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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Can't upvote this enough. Even if it's a really wide range, it rules out companies with unrealistically low pay scales.

It also makes it slightly more equitable, since employees are no longer reliant on playing salary poker in order to determine their pay rate. This tends to reduce the salary gap.

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Hence why companies rarely include it.

That’s silly and bad strategy though, hoping you can “trick” someone into taking a lower salary by getting them to the end of an interview process. Just biases your pool for the least valuable candidates.

In general trying to underpay any employee is a dumb strategy and I don't understand why it's so universal. If you pay any in-demand role under market, you're providing them with a strong incentive to move elsewhere right out of the gate.

There's not a lot of standardized titles and salaries in our profession. One company's idea of a "Senior Engineer" might be wildly different than another's. Either what level of experience that actually is, or how many hours/week you have to work, or not-salary things like 401k matching or bonus ranges, extensive travel requirements, etc.

I don't like the negotiation game either, but I don't really see how to avoid it.

I don't negotiate. I know my market rate. I say I want X and they either pay me X or I don't accept the offer.

I don't count bonuses as part of compensation when I am considering jobs. I've been burned too often by the promises of a bonus.

I also discount 401K matches that don't immediately vest. The longer they take to vest, the less I count them.

I also don't negotiate for raises. Either they keep up with market rates or I look for another job.

One of the main reasons I always go through recruiters. They won't waste my time or theirs submitting me to jobs where the salary is not what I want.

*good recruiters

Have any tips on finding good recruiters to work with? Most of the people that reach out to me are clearly not giving a level of care to their search that I'd be comfortable working with (for instance, I was a PHP dev with some JS for a while and would frequently get requests about Java positions). I'd love to work with a recruiter that cares specifically about placing me somewhere good, but I've never met a recruiter like that.

I had great results with this company http://www.bincsearch.com/

They don't need to know anything really. Their role is only lead generation. All they really have to do is a keyword search.

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