Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

There's a vein of truth here, but it's a bit navel-gazing.

The first truth is that people don't leave their current jobs because someone else is offering more. They leave because they're unhappy. For knowledge workers of all stripes, unhappiness is very, very rarely about compensation.

The second truth is that high compensation keeps people where they are. If a recruiter is offering $200k, you'll listen if you're making $180k. You won't listen if you're making $250k. If you're making $180k, the $20k bump becomes a socially acceptable reason to tell your employer you're leaving, but it's not the true reason you're leaving, because every time you switch jobs, you run the risk of bad management, mistreatment, etc. There's a price to taking that risk and it's not usually worth small bumps to people. When you post a salary band, 90% of the time, people who respond are not looking for the pay bump, they're just considering you before the 90+% of employers who are not posting pay bands or whose pay band is uncompetitive. And they know that they're that much more likely to stay because it'll be that much more difficult to persuade them to leave after they join.

The third, deeper, more cynical truth is that posting salary bands probably signals to employees internally that they are being underpaid, and can provoke discontent and departures. Rather than fix the problem with a long-term solution of unilaterally issuing raises internally before posting salary bands, most companies take the shortcut and keep the salary band private.

I got my current job on the back of a 90 minute phonecall and had an offer the next day. I got my previous job after a 45 minute phonecall. The one before that, I had a 1 hour phone interview. The one before that, the engineering manager bought me lunch and we chatted for 45 minutes, and then I spent an hour in their office with him a few days later. The one before that was a 90 minute in person interview.

That’s the majority of the companies I’ve worked for that weren’t startups I started and none of them had a long or time consuming process.

I also interviewed with a company recently that required multiple rounds with multiple people and it was not worth the effort, so I will stick to the companies that can decide quickly whether I fit or not. I wouldn’t even bother if I had to do a take home assignment. I also want to know up front if it will be worth my time or not, so not disclosing salary range is also a red flag for me. I’m not there to play cat and mouse.

I've interviewed multiple people who were really great at talking about tech and work experience, projects, but when we got to the (not so hard) coding challenge they flopped.

I wouldn't be comfortable opening our code base to every applicant for "real work".

It's not unprofessional, it's setting expectations.

I wasn't saying that I got paid consulting rates to do tech tests. I have never had to do a tech test, and never will. But I've been approached by recruiters, and I always respond with my current top-tier hourly consulting rate, with a minimum half-day charge. Usually that's the end of that conversation, but twice such an unsolicited inbound request has resulted in the recruiter saying "okay, when can you come out?" Once was a certain large asian phone manufacturer, who flew me out to their headquarters halfway around the world for a week of consulting, which also acted as a sort of interview. I decided not to pursue a longer-term job with them for $REASONS. The second instance was my current non-FAANG job. Told them my rate, they again flew me out for 3 days, and on the last day we negotiated salary.

To be clear, my negotiated salary from this job is much, much less than $5000/day I charged them for that interview. It's actually on the lower end for my industry, although I'm still one of the higher paid members on my team. I took it because I like the team, I like the work, and I'm given a fair amount of freedom. It was also 100% work-from-home, prior to COVID. The $15000 I invoiced for 3 days of consulting? They considered it a signing bonus.

But yeah, some companies are willing to pay to get the attention of senior talent, and since I'm charging hourly they respect my time. I have my pick of places to work, so why not filter based on that?