Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also why you should not agree to do coding interviews.
I've found there's zero correlation between interview difficulty and compensation.
that is because most positions in our industry underpay anyways
Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
451–460 of 544 posts
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also why you should not agree to do coding interviews.
Personally, I refuse to work for companies that don't explicitly evaluate programming ability when interviewing engineers. I want to know that the people I'll be working with are at least baseline competent in that regard.
coding interviews do not test what matters.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's not true at all anymore, at least not for TC. OP was discussing salary range, not total comp--but I'd be a little surprised to find that even TC at the $350k range at the top outside of SV firms is quite high. I'm not totally persuaded by levels.fyi, but looking at metros at 90th percentile of SWE total comp: Bay Area - 425k Los Angeles - 325k NYC - 343k Denver - 298k Boston - 273k Austin - 268k Chicago - 26…
First the OP claims "Our salary offerings are very aggressive", I'm claiming they are not aggressive. I'll agree on the confusion with TC, but I'm also guessing for OP's company Salary == TC. So right off the bat I'm not sure the point you're making. If the upper limit you are willing to pay does not exceed the 90th percentile TC, by definition you are not offering "very aggressive" pay. There are tons of mediocre, l…
Have an upvote.
> So right off the bat I'm not sure the point you're making.
That 350k yearly salary is a high number. Attainable, sure, but high, and not representative of typical SWE jobs for most people, senior-level included. Not that people cannot or don't make that, but that it's probably not the norm.
> If the upper limit you are willing to pay does not exceed the 90th percentile TC, by definition you are not offering "very aggressive" pay.
What qualifies as "very aggressive"? 99th? How is this determined? What, typically, is a business's approach towards determining salary ranges for positions?
FAANGs perhaps don't have to observe that approach, I suppose, given their resourcing and scale, but in my experience it's done by market comps.
> Second your numbers there aren't conditioning on seniority,
Fair enough: it does have an impact on the percentiles. I can't easily get them from Levels thanks to the relatively coarse granularity, but a couple quick observations:
In the Bay Area, the top 100 salaries for 5-10 YOE ("senior engineer" per Levels) have substantially higher rates of total comp: $710k-2+M (n=1 here). Most of this is not base salary (which topped out short of $400k) but stock and bonus.
Top 100 in NYC are similar, though smaller proportionately (tops out at 1.5M TC, N=1).
Top 100 in NoVA/DC is markedly lower (tops out at $500k TC).
> and additionally given not only population size but proportion of tech jobs available the Bay area and NYC account for the majority of software jobs out there.
With respect to where SW Eng jobs are located, that's a great question. I'm not sure how to quantify this very well, but for grins, I tried searching for senior-level positions on Indeed and LinkedIn.
Indeed found ~33k jobs, of which ~12k are represented in the locations on which I could filter. Of those 12k, 6021 were on the coasts (I counted anything in Washington, California, NoVA, NYC as coastal jobs but excluded lower-cost areas like Atlanta); I realize not all of these are in SV proper, but I think it probably captures the idea of high-cost/high-value markets for SWEs, and it makes the numbers more favorable against my point above. 3087 were listed as remote.
It's not well controlled, but Indeed's numbers suggest about 20% are in SV or SV-lite areas, and about 10% remote.
LinkedIn's job filters are maybe a bit more sophisticated? but don't offer the same sort of numerical granularity. I picked senior+ SW titles in the US (so included Lead, Principal), of which 43k+ hits were returned. The top ten markets they offer for search (Seattle, Austin, Boston, Atlanta, Charlotte, NYC, San Fran, Chicago, Sunnyvale, and LA) account for 11k results, about 25%. Excluding low-cost areas (Charlotte and Atlanta) returns 9K results, also about 20%.
So I don't feel terribly uncomfortable positing that of widely-advertised jobs, the high-value markets might account for 20-25% of the SWE job market. This is not a vast majority. The numbers could be off, of course--these aren't scientific samples, the searches will naturally have an impact on results, etc. But I don't think most people in software are working in SV, and I don't think most seniors routinely sniff a $350k salary.
