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Recruiters should be talking about numbers in the first interview. Employers should have a sense of what your number is and whether or not they can get there before moving forward with interviewing. If they're not doing that, they're wasting your time and their time.

> If they're not doing that, they're wasting your time and their time.

Actually, they're getting paid for the their time. I'm not. I'm actually burning my time.

> Recruiters should be talking about numbers in the first interview.

I'm going through the recruitment process right now and the numbers out of the gate are always lowball figures (possibly personalized to me), because of two reasons.

Because they want to see if you accept it or not. I'm sure a lot of people coming into the bay area from other cities/countries will be like "wow, 185k, that's awesome" & they'll figure it out that the company was willing to pay upto 350k for the same work.

Secondly, publicly advertising salaries have a big impact on the people who are already in the building. This is pretty much already a problem when you bring in an H1B who has to put their salary into the DoL database and post notices in the offices with their pay. But this is only base pay, not including bonuses or stocks, so it's easy to cap the base pay and fill it up with bonus packages.

So the companies are legitimately balking at this because they'll have to pay their existing employees more if they put out an attractive posting, but if they put a lowball figure nobody would even show up to interview - only people who already make lower than the lowball figure will show up & then try to negotiate upwards.

I'm currently interviewing and this is a weird dance, sort of like buying a car.

I've only got a single response to someone asking "Is this range acceptable" - "I'm looking at multiple offers and being the second best offer is no good for you and I'm not negotiating before an interview or comparing offers. It's your bid, not my ask".

I guess it's a position of privilege to deal from. My need to go to back to work isn't economic, I'll just languish if I don't find a job & become truly feral :)

> So the companies are legitimately balking at this because they'll have to pay their existing employees more if they put out an attractive posting....

Let's phrase this properly: companies are balking because they'll have to pay existing employees market rate.

Not really. Employees aren’t stupid. If they are paid below market they are a serious flight risk, especially in today’s tight labor market. We thus raise valued employee’s compensation to keep up with market.

100%

If they're asking your number and you're not being straight forward, what's the problem?

Them: "What's your number"? You: "$350k." Them: "Ok, cool lets move forward." or "That's a lot of money and we can't pay that much. Thanks for meeting with us."

I'm assuming that you've done your homework and know what a reasonable top of the range is. If that's the case, just say what your number is and let them decide if it's too much.

The candidate has just as much if not more ambiguity and uncertainty as the employer, so why is the burden on the candidate?

It's very possible for a candidate to be thinking something like "I'm currently making $200K. I think it's possible I could get $300K, but $250K would probably be acceptable, and I might even settle for a lateral move of $200K if I find the position really appeals to me." What should they say? $300K and possibly price themselves out? $200K and possibly lowball themselves?

Really just seems like candidates don't want to do these negotiation process.

I was surprised with how much I was able to get away with negotiating my first tech job. It was a little bit of back and forth, a recruiter was involved, and I could just poker face my way into a six-figure job.

If they say 200k are you want to just say 250k and see if you get it.

Like everything it's just quicker and easier if you rip off the band-aid and just do it.

There's also option c they say your number is in range, go tough the interview carousel and lowball you at the end

Interviewers/recruiters who don’t quickly screen out salary mismatches get fired by management for wasting management’s time.

>> If they're not doing that, they're wasting your time and their time.

>Actually, they're getting paid for the their time. I'm not. I'm actually burning my time.

nit: "they" refers to the business, not the employee conducting the interview.

> wow, 185k, that's awesome" & they'll figure it out that the company was willing to pay upto 350k for the same work.

I’m nowhere near the Bay Area, I know what Bay Area salaries are by looking at publicly available sites.

I also know while I never made above $160K until starting at my first “FAANG” two years ago working remotely, there is no way in hell I would accept less than $250K - $300K to ever give up my big house in the burbs in a much lower cost of living area and that’s only because my kids have already graduated and my wife and I could stay in a smaller place and not worry about the school system.

Well I personally would never work a job where I had to go into an office again.

> just for the privilege to be low-balled or even worse denied

I'm ok being denied. You set the bar and I don't meet it, fair enough... far worse is wasting my time when a simple discussion about salary at the start (at least after the first interview) could have saved us both time.

And you can of course bring it up early on in your calls with the company as well.

Everyone is talking about this from the perspective of cushy tech jobs and forgetting that this applies to _all_ job postings. The vast majority of the population isn't bargaining from nearly the same position.

These benefits that we're experiencing by being able to just walk away from an onslaught of recruiters begging anyone with +5yoe don't apply to other job sectors or even entry-level positions in tech!

Can you bring it up early? Yeah. Should it be in the job listing? Absolutely. I've yet to see a convincing argument otherwise.

> I'm not about to go through 3 phone screens, a take-home test, a full-day onsite, etc. just for the privilege to be low-balled or even worse denied.

Maybe I got lucky but I've always been able to figure out the rough range they were thinking of paying before the first real interview. In case of recruiters, sure, they want to talk to you first and that's 15 minutes you'll never get back.

Personally I just don't move ahead unless I have some signal about salary to not get into that situation.

Yep, just ask "What is the budget for this role?". Yep, it's that simple.

It's never that simple. If it were, that's how it would turn out to be and in some places it is. Just one example why it's not that simple - you might have an ad running for a role with no seniority attached. You're open to all seniority, because you need all. Do you open all three ranges in the ad, in the convo? It might be that simple but it closes the door to another convo which might be, after you hear out the company's needs and present yourself, you might offer to jump to the occasion and offer an extended role of yourself above what you were before (a step up) and ask for more. Now what? There's no room to go either way anymore in negotiation but down from the top of the budget.

