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Show me the salary!

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Re: Show me the salary!

#31

Post by specialdragon »

My understanding of 'competitive' salaries are that the employer doesn't know what range they should be offering. The quickest method of resolving that is to phone them up and go, "You've specified a competitive salary range, I'm looking for a salary of £X for that position, if you feel that's sensible then I'll forward my CV", at which point my CV is then updated to reflect the amount I just specified.

If I'm applying for a job it's because what's there sounds interesting, if the salary backs it up then brilliant. If the salary is poor then maybe I didn't want to work there after all and that's very much their loss.

Re: Show me the salary!

#32

Post by serve_yay »

It could backfire - if I saw a salary stated on a job ad, I would consider it firm. So it it was too low I wouldn't even consider applying, when perhaps they would have been willing to work something out with me if I did.

Re: Show me the salary!

#33

Post by 500and4 »

exelius wrote: post #27
500and4 wrote: post #25

I would argue that in London it's the fact that talking about salaries is considered rather taboo in tech that perpetuates non-disclosure. I wrote a post about it a while ago: http://blog.zonino.co.uk/on-salaries-in-london-startups/

It's still common practice in the US not to discuss salaries. Which is total BS because transparency on salary can only benefit the workers; the "taboo" nature of the discussion is perpetuated by big companies who try to discourage collective bargaining (btw, forbidding employees from discussing salaries with their co-workers is illegal in the US - despite what your employment contract may say).

I couldn't agree more. If we want more transparency from employers we (as engineers) should start with being transparent with each other. I had no idea that legislation existed in the US - that's really interesting!

Re: Show me the salary!

#34

Post by johnward »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #12

I've got a handful of general rules around salary that tell me not to apply for certain jobs: - I don't apply to jobs that don't list a salary range. This is a red flag that tells me that the employer doesn't have the budget to pay market rates and that applying and interviewing could be a colossal waste of time for both of us. I get that the employer may not be willing to pay what I want based on my experience, etc,…

I usually follow all of these. The one thing that gets me is when a recruiter calls me up. I usually talk to them because I don't want to be a dick and you never know they my actually be valuable one day. I tell them my salary. "oh well this one pays about 70% of that and it's an 8 month contract. I'd like to put you in for this". I'm not leaving a full time position for a contract position with less pay. I might consider a contract position at about 150-200% of my current pay.

Re: Show me the salary!

#35

Post by protonfish »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #12

I've got a handful of general rules around salary that tell me not to apply for certain jobs: - I don't apply to jobs that don't list a salary range. This is a red flag that tells me that the employer doesn't have the budget to pay market rates and that applying and interviewing could be a colossal waste of time for both of us. I get that the employer may not be willing to pay what I want based on my experience, etc,…

That's reasonable, but I've found that I am no longer put off by open-ended contracts. I found many companies doing this because they know their hiring practices aren't good enough to weed out posers. If you are good at your job, you have little to worry about. Besides, I've lost more jobs that were "permanent" than contract. Employer commitment is a fairy tale from the days of yore.

Re: Show me the salary!

#36

Post by crdoconnor »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #10
austenallred wrote: post #3

We don't broadcast our salaries with our job listings because reality is how much we're willing to pay varies candidate to candidate. Interviewing, for example, someone with seven years experience vs. fifteen (I'm simplifying what matters greatly for the sake of argument - years experience is the easiest thing to put a number to) and we would pay way more for one than the other. Maybe that's unfair, but I don't think…

Seems like an awe shucks kind of answer, if that were truly the primary concern you could post the highest and lowest salaries you hire at and explain the range. I do agree with your policy but for different reasons. For one I haven't seen a scalable way to roll out total salary transparency with a net gain in company psychology. The problems seem to outweigh the benefits, although I think it may be possible and just…

>I haven't seen a scalable way to roll out total salary transparency with a net gain in company psychology

#1 Make sure everybody is paid as much as they deserve as far as you can tell. #2 Roll out total salary transparency.

Not being "scalable" sounds like another way of saying "we don't want to do #1, it sounds expensive. Secrecy is cheaper.".

Re: Show me the salary!

#37

Post by mgkimsal »

This one bugs me

"Recruiter: “Why don’t you tell me how much you think you’re worth?”"

Well... what I'm worth to a company depends a whole hell of a lot on how good they are operationally. Company A may be able to extract $500k of value per year from my skills. Company B may only be able to extract $80k of value from my skills. What am I "worth"? It's largely dependent on the environment I'm operating in, and how good they are at organizing everyone's skills to produce/extract value.

Re: Show me the salary!

#38

Post by emodendroket »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #12

I've got a handful of general rules around salary that tell me not to apply for certain jobs: - I don't apply to jobs that don't list a salary range. This is a red flag that tells me that the employer doesn't have the budget to pay market rates and that applying and interviewing could be a colossal waste of time for both of us. I get that the employer may not be willing to pay what I want based on my experience, etc,…

What's amazing to me is all the recruiters who call you to ask if you want to do temp-to-perm work when you have a full-time job. Why would you agree to that?

Re: Show me the salary!

#39

Post by LoSboccacc »

leeoniya wrote: post #14
CalRobert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is counter to a lot of advice given, but because of this I try to address salary as one of the first questions during the initial contact I have with a potential employer. I'm fine with a range, but if they're not even in the same ballpark we've both just saved a lot of time. Similarly, if there's no way they can afford me it does us both good to wish each other well and move on.

yes, i've had major issues with this. i know what i will and will not accept and if my number is not something the employer is willing to pay, that should be the first thing discussed so we don't waste each other's time. it's very annoying to be dragged through interviews for what turns out to be a laughable offer at the end.

once it happened worse to me, I specified my minimum acceptable price at the first contact, went trough three interviews, then they offered 87% of what I asked.

Re: Show me the salary!

#40

Post by johnward »

austenallred wrote: post #3

We don't broadcast our salaries with our job listings because reality is how much we're willing to pay varies candidate to candidate. Interviewing, for example, someone with seven years experience vs. fifteen (I'm simplifying what matters greatly for the sake of argument - years experience is the easiest thing to put a number to) and we would pay way more for one than the other. Maybe that's unfair, but I don't think…

You are probably missing a lot of candidates. Maybe that's ok because employers seem to be ok with a ton of false negatives to avoid one false positive. I can't count how many positions that don't list salary that I came to find out pay about half what I expected. It's almost of waste of time for job seekers, actually for both of us.
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