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Comment by lhorie | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, do you mean you're applying to companies where the interviewers actually have a say in salary negotiations? AFAIK, interviewers almost never a say on compensation, except in very small companies where your interviewer is a co-founded or partner.

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I'm not looking. I've got companies reaching out to me. If there is no recruiter or recruiter defers to interviewer to discuss salary range then I want that question out of the way before I spend my time interviewing.

It doesn't matter if they tell me what the salary range is or confirm my expectations are within their salary range for that role - I just want to know upfront before everyone involved wastes their time.

As I say above, if there's a fit between company and candidate then things can be done to make sure that everybody is happy. You can't do that with inflexible salary ranges ahead of time.

If upper bound of their salary range is e.g. 30% below what I make right now it's very unlikely we can find an agreement and even if we could I'd be wary to accept an offer, because as an "expensive hire" I'd be less likely to get a raise in the future.

I start every engagement with something like: this is how much I'm willing to accept. If this falls outside of your range, I wish you all the best.

I used to prefer explicit salary ranges when my salary was in the middle of the bell curve. On the higher end of the bell curve, I've started to think explicit salary ballparks can be a bit limiting. Companies that pay top dollar are usually on levels.fyi and you can get a pretty decent idea of what the pay rates are even if the recruiter/interviewer doesn't tell you. These companies also typically have multiple roles open at all levels and can't realistically spam people about multiple roles. So a lack of salary numbers upfront can be a tool that you can leverage to upsell yourself towards higher pay roles early in the process (in addition to being able to negotiate numbers at the end).

^ this - unless looking at reporting to a CXO or director the interviewers, even the HM, are usually only slightly less of a minion than the candidate. They may have a range, but it's nowhere near what you think it is and if they want you they will offer the top of it.

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