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Comment by redwards510 | Hacker News Reader

I don't mind homework, but companies need to start specifying their salary range up front. I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by getting through Tech Interview #1 or Homework #1, only to find out their max salary is laughable for San Francisco.

"You should just find that out upfront" I hear you saying. Well that is not always possible. Recruiters either don't know the range, or lie about not knowing, or you have to submit a big packet of info (cover letter, history, resume, homework) before you can even talk to a human about salary.

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Recruiter here with a history of working as a developer

    > but companies need to start specifying their salary
    > range up front

The costs outweigh the benefits for employers (encouraging existing employees to ask for more money, losing candidates who will accept significantly less but wouldn't apply at a lower range, etc) -- so don't hold your breath.

    > I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by
    > getting through Tech Interview #1 or Homework #1, only
    > to find out their max salary is laughable for San
    > Francisco.

State it upfront when you submit your application, rather than "find that out":

"I am interested in roles paying above my current salary of $xxx,xxx only, and am looking for an improvement on that to reflect my increased experience and the risk of moving roles"

    > Recruiters either don't know the range

Yeah they do.

    > or lie about not knowing

"Could you tell me about offers you've previously made for this client?" They may also be lying about actually being authorized to recruit for the role(!!!) so consider asking them for a copy of the technical specification. If it's a larger company, ask what the salary banding and official job title for the range is, then head to Glassdoor.

    > you have to submit a big packet of info (cover letter,
    > history, resume, homework) before you can even talk to
    > a human about salary

I had a hunch that roles like this weren't worth applying for when I was a developer. As a recruiter, this has been almost completely confirmed.

"The costs outweigh the benefits for employers"

That's funny, I thought this was a employee's market... Better get with the program, bub.

I'm actually in favor of 100% transparent salaries. I've yet to hear a compelling argument against it that wasn't simply "it feels icky."

    > I'm actually in favor of 100% transparent salaries.
    > I've yet to hear a compelling argument against it
    > that wasn't simply "it feels icky."

I have no strong feeling at all on them, but generally when I find myself unable to make a strong case for or against a divisive issue, and can't think of any compelling arguments either way, it's indicative that I haven't researched it properly, or am simply discarding perspectives that don't agree with my existing biases.

> "I am interested in roles paying above my current salary of $xxx,xxx only, and am looking for an improvement on that to reflect my increased experience and the risk of moving roles"

Are you really advocating that people disclose their salary to a recruiter, voluntarily?

What terrible advice. "How to immediately throw away your best bargaining chip 101".

    > Are you really advocating that people disclose their
    > salary to a recruiter

Yes

    > What terrible advice

    > "How to immediately throw away your best bargaining
    > chip 101"

If they're an internal recruiter, they have a banding you can be paid in, and they don't really care where you fall in it. Decisions above that salary banding will need to be referred to the person whose budget you are.

If they're an external recruiter, they have no control at all and are incentivized to get you paid as much as they can, as they're paid on commission.

And if they are an actual external company and not external recruiter?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but are you sure you don't mean an internal recruiter?

External recruiters get paid more for getting more candidates hired with the least effort per candidate -- they are not interested in spending a lot of time getting 10% more salary for a candidate, instead of getting another hire done.

Most external recruiters don't make much more than a couple of placements a month, so they are absolutely incentivized to amp their commission up as much as possible without losing the sale. Was this not the case when you were working as a recruiter?

As a hiring manager and candidate dealing with external recruiters, that's not what I saw happen.

How did you get people you didn't hire to share with you their actual salary preferences, and companies that didn't hire you their actual salary ranges? Sounds like that would be super useful info

This is outside the US, but I just ask at the first call: please give me a range on your expectations to see if it overlaps with ours and that it makes sense to move forward and avoid wasting time. Everyone answers, most giving a number directly and few counterasking for our range for the position, which of course I disclose at that point.

Do you mind not using multiline code block quotes that split sentences in half?

Not only is it obnoxious to read on mobile, as horizontal scrolling is necessary, but it also fundamentally doesn't make sense as you should be able to copy/paste whole sentences.

One might expect that as a recruiter/(ex-?)developer you'd realize how painful it is when you use this formatting.

Looks much better to me, including on mobile, and is the first complaint in the 2,020 days my account has been active here, whatever "one might expect". Additionally, it will look entirely natural to any of us who used email before it was mostly HTML.

Which mobile client and do you browse in landscape?

I agree with photogrammetry in that it's essentially unreadable on mobile portrait as you have to horizontally scroll each quote you want to read (then scroll back and again if it's multi-line).

Shorter >'s with italics are my preference.

Thanks for the downvote - good to know that you're not interested in improving the UX on HN.

