it is to work, I'm not applying to the $70k place. If I can't quickly figure out where you fall on that spectrum, I'm not going to bother to contact you because job listings are not rare. If you somehow manage to present as exactly the perfect place to work, I might contact you—to ask what the salary range is, and if you won't say up-front, I'm out.

It takes exactly one time sitting through interviews, having everyone be super excited about hiring you, then naming a totally normal rate when they ask what salary you're looking for, and watching everyone's faces turn green, to never, ever waste time doing that again. I've had mine already.


Honestly I'm considering the $70k place where as right now I have the $500k total comp.

I can't say I hate my job but I have zero interest in it. Where as I had lots of <$100k jobs I loved. My life was better. I only get one life. I'd prefer to live a happy life than a well paid life. Right now I get paid well but my life feels like it's just bleeding away as a drone.

The biggest reason I haven't pulled the trigger is there's no guarntee that taking the $70k will actually be fun this time. I have my criteria for taking the jump though and if they're met I'd do it in a heartbeat.


Yeah 500k all day. People love to preach about secondary benefits, but cold hard cash allows you to pay for most benefits you actually want.

I think work is work, the more a workplaces tries to trick you into believing you're in a family or home environment they're not being clear on the work. Competency trumps all benefits.


Thing is, people live different lifestyles with different priorities.

Sure, if they could press a button and make more, they would, but in reality getting a higher salary requires to change jobs and they often have concerns about moving to a new place, doing something different, working with new people, wondering if they are going to like it or not, which ends up in them settling for a lower salary, especially if that salary covers everything they wanna do.

Often those thoughts are irrational, but thats how humans function.


Save for one year then take 6 years off and come out roughly the same. That seems like an absolute no-brainer to me.


> roughly the same

Except now you have a 6 year gap on your resume to explain and probably a 6 year degradation of skills unless you're really disciplined.


Nobody cares about gaps in resumes. I swear people think it's 1990 still. If you have desirable tech skills, that's all that matters.


> Nobody cares about gaps in resumes. I swear people think it's 1990 still.

False. I took five years to explore personal projects and then couldn’t get a callback to save my life. After landing a menial temp job, suddenly I got calls and interviews and landed a real job in no time. A huge gap can torpedo your efforts.


So what? Depending on the OPs age that might be just fine. And their skills could very well improve, it all depends on what they do in that time.

That kind of freedom is normally only reserved for the kids of the very wealthy, and it opens up all kinds of opportunities.


Not possible because their $500k/year likely only materializes after vesting. Leaving after only 3-4 years on the job would mean the realized yearly comp is closer to 200-250k.


Sorry but that's not how it works. $500k/year would mean roughly $250k base+bonus and $1 million of stocks vested over four years. And at most companies, the vesting starts after 1 year. So at the end of year one, you would have made $500k in base+bonus+stocks. And after that you would usually get the stocks every quarter so $62.5k worth of stocks every quarter. I am not sure where is your figure of 200-250k Total Comp coming from?


When someone says $500k/year, they usually mean a package like $150k base + $350k stocks with yearly grants.

For the standard 4-year vesting schedule, and assuming a new $350k grant every year, this means actual earnings are:

   Year 1: $150k + $0        $150k
   Year 2: $150k + $87.5k    $237.5k
   Year 3: $150k + $87.5k*2  $325k
   Year 4: $150k + $87.5k*3  $412k
If you leave here, at year 4, and lose all unvested options (expected), your actual average was $281k/year.

Only by year 5 you'll finally actually earn the $500k/year, and the vesting schedule has such an impact on the early earnings that even after a decade, your yearly average is still $400k.

Not to forget taxes. So the idea to "save for one year then take 6 years off" is kinda off the menu unless they've been at the company for a long, long time, or are willing to spend those 6 years living in Thailand.


$500K / year at year four is something entirely different than $500K / year. And that's what the OP said they were making.


How often do people get one large grant upfront, vs yearly refreshers? I was under the impression the latter is the norm.


There are plenty of people making $500K total comp annually right here on HN.


Yearly refreshers come on top of the initial large grant - I've never seen a place that had yearly refreshers without an initial grant.


My last job started vesting on Day 1. It was pretty nice.


I've found lower paying jobs typically treat you worse but YMMV.


Yep, funny how that goes but it's true.


You don't kick your prize chicken.


I can see how it sounds pretentious, but it's somewhat true. After you have the limits of your financial investments explorable, you aren't just going to ignore the potentially soul destroying daily grind. You do it if it does something for you, and if you're basically rich, you might as put your energy in a different place.

But you're right, the 70k place might be just as much work, but they just don't make that much money, or any other series of situations.


Let's say you're in your 20s, single and want to travel the world.

500k requires you to live in San Francisco, commute to the office every day at strict hours and is at a soul crushing, bureaucratic big corp.

70k allows you to work from anywhere in the world, async an on your own schedule. Also, you get more vacation. 6k USD per month is a lot in many countries.

If you want to live now not later, I can see why you'd choose the 70k job.


That's true, but you could also just work the 500k job for 5 years and then possibly (semi) retire. 2.5 million before taxes is a pretty nice chunk to have before your late 20s. It's just delayed gratification.


There exists jobs that would be better paid than the $70k and be more fun than the soul crushing very high income terrible job.


Out of curiosity, what were those sub-$100k jobs you loved?


We can swap if you like. I make $55K.


i ran into a regional bank who wanted to pay a principal engineer $115K to build their entire digital customer facing platform

i was stunned


Plot twist, that was the monthly rate.


What you are likely running into the the trimodal nature of software salaries [1] that has been extensively discussed here on HN in the past. tl;dr there exists (supposedly) in the global market, 3 tiers of tech companies, with 3 distinct salary ranges.

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...


My father once told me that money is how the company tells you how much they value you.

It isn't just about the money, it's about the respect. Many, many people leave jobs because of the salary. Not just they need more money, but because they know they're worth more than that and can get it.

Those people are not going to bother looking at jobs that pay less than they're worth. They are absolutely going to look at the money first, and other benefits after. All those benefits matter, but money is the one that's forced their hand. And by extension, respect.


To follow up on this point. It's not just the amount that is about pay either... it's the fact that, during the job seeking process, you as an employer respect me enough to be transparent about what you're paying.

And, on a personal note, transparent wages are known to help break underpayment cycles where workers have been repeatedly underpaid and at each new opportunity their compensation is based on "Well what did you make in your previous job?" - a lack of pay transparency can end up giving people with social difficulties or who are of a visible minority much less take home. I want to work at a company where everyone is respected and valued because those companies are more successful in the long term. "Those who would give up company morale, to purchase a little temporary profit, deserve neither profits nor morale." - Benjamin Franklin (probably)


And, importantly: they indicate to the sitting crew how much they could make in their current jobs if they were to apply externally, and it isn't rare at all for that to be substantially more than they are making at present. So salary transparency helps employees evaluate their position across the board, not just new hires: if things are fair then there is no problem, but if things are not then employers will be loath to create such transparency because it equates to a break-off risk or an across the board raise.


Yeah this is exactly what I just went through, from making $70k-ish in a LCOL area to now triple that without moving. My coworkers knew their pay was low but not by how much. I did the best I could to be transparent with them on my way out. I'm curious just how many of them are planning on staying.


There is a lot more complexity to this.

For example, I used to work in a SCIF for a government contractor in Northern Virginia, making 95k. No windows, no internet, no cell phone, no outside software without an approval process (had to manually burn linux packages to a CD, often multiple times a day because of dependencies).

Then I got a job at Amazon in their Austin location, essentially almost tripling my salary with the stock growth pre pandemic, with way better work environment, way easier work, but also with teammates with way less skill (after all, writing java web services isn't that hard)

So naturally, as my team and teams around us were hiring, to take advantage of the referral bonus, I contact all my old teammates, who would have easily aced the interview because they all had plenty of experience writing low level C code that was highly optimized, to suggest they apply.

Should be a no brainer, Austin had low cost of living back 5 years ago, no state income tax, your would be making way more, right?

Out of the 20 that I contacted, of them wanted to join. A lot of them were either single or with girlfriends, i.e without family, so relocation would not have been an issue. But they were perfectly content being way underpaid, living in a shitty area with high CoL. Still to this date don't know why. Seems like people value a certain things other than money.


A lot of them were either single or with girlfriends, i.e without family, so relocation would not have been an issue.

Just because someone is single doesn't mean they don't have family and friends in the area. The further the move, the less contact they have with their existing social network. Not everyone is up for that, especially if you are moving a decent distance (like between states).


Oy, yeah. Getting people to even consider changing jobs is really tough. I've been surprised by it in the past, but I'm less and less surprised by it as I see it happen more.

I feel some of it myself, so I can understand it, but it's crazy hard for so many people.


Respect to your father, who knew what he was talking about.

In a similar story, my father once told me, "People are always happy to pay you less than you are worth."


It also provides insight into the type of talent you can expect to work with. I work best when working with smart people that I can learn from and that challenge me. On the average, those types aren't going to be found in workplaces that aren't aggressive in how they compensate talent.


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work. I promise.

I don't really care about your promise because after many (too many?) years in business and seeing a lot of companies from the inside without any restrictions I can tell you that companies that paid at or above market rates generally had better work/life balance than the ones that did not and the people I spoke there definitely seemed substantially happier than in the places where they were paying below market rate.

In those places salary was usually just one indicator of many where incompetent management was showing through. Either you're a founder or you should make a very decent wage and anybody that tries to tell you that their crap salary is made up trough fringe benefits is taking advantage of you (or at least trying to do so). That you managed to trick some more qualified people into responding that otherwise would have rejected you out of hand is not a positive for them, it's a positive for you.

Employees can use a salary range to quickly weed out the employers to avoid from the ones to talk to and I would reverse your statement to 'If you are looking for a place that won't make you feel bad start with salary'.


This is a really good point. Bad management/strategy leads to all sorts of corporate dysfunction, and many times that shows through in either unwillingness or inability to pay market-level salaries for good developers who have options in the wider market.


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work.

Look, it doesn't make sense to respond to ads for positions where there's no reasonable way that I'd accept the job based on comp.

For the most part, I've been an entrepreneur / my own boss. But I remember 2 interview processes where money was talked about too late (one for a consulting job, and one for a full time position) and the offer was abusively low. I think there was the hope that I would try to justify the sunk cost of the interviewing process by taking the deal.

There's a lot of talk that not posting ranges can contribute to discriminatory practices. I think this could be true -- I think of wife's experience as she was entering the workforce. She was president of the mech-eng honor society, magna cum laude from a highly ranked university, with better work experience than most graduates. Multiple employers gave her absurdly lowball offers after she interviewed-- literally half of the average going rate for new grads-- perhaps mistaking her warmness for being willing to roll over and not negotiate. (She ultimately got a gig in the upper quartile).

P.S. Now I make about 3-6% of what I could make elsewhere-- I'm a middle school teacher. There was no need to surprise me with the number at the end to get me to take this offer. Salary isn't the end-all, be-all, but keeping it opaque concentrates too much power with the employer and that power is often used for dubious ends.


I don't know why you'd be surprised by this. If you were giving away milk, you'd get a better response from an ad that said "Free Milk" than an ad that said "Free Expired Milk," even though the milk you're giving away is expired.

You're concealing relevant information in order to sucker in people who have no interest. It's the central mechanism behind "linkbait" headlines. It's just a dark pattern.

People who were not interested in a job with your salary range responded to ads that omitted the salary range. They heard you out because they had already committed their time to reach out to you. This basically shifts hiring costs onto the applicants in that they have to waste their time discussing a job they would never take because you held back the information they needed to know that it was a job they would never take.

Somehow, you've found a way to rationalize this as passion.


> you'd get a better response from an ad that said "Free Milk" than an ad that said "Free Expired Milk,"

But he said he got better candidates with the ad that didn't post salary ranges. If I understand your analogy, that's like (counterintuitively) getting more responses for the expired milk.


No, it's not. They probably got responses from better candidates on the one with no salary range posted because if those candidates knew what the salary range was beforehand, they wouldn't have applied at all.

The better question is were they able to hire any of those better candidates after they told them that the milk was expired?


It could simultaneously be true that including a good salary range increases the number of applicants who are good fits for the role, and also true that including a good salary range decreases the average quality of candidates.

One way you might see that effect is if both candidates who are good fits for the role and candidates who are bad fits for the role apply more often when a high salary is posted, but the number of bad fits increases faster than the number of good fits (e.g. because there is some subset of people who will send their application to every role that pays over a certain threshold whether or not they are qualified).

If it's sufficiently costly to distinguish qualified from unqualified candidates, the company might be better off not showing a salary range, even accounting for how it causes good people not to apply. That approach does feel like an inelegant hack to get around their inability to easily tell whether someone would actually perform well in the role though, so addressing that root cause would be better in that scenario if they could figure out how to do it.


Another, simpler option:

When you put a range of $100-120k, the very high quality candidate who won't accept an offer less than $150k doesn't apply.

Or, put another way:

> It could simultaneously be true that including a good salary range increases the number of applicants who are good fits for the role, and also true that including a good salary range decreases the average quality of candidates.

Part of "good fit" could be "willingness to accept compensation in range". If the job range says $10/hr, the average quality of applicants will go down because the MIT Ph.D.'s won't apply-- but you weren't going to hire them at $10/hr anyways.


I think parent understands your point, but, it's implied that the salaries were high, so your example doesn't fit.

> Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit

Your example covers the case of "mid-range salary", overqualified applicant doesn't want the job, but wasn't going to get hired anyways because overqualified. Parent's example covers "very high salary", underqualified applicant wants the job just because the number is high. Given the "salary offerings are very aggressive", then why would we be talking about a "mid-range salary" case.


Not who you're asking, but I take "very aggressive to the developer's benefit" with a mountain of salt, because everytime I've come across someone saying that the eventual comp was extremely poor and they were either deliberately lying or completely out of touch with the labor market.


Every time I have a recruiter explicitly tell me that they are "top of market value comp" and keep reiterating it, I already know there's going to be no stock or bonus and the total comp is probably 1/5 of what I get now and "can't" do a signing bonus. I have not had one that doesn't meet this benchmark yet.

The ones that actually pay top of market rate I reach out to, not the other way around.


Yes, that is definitely a possibility. My point was "the average quality of candidates goes down when you post a salary range" can be true even if the salary range is very good.


It's possible, but I don't know that we should rush to believe that's the case based on an anecdote of a single flawed experiment when there's simpler explanations.

(Especially since it's only a problem if the higher pay motivates more bad applicants that are hard to distinguish from good applicants. If it encourages 100 people who have no relevant experience to apply, that brings the average down, but it doesn't increase the probability of making a bad hire.)


It does however increase the level of effort to find the wheat.


You make a good point, except it's moot in this particular case. There is no mention of averages. The best candidates simply responded to the one with no salary range posted.

> The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges


They didn't say how the candidates were better. And if the person judging the candidates knows which position description the candidate replied to then they may be applying their own bias when assessing the candidates.


I think they're implying the salary ranges are actually bad enough to smell like expired milk.


> But he said he got better candidates with the ad that didn't post salary ranges.

He did, and that raises a lot of questions:

Were the ads identical otherwise?

Were the salaries actually competitive or did he just think they were?

Did any of these better candidates actually accept an offer?


> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.

> It is important, it makes it possible to pay bills, but it isn't what makes people happy. Meaning, if you are looking for a place you will enjoy working, do not start with salary.

This feels strange to me… I have a minimum salary for which I wouldn’t consider working for a company even if they offered me flying rainbow unicorns. It’s not a gajillion $FAANG but there is a minimum.

If I can get that at the beginning of the process, this saves both myself and the company time and money.


