Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#141

Post by johnward » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 12:50 AM UTC

aml183 wrote: post #139

johnward wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I even if the ranges are listed I still think brain dead recruiters are going to send you an entry level help desk position even though you have 10 years of dev experience. I'm not sure how you solve the spray and pray nature of some recruiters. Especially the ones who tell me "i'd like to submit you for this req" after I've just told them I'm not interested.

I typically only send personalized emails to developers. Do you only respond to emails if salary range is listed?

I try to use my judgement on the skill set to see if it's where I am in my career. If it's actually personalized then I will probably respond either. A range just gives both of an easy yes or no and saves time. Maybe I'm different but I cannot imaging taking a pay cut to go anywhere in this market. If it's even in my ballpark for skills you will be the top 5% of recruiters.

I'll get things like contracting gigs. I'll take one for a significant increase to offset stability. Recruiters offer my current rate +$5 and expect me to travel weekly and cover that cost... We're not even talking at that point.

On job searches I generally ignore any position with no range or "excellent compensation". I just feel like it's too low to list.

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#142

Post by shados » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 4:42 AM UTC

Impossible wrote: post #103

shados wrote: post #26

A range helps to know if it's even worth applying. If I see a range, from X to Y, and my prefered salary is Y + 20k, It's probably worth talking to you because there's a chance I can make the needle move. If I'd have to make the needle move by 100k, then I'm not going to bother. If the range is not shown at all, I'll still apply, but I'll usually start with "While I negotiate salaries later in the process, my range i…

I've been through entire interview processes (multiple hour long interviews over days) to get to this point, so a phone screen doesn't seem so bad. Anyone have hints on how to gracefully breach the salary topic? I've also had technical interviews where the interviewers are attempting to gauge my "seniorness" because apparently resume and work experience isn't enough to determine this. It's possible that many companie…

"Anyone have hints on how to gracefully breach the salary topic"

My tip is: don't be graceful. It's stupid, but the subjective perception people will get when you approach the topic straight up and say "I run 250k/year, is that within your range, before we go any further?" is powerful.

The first thing that happens is that you get slotted for the higher level positions right away, will talk to more important people, and do the more interesting interview (that is often not any harder than what they ask college grads. It's just less "please write a hashmap on a whiteboard!"), so you'll get the job anyway, but make 100k more a year or whatever.

It's dumb, but it's how the industry work.

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#143

Post by joshvm » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 12:59 PM UTC

victorhn wrote: post #127

joshvm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The take-home system is great if you actually use it. I won a prize in a programming comp from a well known hedge fund - lots of interesting (and frankly hard) problems and I learned a lot. The competition was essentially take home and submit a bunch of numerical answers. Several questions were pinched from Project Euler, but I won't hold that against them... Small cash prize and offer of an interview for an internsh…

Genuine question, but what is so difficult about reversing a linked list? I don't have the algorithm memorized, but i can deduce in 10 minutes at most.

It's not, at all, but it took me by surprise and I made a mess of it. In hindsight the answer was less than 10 lines of python. The next time I went round an interview loop I rote learned all the CS101 stuff, because that's what you have to do (I'm not a computer scientist).

The issue was that the comp contained a lot of stuff that you couldn't deduce in 10 minutes. For example, all-shortest-paths graph search, performing huge calculations (e.g. stuff that blows up extremely fast), monte carlo simulations and other bits and pieces. It would have made for a much more interesting interview.