An update on salary transparency in job posts | Hacker News Reader

An update on salary transparency in job posts

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130 pointsdylankbuckley144 comments

Now lets quantify how many of them are absurd listings.

Recently saw a Senior Security Engineer role for Netflix, $100-$700k salary range.

How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role? $100k is clearly a joke, $700k is clearly a salary someone got during the bubble.

Do I come in at $400k? Is $250k a bargain rate?

https://imgur.com/a/0Fe00Qf

This is an often proffered limitation of these laws, but there are second order effects. If someone hires a woman, minority, whatever else, at the $100k rate with the same qualifications they typically hire X group at the $700k rate, they're going to have some 'splainin' to do.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough. If laws are found to have bugs, you keep patching them over time to close the loopholes.

Unfortunately, the patch cycle for laws is, by design, incredibly slow.

Luckily humans don’t change quickly. 1870’s era anti trust issues are still relevant in 2023. Problem shows up 150+ years ago and we’re still dealing with it.

Slow patch times are often a feature. Laws that solve problems can seem irrelevant when those problems go away.

Exactly, and so there are a few outliers that don’t follow the spirit or good faith of the law. Guess what? You can ignore them! Nobody says you have to apply. There are plenty of other companies that are publishing informative salary ranges

But if it isn't a minority or woman then whatever right?

What's your point? Their point was that these scales can help provide evidence of minorities and women getting paid less. Can you expand on what we could learn from the situation of two people getting different salaries when they're neither minorities nor women?

My point was that singling out minorities or women is not necessary, it applies to all humans. Although I think what you end up is a mediocre salary for everyone, not just those who negotiate poorly. By setting the salary range tightly it prevents market forces from affecting pay much.

Unfortunately, grouping people is the only way to enforce these laws in the US. You have to prove you were discriminated against because you are part of some protected group.

A big range like that means you should feel more than fine selecting the average— so $400k— at the minimum. Anything less and you’re essentially admitting you don’t think you’re worth what the salary range is.

Personally I would ask for clarification, and if they refuse to provide any, ask for near or above the top-end of the range. Theres plenty of $215k salary jobs currently, so if you happen to not land this one, then no loss of what you never had. But if you happen to get this job, making $700k, simply for asking, then congrats!

The issue is that if you're currently making $200K, it's hard to tell where they might think you might sit in that scale up-front.

It's a bit like saying "Employee - $10K-$10M p/a" - It's not very useful in a job posting, as you might reasonably assume someone being paid the top salary is not actually doing the same role as at the bottom range.

If they aren't doing the same role, then why are salaries for two different roles listed under a single job requisition?

Because outside of government and certain (but not all) bigcorps, knowledge worker jobs aren’t “find a cog to fit a precise position in a larger machine” things.

Heck, even in government they often aren't, though the rules governing government hiring force people to superficially hire as if they were.

Most people don't know what a $400k Security Engineer actually does to warrant that pay because you can probably find a similar job at another company that pays much less and probably makes you work more. I sure as fuck don't and I at least have one pentesting cert FWIW.

This pricing scheme punishes people trying to be honest about their skill set. Otherwise why stop at the average? Just max it out and ask for $700k. Another $300k/yr won't break Netflix's bank and everyone else is getting rich that they won't care to call you out either.

Won’t they likely place you into a salary band once you actually start interviewing and they see what level you’re at? L1 starts at $100k and L7 tops out at $700k+. I would think a range that broad is using a single listing for all levels.

They should remove the L4 from the job post title if that's the case, or replace it with (L1 - L7) so it's clear it's for broad levels of experience

Do ask for 700 but be prepared to be passed over for a candidate that's better but asked for less. And if you are exceptional (compared to others) then you damn well deserve it. Comparison to the rest of the market (on both sides) is the crux here, not being 'honest' or whatever (what does this even mean). Isn't it?

"... not being 'honest' or whatever (what does that even mean)." Wow. Remind me not to hire from HN.

>Comparison to the rest of the market (on both sides) is the crux here, not being 'honest' or whatever (what does this even mean). Isn't it?

That market comparison is fraught with conditions and often only follows ill-defined job titles.

If you take a look at one of these postings - https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/292552236 - you'll note that the way it's written, there aren't any exceptional job requirements here. It's hard to see why the salary range has such a high ceiling.

Obviously in the interview, they could have much higher requirements, but we don't know that unless someone from Netflix chimes in.