Likewise, I have a minimum salary for which I will move giant hunks of manure with my bare hands and love it so much I'll sing arias about it while I do so. It's a really big number, but I assure you it exists.


Having actually done this ( taking manure collected at a dairy to a worm farm )... when collected into a pit or large enough pile, the manure re-liquifies under the top layer, so while you do acclimatize to the smell after 15-30 mins, moving it with your hands is not effective.

Whatever that big number is.. double it is what I'm saying!


You think this is true, and might even be willing to go through the motions for the money, but if I expect you to truly love what you do and look for ways to improve the quality and throughput of your manure handling operations the money is not a good indicator or motivator.


If I truly love what I do, I'm going to respect my work enough to demand excellent compensation when I do work for others.

Anyway, do you apply this logic to your other vendors? Do you tell your accountant that you'll only pay them 70% of market because they should love what they do so much they shouldn't care what you pay them? They'd laugh you out of the room, and rightly so.


I am a bit suspicious you have more than enough money to be financially independent already - for folks who have bills over their head causing constant stress no job is going to be enjoyable along as that shade lurks over them.

I enjoy my job and have turned down a few higher salary positions because the stress they would introduce into my life would result in an overall lower quality of living and the amount their offering isn't enough for me to burn myself out for a few years to coast for the rest of my life... but my SO is nearing retirement and is slowly working to scale back their working hours - the loss of their income will mean a return to the drawing board and more math to make sure we can continue live comfortably.


> You think this is true, and might even be willing to go through the motions

A good pun.

The money stops being enough after a surprisingly short time. It would be interesting to see how long people could stomach terrible work for great pay.


> The money stops being enough

You have capped your own imagination. Whatever number you are considering, while you still think this is true, multiply it by 100.

> terrible work

I should clarify that I specifically mean unpleasant work. If it's literally killing me by say, inhalation of aerosolized pig brains or standing in cyanide or something, deal's off.


> The money stops being enough after a surprisingly short time. It would be interesting to see how long people could stomach terrible work for great pay.

You wouldn't need to because if the pay is so great you can soon retire.


I'm sure Amazon HR has a lot of data on this question.


wouldn't it have to be "go through the movements" to count as a pun on bowel movements? Or is there another sense I'm missing?


Bowel motion is a common phrase where I am. Bowel movement is too.


If I have to shovel shit with my bare hands for a few months and it means I'll be financially independent for the rest of my life, you bet I'll love the manure out of that job!


I'll bite. Would you take the job for $300 000?


These comments are absurd considering farmhands get paid minimum wage to shovel huge pieces of manure


Each person’s opportunity cost is different. A farmhand shoveling huge pieces of manure for minimum wage probably does not have better options, whereas a software developer already earning a few hundred thousand does.


Former software developer now ex-con. I would take this job for $50000. Also acceptable, $30000. Sad reality, I worked way way worse for way less than either of those two dream salary ranges.


It's the singing arias about it that people are balking at.


I would do that for $1000 per hour.


missing at least one zero


I'd do it for $300k ...hourly.


"Thank you for considering us, but we were able to fill the position with a more-experienced candidate whose salary requirements were more in line with..."


OK now we're definitely drifting into fantasy territory.

A company specifying an actual reason for rejecting a candidate? In writing??

(/j)


this is a really hard thing to study empirically, but the data I've seen DOES reflect your personal experience. The hard parts are:

1. The correlation is weak

2. It drops really quickly after satisifying the minimum

3. it's very different for every individual

Good recruiters try to look for compatibility here very early in the process; unfortunately most recruiters are not good.


Just saying, I don't believe any of this. I think it's anecdotal at best. People want to be paid the most amount of money they can for the work they're doing. Maybe the work doesn't make them happy, that's why it's called work, but why would I want to work for a company that pays half for the same work when I can make double elsewhere? You do realize the decade old article you're linking to contradicts what you are claiming right out of the gate?

    "A 2014 SAP survey found that compensation is the #1 factor that matters most to employees"
and

    "Another survey by the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) conducted in 2013 also found that compensation and pay was the #1 factor contributing to job satisfaction"


I think you're reading the rather poor evidence in a pretty tilted way. "Attractive fixed salary" is not "way down on the list"; it's #8 on a top 10 list in a "study" (cough survey) that considered 26 factors. Further "salary" and "attractive fixed salary" are not the same; perhaps people enjoy a competitive base salary plus a performance bonus. And frankly you say "salary is a sign of respect from you (sic) employer", and you highlight a consultant claiming that the most important thing is "Appreciation for your work" ... why would people believe you appreciate their work if they're not compensated well?

The OP also doesn't say that their "primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary"; they may also be filtering aggressively based on the industry, tech stack, role, etc, and also filtering based on salary.


> The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

> And... before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't. Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit. In my opinion, salary is a sign of respect from you employer.

What's your hypothesis for why they performed worse? If I saw a listing for a job I wanted, for which I was qualified and had a salary range within my target, you'd better believe I'd apply for it. The Occam's Razor explanation is that the listed ranges were below more experienced candidates' expectations for the position.


Wouldn't the test of that question be whether they were able to hire the stronger candidates within the listed salary range?

I could see other things swaying stronger candidates away from applying to the jobs with salary ranges; it can be difficult to tell the distribution of salaries within the range, so perhaps they didn't want to risk being offered at the lower end of the range.


Sure, but I think "the lower end of the range is too low" is basically equivalent to "the salary range is bad".


>Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list. [0] It is important, it makes it possible to pay bills, but it isn't what makes people happy.

This is bad analysis. Employees will already self-select based on pay.

I would bet you real money right now that if you polled employees as they left the company what their future salary is going to be, the majority will be making more.


This. There's a huge selection bias: people saying that they're (un)happy with this or that have already accepted the position they're in, so they were at least moderately happy with their compensation when they started, while they had mostly no idea about the other aspects of the job.


Salary is not a "sign of respect" it is an indicator of how the company makes money and values software engineers. Software companies have software margins other companies... do not. Software engineers want to work at companies where software is the product because:

1. They get to contribute more to the success of the company

2. What they built typically has real users

3. They are valued and get paid commensurately with the near infinite leverage they bring to the company.

4. They get to work with other like minded software engineers.

5. There is probably an established career path for them if they perform well.

Good engineers typically ALREADY work at a place they enjoy. The market is too competitive for good talent to put up with any BS whatsoever. You are trying to get them to leave a good place for another hopefully better place. However, there is risk because they don't know your company/have to trust you a bit. You MUST compensate for this risk.

My risk premium is easily a 25-50% salary increase. Which means I need a job to pay about $100-200k more or have significant high probability upside (IPO etc.) for me to jump all else equal (passion products maybe an exception).

If you waste my time with a job ad that doesn't tell me up front what to expect I will:

1. Not accept your interview request or offer.

2. Will flame your company throughout my entire network.

Also if you want me to do a "take home" anything that will be $500/hr with a max of 4 hours spent.


The link you posted presents studies which found the opposite conclusion.

>A 2014 SAP survey found that compensation is the #1 factor that matters most to employees.

>Another survey by the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) conducted in 2013 also found that compensation and pay was the #1 factor contributing to job satisfaction

Then later,

>Several other studies have also emerged around what employees care about at work but the most recent one from Boston Consulting Group which surveyed over 200,000 people around the world is one of the most comprehensive. Unlike previous studies which may point to flexibility or salary as the top factor for job happiness, BCG found that the #1 factor for employee happiness on the job is get appreciated for their work!

I don't know much about Boston Consulting Group, but my intuition says they may have been contracted by higher-ups with the intention of finding that exact conclusion. Cynical, yes, but so often that's how these consulting-funded-research-studies end up being. I can't speak for anyone else, but compensation is still above and beyond the most important factor when considering a job.


I think the difference is that the OP is talking about being "happy at work". I don't think about compensation while working, it doesn't really affect your work environment.

Compensation is important because of what you can do with it outside of work.


You never have the thought, "I'm not being payed enough for this shit?"

Or, realized new hires with less experience are being payed more? Or that colleagues that are slacking are being payed the same or more?

All these feel like concerns related to pay while working. I've certainly had those thoughts and was genuinely underplayed for half my career


> You never have the thought, "I'm not being payed enough for this shit?"

More like "no amount of money is enough to make me happy doing this shit"


I would be thrilled to take some pretty "miserable" programming work for 7 digit compensation.


There's a difference between happy to have that pay and being happy at work.

It's also not just the programming itself. I would turn down 7 digit compensation if it was going to mean intense burn out, depression and/or anxiety due to toxic management and impossible demands. The toll that shit takes on my personal life, my families lives and the way it removes my ability to even enjoy having that money for years afterwards isn't worth it.


For me, salary is a prerequisite, not a final selection point. It's one I drop potential jobs from my list of consideration because while happiness is indeed the most important one, being underpaid is definitely not going to make me happy.

I just have a salary range I am aiming for, especially because I compare it to my current job where I have a permanent contract. Like the OP said, it's super annoying to go through the process and then get a low-ball offer.

I recently turned down a job at a very big company for that reason. When I said no they said it's a really good career move working for them and I would rise up fast. They have candidates begging to work there. But no I'm not taking less than I'm getting right now (after standards of living correction)


<em>Meaning, if you are looking for a place you will enjoy working, do not start with salary.</em>

I'm not. Work is work. It's how I pay for my life. I want a job that doesn't make me miserable, and is constrained to ~40 hours per week -- but "enjoy" isn't the goal.

Making the maximum amount of money for my labor is the goal. (Without doing things that go against my ethics, or are illegal. I could make more if I had no ethical boundaries, I'm sure.) I have a family, a mortgage, pets with expensive vet needs, and a limited number of years left in my career. "Enjoyment" doesn't pay the bills, supply health coverage to my dependents or put money in the bank to cushion any economic downturns, etc.

I wish I'd had this attitude starting in my early 30s. I wouldn't be working now at all and could actually do things I enjoy with all my time and not just a sliver of it.


A salary isn't a reason to be happy to work. It answers the question "how will this change the lifestyle of my family and I?" It is useful to know because a sufficient salary is one of the few 100% hard-line conditions for applying to a place, so posting it saves everybody time.


Without knowing your full methodology I can't tell you what went wrong with your study, but: I work for a very very large recruiting/HR tech company. Our data across millions of jobs shows the opposite.


Keep in mind it’s really easy to trick yourself into believing the salaries you’re offering are aggressive.

I bet 80% of companies would say they have above average salaries.


> I bet 80% of companies would say they have above average salaries.

And it might be true. E.g., they are all paying the same, and the remaining 20% are driving the average down.


All our salaries are based upon most recent data assembled by market across the country and, in the case of this round of hiring, +10% to deal with the current inflation conditions.

So, I am not just 'saying'. I have data. Careful research goes into making sure our employees are paid in pace or exceeding the market.


This is what everyone says. "we know our salary is competitive because we benchmark it against the market". Most benchmarks for tech companies are dogshit though.


Yep I was going to say the same. My recent gig was like this, they paid a consultant firm big money to find out what the "market rate" was, around when I was hired, and when they finished and my boss spoke to me about it, he was like, "well you are way beyond the market rate they determined." My response was, "well are they going to try to claw some money out of my salary" and he kind of laughed and said no.

And turnover here is super high due to salary.


What's the number?

Every time I've encountered someone claiming they offered "aggressive" salaries, they were not in fact doing so.

Those who actually are offering aggressive salaries just put the number out there and let people decide for themselves.


K, then how much? List the number or you're just blowing smoke


How much you paying for a python dev with 6 years of experience?


Very poor advice. Salary is a huge part of job satisfaction. I normally line up multiple offers at places I'd like to work and negotiate on the salary. If a place I really want to work can't offer me compensation that the market is already offering me, then by definition that place isn't a good place to work. They don't value my labour.


Don't be a zombie. Don't feed the zombies. Knowing the price range the company can afford tells me if this is a zombie company (a company that is dead if it has to pay the going rate but stays 'alive' by hiring people willing to settle for less (students getting experience, self taught people, exploited desperate people, etc)). I have worked at plenty of zombie companies, from ones that thought they were startups, ones using the motivation of making the world better, ones exploiting excon's whose POs require them to have a job as a probation condition with the threat of prison. Every single one EXPLOITs you somehow (using FOMO, passion, compassion, the threat of your freedom). Do not go to work for a zombie company, and let legit businesses know they present themselves as a zombie business when they fail to publish salary ranges.


Salary is great criterion to pick an employer.

Underpaying employees is a clear sign that a company tries to exploit them. So it creeps in work life balance, unlimited responsibilities, abusive management etc

It is also a clear sign that they do not value the work that these employees are doing.

So if a company pays pennies for example for ML engineers, you know that they don’t have vision to grow there, they are just checking boxes.

On the other hand if employees are greatly compensated that means that the company is looking for the greatest talent out there, so they are seriously invested in the area, aka you have good potential to grow.

Also companies that compensate great have no incentive to abuse their super stars. Exactly because they have invested a lot.

So money is the first and only measurable criterion to reject an employer before even finishing the interview loops.


Whether or not I enjoy working somewhere is a secondary consideration. My primary consideration is my ability to support my family. If I didn’t need an income to support my family, I wouldn’t look for a job in the first place.

Once I have a job, I’ve already agreed that the salary is adequate, or else I wouldn’t have accepted the job offer. So the salary isn’t going to be a factor for me one way or the other afterwards. But that’s a different question from whether salary is a factor before you go through the hiring process.


> The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

Maybe your company is known for paying well or well-enough, have you considered that?

> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work.

That's very debatable, and that's to say the least (and to say it politely).

For a lot of people a salary bump that eases financial pressure is a big boon on mental health, positivity and ultimately happiness.

And by the way, a lot of people will not be "happy" in the purest sense of the work at any job. Work is ultimately the chore we all do to exist. Maybe work is the ultimate chore.

We do our best to make the pill taste less sour, but very few of the people that do "code for passion" (or some other thing) would work on the same business related problem if they had no need for money. They would probably work on something else, which is very unlikely to overlap with some random jira ticket or something.


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary

This never get's any less ridiculous the more it is repeated. It's like some sort of stockholm syndrome thing.

I'm responding to a JOB ad, the thing where you trade your time for money. There are many criteria I use to decide if I'll be happy somewhere besides money, but they are all irrelevant if I'm not properly paid because, you know, that's why I'm taking a salary job instead of doing my own thing.

It's funny how no one makes the same advice on the other side. Oh yeah, this person is incompetent, but it's not really about the work right? We are a big family, let's make him a VP because he's really fun to get a beer with.

The same logic also never seems to apply when security is escorting you out because of layoffs and treating you like a criminal. (never happened to me personally but it surely happens to A LOT of people. Like 10s of thousands in the last month)


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work

You might not be wrong, but a higher salary makes me less miserable than a lower salary


> Meaning, if you are looking for a place you will enjoy working, do not start with salary.

I get where you are coming from, but at least here in Texas, a job with the title “Project Manager” can be a low-end job paying 50k to a senior position paying 250k or more. Salary is often the only way to tell them apart because the wording that recruiters use are typically identical (or very close to it).

Not sure if this is common or uncommon, but I wanted to share that sometimes these things are important for other reasons.


That's surprising to me. What statistical measures did you use to make sure your conclusion wasn't confirmation bias?


Also how did you prevent people finding both postings? When searching for jobs if identical they will appear in the same list. Also the smart ones applying will apply on the one without because of all the various biases that the poster has and they will play some reverse psychology.


yes, this is a major flaw in their analysis. there's no way to draw a reliable conclusion because the experiment is uncontrolled in this way, among other factors (like the subjective evaluation of candidate quality which was also uncontrolled for).


That is a great question.

