Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

> 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'm not really happy at any job, I would rather be doing something else. 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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!

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.

"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??

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.

>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.

> 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?

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

> 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

> 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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

> 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.

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.)

> 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.

<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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

> 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.

>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?

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

My gosh :face_palm:

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

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.

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.

Culture can change quickly and I believe that it has.

No, but inequality and cost of living certainly does.

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

> 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.

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.

> Of the top reasons people are happy at work

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

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.

> 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.

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.

>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…

> 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.

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.

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.

>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.

> 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.

> 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)

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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?

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 Oracle wants her by August 1st week (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.

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?

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

NEVER mention your minimum. If anything you should highball.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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".

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Yes, don’t be fooled by private company valuation.

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.

For tech in certain areas / domains yes. For most of positions all over the world, salary is the only compensation.

> Equity compensation

The vast majority of developer jobs offer no equity comp.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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.

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?

TLDR your company likes to waste candidates time, that looks like big red flag