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Comment by arpinum | Hacker News Reader

It's mainly specialties, not just levels. Are you a graphic designer that can also build your designs for the web? Were you previously consulting for our largest customer? Do you speak Welsh for our important client in Pembroke? Did you previously work in tech stack X and want to get back to it, and could lead our effort into that market? I'll pay more for these even if they come in at the same grade. Pay is very subjective, it is a prediction about the value an employee can or does bring balanced against their next best option.

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Many of those things you can still just say, in a job description, as details that make you stand out. Many of those specific details do have tangible value (though I'd still say if you include words like "lead" you're describing levels), and you're not necessarily just describing vibes, but what you also aren't describing is a reason why you wouldn't have some idea of what you would pay someone in normal circumstances.

Say that no one you interview has those particulars, and you hire someone who's just -- by your regular, baseline standards -- qualified for the job. Do you have a cutoff for what you would pay those people? Then you should probably post that, and then just act like companies that comply with this stuff already and include some kind of disclaimer, that extraordinary candidates may still fall somewhere outside that range.

Because I could write 5 pages filled with these potential factors and it would be confusing to most candidates. Why specify Welsh when less than 1% of staff or candidates speak it?

> Because I could write 5 pages filled with these potential factors and it would be confusing to most candidates. Why specify Welsh when less than 1% of staff or candidates speak it?

You want to set laws that hurt 99% of employees for a theoretical benefit to a 1% case for the employer?

what's the point of a pay grade if the pay is wildly different in the same grade?

it's just multiple grades at that point masquerading behind a broken HR system

"level" can be an internal designation to communicate to others about the problems you can take on. Says nothing about pay. Many ways for a company to operate.

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