Regarding performance of responses I am referring to count of unique respondents meeting minimum requirements.

Regarding 'better candidates', this is based upon the count of candidates which made it through team interviews and coding challenges.

Our process requires multiple manager/leader approvals at each step of the process which is intended to reduce bias.

It is possible the soft attributes of personality and communication are reflected better in one group than the other. I do not have evidence but is a possible source of unintended bias.


I have salary requirements that have to be met, full stop, or I cannot waste my time talking to you. There is nothing you can do to convince me to go below my bottom line. I have bills to pay and my family is used to a particular lifestyle. "Hey kids, you're going to public school next year so daddy can chase a dream he had in his early 20s!" ain't gonna fly.


People say alot of things that do not match reality, this is why these kind of self reporting surveys are bunk.

People work for money, plain and simple. If the salary is not there people walk. Period. This is more than just "pay the bills" but Pay the Bills + Savings + retirement + Kids + hobbies + etc.

10 years ago the "magic number" where salary started to become less important was 75K, today (and I have not seen the research) but my guess that is closer to 100-120K before your idea of "salary is not the most important thing" comes into play, even then though it will be in the top 5 until you are well in the 1 percent category which is 400-500K +


As far as day-to-day satisfaction on the job, sure, salary could be way down the list compared to company culture and work/life balance. But I think we should acknowledge that salary is the only reason any of us work at all. If the salary is bad everything else will crumble around it regardless of how excellent culture and work/life balance are. If the salary is good there's no guarantees, but there's at least the potential for on the job satisfaction. Salary is the foundation. The exception to this is charity work for purely mission driven work, but that's not the work context for the majority of people.


> Meaning, if you are looking for a place you will enjoy working, do not start with salary.

Assuming you're discussing engineering roles, this is a dangerous attitude.

Engineering is an economic force multiplier; meaning, the monetary value of the results is worth many multiples of the monetary value of the engineering labor put in.

Seeking a fair salary upfront ensures a few things. One of the most important is the value of the result of the labor. As a top software engineer; I only want to work on products that are significantly valuable. (And then I want my fair share of the profits, too.)


Are you a locally/globally known company or raised funds recently?

I'd still apply to a unicorn, or a company who I know just raised $20M,because I know they can afford it and already pay at/above market.

Salary is not the primary reason, it's a bare minimum requirement, and if it's not completely obvious that the company is willing to pay enough, I won't click on it, let alone apply.

> with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

They responded but did the better candidates accept an offer and work for you now?


I always like to start with the salary. I don't think I've ever been disappointed when a job pays me more, because it drives me to be worth the money more...

Otherwise we (Me and the recruiter) both end up wasting each other's time once I find out the salary is below market value. Honesty is key, positive company culture should be a common expectation in all roles, it's not worth sacrificing income for in my opinion.

One of the best career moves I can make is to ensure I am being paid properly for every job I accept. The most defeating experience is accepting a job that pays under market standard when roles and responsibilities are always guaranteed to increase and often become overburdening without overtime... I also live in an "At will" state, and that makes employers pretty careless about retaining me when their budgets on other projects suffer.

As a senior employee who has done everything from Development to Architecture to Proposals to Project Management, Companies often try to seek advantage for hiring me at a lower rate for just one of those skills, but then often pile on the other roles and work hard to tap my experience/knowledge/contacts for free... In cases like that, a company becomes one in the same as an employee that lied on their resume.

It's akin to being on a dating site... We all need to stop wasting each other's time and find the right matches that are well suited to each job. Listing salary is like a suitor listing their age on their dating profile... Pretty essential every time.


I don't know any programmers who are responding to an ad because of the salary. I know a lot who are filtering out ads because of the salary and then choosing from the ones that include it. If you want to argue that salary doesn't matter then don't take one.


I'm not really happy at any job, I would rather be doing something else. Especially with remote work as there are no real relationships built. But the higher the salary the more I can do the things that make me happy. Salary also allows me to take care of my family, pay for their college etc. I would be willing to bet that most (not all) the hiring mangers saying money doesn't matter are the ones offering salaries on the lower end. It's a job I want to get paid as much as I can as I am selling hours of my life to make someone else rich. Are the higher level people also taking lower salaries and lower equity in exchange for happiness? Maybe sometimes but often probably not.

"Meaning, if you are looking for a place you will enjoy working, do not start with salary." Are you suggesting people go through multiple rounds of interviews with no idea of what the salary is for the position? Of course you start with salary otherwise everyone is just wasting their time. If the company does not want to discuss salary up front then there is probably a pretty good reason for that and it's not a place I want to work as this trend would likely continue come raise and promotion time as well. It's the same companies demanding loyalty and offering none.


>If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work. I promise. Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list. [0] It is important, it makes it possible to pay bills, but it isn't what makes people happy.

Generally when you get people for whom salary is way down on the list, you get morons. But I think you are indeed looking for morons. So your strategy will work.


Salary might not be the primary consideration, but IMHO it's absolutely necessary to at least post the range. no matter how good the job sounds otherwise, a salary that's too low is a huge red flag that they're not going to treat you well otherwise.

as you say, the salary is a sign of respect from your employer, and including that number in the job ad is an easy way to signal to prospective employees exactly how much you respect them.


> The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses

Good sample size. This probably tells us that there isn't much difference posting salary and the people applying to each. This may be unsurprising since not posting salaries is already the norm.

> better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges

I have a feeling that this is a particularly low (and highly noisy) sample.

I think you are overstating the significance of your results.


> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list

You're conflating being happy at work and being happy to accept a job offer. You can be pretty well paid, and end up being not happy, and vice-versa.

If the offer is not good enough, the applicant won't accept it. What happens after you join a company doesn't have to be related to how much you get paid -- although it can be, sometimes.


>If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work. I promise.

I don't know man, if I got paid a metric *!&@ ton of money to do a really garbage job, I may very well be happy doing it for 12mo and building a big fat nest egg, or clearing major debt.

Many of us are willing to sacrifice QoL/workplace culture/etc. if the price is right. If we don't know the salary upfront, you're simply asking us to invest time and energy (and maybe even fall for a sunk cost situation) for the promise that we maybe guessed the magic number you could have told us out the gate. Not to mention if I'm talking to 2 companies I need all the information I can possibly get my hands on to make an informed decision.

We don't have to love our jobs. Some do, some don't. But you don't get to presume what motivates us or, better still, tell us our motivations are wrong. That's up to us to decide.


I am a bit skeptical.

Paying far below the market doesn't necessarily make you a worse or better place to work for... but typically while salary won't improve how things go in a company... they are a core reason why I am even there...

Like... The comfort and performance of a car will not be affected by the price. I can love a certain car, even if it is cheaper or 20k over what it should cost. That won't matter. But I won't buy the car if I am not comfortable paying for it. The car would be just as great, but if it was out of my price range, I am still suffering for it.

Now cars are priced relatively close to their actual worth, and all car prices are well known vs hidden behind 7 hours of interviews and "don't talk about your salary" policies. So this is the playing field we're creating with salaries being up-front.

I have turned down many job interviews because I said my salary requirements during our opening call. Sure it wasn't part of the posting, but it better be an early conversation otherwise why would I leave a comfortable job for a lower pay?

When people respond to online job postings, it is often because they are already really unhappy, or need a job because they lost theirs, so the numbers may be skewed due to needs.

So what is my point? idk... probably recruiter outreach should have salary info. For job postings... my bet is recruiters know response rates better than I do. :P

Edit: Post interviews, I have taken lower paying job offers compared to other offers because after talking to the teams I predicted the money was worth losing over happiness. So money is certainly isn't everything, but it is an important aspect. I assure you I will deal with extra stress for 500k because I know at home I'll get the support needed and the extra money will change our lives. But would I do the same for 10k? hell no.


>And... before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't. Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit.

Tell us the numbers. Otherwise I call bullshit…


>And... before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't. Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit. In my opinion, salary is a sign of respect from you employer.

Let's see your salary range numbers and what tier you fall under.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Are you in Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3?

Are you paying your mid-level engs over $200k total when including stock and bonus? That's the minimum benchmark I would use for my next job hunt. 120k+ for juniors, 200k+ for mid, 300k+ for senior, 400k+ for anything above senior.


I would love to hit that senior/above senior range working remote from the midwest, but everybody I talk to adjusts heavily for COL.


> before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't.

Care to mention what they are? Because I suspect your ranges are out of line with industry standards that have risen quite rapidly.

I know because I've started responding to any recruiters that sound interesting asking for comp ranges and they are all below my current base, let alone TC.

If the upper bound of your range doesn't exceed $350k there is no chance that any of the senior engineers I know will apply and honestly to get something to think about leaving a job they are moderately happy with you'd have to have that be the lower bound of your range.

But I suspect you're posting ranges that are less than or barely over 200k at the upper end.


> If the upper bound of your range doesn't exceed $350k there is no chance that any of the senior engineers I know will apply and honestly to get something to think about leaving a job they are moderately happy with you'd have to have that be the lower bound of your range.

Outside of SV, that upper-bound is an absolutely wild number.


That's not true at all anymore, at least not for TC.

An insane number of startups have IPO'd in the last two years, and even with stock drops a lot of people suddenly have RSUs. In addition the rise in remote work has meant that near SV pay is much easier to obtain. Very few of my friends live in SV and I only know a few who aren't making at least that amount at the senior level.

That number is not at all wild for an upper-bound.


> That's not true at all anymore, at least not for TC.

OP was discussing salary range, not total comp--but I'd be a little surprised to find that even TC at the $350k range at the top outside of SV firms is quite high.

I'm not totally persuaded by levels.fyi, but looking at metros at 90th percentile of SWE total comp:

  Bay Area - 425k
  Los Angeles - 325k
  NYC - 343k
  Denver - 298k
  Boston - 273k
  Austin - 268k
  Chicago - 260k
  NoVA / DC - 237k
  Salt Lake City - 221k
  Columbus, OH - 215k
  Phoenix - 213k
  Minneapolis/St Paul - 210k
  Philadelphia - 210k
  Houston - 209k
  Kansas City - 152k
Again, I'm not persuaded that the numbers from Levels are good, but $350k salary at an upper-bound still seems like a high number. $350k TC also seems high--but it's more attainable with RSUs or other equity options.

I'd also be interested to see a breakdown based on the company type. There's room for SWEs in many companies, and the rates might break differently based on whether software is the primary product.


First the OP claims "Our salary offerings are very aggressive", I'm claiming they are not aggressive. I'll agree on the confusion with TC, but I'm also guessing for OP's company Salary == TC.

So right off the bat I'm not sure the point you're making. If the upper limit you are willing to pay does not exceed the 90th percentile TC, by definition you are not offering "very aggressive" pay. There are tons of mediocre, low paying software jobs out there, but posting that you are one of those is not going to attract more applicants. OP claims they are not one of those companies, and I disagree.

Second your numbers there aren't conditioning on seniority, and additionally given not only population size but proportion of tech jobs available the Bay area and NYC account for the majority of software jobs out there.

My point still stands that OPs company is in fact not offering "very aggressive" comp. Ignoring seniority (which will be weighted by more junior roles) not having the upper bound of comp being in the 90% means you are not really offering aggressive pay in the most major software markets.


Have an upvote.

> So right off the bat I'm not sure the point you're making.

That 350k yearly salary is a high number. Attainable, sure, but high, and not representative of typical SWE jobs for most people, senior-level included. Not that people cannot or don't make that, but that it's probably not the norm.

> If the upper limit you are willing to pay does not exceed the 90th percentile TC, by definition you are not offering "very aggressive" pay.

What qualifies as "very aggressive"? 99th? How is this determined? What, typically, is a business's approach towards determining salary ranges for positions?

FAANGs perhaps don't have to observe that approach, I suppose, given their resourcing and scale, but in my experience it's done by market comps.

> Second your numbers there aren't conditioning on seniority,

Fair enough: it does have an impact on the percentiles. I can't easily get them from Levels thanks to the relatively coarse granularity, but a couple quick observations:

In the Bay Area, the top 100 salaries for 5-10 YOE ("senior engineer" per Levels) have substantially higher rates of total comp: $710k-2+M (n=1 here). Most of this is not base salary (which topped out short of $400k) but stock and bonus.

Top 100 in NYC are similar, though smaller proportionately (tops out at 1.5M TC, N=1).

Top 100 in NoVA/DC is markedly lower (tops out at $500k TC).

> and additionally given not only population size but proportion of tech jobs available the Bay area and NYC account for the majority of software jobs out there.

With respect to where SW Eng jobs are located, that's a great question. I'm not sure how to quantify this very well, but for grins, I tried searching for senior-level positions on Indeed and LinkedIn.

Indeed found ~33k jobs, of which ~12k are represented in the locations on which I could filter. Of those 12k, 6021 were on the coasts (I counted anything in Washington, California, NoVA, NYC as coastal jobs but excluded lower-cost areas like Atlanta); I realize not all of these are in SV proper, but I think it probably captures the idea of high-cost/high-value markets for SWEs, and it makes the numbers more favorable against my point above. 3087 were listed as remote.

It's not well controlled, but Indeed's numbers suggest about 20% are in SV or SV-lite areas, and about 10% remote.

LinkedIn's job filters are maybe a bit more sophisticated? but don't offer the same sort of numerical granularity. I picked senior+ SW titles in the US (so included Lead, Principal), of which 43k+ hits were returned. The top ten markets they offer for search (Seattle, Austin, Boston, Atlanta, Charlotte, NYC, San Fran, Chicago, Sunnyvale, and LA) account for 11k results, about 25%. Excluding low-cost areas (Charlotte and Atlanta) returns 9K results, also about 20%.

So I don't feel terribly uncomfortable positing that of widely-advertised jobs, the high-value markets might account for 20-25% of the SWE job market. This is not a vast majority. The numbers could be off, of course--these aren't scientific samples, the searches will naturally have an impact on results, etc. But I don't think most people in software are working in SV, and I don't think most seniors routinely sniff a $350k salary.

Doesn't mean that the OP (GP? GGP?) is paying aggressively or that advertising salary or total comp is a bad idea--just that my initial reaction that $350 is a lot--seems like a reasonable take.


If your upper bound does not greatly exceed that number*, then all of the actually senior folks that I know are not going to be interested in your role. Most of my contacts are outside the Bay.

I know lots of people who would consider applying to your senior role, all else being good, if you're offering, say $250k or so -- but none of them are the people on my mental list of senior engineering contacts. Still, you might hire one of my mid-level engineering contacts, and you might be happy with them, since if you're paying only around $250k (or even only $350k) you probably won't have many of the other group to compare with (and all of the people whose names I'm thinking of are all great engineers)

---

* assuming we're talking total compensation.


> If your upper bound does not greatly exceed that number*, then all of the actually senior folks that I know are not going to be interested in your role. Most of my contacts are outside the Bay.

That's fine--it's still a large number, and most roles simply don't pay it. There are, I'm sure, many openings that can pay sufficiently qualified people quite a lot of money, multiples of $350k. But it's a high number.


>The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

Were these better candidates within the budgeted salary range though? Or were they priced too high?


The thing is, people often start with a previous salary and a lifestyle/saving goals such that they have some expectations. Telling people to not start at salary, when most people will do so for good reason, is not particularly useful. I, personally, am not looking for 500k+ craziness, but I am expecting a baseline and you trying to waste time I’m not willing to unless I’m otherwise extremely motivated by what you do (very unlikely) is going to make me pass.

This is essentially Tinder “swipe left or right” and it should treated that way.


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work.

Salary can be both a filter and a sorter.

- I won't apply to a job that pays less than I need to support the life style I want; no other factor can overcome that.

- I am more likely to apply for a job that pays more than a different job, but other things are also part of that sort.

