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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

We don't broadcast our salaries with our job listings because reality is how much we're willing to pay varies candidate to candidate. Interviewing, for example, someone with seven years experience vs. fifteen (I'm simplifying what matters greatly for the sake of argument - years experience is the easiest thing to put a number to) and we would pay way more for one than the other.

Maybe that's unfair, but I don't think we've ever chosen not to hire someone because of the salary level they wanted.

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"We don't broadcast our salaries with our job listings because reality is how much we're willing to pay varies candidate to candidate."

This sounds reasonable. But just to play devil's advocate for a second -- for any given role, is your variance really that high? Do you expect to field a dramatically variable range of candidates for the same level, title, or position? So variable, in fact, that establishing a ballpark range is an exercise in futility?

If you're fielding candidates with N years of experience, 1.5N years of experience, or 2N+ years of experience for the same role, maybe it's worth recalibrating your expectations for that role. Fine-tune them a bit. If your expectations are all over the map, then you're going to make a lot more work for yourself by taking on variance and trying to sift through it.

It's totally fine, even admirable, to take the position that each candidate is unique. But how unique, really? Unless we're talking about very high-level or rare positions, a reasonable and market-appropriate range will usually cover most of the variance. (That's not to say that you can't have some sort of discretionary, secondary range available for rockstars or competitive bidding situations. But aren't those typically the edge cases, and not the norm?)

This is counter to a lot of advice given, but because of this I try to address salary as one of the first questions during the initial contact I have with a potential employer. I'm fine with a range, but if they're not even in the same ballpark we've both just saved a lot of time. Similarly, if there's no way they can afford me it does us both good to wish each other well and move on.

yes, i've had major issues with this. i know what i will and will not accept and if my number is not something the employer is willing to pay, that should be the first thing discussed so we don't waste each other's time.

it's very annoying to be dragged through interviews for what turns out to be a laughable offer at the end.

once it happened worse to me, I specified my minimum acceptable price at the first contact, went trough three interviews, then they offered 87% of what I asked.

Of course they did, that is how negotiation works. You don't go up from the sticker price.

You don't say what the minimum you will work for is, you tell them what your other offers are, then you have an auction and they have to bid up.

This works really well with a liquid market. It can be harder for people who are talented in specialized professions. My wife, for instance, is highly skilled in a very specialized skillset, but it's academic, and jobs that match her skills come up a few times a year in the whole state. Even though the applicant pool is small, the illiquidity means it's difficult to say you're going to someone else. Actually, I wonder to what extent markets with very specialized (and comparatively rare) talents are affected by this illiquidity as opposed to mere supply and demand?

Agreed; this is usually the first thing I ask as well. It's basically a gauge of how serious a company is -- if they're looking for a candidate that perfectly matches my resume, but they're only offering half of what I make now, it's going to be a waste of my time to even engage with their interview process. It's also telling when they won't disclose this information: it means that they are the kind of company looking to lowball their employees, not make them partners in the success of the business. Top talent is not interested in working for a company like that.

Then have a range? Of course you need to pay different employees different salaries, but that doesn't mean you can't expose potential employees to the salary they might expect to earn.

Someone who applied hoping for the top of the salary bracket, and who gets an offer for the bottom of the salary bracket, is still going to be upset. And if you advertise "Salary range: $0-$10,000,000" you aren't really telling people much anyway :)

A range tells you if you and your potential employer are on the same page. I don't apply for a job expecting the top end of the range, but at the same time if the top end is less than what I'm willing to take then I don't waste my (and the employer's) time with an application.

If I saw a range like $0-$10,000,000, I wouldn't apply since it's clear that they are not taking the hiring process seriously.

Because if you can afford to stretch your range up to attract an elite candidate you will do.

Explaining to people who are perfectly well qualified for the job including your own existing employees why they're at the bottom of the range is an uncomfortable conversation... much more uncomfortable than explaining why an actually-hired elite candidate whose been given additional responsibilities earns 50% more salary.

This is bull. It's about concealing from the people who are at the bottom of the range who don't deserve it. THAT'S an awkward conversation to have.

Sure, that's also awkward, but it doesn't alter the reality that many firms are perfectly happy with their existing employees, expect to fill positions with similar calibre candidates, but are prepared to pay a lot more for better.

This isn't particularly awkward.

