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Comment by Sparkle-san | Hacker News Reader

When I was looking to switch jobs in a state with salary posting requirements last year, I found the vast majority of the ranges to be perfectly reasonable and having something around a $50k spread. The law also allowed me to see that the ceiling my current company offered for my SRE position was the floor at many other places. There's always going to be a few wild ranges but overall I found the salary posting requirement to be a huge benefit in my job search.

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I've found most ranges to be fair and useful as well. But, I've run into issues where they have no desire to honor the ranges. I've had discussions with HR/Recruiters and requested a salary near the top of their posted range. They've come back and said that the absolute max they can pay is 25% under what was posted as the max.

Their 140-200k posted salary capped out at 150k.

Isn't a hidden, lower max actually fraud?

It depends. You'd have to be able to prove they'd never offer anybody that max.

It's likely that 25% under the listed maximum is the maximum they'll offer GP when paired with their resume/experience/interview performance.

> They've come back and said that the absolute max they can pay is 25% under what was posted as the max.

Suggests that there is really a lower, across-the-board cap.

I know someone who was just told the range for a position is $100-130K. I happen to know that the actual salary range for that position is $100-160K. So why was he told 100-130? Company policy that they only hire in the bottom half of the range. So he was given the hiring range.

It's possible the company you mention has a similar policy, but posted the full range for the position, not the hiring range.

When required to post a range, there are pros/cons to both approaches. One tells you what you can expect for hiring. The other tells you what you can expect going forward. Probably companies that decide they want policies like this really ought to post both ranges, for full transparency. But some literal-minded HR drone who is told to post a range will probably just grab one or the other.

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