It is entirely possible for salary to be an important part of what is considered when deciding on a job, even a deciding factor, without it being the only thing or even the primary thing.


It feels like there is a data leak built into this test. Imagine ‘better candidate’ sees the posting without salary info. They decide it’s interesting and google ‘salary kokanator’s company’, see the posting with salary info, and decide it meets the bar. Next they either 1) know the salary meets their hurdle and don’t care which posting they apply to or 2) intentionally apply to the posting without salary info in hopes that it keeps salary negotiations open.

Either way, it feels questionable to draw much signal from the process.


Frankly, I think you either didn't do a rigorous experiment, were fooled by randomness, or (most likely) aren't hiring top talent.

Interview loops are an enormous investment of time these days. I'm not going to take one unless I'm confident the offer will come out in an acceptable range.

Maybe you can fool some people with less experience or market power by not giving them the comp info upfront. But not the best.

And don't be surprised when any truly talented folks among your hires leave much earlier than you hoped. Karma.


I think your experience makes sense. Over time, salary has become less than half my total comp. If salary is the headline number in the posting, I'll assume total comp isn't interesting.

Put another way, I'd rather work somewhere that's investing heavily in tech talent and also has good market fit. Stock tends to go up at places like that, so it had better be a big chunk of the offer. This makes total comp impossible to predict, and therefore hard to put in a single number.


Sorry, no. I have bills to pay. If your role means taking a 50% pay cut, I'm just not interested. I don't want to waste multiple days of PTO to interview just so you can give me a number that is entirely unacceptable for my experience, expectations, and skill level. The most amazing role in the world would get the same response if I can't support my family.


For most people who aren't independently wealthy, it's a necessary but not sufficient indicator of whether you'd enjoy the lifestyle associated with working in a particular job. And even if you don't need the money, it's a very clear indication of how much an employer values your time and expertise.


I think that misses the point. It's quite possible that if you have high salary ranges, you'll get high quality candidates through both versions of the job listing who will be happy with the offered salary.

The issue is the companies out there with low salary ranges. And while it's absolutely true that a high salary isn't going to make an otherwise bad job great, too low a salary will make an otherwise great job terrible.

So I'm not really surprised that your company wouldn't see much value from publishing salary ranges, but I don't think that means they have no value.

Also on a side note:

> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.

That's a weird link to give as evidence of that, since it immediately covers two different surveys that found compensation was the number 1 factor, before going on to discuss a third survey that found it was important, just not #1...


Hm, I know you're getting a lot of responses to this, but just to throw my view onto the pile: what I "enjoy" doing (golf, video games, playing with my dogs, traveling with my wife, etc.) is not something anyone will pay me for.

What I'm willing to do, however, is a whole bunch of stuff, as long as that "stuff" gives me a better ability to do those things that do make me happy, and a primary driver of my ability to do the things I like is how much money I have.

Happiness doesn't really factor into it, because as I said, the items at the top of the list of things that make me happy are nonstarters from an income perspective.

It's delusional, as an employer, to think your job is to make the people who work for you "happy" in some objective sense.

Nobody would be there if you weren't paying them, you need very badly to remind yourself of that.


I agree that salary is not what dictates my level of satisfaction with my work. However, plenty of people make the (perfectly reasonable) tradeoff of work satisfaction in exchange for money. I'm not dogmatic about this - I am aware that plenty of people are deeply satisfied with both their work and salary, and that others are deeply satisfied with their work and are perfectly willing to trade salary for that. That is great! I am very happy for those people. But it's _also_ a perfectly reasonably decision to prioritize salary to enable your preferred non-work life, and it's entirely possible to still do excellent work if you're in that bucket.

This doesn't even touch on people who _have_ to prioritize salary.


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work. I promise.

This is true, but at the same time, if you're trying to hire people for $X, and I currently make $3X or more, it is probably not worthwhile for us to spend much time exploring working together.

For the most part, I can tell whether you're likely to be vaguely close based on discussing the role with you. It's a bit of a signaling game, but I can usually tell if we're at least kinda-sorta close -- but at the same time I've definitely gotten well into the process with folks only to discover that we're so far apart that it doesn't matter what the role or company is like.


Ads are one part of the equation but being actively searched out by recruiters who can't provide salary information is frustrating as someone with experience. I've gone through similar frustrations to other posters here where someone attempted to recruit me and gave me the old handwave "salary will be discussed later but I'm sure it can be worked out" and after multiple interviews they offered me roughly 50% of my base compensation at my (then current) role.

It was a waste of everyone's time. Providing salary information isn't about finding the ideal place but filtering out the places that aren't in the same ballpark.


> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work.

It's not really clear what "primary" means here. It's certainly one of my primary concerns.

> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.

Okay, but that doesn't mean that if the salary were zero they would take the job. It just means that they have enough options within their acceptable salary range that they also considered other factors.

Asking whether salary is the primary reason for choosing a job is a bit like asking if width is the primary reason for choosing a storage unit.


If I was evaluating multiple similar roles, and most offered salary ranges except a few, I would ignore the ones that didn’t offer salary ranges.

Your experiment is not valid because you are not controlling for the job market environment. However as the job market environment evolves to offer more data, the job postings with less data will suffer.

We already see this pattern in other markets such as housing/cars. More information makes the posting more attractive to the extent that there is whole industries dedicated to offering more information about postings, ex: carfax. The job market is not different.


> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list. [0] It is important, it makes it possible to pay bills, but it isn't what makes people happy.

I want money so my family don’t struggle in the future. My child can go to better schools. We have better food. We can have a house at better places. When you only work to pay your bills you gonna have a bad time. What happens when you get fired? What happens when you want to change your perspective and go to school again.


Bold of you to assume that people weren’t looking at both job postings before applying.

I’ll regularly take specific language from a job posting and search on it to see what information is where.


I think the things missing from this anecdote are secondary sources like glassdoor or personal references. If a company is large enough to have a high enough headcount you can often find it through secondary sources so the salary range is not a 'surprise' or at least you know what the floor should be. The floor is the real problem with a lot of postings where the salary range that they are expecting to spend is just not even a close match.


I don’t agree with this take, and there are tons of plausible reasons you may have had better responses to the ad without salary listed.

The problem is that no one wants to apply to a job where the salary isn’t viable for them.

Amongst the 50 other things they don’t know about a role and company, most of them you need to talk about in an interview, but item #1: salary, is make or break, and can be answered before even applying.

It’s disrespectful to candidates not to put a range on the ad.


A lot has changed since 2014. Any more recent metrics on this?


Human nature doesn't change in a meek 8 years.


I'm about to re-enter the job market. Pay is the biggest motivator due to COL increases (non-relational to human nature) which affects my ability to provide for my family (more relational). So, you're not wrong... but also far off track from the question asked.


In 8 years a whole generation goes from just out of school/uni to having kids and a mortgage. It definitely makes a huge difference.


Culture can change quickly and I believe that it has.


Are the same number of people seeking fully remote jobs now as were seeking them 8 years ago? Human nature may not change that much, but a job market certainly can.


No, but inequality and cost of living certainly does.


> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.

Absolutely.

But when considering a new role, I don't work there yet. It'll take a lot of research and talking to people to try to figure out if the working conditions are good or not. I don't want to spend that effort if it turns out you'll pay less than half what I make now. So I'll need to talk about comp on the first conversation with a recruiter.


In my eyes, this is a great response. It proves that if we want to move salaries up, then we have to follow Colorado's lead and force companies to post salary ranges. You won't have to worry which one performs better anymore, since you won't have a choice.


You posted 2, its well in the anecdotal spectrum.

You just went though the cycle and already think you know which are the better candidates. But we all know that performance is measured by doing the work.

It's a fun idea thou. Perhaps others can follow the example and we may gather meaningful data.


> with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

This makes sense to me. The strongest engineers are those who really love the work and enjoy building software systems. They tend to have active software side projects outside of work. They tend to be the sort who want to be paid well, but prioritize places where they can learn new things, learn from others and be excited. They want to enjoy coming to work each day and grow as an engineer.

The engineers I know who are the most compensation-oriented, on the other hand, seem to think of work as mostly about the paychecks. They aren't bad engineers, but they don't seem to love the craft as much as the great engineers. If your relationship with the industry is transactional ("I write code and you give me money"), you rarely develop into a great software engineer

It doesn't surprise me that the strongest applicants are the ones who aren't prioritizing comp in the decision-making.


> 'If your relationship with the industry is transactional, you rarely develop into a great software engineer'

You may be right but I'm curious. I suspect that the issue is one of trust that the employer will adequately reward great code.

If I'm a jeweler, its very evident that I will get paid handsomely for the finest work, and I will get to work with the finest materials, creating a virtuous circle. It is not at all evident that this works in software. You dont get reliably comped better for creating better code.

In fact it's so bad that people publish code outside of their jobs to demonstrate to the next employer that they should have been comped better.

on that basis I can see why the transactional mindset takes hold. you want to treat me as a fungible disposable fixed price asset? then I will act like one, starting with a demand for the highest possible asset valuation.


> you want to treat me as a fungible disposable fixed price asset?

I think this is the crux of the issue. Many companies invest quite heavily in improving engineers. My last company would send people to conferences, bring in consultants to train, have extended onboarding and training programs, and each engineer had a set budget for any training materials they wanted to purchase. They were absolutely not fungible or disposable. Other companies, I am sure, don't invest in their employees.

But perhaps this is just the system working: "mercenary" engineers will go work for the highest posted salary and will work at companies where they are treated as fungible and disposable. The "growth" engineers will go work at the companies where they can learn and grow and are invested in.

As long as both types of engineer make their way to the appropriate companies, the system works.


Yeah, you hid the salary and got applications from people who would have passed if it had been available. Congratulations, deception and trickery get leads.

Candidates is a red herring. What was the quality of the actual hires from one branch versus the other?


Of course I want a good job, but I do not want a good job at the expense of salary, nor do I want to interview for hours before finding the company isn’t willing to honor my expectations (at least I can make mine clear up front).


Money does not buy happiness, but money enables me to do things that make me happy


Fount the HM/Recruiter with their skewed up anecdotal data. Usually bad jobs hide behind lack of salary data and just like companies want to evaluate me, I want to evaluate them first.


> with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges

Do you have hard, objective evidence to back this up? Very easy to imagine someone reading their personal biases into this observation.


Did you end up hiring the people who performed better and who responded to the salary-absent posts, and what did you end up paying them compared to the initial ranges in the others?


> the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges.

So they would have rejected your offer... or are you hoping to reel them in with the sunken cost fallacy?


Yeah maybe the money doesn't matter if you are single. If you have a family to support, however, money is every so slightly important.


Something about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary proof for this one.

How did you measure better? Did you get the same number of responses for each?


> with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges

^ conflicts with:

> Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit.


Then why post skills at all?

If cultural fit and believing in your mission is the most important thing, then just hire people who are really good at that


If the posted salary is too high I'll probably assume it's a scam or you plan on doing a bait and switch anyway :)


My primary reason for where I work is my salary (FAANG), and I have never been happier with my job.

I work to live, not live to work.


You can also have an exciting work that fits your interests because life is short and it is better to enjoy most of your work hours.


And once your job becomes non-interesting, what do you do? Quit? How many times?

I expect some excitement from my work but in the end it is just work. I work 8 hours and they pay me for that. I think having that personal attachment to your work and expecting more from it leads to early burn out when things are not going great


If you job becomes non interesting you need to take actions to make it interesting again. Perhaps some change of projects, of responsibilities, of technologies, of scenery. If it’s not possible or it doesn’t work you will have find another interesting job indeed. You may have to do that a few times during a career but I don’t think you should switch every second year.

It’s true that if you love your job, it may be hard when it’s not going great.


> Of the top reasons people are happy at work

Don't confuse "people" with "this person."


Your company's location/HQ will significantly impact assumed salary ranges.


High salary won't make you happy, but low salary will definitely make you sad.


> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.

My gosh :face_palm:


Which pool did candidates end up being hired from?


Why do you think people work? For fun?


Did you bother asking OP if their selection criteria is too restricted or assume based upon a single post highlighting one criteria?

Really curious how it is air gapped commentators are able to intuit the real sequence others have adopted with so little information. That’s a pretty amazing power.


>And... before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't.

Oh ok.


My former employer had a lot of trouble hiring and getting applicants even though we paid very high wages. They asked for my help. Naturally, they hadn't posted the salary range. I changed up the listing to talk about what we provided as a company for the employee and why we were such a great place to work and included our high salaries. We immediately had trouble keeping up with the number of applicants.

If you pay well, they will come.


In Canada, there is this weird faux pas where asking for market rate gets you flagged for a position that requires in reality less than 4 years of experience require significantly more as it is very much still a employer's market. (4 year experience job requires now 8~10 year exp without the salary to reflect this)

I can see significant strains in hiring because of this cultural backward thinking. If you don't list your salary range, you simply won't get applicants other than the truly desperate.

If you don't offer a competitive market rate you are not going to find quality people or very motivated workers.

It's no surprise that Canada has massive brain drain, especially in the West Coast. Those that stay, like to gaslight and come up with a dozen reasons why a haircut is justified to live in the warm part of Canada.

In the long run, Canada is absolutely going to lose relevancy economically. 1 out of 5 immigrants leave in the first 4 years, record number of Canadians/PR are leaving Canada permanently.


Really having trouble parsing this sentence:

> In Canada, there is this weird faux pas where asking for market rate gets you flagged for a position that requires in reality less than 4 years of experience require significantly more as it is very much still a employer's market.


Not unique to Canada at all, FWIW. Demanding top level skills while paying market rate at best has been going on for years now. Employers just don't want to change, and a lot of candidates are still accepting the circumstances.

Especially noticeable with the whole cloud + microservices + event queue craze, since very few companies do anything with this yet, so few people actually accrue the knowledge they require, and most projects where the benefits of these shine are not projects individuals will tend to pick up.


what are you seeing right now with the whole cloud/MS/CQRS scene? Seems like after serverless took off more companies are pondering whether they need kubernetes at all.

Yet I still see K8 positions without salary expectations. I wonder if companies will be able to afford the upkeep with these shops that hopped on the K8 wagon early before serverless was a thing.


Europe is lagging by a few years. They started demanding anything junior or above knows about cloud/MS/CQRS a few years ago while most of the local bigger names and below (Tier 2) have barely any inhouse knowledge beyond a few week 1 tutorials.


I've noticed posting of salary ranges that are above market rate but when you speak to the company the real range is lower and when you go on glassdoor current salaries are much lower than their real range.


Or the hiring engineers are holding candidates to insanely high standards that they themselves couldn’t be held to. I did a 4.5 hour interview with Capital One where I had to design a full system diagram from a text description. I thought I did great on it because I’ve done it several times in previous roles for real. Then with a different interviewer I had to solve a Python challenge which I passed and then was asked to explain the Big O value for my algorithm which again I did successfully and then I was repeatedly asked if I would change anything with my solution. They probably wanted me to find a log n time solution with low memory usage in like 45 minutes when the algorithm itself was hard to figure out. Then I had a behavioral interview where they use sneaky questions to subjectively decide if you’re going to be a jerk based on your previous work situations which I don’t even remember after a few months. All of this was live over video after already successfully completing a coding exercise. I mean the caliber of person for these basic jobs would have to be insanely talented, invest tons of time interviewing, and then they don’t want to pay you a lot.


Dont mold your interview process after a FAANG, if you're not going to offer FAANG money and incentives.


This is precisely what you should filter out: 2nd-tier non-FAANG companies who have obviously and unthinkingly adopted SV/FAANG interview processes and expectations when they aren't required.


