Should HN require/encourage job postings to have a salary range?
In the spirit of some states now requiring salary ranges for job postings I think it would be good if HN followed that trend.
I often read the “Who is hiring?” posts but I have no idea if the jobs are even remotely within my range. I think it would save everybody a lot of time if a range was posted.
If these were extremely specific job postings (e.g. "We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer II with 2-3 years of experience") then it would make more sense.
But most of the "Who is hiring" posts aren't job postings. They're literally answering the question "Who is hiring" and inviting a wide range of people to apply.
Requiring salary ranges would significantly elevate the amount of work that goes into answering the "Who is hiring" question and therefore would reduce the number of postings significantly.
The smallest companies and startups would be the most negatively impacted. Big companies could probably kick it over to HR and legal and have them spend a week drafting up a post that complies with all of the various requirements in different states, but the average poster in that thread isn't going to want to touch a salary requirement posting for something that isn't a specific job ad.
Yes. As someone in the hiring space, salary ranges are a huge time saver to candidates and companies.
For companies, remember you're not just wasting a candidates time. You're also wasting company time paying people to interview a candidate that won't accept a lowball salary.
Yes, absolutely. Job postings are required in Colorado, and will soon be required by law in New York City and Washington State. Every listing that doesn't follow the law should be removed.
I also think if companies are allowing remote except for those particular states the job posting should be removed, but that's more of a personal opinion.
I've been pushing this for months. At the very least it should be part of the template in the text at the top. Companies can feel free to ignore it if they want, but it would be a good nudge.
It's a matter of fairness. Not everyone is good at negotiating salary, and they shouldn't have to be just to get a fair paycheck. There is tons of data showing that women and minorities get paid less for the same work in part because they are afraid to do so.
Posting the salary up front goes a long way towards pay equity for people who are traditionally underpaid.
One thing I do personally to help the situation is go through the Who's hiring threads and upvote any post with a salary listed. I encourage everyone to do the same.
Of course,
I spent too much time talking to people who couldn't afford me. What's the point?
On the other hand, if you know the person is not the right fit, why would you waste your time, just out of respect to other people's life
Why does everyone believe that jobs should be so cookie cutter that you can decide the salary range up front? Generally, I would like the option to pay a lot more for someone a lot better and putting up a salary range like Founding Engineer, $150-500k+ isn't that useful.
Yes. Full stop. A reasonable range (say +/- ~$25k?) with “DOE” is fine here. Totally omitting it is not. Should have been federal law 25+ years ago.
If you’re unwilling to tell people what you’re willing to pay, you’re willingly telling them that you’re looking to screw somebody over. Either way, we’re getting a valuable signal about your company and whether or not you’re trustworthy.
I agree with this sentiment. Every company has a budget, they know exactly what range they can and will pay, even if it's a wide range.
Even better, I've encountered some companies who have a "everyone at the same level has the same salary" policy and I think that's most likely a net positive. I would personally like pay to be less about your personal risk factors and negotiating leverage and more about the value you bring to the company.
Here's an incredibly common example: if I am currently employed, I know I can risk losing a job offer by asking for a higher counter-offer. If I am unemployed, I might not want to take that risk. The previously-unemployed worker doesn't bring any more or less value to the company than the one with negotiating leverage.
Companies that have pay equity policies probably have a lower risk of running into discrimination lawsuits, too, so I think it benefits the company to be transparent.
I don’t even read the ‘Who is hiring?’ threads because my time is valuable when looking for a new job and it seems to promote window shopping for candidates, regardless of commitment to actually hiring them. If the salary amounts were required, I would take the threads much more seriously.
If they share a salary range, and then hire a candidate for a salary outside that range, does that expose the business to a lawsuit?
Is there any concern about the fact that posting a salary range (ie, setting the initial reference point for negotiations) weakens the candidate's bargaining power?
I personally expect (or at least hope) that these measures finally end the goldrush and bring tech salaries down to reasonable levels. What kind of lifestyle must one lead to worry if a developer job is _remotely_ within their range?
The more transparency, the better for everyone, including and especially under-represented groups.
I might agree (or rather give a hoot) if salaries weren't so contingent on location.