For example,

>You have knowledge of various regulations and controls (SOX, PCI, CCPA, GDPR, etc)

how much is knowledge of each of those worth towards the final salary? Pricing each of those would add more fidelity to the market's signals, but companies often don't do that. Same with technical skills or knowledge of individual products: how much is AWS knowledge worth at the beginner, intermediate, and expert levels to a job that needs AWS knowledge?

This is like buying a publicly traded stock (not yolo'ing) with roughly 80% of the company information not available to you. That information is there for a reason because it promotes market efficiency. It allows you to more easily compare two companies that do similar work.

This is what is meant by honesty, but the job market hides this information. And the job market is often dishonest because it does not price these things, because it is hiding information from applicants, because that gives an advantage to employers. An extremely wide salary range here only serves that goal.

And on the employee side, it would mean that I can go learn AWS to a certain level, and I know that skill would contribute $X amount to the final salary that I can ask for. I don't have to play games trying to sell my skills for more than they're worth.

> This pricing scheme punishes people trying to be honest about their skill set.

I've really liked the rare company that advertises a narrow pay range and then makes a single, non-negotiable offer for the most they can get the candidate.

The company has more data. The company has an existing pay structure. The company knows its own budget. They should offer what they're willing to pay. Anything else is extremely disrespectful, frankly, despite being the norm.

> A big range like that means you should feel more than fine selecting the average— so $400k— at the minimum. Anything less and you’re essentially admitting you don’t think you’re worth what the salary range is.

But does this mean that no one who is "worth what the salary range is" should be paid in the bottom half of the range?

Yes. Given what Netflix pays in general, I would guess that the bottom parts of that range are negotiating shenanigans and no senior security engineer they hire actually makes that little. (Which sounds silly until you consider - how many good engineers would accept an offer at the bottom of a posted salary range?)

Where are there plenty of $215k jobs? That's way above the range I'm seeing even on most "senior" or "staff" listings.

Are you in the US in a coastal market? $200k+ base is very normal.

I'm in Philadelphia which is definitely a coastal city in the US and $200k would be way above market here unless my understanding of the local market is dramatically wrong.

I don't know what tech cos hire out of there but a senior engineer in NYC would easily make $200k+ base at most companies

Philadelphia metro area has very weak wages compared to most other east coast cities for tech. We don't have much of a FAANG or tech company presence here to bid up market salaries(outside of a couple of satellite offices in the suburbs). I can tell you from my network that with ~6-7+ YoE you can earn about ~180-210k counting base & bonus at most of the banks or financial firms as a new hire at the VP or tech lead level.

My experience is based in SF and Los Angeles, but I personally know many new/recent-grads who were recently hired at $150-$180k (cash) comp including bonus, to say nothing of options, from FAANGs to well-funded later-stage startups to even run-of-the-mill legacy corporate tech positions.

Even GitHub, which pre-Microsoft was more stingy with its money, is offering $160k for entry-level new-grad hires last time I checked.

>How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role?

Get a competing job offer.

A minimum price lets labor sellers know if it is worth applying or not, and trends in supply and demand for that type of labor (based on which way the minimums are moving industry wide).

The timing on this is rather difficult though, and its non trivial time and effort

In any market, sellers should always be constantly seeking buyers and negotiating prices if they are interested in receiving the highest prices.

or “unethically” (depending on your ethics!), you could just _say_ you have a competing offer. Unless there is like some secret hiring manager slack where people ask each other “did you really send that person an offer?”.

There is, but if I give more details my life will be in danger.

You don’t even have to disclose the company during negotiation, I’ve simply said “I have an offer from a Series A company with X equity and Y salary” so they have something to benchmark against

You did used to be able to similarly overstate your current salary, and then something quite a lot more formal than "secret slack channel" evolved. And it's often not accurate. Urgh.

The counteroffer can easily be conditioned on seeing a copy of your offer. They don't need to see it today, but they might when you start your job...

How far are they going to go to validate it’s legit if you make one up?

But say you don’t want to forge one for just any company because that might not be legal. You could make your own company with a site and make offer letters that way.

All you say in this case is that "the actual offer letters are proprietary information of the company that I'm applying to and I'm not at liberty to share them" or some similar verbiage.

FWIW I've done this several times (multiple offer scenarios where I have companies compete against each other for me) and never once has a company asked to see actual proof of the other offers on condition of hiring me. If that was a condition, I would say, sorry, I'll go with one of the other ones

In what world would this be considered normal lol

Well, I can print a piece of paper...