On the flip side, I think people assume that FAANG process is easier than it is so when they see any leetcode style question process they assume it is "FAANG expectation" when it might be an easier question.


My experience with interviews like that is that the manager isn't looking for the perfect candidate. Instead, the manager is looking to expand their empire, which means looking for someone who'll shut up and keep up appearances.

In these kinds of jobs, the best thing to do is get rejected.


That’s basically the same process that Capital One has had for hiring for years. It doesn’t seem like that was tweaked because of the pandemic and remote work.


Interviewed with them just before the pandemic and had the exact same experience, including the low-ball offer.


Funny enough I've recently done an interview circuit around Chicago and Capital One seems to hire a lot out of Chicago. I took a look at their Glassdoor interview page for engineers and immediately saw what you described though the various anecdotal reviews. Was an easy nope for me.


https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/ <- last year, when this requirement began, several companies started refusing to accept job applications from Colorado residents to avoid having to post salary ranges, and someone made this webpage to name and shame these employers.

It seems to have been less active lately, but based on what you say, that may not be because employers are responding to the incentive...


How well is this law actually enforced? As an example, I quickly pulled a physician job at a random HCA hospital in Denver:

https://careers.hcahealthcare.com/jobs/9031565-pulmonary-sla...

I see no salary ranges. I pulled some other medical jobs as well and it seems moderately random if they list anything at all. Really, I may be misunderstanding the law and what information is supposed to be disclosed, but the larger hospitals and medical groups in Colorado mostly don't post salary ranges.


Like many laws, it may be less expensive to break the law and pay the fines than to comply with it.


https://cdle.colorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/Equal%20Pay%20Com...

You can submit anonymous complaints via the form through email. Screenshots are accepted.


It's enforced, but needs to be reported to have action taken.


It's not heavily enforced. The fine is like $5k IIRC, they don't seek out job postings and only take tips, and the first breach by a company is only a warning.


That's a great site. I've also noticed in the last couple months, many jobs (although not most), have started to list salaries for Colorado employees. It's a good ballpark for the rest of us at least, and I like this trend.

I post the salary range for all the jobs that I list because it's a waste of everyone's time if we don't meet each other's expectations on some of those important points before investing more time in finding the right fit.

Recruiters don't like to post the salary range because they want to have a phone call with every candidate. There may have been a time when that made sense for them, but that time is not now. The job market is not the used car lot it used to be.


The form to submit complaints:

https://cdle.colorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/Equal%20Pay%20Com...

You can do so anonymously.

Simple screenshots are accepted.

Submission can be sent by email, also anonymously : cdle_labor_standards@state.co.us

I'd suggest a burner email, if you'd like to stay anonymous : https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&q=burner+...

Please be kind to the worker that is processing these complaints.


I think that web site is out of date. I clicked on a few, and the companies are still hiring Colorado people.

For example, clicking through the Accenture link to a job listing shows:

"As required by Colorado law under the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, Accenture provides a reasonable range of compensation for roles that may be hired in Colorado. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific office location. For the state of Colorado only, the range of starting pay for this role is $112,000-$134,000 and information on benefits offered is here."


Remote job listings made up 18.4% of paid job postings on LinkedIn in May, attracting 53.5% of applications, up from 2.9% in January 2020, according to LinkedIn data.

(Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-that-remote-job-opening-real...)


Using LinkedIn as a source of data is completely pointless.

I see the same exact position posted 20 times by the same 3rd party recruiter.

I see positions posted as listed in Zurich with a title of "Software Engineer, Bangalore Office (relocation provided)" which is listed 30 times for the 30 biggest cities in the world.

I see positions deleted and being re-created daily to pop up in job seeker's filters again.

You could argue anything using this as data.


Yep, getting job statistics from Linkedin is a bad idea simply because Linkedin don’t track “unique” jobs.


distinct*


Unique for the constraint, distinct for the select. :)


Given the amount of people applying for fewer remote jobs one would think employers could/should start paying lower salaries for remote employees, if they haven’t already.


In decades of interviewing and hiring developers I have not seen an actual difference coming from posting salary ranges. I tried many different versions of this.

As a candidate, I do not apply to a thousand different places. I find 3-4 where I would want to work and I do my research before I even apply. I know what they can pay me before I get to talk to them.

As an interviewer I try to stay away from candidates that spray and pray. They probably don't care where they work -- usually a bad sign (except for positions where it truly doesn't matter). They probably also have a problem finding a job -- do I want to play the expensive game of finding out why?

When I meet the candidate the first time, I usually ask if they had a chance to look at our website. I have never hired a person that did not (somehow being disinterested prevents people from being good at what they are doing).

More than that, as a candidate your bargaining power is lowest at the beginning of the process and highest at the end when they had a chance to get to know you and really want to hire you.

And if this is not happening, don't get hired. If you made barely passable impression on your new boss but got hired because they needed a warm body in the chair, your career at the company is almost over before it got even started. First impressions matter and self-fulfilling prophecies are real.

And again, as an interviewer, posting salary ranges is a loose loose for me. If you have posted a range, there is couple of things happening. First, you are loosing ALL candidates that you would gladly pay more than the posted salary range, but now that they see the range they say "Meh" to your posting.

Second, everybody expects to get salary close to the top of the range and will be forever unhappy if they do not. So it is more like you have posted an exact salary you are paying and rather than be flexible you can now pretty much only decide to hire or not hire for this salary.


That is so terrific you are talented enough that out of 3-4 places you want to work, one of them hires you. This seems like terrible advice for most people though.

Even if 4 out of the 4 would hire you, the chances of getting your resume looked at and a callback is very slim - and that's because it's a numbers game on both sides. Popular roles often have 10's-100's of candidates.


> This seems like terrible advice for most people though.

But why?

Maybe reducing number of companies you apply to lets you focus much more on getting prepared and this leads to you standing out from other candidates?

Remember, you don't need a thousand jobs, you just need one. One that suits you.

If I am interviewer and I see a candidate that looks like he/she is prepared, did their research and genuinely care and want to work for the company I work for, don't you think this is huge advantage when comparing to other candidates, all else being equal?

And it is rare that all else is being equal. People who are genuinely prepared typically tend to do a lot of other things right.


The last time I posted a job ad, 100 seemingly qualified candidates responded within 2 days. I interviewed 7 of them, and 6 out of those 7 were more than qualified for the position. Having lived both sides of this, I feel hiring is very much a numbers game.


That advice only works if employees get to pick and choose. If for whatever reason you can't do that, focusing on particular companies besides the basics is pointless.


You also don't see the people who assume you don't pay well and "meh" you due to the lack of a range. If I see a firm that isn't well known with no range, why would I think they pay enough to make it worthwhile? Chances are we'll both waste time.


Your "loose-loose" problem can be easily addressed. Simply post two ads - one for a Developer, one for Senior Developer, Senior Developer range being x000 USD higer than dev range. If mediocre candidates apply for Senior, tell them that you can only offer them the dev Position because they lack qualification x. Vice versa, you can "promote" great dev candidates to the senior dev position. In the end, nobody forces you to hire both.


That's not how this works. If somebody responded to senior developer ad, they will never be happy if I give them regular developer job.

This is how human brain works.

If I started discussion with you at $150k and then negotiated down to $120k you will be permanently unhappy even if you could be happy if we started with $100k and then gave you upgrade to $120k without you even asking.

Same with bonuses. When people receive full bonus couple of times in a row they start treating it as part of their base salary and get very unhappy, feel resentful and cheated if they suddenly don't get it all.


> If somebody responded to senior developer ad, they will never be happy if I give them regular developer job.

Not true. Plenty of people apply for stretch positions they're not qualified to do. They may still accept a lower position, so long as it's established early on. I've hired people like this before.


> First, you are loosing ALL candidates that you would gladly pay more than the posted salary range

Then you're doing it wrong and not posting the correct range. If you can pay more than increase the top end of the range.


[flagged]


How is the GP supposed to respond to this? You're not wrong that its a common mistake, but you're not adding anything to the conversation by remarking on it. And you're not actually asking for any help. Comments like this are generally not well-received on HN.


When I have internal conversation with myself, there is no difference between lose and loose. Probably because in my native language both pronunciations are indistinguishable.

And also at least partly because I mostly work with polite people who will not point out my language mistakes. And I never attended any classes to have a chance for a teacher to weed it out.

As to your comment about sloppiness/ignorance, you might be ignorant thinking that because you care it means everybody else also has to.


Agree in principle.

My approach would not be quite that categorical/binary though, for couple of reasons

1. Sometimes salary ranges are wide enough to not be meaningful - i.e. 80-200k

2. When I'm in the hiring manager role these days, there are roles for which I have limited to no flexibility; but also roles for which I have or can fight for flexibility for the right candidate. If I post e.g. (random numbers) 100-120 Croatian Lipa, for some roles that's hard limit, for others it's the middle section of a bell curve: If I get an exceptional candidate way at the tail of bell curve, I may be able to obtain exceptional compensation. (why not just post that in the first place? See #1. Answers/solutions are easy only if you don't consider enough questions/cases/consequences:).

So if I were looking for a job (not currently), and I see a posting with an interesting role on a very interesting project at a supremely interesting company, I might approach the interview more as "open the door slightly, peak inside, and see what we can come up with for mutual benefit", rather than a strictly interpreted formal requirements description.


> 1. Sometimes salary ranges are wide enough to not be meaningful - i.e. 80-200k

It is always meaningful for a labor seller to know the lower bound.


>but also roles for which I have or can fight for flexibility for the right candidate

Realistically this happens very little in the candidate's favor (they undervalue themselves and the employer decides to throw them a massive bone), which leaves cases where you initially lowballed them and they called you out on it / you realize throwing the lowball offer is not going to work. By forcing ranges, you're flipping the script. Odds are you'll quickly find out what prices these exceptional candidates are going for anyway.

I agree it's not black-and-white, but you're largely arguing for your employer's convenience, not the candidate's.


Are you saying that 2 different people could apply for the same (or equivalent) roles and you would actually pay one 2.5 times as much as the other for the same work?


First, the numbers in my post were explicitly randomized non-representative examples, whether the 80-200 first example or 100-120 second example; and they were intentionally different so nobody would pick on a random example and focus on those numbers instead of my wider point :)

But yes; two people could have the same title on their business card, and bring different expertise and experience, perform different duties and contributions, generate different value, and have different compensation.

I would think this is trivially true - e.g. you have "CEO"s that make any given amount of money, with order of magnitude different compensations even though their title and even job description may be at some level comparable (though CEO compensation is famously contentious, and I for one think should be less extreme, but that's another topic entirely).

I was in a company where "Senior Developer" meant "I've been hanging around this place for 12 months after graduating", and another place where "Senior Developer" meant "I can code a space shuttle AND the HR database that supports the astronauts". "Enterprise Architect" or "Solution Designer" can similarly have vastly different experience, skills or contributions.

It comes down to what one truly means about "equivalent roles", and even more so "same work". I would intellectually assume there are situations and jobs where two people can truly be equivalent in every way; but it's rare where I'm at - we're all special snowflakes, not machines which reliably and boringly produce consistently the same output.

Example,FWIW: my background is as "PeopleSoft Administrator" - basically a sysadmin/DBA/NetworkAdmin/infra in PeopleSoft ecosystem. The skillset and output is vastly, vastly different between two people in the same role. From those who can follow a checklist and mostly reliably build a server if told exactly what to do, to those who can design and risk asses/mitigate massive systems, and troubleshoot critical production problems.

What happens is - lets say I have two senior and one junior PSADMIN on the team, and I want to grow the team, so I open a junior psadmin seat to get somebody to train up. But then I interview somebody and holly caramoli, this person can whip weblogics into submission and optimize queries and create new indexes and automate maintenance like nobody's business; I want that person; I need that person on my team; this person can mentor my senior psadmins and bring everybody up and help us out hugely. I would now like to offer this person a higher salary than I had in mind for the original junior psadmin role I posted.

It happens other way around - I open a senior PSADMIN seat, but I get an eager, enthusiastic new grad who was bold enough to apply, and we think we can train them up but not necessarily at the rate for the Senior PSADMIN seat.

And if I want to capture every conceivable edge case for the seat I open, add geographical dependencies and what not, yeah, the range will be pretty wide. OR, if the range is narrow enough to be useful AND enforced, it'll severely limit the flexibility of who and what I can hire.

Do note I started my initial comment explicitly through my personal lens if I were to apply as a candidate, but with some limited experience in hiring - sure, I like ads that have salary ranges; but my original point was simple - I would not, as a candidate, necessarily binary reject posts without salary; and I might even apply for positions with posted salary range which is too high or too low for my expectations (yes, I once negotiated salary down, because I wanted to put a limit on my scope & responsibilities). I have also, as an employee, personally shied away from public sector positions with grid salaries. To each their own but wanted to share my perspective :)

I understand we all want to feel indignant and upset at injustice (myself included!:), and there's a lot of VERY real injustice happening, and there ARE people doing similar work for vastly different amount of money and we should fix that; but not everything is a subjugation conspiracy, sometimes it's just regular people doing regular work the best they can, and I think flexibility on average is good rather than top-down process and overbearing limits from HQ - that wouldn't let me hire that person for what they're worth.

I am terribly worried that forced posted and enforced salary ranges will in fact lead to salaries lower for everyone, not salaries higher for everyone. I fear it'll end with lowest common denominator as opposed to some form of meritocracy, and may not be what we as employees actually benefit from. Maybe I'm paranoid, we'll see!


This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I one interviewed for a local place and at the very start, first interview, I asked for the salary range and was told "We are very flexible". Against my better judgement I went ahead and did the rest of the interview and later that night they sent me an offer... for ~$30K under what I was making. I emailed them back and told them the number I was looking for and they effectively said "Oh, well we aren't /that/ flexible".

Thankfully this was only 1 interview but I can't imagine going through multiple rounds only to find the pay isn't going to work. There are jobs I pass over because my first thought is "Ehh, I bet that place/job/position doesn't pay well" but I have no way of knowing. I have a limited amount of time I'm willing to spend looking for a new job and going through multiple full interview processes is not high on my list of things I want to do. I absolutely hate having to take that "leap of faith" when starting an interview process. It's absurd that we don't demand that companies post what they are willing to pay.

Also, let's not kid ourselves. There is 1 and only 1 reason why companies don't post this and it's greed. Period, end of sentence. There is no other reason. It's either because they don't want internal people to know what they are hiring at and/or because they want to try to get a developer for the lowest price possible.


If they don't bring it up in the first meeting I will. It's mutually beneficial for both parties not to waste time if the numbers don't work. If they absolutely refuse to give me any range I tell them I don't think it will work and go look somewhere else. It's not the only thing I care about, but it is a make or break item.

Part of my life is having financial goals I want to meet, the same as any business. Sure I have passions and things I want to do to help the world, the same as any business. But if the numbers don't work I need to find a different way or pivot so that they do (again, the same as any business).

A more pessimistic view is refusing to give me a range upfront (even if the gap is large like 90k-300k) tells me they're betting on me giving into the sunken cost fallacy at the end of the rounds. That's not someone I'd want to work for anyway.


Applying (or hiring) for jobs is just like online dating. If there is something that stands out about you that may be an important factor in someone finding you appealing, it is worthwhile to be clear about it up front. If someone does care about it, they will pass on you, but you will get overall higher quality candidates from those who don’t mind or don’t rank the property as highly. It saves everyone time this way.

I am a short man, and I have firsthand experience in this by posting my height on my dating profile. I got fewer matches when I did, but those who matched after were always way better dates!


Haha, I put this on my profile, too!


I could try to ask companies to list their salary but it’s a fight I’m not going to win, at least not alone. So instead, I stay mine.

