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No salary wastes everyone's time

news.ycombinator.com

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No salary wastes everyone's time

#1

Post by michaelteter »

It's the first of the month, so that means "Who's Hiring".

Roles which do not list a salary (or reasonable salary range) will have worse signal-to-noise applications the more senior the roles.

Missed opportunity: company and candidate may never meet because candidate assumes low salary.

Wasted company and candidate time: candidate is enthusiastic and goes through some effort/process before discovering the salary is too low.

The days of hiding salary numbers need to end. Imagine shopping at some stores where the cost of items were not displayed until checkout. Shoppers would favor the stores which listed prices up front; they would only visit the hidden-price stores for unique or specialty items which were not available at stores which listed prices.

If a company cannot compete on salary, and they know it, they should explain why they are still worth considering. And if they have no value to offer to make up for the comparatively low salary, then they should make clear that they accept more junior developers (or are willing to train).

(reposted with title change based on previous comment recommendation)

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#3

Post by hirundo »

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.

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#4

Post by VoodooJuJu »

hirundo wrote: post #3

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.

For the working class (most applicants), we're here just for the salary. We're not here for prestige, or asslicking, or passion. We're here to put food on the table and to potentially build for our children a future where they don't have to sell their time for money.

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#6

Post by _Microft »

aaomidi wrote: post #5
_Microft wrote: post #2

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!

Why so rude?

There is no rudeness or malice in my comment. You can find the necessary context here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36157422

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#7

Post by potsandpans »

hirundo wrote: post #3

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.

idk what you're talking about, I'm here to get paid.

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#8

Post by paulddraper »

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.

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#9

Post by throw9away6 »

hirundo wrote: post #3

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.

Are you the person on the dating site that refuses to post a photo as well?

Re: No salary wastes everyone's time

#10

Post by ryapric »

paulddraper wrote: post #8

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…

So post two openings to close the gap?
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