Sure, you can do that. But aside from the ethics of it, there's always a chance that they won't counteroffer and just say "Maybe you should go with that higher offer."

You really don't want to bring up a "competing offer" unless you're prepared to take the counteroffer/just walk away.

There is a 0% chance that I'd put in the effort to get an offer from a company just to set my price with a company I'd like to work for. No company is worth that headache.

If I happen to already have a competing offer, sure. But when job searching I'm not carpet bombing resumes, I'm targeting specific companies that I think would be a match.

Then that is the price of not having the headache. Markets work best when buyers AND sellers are constantly engaging in negotiations.

wouldn't this mean that your company is also negotiating your salary down regularly?

They do, by not giving appropriate raises. Adjusting down nominally is typically done via terminating everyone and telling them to reapplying.

Though, in at least a somewhat healthy company, adjusting down nominally leaves too much of a bad taste, so layoffs are used instead where the remaining employees’ pay to qualify of life at work ratio goes down (more work responsibilities, more hours, less amenities at work, etc).

This is where pay transparency [1] comes in. If employees can see what other people are making and it's clear that old hands are getting the shaft, then old hands will leave.

Also the last few places I've been at have made a conscious attempt to reset once a year or two to combat this effect. I can't speak to prior employers as that was before I started to be privy to how the sausage was made. Companies that don't reset compensation aren't worth working for.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38167969

Transparency helps a lot, but is not sufficient. Labor buyers can also be knowledgeable about their labor supplier's other options, so if they are the only game in town (such as in smaller towns/metros), they might choose to adopt a more take it or leave it attitude.

Markets also work best without information asymmetry.

That's why you find two companies you'd like to work for, and have them compete against each other. This is just job hunting basics.

In practice, this can get dubious.

You'd be surprised how many companies will simply pull you out of the candidate process and decline the offer. Companies you would probably work for, to be honest.

This works when you're pitting say, Netflix vs Meta or Apple vs Microsoft, or Google vs Amazon etc. but if you go down the ladder just a little, you'd be shocked at how much this doesn't work, is all.

I feel like its too general of advice to say you can simply play two companies off each other.

There's other tactics too, like setting a high minimum acceptable amount of compensation upfront, that one can use.

Its all a little risky in a way

I believe that this has been your experience - I can only offer my own as another data point.

I've done the "two competing offers" thing four or five times at companies big and small. I've never had a company rescind an offer or ghost. In fact they all seem to expect a competing offer; all have asked "Are you interviewing anywhere else?" at some point.

I agree with discussing a minimum early on in the interview process. It's a good smoke test to ensure neither party's time is being wasted.

I’ve never heard of a company pulling an offer because a candidate was applying somewhere else.

As a hiring manager, I’ve certainly never done it, because I basically don’t care where else you’re considering working. I’ll put our situation (project, team, comp, culture, etc) forward and you decide if you think it’s your best option. We might negotiate a tiny amount, but if you find a place that’s a lot better for you, you should go there, but I’m not pulling back the offer we made.

I do want to clarify, its not common (the pull the offer part), but I've had a friend go through it, and I once had it happen.

More often, alot of times the company will say something about going with the other offer, like you stated, or something in that ballpark.

A couple times though, I had a company dutifully try and convince me that the perks and work-life balance were better, even thought the salary maybe was not. That was an interesting one.

If you told me I got a ton of vacation time for a significant salary cut I would seriously consider the offer. Or some 4-day workweek setup. Those are the kind of things I would take a significant chunk of less money for.

It rarely happens that I'm both looking for work and also am open to more than one company at that time.

But I haven't been in a true job hunt where I'm just hoping someone picks me out of a pile for over 20 years.

Neither have I :-)

Honestly after sometimes weeks long latencies waiting on “proceeding to the next step”, ludicrous leetcode exercises and design Twitter, or worse - their business - from scratch on this here virtual whiteboard, I’m so buggered I’m gonna take the first number out of their mouths.

Yeah I had a situation where I had an offer for Job A, but really preferred Job B (Job A required me to move which I really didn't want to do). The recruiter for Job B gave me the impression that the interview process was going to be quick enough that'd I'd have time time to take it before I would have to accept A instead. Instead, I hear nothing, assume I was ghosted until fucking weeks after I moved and started Job A, Job B calls asking me to do a final round.

Even worse, im just now getting interviews/rejections for jobs I applied to months ago.

Competing job offers and other interviews lined up are excellent, excellent, excellent to have!

