Poll: Do you expect/want to see salary information in a job ad?
22 comments
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you can't be up-front about what you're going to pay a person for doing a job and offer the same to everybody, that's a red flag and it tells me you're looking to screw somebody. Tells me everything I need to know about you right there, and that's an instant hard-pass.
Should be legally required by federal law to post salary for any job ad regardless of platform of publication.
Should be legally required by federal law to post salary for any job ad regardless of platform of publication.
Tech jobs vary wildly in pay, but their marketing language doesn't. This makes it very hard to know what's worth your time. The reality is, if you're making >$100k and a recruiter comes offering "a great opportunity to work at the next big thing!" but their top range is $90k, then there's almost no chance you'll choose to go there.
Since pay is paramount to the employment arrangement, why wouldn't I expect that to match up near the beginning?
I will add a small note: if a recruiter reaches out with a job that doesn't mention salary, I won't outright ignore it, but asking for a range is always in my first reply. If that isn't answered then things stop there.
Since pay is paramount to the employment arrangement, why wouldn't I expect that to match up near the beginning?
I will add a small note: if a recruiter reaches out with a job that doesn't mention salary, I won't outright ignore it, but asking for a range is always in my first reply. If that isn't answered then things stop there.
I just straight up tell recruiters what my expectations are. Yes, there's a risk of selling myself short, but if I quote a number I am happy with (say, current salary plus 33%) and they are fine with it, why should I be unhappy if I got what I demanded?
FWIW in case you didn't know:
> Pay Transparency: [European] Commission proposes measures to ensure equal pay for equal work [...]
> Pay transparency for job-seekers – Employers will have to provide information about the initial pay level or its range in the job vacancy notice or before the job interview. Employers will not be allowed to ask prospective workers about their pay history.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30429182
> Pay Transparency: [European] Commission proposes measures to ensure equal pay for equal work [...]
> Pay transparency for job-seekers – Employers will have to provide information about the initial pay level or its range in the job vacancy notice or before the job interview. Employers will not be allowed to ask prospective workers about their pay history.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30429182
I get so many contacts from recruiters that I'm never going to follow up on almost any of them.
Is salary information absolutely essential? No. But if I'm not pretty confident talking to you is a good use of time, you'll never hear from me, and not providing salary information is a great way to keep me uncertain.
I can think of two exceptions. For my first job I didn't really care about salary - my main goal was to get good experience and get into the field. Also, there weren't a ton of recruiters constantly spamming me. Alternatively, if you're a large well known company and I'm interested, then I'll just google to figure out what sort of salary to expect. In that case you don't have to explicitly tell me.
In all other cases, if you leave out the salary, I'll probably ignore your job.
Is salary information absolutely essential? No. But if I'm not pretty confident talking to you is a good use of time, you'll never hear from me, and not providing salary information is a great way to keep me uncertain.
I can think of two exceptions. For my first job I didn't really care about salary - my main goal was to get good experience and get into the field. Also, there weren't a ton of recruiters constantly spamming me. Alternatively, if you're a large well known company and I'm interested, then I'll just google to figure out what sort of salary to expect. In that case you don't have to explicitly tell me.
In all other cases, if you leave out the salary, I'll probably ignore your job.
Has to be a tight range. Some recruiters try to give a non-sensical, meaningless range where the upper bound is close to 3x the lower bound.
How is that nonsensical? Lots of times, the same nominal job might involve vastly varying amounts of responsibility or productivity. I've seen positions where 3X dynamic range would be unreasonably small, e.g. at companies which don't bucket engineering roles into arbitrary seniority brackets.
That just means that the nominal job title is insufficient for making a job posting. There's no reason to think that the job title, which is dictated by the internal organization and hierarchy, would be at all correlated with the salary, which is dictated by the expertise and the demand for that expertise.
Surely they would know what level of responsibility they expect if they're posting a job ad?
They might be looking for a developer, and would accept either an intermediate or senior. Presumably the job description would indicate as much.
A single job might cover vastly different responsibility depending on skill or experience. It's unreasonable to expect every job to fall into a nice narrow description. For most of my career I've been something like "software engineer", as have people with much more or less experience than me.
Variable such as bonuses or stock options / RSUs are not salaries and should be quoted separately.
It depends on the company size. If it’s a large company, I expect rigid and well-defined salary bands, so it would be nice if they’re published. For a smaller company, I don’t expect salary bands, and I treat the relationship more like a contractual one.
Any contract price is negotiable by definition (“meeting of minds”), and whether or not the job description provides an initial anchor price does not change that. So if it’s negotiable either way, then IMO it actually seems unfair for the company to name the salary because it means they’re providing the initial anchor.
It also depends on me. If I’m the head of a machine learning lab at Stanford, the salary is negotiable at the big company too.
So all in all, I’d say I expect companies to publish a range of salary, or at least include some indication they’re serious. If I see them in TechCrunch I know they have enough to pay me, and if I’m worried about their runway then maybe I should work at a big company with rigid salary bands.
Any contract price is negotiable by definition (“meeting of minds”), and whether or not the job description provides an initial anchor price does not change that. So if it’s negotiable either way, then IMO it actually seems unfair for the company to name the salary because it means they’re providing the initial anchor.
It also depends on me. If I’m the head of a machine learning lab at Stanford, the salary is negotiable at the big company too.
So all in all, I’d say I expect companies to publish a range of salary, or at least include some indication they’re serious. If I see them in TechCrunch I know they have enough to pay me, and if I’m worried about their runway then maybe I should work at a big company with rigid salary bands.