There's no black and white, fits all, thing. Never is that simple. The only fair thing I saw so far is along the lines of if there's any indication that company is decent and you're interested in a role, if you pass a filter to get a call: do the short intro about the company and the people and the role, do the short intro (after company intro, that's important because you can tune your self-presentation) about yourself and then go a bit back and forth on the expectations from both ends, including financials. If all things are aligned then you proceed forward. If there's no talk about financials on that call, not worth it or if there's no indication there's an honest answer we have to see since we're talking about outside of what we initially even asked for but here we are - offered more. Getting low-balled there, in such environments, is hard since the day you start you get to feel and know that you, indeed, were.. and what did company accomplish with that then? Nothing good. Overall, that's about half an hour or so IF there's indication that company has good reputation. If not, or a startup, or you're just shotgunning it across to get to the high score (and hopping) - there's no help, it's a gamble where number indicated will help but will also close a lot of real good opportunities.

That’s the value ad of a good recruiter. You tell them I’ll move for $X and don’t call me without that.

If neither prospective employee nor employer talk about salary up-front before investing many hours with interviews, travel, etc. that's just simply a screwup on both sides.

This salary range thing won't fix that. Ready? The job listing is now "$100k to $200k depending on experience." If you are making $140k and hoping to make $160k the range doesn't help you at all. You still better talk about salary up front!

Oh I can make-up scenarios too! Ready?

I make $60k because my company underpays and I don't work in tech where jobs tend to be very cushy and compensation information abounds! I start seeing job listings for my position with a floor of $80k. Wow I just made $20k more thanks to reducing information asymmetry!

For a real example, I had plenty of recruiters and companies that _refused_ to "talk numbers" until the end of the process. Now that I'm further along in my career and finances I have the luxury of being able to shop around and kick companies to the curb that don't suit me.

When I was first leaving college and had no income and little/no savings? A huge power imbalance in favor of the companies and I personally didn't feel comfortable pressing about salary. A law like this that I could have pointed to to just say "you have to tell me, them's the rules" could have had immeasurable impact on my career.

This law obviously doesn't solve every situation, but you must be able to see the information asymmetry and power imbalance that exists that this will help resolve?

This. As an employer, we ask rough salary expectations up front. We take into account seniority, experience etc… in adjusting the salary to match a person’s worth too.

We do an initial 15 -20 minute screening interview. One of the questions we ask is what is your desired salary range? If it is out of range of what we are willing to pay for you experience and skill set level, we don’t do a follow up. Process closed.

I have never had a first interview where the recruiter or TA person could not or would not let me know the salary range.

Would it be nice to know in advance, yes. Is it necessary for me to know in advance so long as I can get it during the fist contact? No.

I'm with you 100%. And also never had a problem getting a hard number or a range from the recruiter.

> > if the ad doesn't specify salary...just don't apply.

> So all job postings before these laws have been put into effect? Looks like someone doesn't understand how the world really works.

I think it does actually work like this a lot of the time. Either the candidate doesn't bother to apply, or they apply because they got a salary estimate from another source.

A relatively unknown company that isn't posting salary info is kind of a red flag.

> A relatively unknown company that isn't posting salary info is kind of a red flag

I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality than others in this thread. Even in tech I've had to put in a ton of legwork to find salary estimates for jobs and often the data was very incomplete. Combine the weirdness with roles/titles that companies can have, how do you search for salary info for "assistant to the guru of front-end"? Am I a devops engineer, SWE.Is there different pay for being on-call?

Not to mention it being even worse for everyone I've talked to that doesn't work in tech. Basically everyone I know has gotten the best salary info from the source, during the interview process.

In the rare exceptions, they are actively looking to leave their current job and are worried about cash-flow or even more extenuating circumstances like deciding whether or not to change careers.

I've _never_ seen a company offer salary information (numbers) in the job listing unless it was explicitly required by law (CO, soon to be CA and NYC, government jobs, etc).

I'm not saying it's the norm to post salary, and I'm not defending companies that don't. But some companies do, and some job seekers won't apply unless they do.

In the September HN who's hiring thread, two of the first four posts include salary info. Remote, and NYC.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677265

So at-best 50% in a small pool that's already selection-biased 18 ways to Sunday? These laws apply to _all_ job postings. The benefits are, I admit, smaller for experienced tech workers for a myriad of reasons, but the societal/worker benefit across the entire population is huge.

> the societal/worker benefit across the entire population is huge

I didn't disagree with your main assertion, only with your use of absolutes. You said:

"So all job postings before these laws have been put into effect?"

and:

"I've _never_ seen a company offer salary information (numbers) in the job listing unless it was explicitly required by law"

Why not legislate the other way around?

Make it the law that you post how much you're willing to work for on your LinkedIn profile and that you have to supply it to employers at the start of an application process so neither side is wasting time.

Seems like that would address all your complaints just as well.

Because the employers already have more information than the employees. The whole point is to level the playing field. Your suggestion just gives the employers more data.

Because ostensibly, governments should be acting on behalf of their citizens (almost all of whom work for a living) rather than their corporations.

Because that gives employers more leverage to push salaries down, and makes it more likely that workers will be exploited.

The point of this legislation is to push salaries up by forcing employers to reveal their hiring budget up front. That way, prospective employees can more easily shop around for the highest salary.

Because corporations already have more leverage than individuals like 99% of the time.

This just tilts the scale of information asymmetry even more in the direction of employers than it already is.