The vast majority of any applications for me for the last 10 years have started with an incoming message from a recruiter (usually external, very often not engaged by the company). To filter out irrelevant conversations, I respond “Thank you for your interest” and I immediately put:

* my current detailed compensation,

* that I am very happy where I am.

Most conversations stop there. Several recruiters include the range, but it’s usually half to a third of my current compensation. A lot of recruiters assume they can just take the first number and compare that to the total compensation — that’s an easy filter too.

I don’t think it’s a great situation to have my compensation so easily available, but I have regularly refused offers with higher base numbers because the conditions were not there –– a counter-productive bonus structure, or more recently, no remote option; that last one is worth +50% to me, and many recruiters don’t like when I tell them that.


I like the cut of your jib, I'm going to try that with unsolicited recruiters for a while and see what happens.

I've been getting pings over the last two years and if I can get them to a range, it's routinely 80% of my current comp and that never changes. Nobody is getting the idea that you need something to attract talent away from a current job to hire for a new one. There's no salesmanship in this at all.


I’ve had many recruiters think they can try to sell me on the job _after_ I’ve told them it would be half of my compensation…

And, look, I’d love to join a Series A start-up that offers a ton of early stock in a promising idea; I’m typically the rare profile that would happily discuss that, with a spreadsheet and all. But those are almost always meat-by-the-slice “agencies” with no bonus structure. I’m really taken aback by the glib of those recruiters.


A good hunk of them are just lazy.

Just yesterday I had a lackluster job description sent to me by someone I've talked to before, and my rejection was just a boring. He had a small amount of motivation to ask what was wrong and I told him there's nothing in this JD that is interesting at all.

His response: "Well, that's what the client sent to me."

What the fuck value are you adding to this transaction at all, then?


Not sure why you feel the entitled to good service when you're probably not the one paying him. And probably not even the one to close the deal that lets him get paid... He could be much more enthusiastic with potential candidates that are more eager to apply for the jobs he has.

Sure people are lazy, but you're not the paying customer here.


it works really well. the interviews generally won't be a waste of time, though I've definitely been offered down-leveled roles sometimes.

the key is that you want the recruiter to say, firmly, that your ask is within their range.

ANYTHING ELSE ("we can make that up in equity", "we're willing to do that for the right candidate", "we can't guarantee that, but our benefits package is stellar", "i'm not sure, but let's connect anyway?") is a sell and should be approached carefully.


This is my method for recruiters (when I'm looking/interested). I have a blob of text saved in my notes that outlines what I'm looking for and not to bother me (in a nice way) if they can't meet that. The only difference I don't share my current compensation, I share what I'm looking for.


> No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.

You can just ask at the end of the first interview. I've never had a problem doing so.


That's not the point. Companies that don't list a salary range aren't being competitive. I can only apply to so many jobs at once, so I'm going to pick off the listings that list a salary range I want and apply to those first (and probably only).


Exactly. I don't have the patience or juggling skills to apply to too many companies at the same time.

Whenever I've been looking for work I'll google, search linkedin, etc, and pick the top three/four companies that seem interesting. I exclude any that don't include a salary range, and any which have "common knowledge" shared locally about them being bad companies.

For the past few years that's been sufficient, sometimes I get an offer and accept, sometimes I have to choose between two offers. I've not even always taken the higher offers, because money is important, but it's not the only thing that matters when picking a job.


Maybe its a cultural thing, but doing that in a Japanese/Asian setup is a big red flag - to the point my recruiter wife has to warn foreign nationals they may not hear back from the company anymore. Salary negotiation is kept at the very last step.

Personally I feel it is such a waste of time to discover if the salary doesn't meet your expectations after 3-5 rounds of song & dance.


given the sterotype of the overworked salary man, its probably a red flag in that the red flag is "expects to be treated like a human being."


Okay here's the thing: Let me add some details to dispell that "part-myth".

Salarymen do have long working hours & have to go along with those office drinking parties etc. But at the same time, they are treated more personally than an American enterprise employee would. Parents sick in old age? Many companies would give cash incentives to support. Buying a house? CEO might extend you a personal credit line or speak to his banker buddy to give you extremely favorable terms. Got married or had a child? Employers (not coworkers) would give you off-days & some cash/gifts to newborn. Did extremely well a financial quarter? You get a bonus "red letter" (typically a cheque or cash of good amount) or a paid short vacation. If you have passed your probation, Japanese companies will bend over their back to retain you (retrain, reassign under different manager etc.) rather than outright fire you (although thats slowly changing with the economy shrink)

Traditional Japanese companies treat their employees as half families. Managers tend to be more hands-on as a patriarch for the good or the bad. So while we concentrate mostly on the bad parts, we often overlook the good parts too.

I am in no way advocating their culture. Many things desperately need change. But if salaryman situation was so miserable, it would have changed a lot of things long time ago. No matter where we're born - freedom & comfort are valuable for everyone.


There are still some caveats to these things.

Managers becoming patriarchs (or even companies) can change the culture to then make individuals dependent on them. No patriarch, severely restricted options. That's a huge issue in Japan, and it's a huge issue outside Japan as well.

Giving people the stink eye for just mentioning leaving a company makes it easier for malicious companies (black companies in particular) to sink their teeth into naïve individuals. We see this problem in the West as well. We all know employees leave for pretty obvious reasons (and the reason they apply is obvious), but saying anything bad is the #1 sin of any job interview for very, very superficial reasons.

And neither of these are required to keep most of the solely good things.


What is a black company? i am not aware of this nomenclature. Please explain?

>[...] these are required to keep most of the solely good things.

Which things?


A black company is basically a highly exploitative company. They will wring out employees for as much as possible, mostly within legal constraints, at the detriment of employees and the benefit of themselves. [0] probably explains it better.

Since changing jobs is seen as a huge risk and the culture among individuals is to remain loyal, it allows black companies to take advantage of naïve, mostly young individuals. You see similar things outside Japan, but less stigma on changing jobs makes it easier to get away from these situations.

>Which things?

E.g.: you don't need to be extremely judgmental of individuals ditching a job to still have the benefits of loyal employees being rewarded and having a family feeling within the company. Which would solve most of the problems with bad/malicious companies taking advantage of the situation.

[0]: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-black-companies/


Yes. Wholeheartedly agree on both your points


That just sounds like mafia. No disrespect to the Japanese corporate culture, but I would never truly feel safe in this kind of employment.


It has nothing to do with culture. It is simply a reflection of the supply demand curves for labor giving labor buyers much more negotiating power.


But Japan has always been a tech labor-shortage economy. That should incentivize employers to be advertising compensation. I am probably understanding your answer wrong. Could you please elaborate?


The evidence points to the assumption of a shortage being wrong.

By definition, a shortage of labor sellers means labor sellers have an advantage in negotiations. From what I understand about Japan, even in the tech sector, the quality of life for labor sellers is pretty bad with long hours and not much room for high pay.

I imagine if Japanese tech workers has the option of working for employers with compensation offerings like Google and Apple and other US companies, then they would not accept the quality of life that they are. And even with the terrible quality of life they have now, the Japanese world keeps spinning, so any shortage is clearly not short enough to be a showstopper (in the short term).


> By definition, a shortage of labor sellers means labor sellers have an advantage in negotiations.

This is untrue. 1) Employers have more information about the current situation than applicants, and 2) employers collude, applicants don't.


True, the context I intended was where all participants have information about the market. If either party has incomplete or inaccurate data, then there exists arbitrage opportunity.

Hence the importance of price transparency, and laws requiring a minimum pay figure are a start.


> And even with the terrible quality of life they have now, the Japanese world keeps spinning

So it boils down to the working culture, no? The one I referenced initially..

My wife is interviewing for Oracle HR right now (mostly done deal). She is due for the final interview tomorrow. The offer has still not mentioned her compensation yet - although from hearsay she knows a ballpark. It seems even American companies play by Japanese ways when in Japan.


Suppose a Japanese bank had a technical problem that only one person could fix and it had brought down their whole system and they were losing tons of money.

Culture would take a backseat and the Japanese execs would start talking compensation real fast.

Clearly whoever is in charge of hiring at Oracle for your wife’s position is betting that your wife will not mind waiting to discuss compensation and/or they can find someone else if your wife does bring it up. Simultaneously, your wife is betting that she cannot find another position if she brings up compensation at a point that she thinks could cost her the offer.

If your wife was indispensable to Oracle HR, and she wanted to bet on that, there is no reason she cannot start talking compensation whenever she wants. Or if she has alternatives that are willing to talk compensation, then she can skip Oracle HR and move on to better options.


She does have alternatives in IBM & Tesla. But they functioned the exact same way in interview. And given she's a top biller (~60 million yen per annum for her employer) Oracle wants her by August 1st week which is insane given she still has to give 30 days notice to Michael Page (but that will remain to be seen). I think in her case, she didn't bring it up because that isn't the norm. So all in all, it's not the market dynamics - but culture dynamics still.


Even with an advantage, it takes a concerted effort to push for culture change. Things can get by on inertia for a long time.


That is the main reason IMHO plaguing the work culture. Changes are slow because of inertia & the fact everyone tries to keep a decorum and play nice / polite


> Japan has always been a tech labor-shortage economy

The meagre salaries tell a different story.


It is a labor-short economy. But the labor pricing isn't changing because hiring runs like a cartel. Employers don't collude but there is an "accepted bracket" of salaries generally known, which hiring managers don't deviate from.

Its like how you're aware of a price of an item across different stores or markets. Same - but the item is a tech employee.


Typically I've been asked by the recruiter what my expectations are, as one of the first questions in an initial candidate screen.

I'm generally in favor of posting salary ranges. I like to know how the company values the positions they are hiring for, and I don't really want to talk to a recruiter at all if it's not going to be a salary match, so I like the idea of being able to screen better as a candidate.

But now that I've been on the hiring side, there's some flexibility I think we lose if we post those ranges: what do you do if you like a candidate, but not for the role they applied for? Perhaps their skills and background are not quite what you're looking for in this role, but you know another team has an open rec and this candidate is perfect. Or, maybe you've posted for a particular seniority range and you like the candidate but they are more/less senior than the posting, and you want to scale the position up or down to meet them. Neither of these scenarios (which seem to happen with regularity) preclude putting the range in the job description, but then the redirect or rescope feels bait-and-switchy when it's really not.


I would have no problem with a company saying "We really like you, but we found a better match for role x. If you're interested we think you'd be great in role y and here are the details." If I don't like the compensation of role y, I'll simply decline.


That's because recruiters exploit lack of transparency to determine if you're worth their time and sucker you into lowballing yourself.


Yeah I figure that happens. I declined to answer with the role I have now, and it worked out :shrug:. Not everyone is trying to screw you.


> Typically I've been asked by the recruiter what my expectations are, as one of the first questions in an initial candidate screen.

So, if your expectations are below what they are willing to pay, they'll just offer your less?


Better to ask before the first interview, but that still takes more time than reading it off the posting.


I think it sends a back signal and will put a slight negative mark on the interviewers' memories of that interview. Asking at the end of the interview shows that you care about other things, too.

You can argue that it shouldn't, but people are people.


I find it really bothers some companies while others are proud of their salary ranges and will gladly share upfront.

The ones who get offended usually pay less and have had issues with employees quiting over low salaries and/or have heard negative candidate feedback around pay


As long as that meeting is with your recruiter. As someone conducting technical interviews, I have no idea how much is on the table for candidates (I mean, I kind of know in general for the role, but not specifically).


I don't like having to ask.


Don't ask. Tell. "Hey just to ensure that we are on the same page, I am ideally looking for a minimum of $xyz/year. Is that in the range for this role ?". Then pause and wait for their response.


That's one quick way to get exactly a salary of $xyz, and with the word "ideally" in there you're admitting you'd go slightly lower.


That’s why you make sure your minimum amount is something you would actually consider. Otherwise you’re only screwing yourself.

On the other hand, giving a range and getting offered the bottom (which we already agreed is sufficient, otherwise why is it your bottom?) gives you the opportunity to negotiate non salary terms like health care, holiday, work from home, etc.


Ok don't use the word "ideally" and say "minimum". But nothing wrong with getting what you want exactly. You can't have it both ways where you don't disclose your number but expect employer to. Decide what works for you, tell them that and shut up. Simple.


ask for more than $xyz and reject if they offer less than $xyz.


NEVER mention your minimum. If anything you should highball.


what else do you not like but still have to do?


What makes you think he has to take jobs that don't tell him the salary upfront?


Ok.


What happens to me is that I ask, they agree, and then they make a lower offer anyway.


That's when it's appropriate to rage on them, to inflict some small degree of emotional pain on the recruiter or HM or whoever falsely got you to waste your time, both as a little bit of selfish satisfaction and also to hopefully make it better for the next person. Then trash them on social media if you have a following. Maybe send them an invoice for your time. They won't pay it but it might be a fun thing to do.


I can just tell the customer the price of my product after the first demo


Some companies do that. Some actually do huge, heavily customized deployments where it is hard to tell the price upfront. For some others it's just to jack up the price if they smell a sucker.


Yep. If they don't provide it, it's always my first 'do you have any questions for me' question on the initial 'tell you about the job' call.


Ask before the first interview. You shouldn't waste your time on an interview until you know the position matches what you're looking for.


I would ask before the interview process even starts. Actually I wouldn't, I would just skip like the OP.


While I agree that the information should be there, I've had some success with asking "do you have a salary range you can share with me". Some quickly give a range, a few will reply "well... it depends" and about half dodge the question or ignore it. Most of the "well... it depends" group will end up giving a range if communication stops. The ones that completely refuse, well, that's part of their corporate culture and they'll have to deal with the shrinking pool of candidates who are willing to invest time in the hiring process without knowing the compensation range.


On the [Who's Hiring] threads we used to upvote those that listed salary and downvoted those that didn't to signal to companies that this is vital information (it saves everyone time). Is this something we should start doing again? We could also put this in the template.


I agree that salary ranges are needed.

I would add though, "leetcode" is also why companies struggle to hire.

I avoid outright companies who use this as a filter, and cut the process short if I encounter it along the way.

Prima donna? Sure. But I believe quite strongly these things measure memorized puzzles, not skills.


Personally I'm more willing to go along with leetcode for FAANG-type giants, simply because in that situation it's more of a filtering mechanism than anything. I still dislike it but I understand why it's there.

For startups and small-to-midsize companies however which typically aren't awash in candidates for technical roles leetcode makes little sense and I generally won't entertain it.


We don’t post salary ranges right now. We are a small firm and cannot keep up with the salaries from enterprises in our area. We are looking for (and finding) candidates that are willing to sacrifice parts of their salary for 100% remote, flexible work time, PTO and others.

We decided to screen applicants in an informal phone call and discuss salary options at the end, after they had a first impression of how we are as a firm.


Why wait for the interview? Post an advert that explains exactly this.

People would who are not prepared to make that trade off will skip you and you’ll be left with people that are.

There have been times where I’d have been ok with that trade off but would have skipped over you for not making the salary clear.


Why not post the range and say what you just said?


I think I can see a scenario.

You think you're hot shit on a silver platter. You apply for jobs with high TC listed and others which you believe will also be high TC based on... reasons, even though they don't list their salary ranges.

You get callbacks from some of the high TC positions you applied for. You also get callbacks from the non-listed salary positions. Cool. None of the highest, none of your first choices, but whatever, an interview is an interview.

You go through the processed and find out a lot of the non-listed positions have TCs much lower than you were hoping for. TCs so low, you wouldn't have considered the job if you had known. Whatever, you'll just ghost them. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

But then the days stretch on and the only positions submitting offers are the low TC jobs you applied for. You take the blow to your ego along with the job. Gotta pay those bills.


but in that case... isn't it bad for the employer if the person is not actually happy with the salary is they are going to bail as soon as they find something else?