If you aren't willing to tell me up front how much you're prepared to pay, then I can't be bothered to apply.
This is especially the case for tech recruiters: tell me who you represent and how much they're prepared to pay, or I will mock you.
This is especially the case for tech recruiters: tell me who you represent and how much they're prepared to pay, or I will mock you.
A reasonable range would absolutely be great but I understand why disclosing any salary information would be challenging for the company as it changes how compensation negotiation is done but will also affect the overall culture. Ultimately, you need to continue your first principles thinking and put this hypothesis to the test.
> I understand why disclosing any salary information would be challenging for the company as it changes how compensation negotiation is done but will also affect the overall culture.
So do I, but I refuse to care. I'm not willing to jump through all of the hoops that come with interviewing for a tech job only to find myself having to say no because I'd be taking a pay cut.
My life matters, I'm not getting any younger, and I'm not willing to waste time for some corporation's convenience. I already have a solid job, and a decent network outside of LinkedIn in case I need to jump ship. Tech recruiters will deal with me on my terms or not at all.
So do I, but I refuse to care. I'm not willing to jump through all of the hoops that come with interviewing for a tech job only to find myself having to say no because I'd be taking a pay cut.
My life matters, I'm not getting any younger, and I'm not willing to waste time for some corporation's convenience. I already have a solid job, and a decent network outside of LinkedIn in case I need to jump ship. Tech recruiters will deal with me on my terms or not at all.
If I can understand how and why they would be hesitant to disclose salary information, but that doesn't mean that they should be given a free pass for it. Yes, this would change compensation negotiation, in the same way that cutting the deck changes a game of poker. It makes it harder for the deck to be stacked against you.
Hiding salary information makes it harder to negotiate and harder to see when you're being treated unfairly.
Hiding salary information makes it harder to negotiate and harder to see when you're being treated unfairly.
I used to work for the federal government, everybody knew more or less where everybody else was on the GS scale. Worked great.
Honestly I don’t mind either way. I know how much FAANG pays, funded startups who have a clue pay the same salaries but have illiquid variable comp through stock. I’m OK doing startup stuff with my startup friends and working at a hyper growth stage company for less liquid comp for no other reason than I think it’s fun. Just like how some people like country music and I like heavy metal, just pure preference.
Now if the company is a big company, not an interesting job, and there’s no salary listed, I’ve played that game before already. I’d rather just grind leetcode and go to Google then apply.
I’d encourage everyone to figure out what kind of role and culture they’d like first, then find the job. You’ll be happier for it, and any company is more than happy to throw a bit extra money at someone who’s a perfect fit.
Now if the company is a big company, not an interesting job, and there’s no salary listed, I’ve played that game before already. I’d rather just grind leetcode and go to Google then apply.
I’d encourage everyone to figure out what kind of role and culture they’d like first, then find the job. You’ll be happier for it, and any company is more than happy to throw a bit extra money at someone who’s a perfect fit.
Yes, but I would be more happy if it wasn't straight up "advertised" in the ad, but was readily answered when asked without expectation.
What?!
Here's my thought - doing it like this it keeps it slightly competitive. Sure if it's easy to ask for the salary range, people can and will ask. But do you want to be fighting loads of people for a particular job due to the dreamers with low skill /chance clogging up the machine because they saw a shiny 180k salary?
Okay, but why readily answered when asked? Because it's a huge time suck. If I have to jump through 11 hoops only to find out it's for 20k less in the 0 hour it's wasting all our time.
Let's not forget, we work for an organization to be paid. At the end of the day the marketing of a job for a held hostage pay range isn't going to fly 9/10 times.
What?!
Here's my thought - doing it like this it keeps it slightly competitive. Sure if it's easy to ask for the salary range, people can and will ask. But do you want to be fighting loads of people for a particular job due to the dreamers with low skill /chance clogging up the machine because they saw a shiny 180k salary?
Okay, but why readily answered when asked? Because it's a huge time suck. If I have to jump through 11 hoops only to find out it's for 20k less in the 0 hour it's wasting all our time.
Let's not forget, we work for an organization to be paid. At the end of the day the marketing of a job for a held hostage pay range isn't going to fly 9/10 times.
Yes. Without a range being advertised, I think it's too easy for companies to foster pay inequality by hiring new engineers for more than they're paying their existing engineers with similar experience/responsibilities.
While I am accustomed to the current situation, in which one must often simply guess and hope, I would greatly prefer to have more information up front. I don't see how you can lose by giving people more information.
Why waste time applying at places that aren't going to be upfront with you?
For those in California, Assembly Bill 168 was passed in October, 2017, effective January 1, 2018. Section 432.3 was added to the Labor code, which includes:
(c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment.
Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
Disclaimer: I don't know if/how that provision may have changed since 2018.
(c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment.
Source: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
Disclaimer: I don't know if/how that provision may have changed since 2018.
I live in a state where salary ranges must be included in any job posting. The reality of it is that many employers still don't comply. Many of those that do give very broad ranges.
Even those that give a salary with a reasonably tight range still never include equity compensation. That makes salary info nearly meaningless.
Even those that give a salary with a reasonably tight range still never include equity compensation. That makes salary info nearly meaningless.
As an experienced dev I get plenty of recruiter contacting me. If you aren't going to tell me what I can earn, then there is a good chance that it's a waste of my time going through the process to find out it isn't enough.
Yes. Imagine if I applied without a CV and just said ‘competitive experience’
I would always prefer it but most jobs I have applied for have not listed salary.
Uwu
I would love to know what the general consensus and expectations of the HN crowd towards this issue is.
Many thanks and Happy Hacking.