I'm not affiliated with YC, but people are not commodities - one person might be a $50,000/yr X, and another person might be a $200,000/yr X. You don't know what kind of person you have until you talk with them.
It wouldn’t be all that helpful to break the job listing down into 3-6 different job listings if the end result is a wide or open-ended range anyway.
I have personally seen people with literally no domain relevant experience (they’d worked in retail & service businesses) say that they expect to be in the top half of the salary range of a mid-level engineering role posting.
Not accusing you (or anyone) of this, but just a general observation- a lot of these 'companies should have salary ranges' discussions seem to come uncomfortably close to an old-school union or government employee system of 'if you have x years, you're at x level'. I think we should celebrate individual accomplishment- some engineers with 4 years of experience are just better & worth more than some engineers with 10 years, and that's OK. My point is- most companies are hiring at multiple levels, and we can't know what level you're at until we interview you. So we can say Software Engineer 1 makes this, Engineer 2 makes that, etc.- but we don't know where you're going to end up
The seniority thing misguided. People should be paid based on the value that is a product of that role. Maybe their seniority qualifies then for a better role. That's fine, then post a different job description for the other role.
I think it is in large part way to underpay people earlier in life and overpay them later in order to incentive them differently. It also is a rough cudgel to match family vs single difference in needs.
It should be this easy for a company or recruiter:
- SDE 1 makes $X-Y
- SDE 2 makes $Y-Z
- SDE 3 makes $Z-A
- Sr Software Engineer makes $A-B
- Principal Engineer makes $B-C
For someone of your experience we'd typically be looking at an SDE 2 or SDE 3 role, but that can change as we move through the interview process. We'll let you know as we move through the process if we decide to change the level that we're evaluating you for.
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Just, like, be transparent and honest with candidates. It's really really not hard.
I disagree. I'd say that you don't know what kind of person you have until they've put in a few months of work.
At one of the earlier startups I was involved with I had worked closely with another developer. When said startup fell apart and the group of us all went our different ways, I got a warning from another colleague about the individual I had grown close with, we will just note them as "E".
She had cautioned that when things were good (and the usually were) "E" was a great individual. However, the moment things did not go 100% perfectly, or there was any type of "advantage" to gain regardless of the cost, they would immediately do that and backstab anyone. I wrote that off as just a disagreement between the two of them, something grudge or who knows.
It took many years later that "E" made his true nature shown. I truly believe it to be a combination of being locked down for COVID, constant job hunting, the fact he had "quit" learning in tech, a weird fascination with crypto currency, getting lost into a hole of IDPOL (us versus them, with us or against us nonsense), and some closet fascism to boot. Not to mention attacking myself and others for "being educated" because the few of us Engineers held specialized degrees and long work histories, whereas "E" was nothing more than a basic bootcamp grad.
All it took was myself not fully agreeing on a trivial point in a matter, and in moments "E" had attempted to turn everything I had privately confided in him in an attempt to hurt me. Of course all that did was confirm the warning of him being what he was, and his opportunist ways.
So even then, people can surprise you.