That's assuming they can. In my hypothetical scenario, it's their best offer because it's actually where they should be but our hypothetical protagonist has an over-inflated sense of self-worth.

Like I said, it's just a possible scenario where I can see how not posting their range could get them more applicants.


Concern was that it still turns down too many, maybe we were too careful.

We have another vacant position soon, I might try it.


You should! Not everyone wants to work as a cog in the giant enterprise machine. I've taken a lower salary from a small company specifically because they are small.

I would caution you against the "willing to sacrifice parts of their salary for 100% remote, flexible work time, PTO and others." mindset though. 100% remote, flexible work time, PTO, and other benefits are not added bonuses at this point: they are the minimum requirements for many positions/prospective employees. Instead, focus on the selling the qualities of your workplace that make people happy to work there (for instance, work/life balance, no red tape/micromanagement, creative freedom on solutions, interesting problems to solve, etc).


Why do you want to mislead these people in the first place? The advert has a role in filtering, and in turning down many people you are avoiding wasting time both for you and the potential candidate.


Give it a try. I've taken a lower paying job in exchange for a better experience. It happens!


IMO, things like the ability to work remotely, set up a flexible schedule and get a nice amount of paid time off are part of the compensation as much as the salary.

Some people just want money; hoard it like a dragon, invest, retire early. Others are perfectly fine with earning less if they can live better lives in exchange. After all, what's a huge pay check worth if you can't enjoy your hard-earned money in the prime of your life? Or perhaps the dev has a family and prefers spending time with their kids? You can still make money later in life, but your kids' life milestones are irreplaceable.

Posting a lower salary position may attract different people (i.e. people who value their private life more than the money) but that's not necessarily a bad thing. With enough experience, someone can always get more money elsewhere; their employment may only last until the second a better job offer comes in. People who value the additional benefits more are less likely to get them at other companies, as the market is aimed at making the most money right now, so I'd expect them to stick around longer and have more of a vested interest in the success of your company.

You may miss out on top players who want to see their money's worth, but if your package is as good as you say it is, I don't see why you wouldn't post your salary ranges. Focus the ad on what makes the job great and add the range for transparency and I'm sure you'll find the right people.


How has that gone for your firm? Why was the decision made not just be upfront about the salary? If you are afraid that people won't be willing to work with you if they knew the salary then why potentially waste their time?

The first impression of how you are as a firm is the job ad, and if you don't post a salary the first impression is worse.


> for 100% remote, flexible work time, PTO and others.

Given how much more common this is now across all white collar work, do you find your company less competitive?


Why would you try to compete with them instead of enumerating your advantages?


TLDR your company likes to waste candidates time, that looks like big red flag


The salary ranges are largely meaningless though? Equity compensation for good tech roles is like half or more. Also, levels.fyi has most salary information you could need.


Equity compensation has meaningful value for a small minority of roles (i.e: at liquid companies) so for the majority of job seekers, salary is the compensation.


Yes, don’t be fooled by private company valuation.


And for the most part, even if it's a lot of money, I can't pay my bills with RSUs or options. I may be willing to accept a bit lower cash salary if the equity numbers are huge, but I still need cash in my bank account to pay for things that is above some number per month.


It also depends a lot on the person. Like, I totally refuse equities as a compensation and thus would not consider any job with a salary under my minimum, even if the equities would bring the total compensation to an extremely high value.


Sure it may not be total comp but if I see a range of 120-160k I'm not going to apply when my current base 180k.


Yea, not unless they're giving 150k+ in fairly stable equity. Like, I'd take a pay cut in raw salary if they were matching it in 1-3 year RSUs for a public stock.


Colorado's already thought of that. https://cdle.colorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/INFO%20%239_%20Eq...

> Compensation and Benefits to Disclose. Employers must include in each job posting (1) the rate of compensation (or a range thereof), including salary and hourly, piece, or day rate compensation; (2) a general description of any bonuses, commissions, or other compensation; and (3) a general description of all benefits the employer is offering for the position. Benefits that must be generally described include health care, retirement benefits, paid days off, and any tax-reportable benefits, but not minor “perks” like use of an on-site gym or employee discounts. At a minimum, employers must describe the nature of these benefits and what they provide, not specific details or dollar values — such as listing that the job comes with “health insurance,” without needing to detail premium costs or coverage specifics — and cannot use an open-ended phrase such as “etc.,” or “and more,” rather than provide the required “general description of all of the benefits


> a general description of any bonuses, commissions, or other compensation

By my reading, that just means that they have to disclose that equity compensation is available, not the amount of that equity compensation. Contrast that with "the rate of compensation (or a range thereof), including salary and hourly, piece, or day rate compensation," which actually requires a number.


This is far out of my competency. My understanding of the bill is that it's meant to close the wage gap between men and women by increasing salary transparency. https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/2019a_085_signe... says:

> It is the intent of the general assembly to pass legislation that helps to close the pay gap in Colorado and ensure that employees with similar job duties are paid the same wage rate regardless of sex, or sex plus another protected status.

where "wage rate" is:

> FOR AN EMPLOYEE PAID ON AN HOURLY BASIS, THE HOURLY COMPENSATION PAID TO THE EMPLOYEE PLUS THE VALUE PER HOUR OF ALL OTHER COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS RECEIVED BY THE EMPLOYEE FROM THE EMPLOYER; AND

> (b) FOR AN EMPLOYEE PAID ON A SALARY BASIS, THE TOTAL OF ALL COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS RECEIVED BY THE EMPLOYEE FROM THE EMPLOYER.

Any judge is going to look at the intent in order to help resolve ambiguity in interpretation.

If stock option compensation need only be advertised as "we offer stock options" then my uninformed impression is that that would negate the intent of the bill.

Contact a Colorado lawyer for actual meaningful advice.


> Equity compensation

The vast majority of developer jobs offer no equity comp.


For tech in certain areas / domains yes. For most of positions all over the world, salary is the only compensation.


Spammers != headhunters. The former tend to post low effort, programmatic crap and may not be allowed to give straight answers to your $$ questions. The latter will offer you an above market salary range up front, and then help you negotiate a higher number during the hiring process. Know who you are dealing with.


Complicating things here is the fact companies like Amazon top up their compensation with stock grants (or maybe ISOs, it's been a while since I worked there.) So you see a job offer from Amazon that says the salary range for a SDE I is $85k-$160k, but I'm pretty sure they would low-ball you on salary but give you a stock grant that might be worth $80k over 4 years if AMZN stock holds its value.

I think my point is... yes... it is very cool companies are posting salary ranges more often now. But it's just the beginning of the evaluation process. Bonuses, options, grants, etc. aren't listed and could be valuable.


Companies like amazon... So, what, maybe 100 companies out of tens or hundreds of thousands? Why even bother talking about it.


It's even worse when you realize most of that stock is paid in years 3-4 whereas a lot of people don't last past year 2


Interesting, I know of a place where the same law had pretty much the opposite effect: every company pretty much just posts sth like "The minimum salary for this position is 35k/year, but we will overpay based on qualification". In reality, they'll easily pay 2-3x that amount, but my suspicion is that the law had an overall downward effect on salaries (especially at the junior end - being offered 1.5x the advertised amount might feel like a great offer if you don't have a good idea of the market).


I think this is excellent progress (posting ranges) and I've made a habit of always telling candidates I'm interviewing right up front what the range is so that I don't waste their time (or mine!). It really is just good business.

That said, I want to make an observation here on this part of the comment by Carrok:

> I am currently job hunting. I started looking locally, everything lists salary ranges, perfect. I can know which positions to skip and which ones might be a good match right away.

This is indeed a feature, but there is a trap here as well. I have watched a number of engineers who join a company that gives annual raises. They stay at that company for > 10 years and their salary is very comfortable for them. Then they decide to change jobs and the salary range for their current role with no history at the company is significantly less than they are currently making.

As you get more senior experienced, it is important to consider that there are two components of your "worth"; The skills you bring to the job is kind of your intrinsic value, and the knowledge of how to get things done at this company is a value "add-on." You lose that add-on when you start at a new company.

If you've been hopping from job to job every couple of years that won't be a significant issue for you but if you've been somewhere for 5+ years it could be, so keep that in mind while looking around.


That title is misleading. Reading that blog post it should really be "Tell HN: You can't hire me because you don't post salary ranges" or "Tell HN: I don't apply for jobs without salary ranges".


isn't it same any way you look at it?


Definitely not.


When tasked with new hires, I was often biased by startup-culture to make sure everyone was fed at my table. However, this also led to overpaying inexperienced kids with senior level salaries, and often incurred a lack of work ethic from some (money makes some people stupid). In general, we found firing the counter-productive after 1 month was the most effective means at reminding everyone of their obligations, as handing out pay cuts and manipulative antics just fosters resentment.

  If someone appears purely motivated by compensation packages, than you can be sure they belong in a bureaucratic process rather than a development team.  Likewise, companies that try to cost optimize labor for a fixed-cost project have doomed themselves to be crushed by competitors.


You sound like someone I would never want to work with and certainly for.

Tenure is not equivalent to performance, contra your "inexperienced kids" rhetoric. The idea that you can judge someones performance well enough in 1 month to fire frequently within that time frame sounds like bogus to me.


It is anecdotal opinion based on my experience, and people need to learn to get along with people they don't like... as it is called being a professional.

To "judge someones performance" one needs to understand how systems work in detail, and empathize with individual situations. In general, I prefer ex-service personnel, as they typically are self disciplined and require minimal oversight.

I still respect your opinion, but disagree because it sounds like someone who has never had to manage teams, projects, and or budgets.

Enhance your calm. =)


> Most jobs on nation-wide job boards do not post a salary range. I will not even click on those job postings. It's simply not worth it.

Not everyone is like you. I don't think that you can generalize based on the criteria you use to filter out companies.


Yeah, but there's an adage in customer service that for every customer who tells you what's wrong, ten more walked out without saying anything. That may apply here.

Personally, I'm 100% on board with OP's point. I've been putting out feelers lately, and I likewise interpret an unstated salary range as a warning sign. Who knows if they speak for the majority, but they're certainly not alone.


I think they should post salary minimums instead of a range - that huge range is just eye candy. Oh, but not enough people will be interested at the minimum? Then your minimum wasn't good enough and isn't actually the minimum.


> Oh, but not enough people will be interested at the minimum?

It's way worse than that. I recently had the displeasure of reading one of the dumbest thread of comments on a linkedin post because the job description did exactly that: mention the minimum salary.

It was a job post for a "seo and social media manager" position which can mean a lot of things, can mean everything and can mean nothing, depending on many factors (eg: company size, number of customers). The (minimum) pay was 20 k€ (south europe).

Everybody was looking at the number, no one had even considered it was the bare minimum and that maybe the original company was looking for some 20-something fresh out of high school, which no particular set of competencies.


How long does it take to get competent at that?

If it's not a very long time, then why shouldn't everyone get a somewhat similar pay range? Unless the plan is the hire that person out of high school and then rapidly ramp up their pay as they get good.

> can mean everything and can mean nothing, depending on many factors (eg: company size, number of customers)

If the position might not be full time, then that's an important consideration. But if it is full time it shouldn't matter how big the company is or how many customers there are or how much "nothing" there is.


well the company should decide if they are looking for fresh graduates or experienced candidates then, judging by 20K seems more likely they don't wanna experienced people or dunno what they really want if they come up with such number


I like that. "If you get an offer, it won't be lower than X."


Why would you want less information than more information?

A range is a minimum, plus more.


For me, the lack of salary range equals the following:

1. There's nothing to brag about. If you pay well and you seek talent in a market where most of the time it's the workers that are in position of power you want the people to know that you're paying well. FAANG wouldn't be half as famous if the pay was mediocre.

2. There's lots of people being chronically underpaid and revealing salary ranges would cause them to revolt. Even if I'd get hired and receive a competitive wage it still highlights an issue with keeping the wage up to the market standards, which makes the job a temporary gig at best and I'd have to start applying to other companies soon enough, so why bother in the first place?

3. The company doesn't actually want an employee and is just probing the market.

4. The company doesn't have an actual number in mind (or actual hiring budget) and their offer is not going to be serious.

5. Whoever is in charge believes in some fairy tales about pay not being important or people working for passion and assumes I am equally as dumb and naive.

All in all I most likely won't consider the company if the information about pay is absent. There's nothing to gain by wasting time with the whole process only to find out the pay is mediocre and I really don't expect to be surprised by an above-average offer.


Just ask in the initial phone screen. Say you won't entertain roles below <your number here> and you don't want to waste everyone's time. Usually recruiters appreciate this and if they can't give you the number themselves they will check with the hiring manager.

Some people say this reduces your negotiating leverage because it reveals your hand too much. I try to get around this by making clear it's a minimum, not a maximum, and anything other than stellar equity/benefits/WLB will require even higher base


Some people say this because it's true. This is an ineffective negotiating tactic. You shouldn't accept anything less than stellar equity/benefits/WLB. But if you do, now you are in the position of saying "Well, your equity/benefits/WLB suck, so I want more money." There's no positive way to spin that. You look like an ass and are negotiating from weakness.

I tell them exactly what number I'm looking for. Saves everybody a bunch of time. Yes, my current job I got what I asked for.


> But if you do, now you are in the position of saying "Well, your equity/benefits/WLB suck, so I want more money."

"The equity/benefits/WLB you describe aren't consistent with what I was expecting. I'll need higher base if this is going to work."

Salary is not the only part of a compensation package. If other parts of the package pencil out, great, if not, you're within your right to ask for more salary. Some employers have more flexibility on salary, others might be more flexible in other areas.

This is a very common negotiating technique; if you can't reach agreement on one point, expand the negotiating space.

Anyone who would be offended by the above worth working with anyway.

> There's no positive way to spin that. You look like an ass and are negotiating from weakness.

If you think negotiation is about what party can project dominance the most, you don't have a clue about negotiation. You're not haggling for cab fare, you're establishing the terms of a relationship that will continue for years if things go well, and in those situations you want to be collaborative rather than adversarial. This will pay dividends down the road.


If you believe everything you just said, then you'd understand why opening with the minimum salary is not consistent with it.


I always ask salary range before I even apply, and especially before I share a resume - like the OP, I don't want to waste my time (or the recruiters time) doing the dance only to find out they are not even close to what I need to consider a move.


> Some people say this reduces your negotiating leverage because it reveals your hand too much. I try to get around this by making clear it's a minimum, not a maximum, and anything other than stellar equity/benefits/WLB will require even higher base

Or just ask for the range without discussing your requirement. I've never had a recruiter or hiring manager who balked when I turned the question around. If the numbers are favorable, I just say, "If it doesn't work out, it won't be a numbers issue." If not, I say, "That really isn't in the range I'm looking for, and I don't think it'd be in our mutual interest to pursue this opportunity."

The former response preserves an opportunity for later negotiation if the interviewing process goes well.


I have no problem applying for jobs without a salary range. I typically ask in the first recruiter call.


Listing salary ranges is bad for employees because it limits upside from negotiation. Like everything it's just a trade-off between capping your downside and limiting your upside.


I have successfully managed to negotiate higher than the supposed maximum.

I applied for a regular SE role and when I stated my expectations the recruiter said that this is over 10% more than the maximum. I stated that if I go any lower than that I will have no reason to switch companies. He offered some sort of a signing bonus (which was rather small) and the promise of quickly getting into a more senior role, which would put me in a higher pay range. I didn't budge.

They came back 3 days later and actually offered me the senior role, the pay I wanted and a signing bonus that was 4x what previously offered and I accepted.


I got a solution.

> Position pays 100k+ depending on experience.

Solved.

