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

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

#101
Absolutely. If I currently have a job (probably the people you want), the most companies I actively interview for at any given time is ~4, give or take. Any more takes way too much time and is difficult to prep for. I simply can't waste my time with companies that may take a significant chunk of my time and end up not being able to offer an acceptable salary. There's a big enough pool of jobs I know for a fact are within my salary requirements, so I don't need to have doubt. Some of these usually come from job postings including salaries, and some of them come from a recruiter (a good recruiter is a valuable asset for me) who know my requirements.

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

#102
post #63

Lacking a salary range in a job posting tells me that "competitive salary" really means "below market rate" in most cases. I've found the best postings list their minimum ($70k+ or whatever). Maximum is irrelevant, as you can assume it's around 20% of that minimum. It shows what salaries and skill expertise they're after.

I've seen ads that list a salary range of "$100-200K." Not sure what skill level they're aiming for there.

We do this when the candidate pool is very small. If we get someone fresh out of university with very little experience they'll earn the bottom of the range. If we get someone more senior with relevant experience they might be worth a lot more.

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

#103
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 companies want to adjust salary based on perceived interview performance.

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

#105
post #6

I doubt you'll get anyone who says that salary range disclosed in a job advertisement is not a good thing, from the perspective of the job seeker. The question you may want to ask instead is: "Does the benefit to the job seeker of having a salary range specified outweigh the loss of potential advertisers who do not want to disclose a salary range?" If you're just doing this as a side project, with no expectation of m…

Multiple users could collude to determine the top of the range for a position, if that were the case.

In any case we are discussing passive job searches. I'm not going to take the time to apply to a great job if I already have a great job, in the hope that they might meet my salary requirements. I might however use salary as a metric in initial search.

The best data from a job seeker's perspective isn't a salary range, which is a signal about what to expect that you chose, it's making public but perhaps anonymous what your developers actually make, which are facts.

It's a market. Efficient markets don't have secrets.

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

#106
post #99

All things being equal, if I had to choose between applying to two jobs, and one of them explicitly offered the salary that I believe I'm worth, then yeah, I would apply to that one. On another note, one thing I've been thinking of doing, (and I'd be delighted if you did it!) is a job board that only shows positions with take home interviews instead of in-person coding exercises. I think this is a growing trend as pe…

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…

I had a very similar experience. The interview guy most likely first saw my resume a minute before the interview. Clearly did not see the code I wrote for them.

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

#107
post #19
post #6

I doubt you'll get anyone who says that salary range disclosed in a job advertisement is not a good thing, from the perspective of the job seeker. The question you may want to ask instead is: "Does the benefit to the job seeker of having a salary range specified outweigh the loss of potential advertisers who do not want to disclose a salary range?" If you're just doing this as a side project, with no expectation of m…

I'm thinking that launching just another job board won't get me anywhere. I'll have to either a) spend heavily on advertising (which I can't afford) or b) differentiate myself from all other job boards out there. I live in Finland (5 million habitants) and based on my research only about 5% of job ads include salary. It's not part of the culture to discuss salaries publicly so it's very well possible that companies w…

Offer and demand explain a lot of phenomena. Companies only disclose sallaries when they need to, in order to seduce enough talent. Industries with a large talent pool to choose from will never do it.

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

#108
post #19
post #6

I doubt you'll get anyone who says that salary range disclosed in a job advertisement is not a good thing, from the perspective of the job seeker. The question you may want to ask instead is: "Does the benefit to the job seeker of having a salary range specified outweigh the loss of potential advertisers who do not want to disclose a salary range?" If you're just doing this as a side project, with no expectation of m…

I'm thinking that launching just another job board won't get me anywhere. I'll have to either a) spend heavily on advertising (which I can't afford) or b) differentiate myself from all other job boards out there. I live in Finland (5 million habitants) and based on my research only about 5% of job ads include salary. It's not part of the culture to discuss salaries publicly so it's very well possible that companies w…

Offer and demand explain a lot of phenomens. Companies only disclose sallaries if they need to in order to seduce enough talent.

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

#109
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to quickly verify that a potential employer is willing to pay a 'competitive' salary, why don't you take the initiative and tell them not to consider you if the position pays less than $x?

Because that usually turns into you getting an offer of $x when in reality, they may have been willing to pay much higher.

I think this risk is a lot more prevalent early in your career or in the bay area.

I can't imagine this happening in the Houston market to someone with 6-7 year of experience.

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

#110
Indeed, otherwise there is a cost time and sometimes money based on that time to the job seeker to find out what the salary is.

For the employer this may suck because existing employees will see rates/market and if they don't have an open salary policy it could cause issues.

For the job seeker, you might also want higher and not go to a place that may decide to pay you higher based on experience and skills.

A range is probably the best but a number puts job seeker and employer closer to the deal just by seeing the numbers.

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