Years ago when I suggested lowering or raising salary based on precisely where the employee lives is a demi-scam, HN told me I was wrong.
So is it practical or useful to advertise a salary range and be okay with paying someone $80k instead of $200k because they live in Des Moines instead of San Francisco? Or even just San Jose instead of San Francisco?
It's bizarre that this isn't already the expectation. A job posting contains the company name, location, description of the role, tech stack, education and skill requirements, what the expectation from the employee is, sometimes even benefits – all key info that helps both sides with their decision making. But as soon as people mention salary suddenly it's some big taboo.
Many already do. If they don't want to, why force them, job seekers can just choose to avoid places like that if they value transparency.
I predict that this trend towards requiring companies to include information in job postings that leaves them in a legal grey area (what if I end up hiring someone and paying above the range? can I be sued for discrimination by a unrepresented minority if the unrepesented minority gets an offer on the low end? what if I don't find anyone that is near the top of the range? can I be sued for that too? what if my current staff isn't in the salary range?) is just going to result in less public job postings and more use of recruiters and good-old-boy networks. The fact is, as a company, you can be sued for anything at any time by any one and all these requirements do is add new lines of attack for no benefit.
How does this work for companies where a significant portion of comp is bonus and equity? And this is not a rhetorical question, I'm curious how existing laws (e.g. Colorado) treat this. I did a quick search and couldn't find a good answer.
I think so. Transparency leads to greater levels of properly calibrated pay to skills ratios.
Hiding pay merely let’s the employer pay as little as possible for the same work.
I found out recently I make more than my team lead. He didn’t know any better.
Yes for real salary ranges with detailed parts like base, bonus, equity and type of contract, but hard NO for the broad ranges I can see everywhere.
In my country (Poland) it's not an unusual thing to hear after the interview that the salary from the posting is with some vague bonus which "nobody ever seen".
I don't want to waste my time (hours or sometimes even days/weeks) with some convoluted multipart interviews and offline "coding exercises" only to hear that I would get just a lower/small part of the range which nobody ever gets from the start as they're there only to encourage you to apply.
The salary range requirement makes complete sense to me for jobs that only pay a wage/salary with little else guaranteed as part of your contract.
I don’t think they’re necessary or helpful for software jobs where bonuses and equity compensation can make up such a large portion of your pay, and are still highly variable but not covered under such rules. It doesn’t add a lot to require just salary info, and then a lot of companies will not post here because they don’t want to give up that info. So overall I believe it would be a net negative.
I remember a few years back there were people who were encouraging to upvote job postings that showed salary ranges and downvote posts that didn't. Including a "friendly reminder" post in the who's hiring threads. Whatever happened to that? It seemed fairly effective. In fact, I thought the who's hiring template was supposed to have a salary range
No. They should leave it up to the commenter/company, and people can handle that however they would like, including by not applying.
Because of the changes in the forum over time, it has become less valuable as a recruiting channel. This would just kill "Who is hiring?", rather than affecting change.
Yes. Even better, I would like some sort of feedback mechanism for jobs posted here. I would like to know how often someone actually gets hired through these posts, and how accurately does the posted description and salary range match with reality? Hopefully it would cut down on the BS.
Might as well do it, it appears almost everyone here would like that. Try it for a few months and see?
I don't have a strong pro or against view at the moment, but I do think people ought to consider the privacy aspects - what you earn, at least for a while, becomes easily derived from the job listing for your role.
At the end of the day people just want to lowball. Anything else is just making excuses.
whatever criteria and mechanism used to actually determine the final comp can simply be said before hand with said ranges.
It would make filtering listings much easier, granted the long tail issue here is associating an expectation of velocity / experience with a salary range.
Maybe recommending it? I get the first comments resistance based on the variety of posters, having any requirements isn't really enforceable anyways.
This will soon be law in all of the EU so I say why not.
Isn't this just going to end up causing companies to post large salary ranges with no intention of paying the higher part of the range?
Yes, this saves everybody involved from wasting their time and is generally interesting even for people not looking for a job change.
I think Schiff's perspective[0] applies here. It seems a popular opinion on HN that all programmers should be paid SV salaries (which are astronomical), but I don't think the wider market works like that.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6LtyFTEdis
No.It is not good for founders.