Or potentially

> Position pays 100k-130k+, depending on experience

If a company isn't getting applicants, boost that baseline.


Most candidates overestimate their ability. No one would like to hear that they should get the lower end of the range because well they didn't deserve the higher range.


> Position pays 80-130k+ depending on experience but no one actually makes under 100k and 80 is only here to make you feel better

Solved.


That’s like saying unions suck because Conor McGregor or Lebron James won’t make as much as they do now.


I don't think it's true that companies "can't hire". Many companies are freezing hiring for now given economic conditions, and the market equilibrium between supply and demand while still apparently candidate centric is nowhere near as favorable as it was a year ago, and the pendulum continues to swing the other way.

Nonetheless, to your point, whether salary ranges are posted or not is likely a moot point. The truth is you might see anywhere near 50-100% dispersion for a role. Figure out what range or number you're looking for, see if they can offer it on the first call, and go from there. If you're really insistent on that as a prescreen, do what I did when I was in your shoes and use a platform like Hired that lets you prescreen offers.

I just think that if I were you, I would be careful about having an attitude that implies "I know why you can't hire and you don't." The process you are in is much more similar to dating than it is to a standardized test being taken. Top hiring managers at top companies are not having trouble hiring (myself included) because they are not squeaky wheels. We're hiring silently, paying above market, getting inbound referrals. And similarly, top candidates are not having trouble sourcing multiple offers because they can command a premium (which was always the case for me when the shoe was on the other foot).

My advice to you would be to rely on your skills and ability to get competing offers which you play against each other to do the heavy lifting of increasing your salary. Then it won't matter whether companies post salary ranges or not. If, on the off chance you aren't able to get multiple competing offers, then I think you have your work cut out for you and I would highly recommend to sharpen your interviewing abilities first as that will serve your career very well in the long run.


Yep - as a top-tier passive candidate in data science, I swipe left on job postings and recruiter emails that don't provide a salary range upfront.

Interviews are an enormous investment of time and effort these days. I won't go through one unless I'm extremely confident I can come out with the offer I want.


If a company/recruiter hasn’t indicated salary, then I just tell them what my remuneration expectations are.

If it’s out of their range neither of us waste our time interviewing each other.

Or possibly, the company has no idea what they should be paying. In telling them what I expect they too may adjust their expectations.


For some companies, giving a compensation range, e.g. $150k-$200k, would most likely create turmoil internally. Imagine Bob has many years in that role, and makes $160k. If I were Bob, I'd have a conversation with HR as to why I'm on the low end of the range.


Good for "Bob"?

Bad on HR for trying to keep talent at the lowest price they can away with. I'm not willing to accept this as a valid "excuse", it just tells me your company is shitty. Bob /should/ take that info and either get a raise or leave for a place that values his work.


Good. That’s what it should do.


In Austria we have a law that ever jobposting must have a minimum salary and if the company is open to overpay.

It lead to lower entry positions salaries. Because they are too afraid to push for what they are worth (as they dont know it) and the salary "is already posted".


Every recruiter that reaches out gets my same copy-pasted response, which includes "what are the responsibilities" and "what is the salary range of this position" which often ends with "sorry, not looking to take a pay cut".


Just a note: in California you have the right to request a salary range after your first interview, and the company is forbidden from asking your salary history. When they ask you what you want, give a big number and negotiate from there!


https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/california_equal_pay_act.htm


It's a tough problem from a game theory point of view.

The company wants to hire someone who wants the job, is paid within (below?) budget, and so on. They'll also try to pay you less if they can.

If they publish the salary range, there goes the chance to pay you less. If the salary is low, you cut out people who might like the job but won't even consider it. The company might like them enough to pay more, too.

Employees don't want to waste time on jobs where they wouldn't take the pay.

I suspect not publishing salaries is a Nash equilibrium. Might not be great but you converge to it anyway.


The job I have now and am happy with, I would not have applied for if the "official" salary range had been published. What ultimately sold me were intangible things that I only discovered after being in a conversation with them. And it turned out there was enough other flexibility for things to fall into place.

The range is often a leaky abstraction anyway. As a hiring manager I've wanted flexibility for the right candidates. As a candidate I've wanted to know that comp is more personalized than arbitrarily capped by a bureaucratic process.


Salary ranges are great, and I think it indeed can save time for some job seekers (as well as employers) but on a side note, regardless of posting salary ranges, sometimes you want to hire people who do not only look for a better pay. Sometimes you can't pay better, and sometimes you know you can only pay worse (e.g. a seed stage startup) and all you can offer is - interesting problems to solve, culture, upside, vision, working with other crazy people who took a pay cut to try and move the needle and make a bigger impact.


Then post the lower salary range and save yourself and the candidates who won't work for that kind of money the time.


I created a confidential salary survey app for companies/candidates who don't want to give a number. The idea was that the company would put a budget, and just get a yes/no answer whether the candidate expectation was in range.

This way nobody loses any negotiation leverage, and no interview time would be wasted over salary.

I didn't know how to get traction for it though. Any ideas?

https://payscope.appspot.com/


I am currently working with a friend who is searching for remote tech jobs. I even went through the internal job board at my company. No salary ranges posted anywhere.

And while I agree salary should not be a top priority when looking at a position, it does answer one interesting question. Am I qualified for this position. You would think a job description would answer that question. But most people already know that job descriptions are wish lists, not requirements. Pay range really tells me how qualified an applicant needs to be.


I don't share/forward jobs without a salary range, and usually refuse to engage with them. I do ask, and if they're fuzzy, I understand it's not a good match. That said, and beyond my personal preference of a relatively privileged person (white male early 40s), this website gives some ideas on why it's better to publish salary ranges: https://showthepay.com/


Given the number of upvotes this has, and I would guess, too, that people who upvote a story don't always comment, I would say there is pretty strong agreement with posting salaries. Like, everyone, just get over yourselves, and post salaries. Then we can go on to debating other aspects of hiring, work culture, work-life balance, etc. I am not saying that to diminish the salary thing, but of all of the issues surrounding hiring and working somewhere, the posting of salaries seems like a no-brainer.


I have this problem. As a result, a friend and I made a developer job search and recruiting tool that requires employers to state how much they pay. It will actively filter out developers who won’t accept less than what you’re offering.

Developers express their preferences — pay, schedule, interests, values, etc. — and then only hear about new jobs if they match their preferences.

https://polyfill.work


This has been my personal experience too. I found myself opening only the job postings which have a salary range mainly because you need a lot of time and motivation to go through the whole process. Especially when you already have a job. This eventually inspired me to create RemoteFriendly[1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32019598


From an employer's point of view there are many good reasons not to state a salary range, the 2 most obvious ones being:

- once you state clearly what your max is, why would your preferred candidate settle for anything less?

- why would you want to exclude good candidates willing to accept lower comp than what you thought your min was?

So then some places are a candidate's market... well maybe employers have to adapt, but I can see why they would not want to.


The bizarre situation in the UK is that most companies will not post a salary on their job ads, but recruitment firms, advertising the same role, will post a salary.

This means I will always go for the ad with a salary and the company will have to pay the recruiter their finder's fee.


I think for cold applications this is probably the case, salary ranges (if competitive) will help encourage people to apply.

However, recently I've opted to just response to LinkedIn messages that seem interesting. Many of them have the range, or if not, I just respond asking what the salary range is prior to having a call with them. Most of the time I get a response, and if not, then to the dustbin they go.


Also, to recruiters: non-desperate candidates are not interested in your semi-coherent description of what 'the stack includes' if you don't mention the company name.

(Maybe if it's something really niche? But I receive things like 'you seem like a great fit for this python position'.. yeah, maybe, but that could be anywhere. I'm not interested 'because python'.)


Every interview screen I've had in the last few years has been an opportunity to discuss salary before getting into the more grueling technical stages of the pipeline.

Yes a screen call is annoying especially if you have a current work schedule but it really isn't that inefficient considering the phone screen is also the ideal medium to pick apart other aspects of the company and its constraints.


A phone screen is fine for that other stuff, but why invest even 30 minutes if you know they won’t pay what you are looking for?


Do you have some data to back this up or is it just your experience? Because I've recently hired 4 people without specifying ranges in either of the job posts and I didn't feel like I had any issue with it. 3/4 job ads got over 100 applicants and the 4th got like 70. All jobs in tech.

I feel like your assumption that companies don't find people might be wrong.


I live in Serbia. The amount of job posts that have salary ranges is about 0.1%. That sucks. Also, you never get an email from your potential employer that you aren't their choice for that position. You just assume that with time passing by.


For most companies, you can tell them what your expected salary range is during the first round of phone screens or meetings - no need to wait till the end. The HR represenative should be able to tell you right there and then whether they are comfortable with that number or not. The biggest tip is to know what your market worth is so that expectations of both parties align.


> No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.

It's somewhat nice to have salary range in the job posting, but I've never felt strongly about.

You should not go through 7 rounds of interviews, or even a single round, if the comp isn't a fit!

That's the conversation to have on the very first intro call with the recruiter.


We don't have such a law in Poland but we have a nice culture of posting salary ranges in IT offers. It's very ubiquitous on boards, Facebook, Slack channels, etc. We also have a (very popular) board where it's required to share a salary range (you can take a look on nofluffjobs.com if you are interested, it's not an ad, I just love the idea).


I put all companies without listed salary at the bottom of the pile. No salary listed means the company assumes candidates will see the low pay, and will see nothing else of value in the job, and skip it. Which means the company thinks it doesn't provide competitive value as an employer. Why work for a company that doesn't believe in itself?


This is true.

I respond to most recruiters now that I won't even talk to them without a salary range. And then they send it right over.


I personally find that 90% of the responses I get to salary requests are:

"I would love to chat to you on the phone about this on the phone with you!"

"How dare you ask me that, you should be thankful for me even writing to you with this incredibly vague offer in the first place."

I tried responding to ~20 recruiters with a copy-pasted question about salary, and none responded with anything even close to a salary range, only the responses above.

Needless to say, I have simply given up responding to recruiters at all.


I have a similar approach that works well, you just need one more filtering step.

Anyone who reacts negatively to the salary request, you ignore and move on. Don't even bother replying.

For the "lets hop on a call" folks, I have a second copy-paste that just politely states that my schedule is tight between interviewing and my day job and that I want to ensure a reasonable fit is possible before investing a lot of time.

Anyone who _still_ hasn't given a clear answer after those 2 tries I stop replying to.

To be clear, well north of 90% of inbound linkedin recruiters will fail this test, but I've found it to be a surprisingly low-effort way to separate valid opportunities from uninteresting recruiter spam


There are a few that are worth dealing with, and a large number that aren't. When you stumble into the few, even if you aren't looking, take note of who they are. You may want them later.


I'm glad to hear it.

I'll keep watching out for the first.


I don't think that leaving it out of the job posting would ever prevent me from pursuing a role.

If I'm interested in a job, I ask for the compensation range. If they don't tell me, then I will not pursue the role. Personally my other requirements like field and company are much better ways to narrow the search than salary.


I believe the reason they don't post salary ranges isn't to lure new hires into underpaid positions, at least not primarily.

it's in order to avoid renegotiation with current employees, who may have negotiated a less favorable deal, under different circumstances or because they can't haggle.


I agree with OP 100%. I once went through multiple rounds, got an offer only to discover they wanted to pay me tens of thousands less than I was already making. I'll never engage another company about a job without knowing the salary info ahead of time.


Let's be honest about salary ranges, though - posting two different numbers is a meaningless nod to convention. Everybody who applies ignores the low number and expects the high number (maybe a little more, because they're "that good").


I would argue that the lower number is meaningful if the posting in question entertains hiring zero or low experience candidates (e.g. fresh undergrads) for the role. In that situation I would think that most applicants matching that description would be happy to get a salary on the lower end (within reasonable limits of course) since at that stage in one's career the biggest challenge is getting one's foot in the door.

In my experience there aren't many postings like that though, most are looking for at least moderate levels of experience in which case I would agree that the upper end tends to be the expectation.


My expectations are very much the exact opposite. When a company posts a range, especially a large range, I expect them to at least pretend that the lowest end of the scale is the best they'll give during salary negotiations. Companies, and companies people trying to hire you, have an incentive to get you the worst deal you will agree with.

That said, ranges are still nice to have. I'd much rather have an estimate below expectations than another company saying they offer "competitive wages". Competitive just means "what you earn right now, or worse".


Salary range is $60,000-$250,000


those salary ranges are usually way off, i've found. for ex., the posted salary range for a position I know pays over $200k base caps out at $165k. i'm guessing this is the case bc the band for that region caps out at $165k but hiring managers will shift really strong candidates around to make numbers work.

as always, the only reliable way to know what salary to expect is to be upfront about it as early in the interviewing process as possible.


> No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.

I'm currently interviewing and this has come up in the first-round phone screen stage with everyone I've talked to.


Nothing prevents you to ask about salary range at the very first conversation.

Just specify that "depends on experience" or "we're competitive" or "industry standard" BS is not going to fly.


Listed price vs Call for Quote


Maybe it's just where I am in my career, but I prefer to have some discussion before talking salary. I don't tend to look for $job, I look at specific jobs that look interesting to me. If it looks good I talk to them and see if they'd be willing to pay what I'd want to get to do it. I've had places go back and get approval to offer more so they could meet my requirements and I've taken jobs with lower offers because they looked more fun. If they'd posted a salary range, we probably wouldn't ever have talked in the first place. Maybe people find it hard to ask for what they want, or are worried they won't ask as much as the employer is willing to give? To me the salary range things more limiting than empowering.


It’s as simple as not proceeding past the initial 15 minute call without knowing the comp range of the role. Period.

Bonus points if you also confirm I’d that’s W2 or 1099. That one has caught me a couple of times.


I don’t mean this to sound snarky but I fear it might. Earnestly:

If a job looks interesting, why not just email and ask? If the position actually excites you, surely it’s worth a couple minutes of your time?


aka why not waste time of dozen people instead providing answer in the first place, I really hate this attitude


> No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.

You never need to do that. In 2022, you lead your very first call with that information.


> No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.

No reason why you cannot ask up front what the salary range is.


I live in a higher COL area than Colorado and their salary ranges help me in only that I expect to get paid more. I'm not sure if that's what Colorado wants.


No salary range usually means salary dumping.

Where I work the management play this game, job postings without salary range and then they try the lower possible offer.


Rather than doing 7 rounds of interviewing before finding out the salary, why not ask earlier in the process?


I don't understand why people start even a first call without knowing the salary range. As mentioned by others, it's waste of time.


Colorado is just 1 of 50 states and I'd guess companies don't care about ~2% of applicants.


I ask in the recruiter phone screen. Maybe 5% of the time they deflect and don't give an answer but 95% is good enough for me.


in Poland something like 90% of IT offers have transparent salary ranges - if someone hides that, he's already suspicious. There's also a community-wide agreement that those offers should be avoided.


I'd rather have tax returns be public (like Norway) than have laws requiring salary ranges.


I use the same approach, save me time.


+1

"Competitive salary" = mediocre.


If there's no salary range listed, I usually don't apply.


No salary range = lowballer scum. Simple as.


I've stolen this idea from somewhere. Feel free to steal from me too. https://blog.pitermarx.com/2022/05/how-to-respond-to-recruit...


Salary or total comp?


I send an e-mail and ask "for a friend." Works every time. Unless they are low balling the range and then they are only hurting themselves.


I feel completely the opposite. Why would I apply for a job with an upper limit of a salary range? That doesn’t really make sense to me. Also it’s an incredibly easy thing to sus out in a phone screen.


What use are salary ranges when a majority of compensation is equity-based?


Hard to pay the mortgage with equity.


For most jobs that is not true.




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