What changes if you drop just a handful of words so it starts "I am interested in roles paying above $xxx,xxx only"?

That might be my salary. It might be my floor for moving to a new, more expensive, area. It might be what I think my current salary should be.

Depending on how things like bonuses are done, base salary alone isn't super relevant anyway. There's a potentially very big difference between a company that says "we give bonuses of up to 20k per year" and "our bonus target for good performers at this level is 25%."

Maybe 9 times out of 10 the recruiter says "sorry, that's not going to happen." But you only want to find the ones who say "we can work with that" anyway.

This may not be the best way to absolutely maximize your total, but if you pick the right floor, you can save a lot of time up front. And the way to really maximize your offer isn't to hide your current salary, anyway. It's to take that first offer to another other company you're interviewing with, and see if they can beat it. That's your best bargaining chip.

> The costs outweigh the benefits for employers (encouraging existing employees to ask for more money, losing candidates who will accept significantly less but wouldn't apply at a lower range, etc) -- so don't hold your breath.

> State it upfront when you submit your application, rather than "find that out"

As an employee, I would say the costs of specifying my expected salary range upfront outweigh the benefits.

    > As an employee, I would say the costs of specifying
    > my expected salary range upfront outweigh the benefits

That's interesting. Having well over a decade of being an employee, having been a hiring manager, having been a freelancer, and having been a recruiter, I'd do it every time.

This is true, and one of the worst inefficiencies you encounter as a candidate (and probably as an employer, I don't know): There's so much song and dance that has to go on before you get to the meat of things: Compensation. Companies could easily solve this by posting clear salary ranges, but most just don't.

Another thing that companies could do better is think really hard about "required" and "desired" skills, and be truthful. Lots of companies list things as required which they're probably willing to bend on for the right candidate. All this does is scare off potential candidates (odd when you're complaining about that mythical shortage of engineers). On the other hand, recent events have encouraged me to not be afraid to apply for jobs that I'm unqualified for :) so maybe it's not such a big deal.

    > There's so much song and dance that has to go on
    > before you get to the meat of things

This can be an advantage of using an external recruiter, because they sure as shit know what their potential cut of the revenue will be.

100% This. I just wasted a bunch of time extracting an offer from one of AmaGooFaceFlix. Supposedly a top SV company with good compensation.

Got an awful offer to relocate to an area where 1/4 to 1/2 the house costs twice as much and I would no longer be able to work from home. I would also lose a significant portion of my life commuting. The offer was comparable to what I made working remote from Boston.

I don't mean comparable in the sense that they tacked on a CA bump to handle the cost. Comparable as in same money, but I would have to live in CA.

Ended up working remote for more somewhere else. Everyone's time wasted. I don't get it at all. It's not like they didn't know it was low.

Sounds like Amazon?

Re-read (it is an odd wording): "1/4 to 1/2 the house costs twice as much". He also said SV

Seattle is not even close to being as bad as silicon valley in housing costs.

I don't publicly shame current or past employers as well as potential employers. It's why I listed multiple companies. You will have to reach out to me on some other medium to get details.

My guess: Facebook. I talked to them. I flew out. I spent the entire day on their campus and ate a really nice lunch. I wasted my time with them. They were excited to hire me for about $45k/yr less than I was already making.

But don't worry, they'll make it up with about $10k/yr of stock grants which you don't get until you've worked there 4 years.

I picked another lesser-known company and am making - no shit - about $70k/yr more than Facebook was offering. With stock grants that also might be worth about $50k after 4 years, though admittedly, the stocks are a much bigger gamble in this case.

In addition to salary range up-front: find out up-front if they're actually hiring you, or want to do the "contract for a while, then maybe we'll hire you for real" thing.

I had to say no late in the process to several companies which offered me the contracting-to-maybe-hire dance.

I had an incredibly bad experience with this recently. They failed to do the end-of-contract review on time, extended the contract period numerous times after, and when they finally got around to the review said, "we're not a good fit." I actually liked the people and the job, but got the distinct impression it was just a team full of devs that wanted a devops to clean up their terrible infrastructure mess, future proof it, and then let them go.

Never again will I do contract-to-maybe-hire.

I agree, I always ask what the salary range is and if they are not willing to give it I tell them I am not willing to go any father in the interview process. They say then if they really want to interview you.

Most companies pay poorly.

If you are in the higher range of salary, you gotta find out which local employers/industries are worth talking to and limit your application to them. There probably aren't many.

Alternatively, you can specify your expectations up front. It doesn't have to be an exact number, just a hint -- e.g. "No talk if the salary isn't well north of 100K".

You're anchoring them to offer you 100k. Pretty sure that's not what you wanted to do ^^

"Well north of" are the key words here.

Have you tried hired.com ?

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