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Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

I've always asked, and then get the generic "for the ideal candidate we are prepared to go very high", which I tactfully point out as the BS it is - there is no role that has ever been advertised without a manager or director-level sign-off on the range.

I usually reply to the brush-off with "I only ask because the seniority level is reflected in the salary, not the role or the advertisement."

I say that because it is, in fact, true: the seniority/skill required for the role and duties/responsibilities dictates the pay, the bullet points in the advertisement and the role description is often completely divorced from the level of seniority or skill required in the actual role.

IOW "We're hiring a Senior dev" might have me respond "That's a Junior pay-bracket".

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I’m not sure of a way around this. I’ve done it.

I need someone to do a specific set of tasks, but there’s also a wider group of tasks which I’d like someone to do, but it isn’t urgent.

The posting goes out for the task we NEED. If someone more senior applies, and they can do more than the role needs, we pay them more.

This is a non-problem: if a candidate approaches you for Role A, and you decide they'd be a great fit for Role A+B, then create Role A+B, and perform the perfunctory interview, then hire them at the new role.

There is no (and I feel comfortable with this absolute) scenario where you need to keep the salary range hidden, or where a published salary range prevents you from hiring a candidate for an expanded role. None.

The only thing transparent pricing does is result in an informed participant in the market, which is pricing signals and thus something Capitalism.

Once you go down the route of asking for special exemption to make your business work in an open market, you're not doing Capitalism anymore.

It's a bureaucratic problem. Getting a headcount approved for a specific role is a non-issue. Getting HC approved for something brand new might be impressively complicated. Especially at large companies, listed postings persist for many months sometimes and stagnate because functions, dynamics or org alignment shifts before anyone is hired. It's much easier to write a generic-ish job posting and just coach the recruiter/screener on updated specifics than it is to retract a posting, rewrite it, and repost it. This happened to me frequently when I was a hiring manager at Google, for example.

This works for some orgs but not for ones where roles require significant negotiation and sign-off. That can take weeks or months and by that point an attractive candidate has moved on.

To be honest, the places I’ve worked for that could do this were not the best jobs I’ve had. That flexibility can sometimes point to other organizational issues.

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