Eloquently put. The last time I was on the market I didn’t apply to a single company that didn’t list salary - every time I’ve done that their pitch was underwhelming.

To those saying “there’s more than salary” - that’s a privileged take. I hate to use that word but it’s appropriate here. Salary ONLY MEANS being able to put a roof over your family’s head and feed them.

The junior version of myself would agree: when you are a junior you have little power of negotiation and you accept whatever the company offers to you at the end of the interview cycle (besides, if you manage to get to the end of the cycle, then you're probably thinking "I cannot let this opportunity pass"). So, if salaries are public, then you know what you are going for.

The senior version of myself wouldn't mind having no salaries advertised in job offerings. I know that now I have more power of negotiation and I know how much I should ask for in an interview. In order to not lose time in interviews, sometimes I tell upfront "BTW, I'm expecting at least X per year. Is that alright? Otherwise, goodbye and thank you for your time". Sometimes I don't say that and wait until the end because my guts (and the internet) tells me that the company can pay really well, so I want to make a good impression in the interview and ask for a 10% more of whatever salary they offer me first.

This is probably going to be controversial.

I find salary to be really weird for many reasons. One of them is that I just can't imagine a sustainable world where salary is proactively offered, raised, etc. I think it necessarily must be negotiated. I say this as a person who spent most of my 20y career negotiating for my salary and hating the process.

It feels attractive on the surface to see a concrete number, kind of like coming to a car website and seeing cars sold at a fixed price, no bargaining. Or kind of like searching for loan refinancing and seeing a bank website show you the standard menu of rates they offer. You just pick from the menu.

However, the issue is that you're probably overpaying for the car, and getting a bad refinance rate every time. And your blanket "salary tier" is probably some safe hedge for the worth you may or may not be bringing. An estimation of vague plans they might have on where you may help.

Shouldn't this be reversed? Shouldn't it be you to tell them what you can do, the plans, explain how much you're worth? How can they know your salary if you haven't told them this stuff yet? Aren't you supposed to be an expert at something? That's just one of a few weirdnesses about salary.

Maybe it depends on a job, and some jobs are really _that_ predictable, but feels like in software dev industry it doesn't add up, except maybe for junior positions.

I used to be in the opposite camp, but nowadays every time I see a concrete salary range listed, it makes me feel silly. We all know that humans running the place can probably decide to pay whatever they want based on how they feel. I can't imagine a situation where they go "sorry, we really think we need you, but our job listing only goes up to this number, oops".

Manager here. I've been on both side of the table.

From HM perspective showing salary is bad idea. I can pay whatever I want inside budget assigned and build a smaller team of seniors or larger swarm of juniors depending on many factors. But first and foremost I want to have people with certain culture and mindset.

If I put low range I might loose opportunity to talk to people above the range.

But if I show high salary I am overwhelmed with conartists and tricksters trying to find their way to high compensation by finding company with poor vetting process. No exceptions for 10 years. I have yet to see a case where it brought a talent into pipeline.

Thus unless obliged by the law I am not showing any ranges and determine expectations through conversation with candidates compose a team from them and see if I can sweet the deal by beating their expectations.

From candidate perspective I see no issue, if you have few years of experience already you know potential employer salary tier just by looking on what they are doing.

I would try to avoid providing salary expectations, but if forced to just make current+30% stake.

And if it in a right league it's no issue for going through interview process.

I learn a lot on interviews by turning tables and trying to deep dive on what they doing and challenges facing and frequently get above the market offers.

There's more to a job than the salary, and it can be reasonable for a company to leave salary ambiguous in order to make that sales pitch. Sometimes it's half the company; sometimes it's a set of steak knives. And it's reasonable for an applicant to decide that they're all about the salary and don't want to waste time on the sales pitch, and move on.

never going to happen for a very simple reason. what every for profit company is trying to do is to extract as much value and labor from employee as possible.

dont get it twisted, this is a war and salary is strategic information. noone in their right mind is going to share this information unless they are forced to or believe there is tangible benefit (for them) behind it.

your boss is not your boss because they are nice and kind person, your boss is your boss because they figured out how to extract value from other people for their benefit.

I tend to focus on what I can control:

I cannot make the job market makers play fair(?) game, but I can reach to current and past employees on linkedin and get the salary range myself, and discard interviews where it is hard to negotiate to an acceptable salary.

Also, some keywords in job ads shows more probabilty of lower than market salary, no company is really looking for someone who is looking for new challenges or who can wear many hats, they are just looking for affordable candidates

Too bad, this didn’t help either as it seems. Thanks for trying!

Edit: ha, it has made it to page 2 now. Good luck!

Not just salary, but TC range would be helpful. How do I interpret a listing that says $X salary + equity?

I want to be upfront. Here's the difficulty. (I say this as an employer.)

Let's say I'm looking for engineer #2 or #3 for my YC startup and I'll pay 95k for junior or 185k for senior.

Is posting 95-185k really that useful?

What happens when I offer someone 130k but they were expecting 185k?

And you can't just use years of experience alone to rank junior vs senior.

tl;dr If engineers were more fungible, I could post a precise number. But I don't think they are.

I really love negotiating. I also like knowing the budget a position has been assigned.

Obviously salary means you're getting paid less than the value you contribute so then it becomes a matter of squeezing more value out of the position or adding more value than advertised?

I've interviewed candidates. They come in every skill set. Some under value themselves while others. We've been given a max budget of $150k. What do you do when an amazing candidate who could replace a dozen current employees only wants $180k?