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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Startup hiring is nothing like big company hiring. You’re basically casting a wide net and negotiating compensation on an individual basis. You may get a great junior applicant with 1 year of experience and a great senior tech lead with 15 years of FAANG experience respond to the same post, and you may want to hire them both!

If a company is flexible on compensation then it doesn’t make sense to artificially constrain the job listing before they even know what candidates are applying and how much they need to join.

Source: Previously a hiring manager at early startups.

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If that's the case, why not post some general guides based on experience? It seems like this excuse doesn't hold up if the job posters actually cared about transparency.

Example:

Job: Software Engineer

Description: Lorem ipsum

Range of 125K-300K based on relevant experience level

New Grad / 1YOE: 125-150K

2-5 YOE: 150K-200K

5+ YOE: 200K-300K

You can of course be as specific or vague, but these guides help inform people on both ends while not closing you off to those two disparate candidates.

What happens if someone looking for $450k really likes the company and can easily justify their ask. Is the comoany duty bound to now to refuse an offer that exceeds their stated range?

Then put that upper bound as unlimited and make a note that these are estimates. The theoretical candidate doesn't outweigh the value you provide to the vast majority of candidates if you do agree with the premise that it's good to provide the range.

If your upper bound is unlimited, what's the point of listing anything? Especially with a well known company like YC, it seems like they would have a solid lower bound so there's no need to list it.

Because there is an upper bound for most candidates, and there most certainly is a lower bound if the company means to hire fairly to employees. But as others pointed out, most companies do not have an unlimited upper bound. Additionally, companies do not want all senior level superstars, they almost always want the balance of levels. So be honest with those listings!

> Especially with a well known company like YC, it seems like they would have a solid lower bound so there's no need to list it.

That sounds like a great way to exploit the subset of candidates that don't know the unspoken rules of the valley. And given the variance of companies in YC, I don't think there is a known lower bound for every company.

Well, it's a shame but I guess that individual asking twice as much as everyone else will be left without a job...

There's a better way to get higher salaries: fight so that everyone gets a higher one.

Probably because it is more about deliberate information asymmetry and this provides a pretext.

I have very rarely seen a startup actually cast a net this wide if they're truly looking for senior candidates.

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