Doesn't mean that the OP (GP? GGP?) is paying aggressively or that advertising salary or total comp is a bad idea--just that my initial reaction that $350 is a lot--seems like a reasonable take.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#454More anecdotal evidence: a few years back I wanted to get out of the work situation I was in. I looked around, had some interviews, had some offers. None of the postings had salary ranges, as is common where I live. My eyes, however, were set on a specific small company because I liked their product. The process was long and involved multiple meetings, a take-home problem, and stretched over 2 or so months. I was upf…
I seriously don't get how slow firms hire anyone. Surely the people you want will vanish quickly? I recently found a new job, had a backup offer after a week, and the job I actually wanted 4 weeks later, after about 7 working days post contact. After I signed, several of the firms I'd interviewed with got back to me with interest. This is weeks after initial contact, and weeks after the last interview, so if course I…
Thinking motivated by self-preservation, plus overweighting the “we want people who WANT to work here.”
When the quality of a hire isn’t easy to determine, this enables nearly every company (especially those where people are collegial) to think their people are the best.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think this is true, and might even be willing to go through the motions for the money, but if I expect you to truly love what you do and look for ways to improve the quality and throughput of your manure handling operations the money is not a good indicator or motivator.
> You think this is true, and might even be willing to go through the motions A good pun. The money stops being enough after a surprisingly short time. It would be interesting to see how long people could stomach terrible work for great pay.
> The money stops being enough
You have capped your own imagination. Whatever number you are considering, while you still think this is true, multiply it by 100.
> terrible work
I should clarify that I specifically mean unpleasant work. If it's literally killing me by say, inhalation of aerosolized pig brains or standing in cyanide or something, deal's off.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#456More anecdotal evidence: a few years back I wanted to get out of the work situation I was in. I looked around, had some interviews, had some offers. None of the postings had salary ranges, as is common where I live. My eyes, however, were set on a specific small company because I liked their product. The process was long and involved multiple meetings, a take-home problem, and stretched over 2 or so months. I was upf…
This is exactly why. Interviewing can easily eat up 2-3 days of your life. You only get 15-30 days of vacation per year. Theoretically, you are working to have free time. This is maybe 1/5th of your free time per year. You can't waste this on unknowns. Give me the salary up front or p#$$ off.
If you're taking time off for interviews, you're doing it wrong. Everyone I know either 1) calls out sick, or 2) if remote, just does it during their work day.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#457No salary range = lowballer scum. Simple as.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#458> No need to waste time with 7 rounds of interviewing only to find out the salary is 50% of what I currently make.
It's somewhat nice to have salary range in the job posting, but I've never felt strongly about.
You should not go through 7 rounds of interviews, or even a single round, if the comp isn't a fit!
That's the conversation to have on the very first intro call with the recruiter.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#459We just went through a large hiring cycle. We posted two versions for every job posting- one with salary ranges and one without. The ads performed equally well in regard to total responses with the better candidates responding to the ones without salary ranges. And... before you say, perhaps your salary ranges were bad, they weren't. Our salary offerings are very aggressive to the developer's benefit. In my opinion,…
> Of the top reasons people are happy at work, salary is way down on the list.
Absolutely.
But when considering a new role, I don't work there yet. It'll take a lot of research and talking to people to try to figure out if the working conditions are good or not. I don't want to spend that effort if it turns out you'll pay less than half what I make now. So I'll need to talk about comp on the first conversation with a recruiter.
Re: Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think this is true, and might even be willing to go through the motions for the money, but if I expect you to truly love what you do and look for ways to improve the quality and throughput of your manure handling operations the money is not a good indicator or motivator.
> You think this is true, and might even be willing to go through the motions A good pun. The money stops being enough after a surprisingly short time. It would be interesting to see how long people could stomach terrible work for great pay.
> The money stops being enough after a surprisingly short time. It would be interesting to see how long people could stomach terrible work for great pay.
You wouldn't need to because if the pay is so great you can soon retire.