For this reason always try to cluster job interviews together as much as possible so that the offers come out around the same time. This situation is generally going to be very favorable for you as an engineer!

Consider that some hiring manager probably has been played games with for months in terms of head count and interviewing poor candidate after another. When they extend that offer to you, they want you seated yesterday. Mentioning "I have 2 offers, I've had 100% offers for every interview so far, and btw I'm interviewing at a FAANG tomorrow." - that will perk up some interest and can elicit a pro-active better offer.

I've had one outfit ask me, "How much for you to just stop interviewing and come work for us?" This sense of urgency on the employer side is the only time where an engineering employee has more power than the company. Most employers will try everything to make this window of time short - usually by trying to get you to stop interviewing and do no salary negotiation, or give you an exploding offer, or counter and say there are competing candidates.

> Mentioning "I have 2 offers, I've had 100% offers for every interview so far, and btw I'm interviewing at a FAANG tomorrow." - that will perk up some interest and can elicit a pro-active better offer.

It's also a risky maneuver. There are a lot of companies that will immediately, as a matter of policy, reply "then take one of those offers".

That's not to say it isn't a gamble worth taking, of course. Just that it comes with some risk.

"It's also a risky maneuver. There are a lot of companies that will immediately, as a matter of policy, reply "then take one of those offers"."

Have they ever said that? Why would they interview you or make a job offer? I find this sentence hard to believe. Having a job offer is a signal that someone else did due diligence on you and is willing to commit capital at a year rate for your talents. Skin in the game.

Sure other companies don't have to compete on the price is if what you are trying to state that, but you didn't state that clearly.

> Have they ever said that?

Yes.

> Having a job offer is a signal that someone else did due diligence on you and is willing to commit capital at a year rate for your talents.

Sure, but applicants can and do lie about the existence of such offers, so ignoring such statements is not a terrible strategy. And that another company did "due diligence" is not as valuable as you might think. The investigation prior to an offer letter is often cursory, and different companies have different concerns they're looking for as well as differing levels of scrutiny.

Some companies also view an applicant leveraging other offers as a negotiation tactic as a bit of a red flag, depending on the sort of applicant they want to hire.

I'm not saying any of this is universal, nor that any of it is smart or appropriate. I'm just saying that I know there are a nontrivial number of companies that think like this.

> Sure other companies don't have to compete on the price is if what you are trying to state that, but you didn't state that clearly.

No, that wasn't what I was saying.

Does Netflix do location based pay? Could explain that.

Not that I necessarily agree with location based pay scales. I haven’t really thought about this idea tbh. On one hand, a company can get location based pay scales simply by having an office in a different area. On the other, if you’re hired in San Fran and working remotely in (some much cheaper to live place) then it’s not really the same. Obviously, the state is benefiting much less from this scenario.

Don't apply. The employer is showing you how they operate when they're trying to impress candidates. Do you really want to find out what they do when they know your best alternative is a job search?

I don't think that's absurd. That's a realistic enough salary band for getting hired at Netflix across all levels (https://www.levels.fyi/companies/netflix/salaries/software-e...). It's not like those job listings that put "$0-$1000000 a year" in the salary range just to check the box.

For that role it's most likely, they're hiring multiple security engineers and will level based on experience - most people they hire will probably make $200k-$350k. But the right person (10+ YoE in Security, relevant experience at competing streaming companies, strong interview performance) could definitely negotiate themselves to the top end of that range.

> $700k is clearly a salary someone got during the bubble.

Research a bit about Netflix's comp philosophy and this will make more sense.

It's not bubble compensation. They aim to beat what someone else will pay for your skills, as long as they want you working there.

Until recently, they also only hired at a single IC level so the range was probably narrower.

> They aim to beat what someone else will pay for your skills, as long as they want you working there.

So what happened in 2020-2022 where everyone was willing to pay more and more for the same skill sets?

I think we're agreeing on the same thing here, I am saying they will never pay $700k now, but they probably have someone at that comp level, so they have to list that in the range.

You have no idea what you're talking about, so please stop talking with such confidence.

Netflix has always paid top of the market. They haven't dropped their salaries. Period, end of sentence.

They will, but it depends on previous work/level. The range is because they’ll hire you in for a position at your ideal level, not necessarily for the position you actually applied for.

That looks like, essentially, the decision not to tie skill levels to job titles. Which is legitimate I guess.

