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Comment by noodle | Hacker News Reader

I currently post ranges because we're now large enough. But when we were smaller, I wouldn't include ranges because our job posts didn't filter by seniority, and at least part of the comp was the potential for a healthy options grant. So the effective cash comp range was so large as to be meaningless on a single job post. "$0 to $1m DOE" (for example) doesn't help anyone make any decisions and is so distracting that its better to leave it off.

Also as a hiring manager, you'll also find that if you post the range, it just so happens that almost everyone's very firm minimum acceptable comp is the top of your published range.

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As a counterpoint to "everyone's very firm minimum acceptable comp is the top of your published range", I find that most jobs with a published salary range seem to pay just low enough for me to not want to go through the trouble of applying.

It certainly does act as a filter. My point was more, this was much less of a thing when ranges weren't published. Many applicants had firm requirements across all the way across the spectrum. Published rates end up grouping towards top of published ranges for each role. Could be caused by something else of course, this isn't necessarily commentary on cause/effect, but it's my observation.

I suppose if you can set the top end of the range to be something that you feel is exorbitant for a senior engineer, to show that you're willing to pay well for good talent. If you come up short, then perhaps you're just not competitive enough and no amount of playing hide and seek with the salary range will help.

You'll need objective criteria as to why you're making a less than top-end offer to someone, and perhaps a contractual way to promise them how they can make it to the top end... then it could work.

> $0 to $1m DOE...

Actually, that does help me. At least I know that for the right candidate, with the right skills and fit, we can talk. That means I am not wasting my time because I am not talking to a place that has an inflexible top dollar range controlled by someone other than the hiring manager that will become a brick wall if we hit that point.

I don't mind an interview process where I need to prove my worth to get that high offer. I just feel disheartened for everyone's sake when I get through a process and both sides really want to work together, but everything comes crashing down because of the money.

This is fairly true for most businesses already, though - at least in tech. It's just a question of how they value your skills that might not be in alignment. Some companies will value what you bring to the table more than others, just because of what their needs are. Or they just can't match pay. We regularly lose people to FAANG because we just can't comp the same, and that's been true for every startup I've hired for ever.

> We regularly lose people to FAANG because we just can't comp the same,

This would seem to support the GP's point - it sounds like you do have an inflexible top dollar range, meaning listing it up front would help to avoid wasting the time of you and candidates who are expecting more.

I think a more thorough answer to this question would require me to put too much detail out in public than I might be allowed to, but suffice it to say that we don't. We also don't really have a problem hiring and we pay above market, so this isn't me lamenting how tough the market is or anything.

Why wouldn't you include the option grant in the job advert though ? I know some people (including me, couple of years ago) who specifically try to find places where there is a huge upside potential through options

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