> Explaining to people who are perfectly well qualified for the job including your own existing employees why they're at the bottom of the range is an uncomfortable conversation

I would imagine having to explain to your employees why you're underpaying them is a difficult conversation. But the problem is that's the employee's know, the problem is that you're underpaying them.

Sure. But just because you're more likely to pay a new hire more than your existing staff than less doesn't mean they're underpaid, or indeed not paid comfortably above market rates for their skillset (above-market payers often have the most opaque salary structures)

Most employers able to pay market rate or better would rather attract candidates for a position that are substantially better than their existing employees than substantially worse, so the feasible salary range is naturally skewed upwards even if you pad it at the bottom. Most employees don't think they belong in the bottom half of the salary range for their position, even if they do. Something has to give, and its usually transparency.

Too bad?

The problem is, and this has happened to me personally, is you'll be told the salary is "competitive" without further details even when pushed. Of course, everyone wants to save a buck, but when you've gone through multiple rounds of interviews...spending personal days...personal time doing projects.. then you get an offer that is 1/2 the starting range for the industry and location, you have a problem!

The two times I've had that response, I've just taken my current estimate of high salary, added $20,000 and then asked them to confirm that that amount is in their definition of competitive.

First time, they said no and we stopped talking. Second time got me my current job. YMMV.

That is an excellent approach to this problem. Thanks.

Seems like an awe shucks kind of answer, if that were truly the primary concern you could post the highest and lowest salaries you hire at and explain the range.

I do agree with your policy but for different reasons. For one I haven't seen a scalable way to roll out total salary transparency with a net gain in company psychology. The problems seem to outweigh the benefits, although I think it may be possible and just not figured out yet.

>I haven't seen a scalable way to roll out total salary transparency with a net gain in company psychology

#1 Make sure everybody is paid as much as they deserve as far as you can tell. #2 Roll out total salary transparency.

Not being "scalable" sounds like another way of saying "we don't want to do #1, it sounds expensive. Secrecy is cheaper.".

This implies some sort of unfairness is being hidden, which should be the easy part of the problem.

The hard part is that equitable salaries do not mean equal salaries. If you there are large differences based completely on merit it's very difficult to make someone feel good about being lower than the person sitting next to them, even if it's objectively fair.

>This implies some sort of unfairness is being hidden, which should be the easy part of the problem.

You seem to be implying that voluntarily giving out pay rises to the underpaid is easy. It isn't easy.

>The hard part is that equitable salaries do not mean equal salaries. If you there are large differences based completely on merit it's very difficult to make someone feel good about being lower than the person sitting next to them, even if it's objectively fair.

This would be the hard part if American were mostly all secret communists.

If those differences actually exist, they should be pretty easy to demonstrate.

"Scalable" means like airline prices or how westerners get consumer products from slave- or near-slave labor: the system only works if someone employees subsidize others, and they won't consent to that, so the subsidize are done secretly.

I imagine there would be potential problems due to the fact that people have differing opinions about what people deserve.

For one thing, there are different but equally reasonable criteria on which to base "deserve." Maybe Bob in Engineering contributes more to company profits than Steve in janitorial, so Bob deserves to get paid more. Or maybe Steve is intensely loyal and stuck with the company through hard times and often stays late to get everything done, so Steve deserves to get paid more. Or Joe in sales hasn't been selling well this year, but his kid has cancer and he's obviously distracted and he deserves high pay because he's having such a hard time.

And of course, given a choice of criteria, people will invariably tend to choose whichever one gives them the results they like. Bob will be more likely to think the profit-based evaluation is best. Someone who's good friends with Steve will think that loyalty is more important.

Maybe it can be made to work (and it definitely can work in a smaller company), but I don't think it's as easy as you make it sound. Sometimes it's just impossible to please everybody, and if you try then you'll only succeed in displeasing everybody.

>I imagine

Perhaps you should look at some real examples rather than your imagination:

http://99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transparency

I said, "and it definitely can work in a smaller company." I don't have to look at outside examples, I'm part of such a company myself. But if you want to say I'm wrong, show me a company doing this with 10,000 employees rather than 10.

I believe there are some government departments out there (Norway perhaps?) that do this.

You are probably missing a lot of candidates. Maybe that's ok because employers seem to be ok with a ton of false negatives to avoid one false positive. I can't count how many positions that don't list salary that I came to find out pay about half what I expected. It's almost of waste of time for job seekers, actually for both of us.

You should have a budget for the position that you're hiring for, so a salary range should fall out of that. If you don't have a budget, how do you know what you CAN offer?

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