But the company needs to fill particular niches, right? So if their philosophy doesn’t allow them to advertise for more or less experienced coders, it seems like they are signing themselves up for a more difficult filtering problem?

I guess that’s why they are unusual. If this sort of thing became really widespread, it would be easy to write a law with more onerous reporting requirements. Maybe we should require a distribution of salaries for that role, for example.

Every one of these comments so far are from people that have no idea how much Netflix pays. $600k-700k for a Senior Software Engineer at Netflix is about expected. Also keep in mind, they pay all cash, so this isn't a "Total Compensation" number. I have a friend who made over $1 million cash at Netflix per year. Their philosophy is to pay top of market for the best talent.

Then why do they start the range at $100k?

Exactly what I was questioning in my post.

> How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role?

Ask for what you want.

If I'm making a salary I'm excited to earn, why do I care if I left money on the table? I'm happy!

If I'm happy, somebody else being a better negotiator than me doesn't make me unhappy.

If something in the future makes me unhappy about the salary I'm earning, then I'll address that in the future.

You are asking wrong question.

Salary range is what they can offer, but you should know your own value. If you think your time is worth $400k then ask $400k. It is simple as that.

At one point you should know what amount of money would drive you to get out of bed and do whatever client wants.

> How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role? $100k is clearly a joke, $700k is clearly a salary someone got during the bubble.

Netflix does actually compensate within this range, though.

The alternatives to these wide ranges are:

1. Create a lot of different postings with different ranges. This is how companies end up with Junior Engineer, Engineer, Senior Engineer, Staff Engineer, Senior Staff Engineer and other titles for what might be the same headcount. If someone comes in with skills and compensation expectations that don’t match the job they applied for, they get bumped to a different job listing. Nothing actually changes, but now the salary ranges are narrower in the job postings.

2. Give everyone similar base compensation and make the difference up in bonuses and RSUs, which aren’t posted in the job listings. These listings usually have lower compensation listed to signal the candidate that RSUs are going to be significant. For example, you’ll see Meta posting jobs with comp down to $129K even though everyone knows they’re going to get more RSUs than base comp. I’ve seen more companies claim to pay everyone the same, with the fine print being that equity grants can vary greatly from person to person.

Really though, I think highly compensated devs need to acknowledge that this law wasn’t made for them. It was made for the people applying to jobs where they don’t know if the typical compensation is $18/hr or $30/hr, or people who have been earning $45K for years who haven’t realized that their peers are getting $60K.

When someone is applying to $450K jobs at Netflix, they have numerous resources from levels.fyi to Blind that will reveal far more than a number on a job listing will. The law is not for highly compensated SWEs applying to the top 0.1% of jobs.

Double the median salary is clearly a joke?

White collar pay has gotten totally out of hand.

In context, yes. For a senior engineering role at one of humanity's biggest richest companies in a very HCOL location, $100k is ludicrously low.

Now, I agree that pay ranges across our economy are completely out of touch with reason, but in this context it would be downright stupid to take $100k for that role when non-FAANG could pay you more.

It's not absurd, it's an actual range. I don't know about Netflix specifically, but I think it works that way: They know you resume, and how well you did at the interview. Based on that, they'll make you an offer which you can negotiate only slightly. It's also better to have a competing offer.

Conversely, you should have some idea of how much you're worth and where you fit in that $100-$700K range.

If you fully meet said requirements, you anchor at $700K as per the ad - and then negotiate from there.

That’s what I’ve seen as well, it’s always a range with a huuuuuge gap. No one is posting the actual expected salary. It’s almost a scam, I could post a job listing with a salary of “$0 to $1,000,000,000.00”. It’s the same as not posting a salary number at all

The median range is somewhere around 40%, that is the max is 40% or so above the min. That’s based on my analysis of over 5 million job postings with salary ranges in them. A subset here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j0Xap2Qt1bzY-8OA1Gqk.... Which is around what most salary ranges for a specific job grade have [1]

That’s my data, not my gut. So yes, there are absurd ones, but it’s not the vast majority by far. So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water based on some outliers

[1] https://www.aihr.com/hr-glossary/range-spread/#:~:text=A%20g....

> How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role? $100k is clearly a joke, $700k is clearly a salary someone got during the bubble.

$100K is easily a junior salary. $700K is a Principal plus salary in "big tech". A huge portion of that is RSU's and there may be weight thrown into personal performance with certain goals that align to company objectives. There are certain SRE jobs that are designed this way, especially if you're on the policy or proactive software development side of SRE work where the products you build (policy or software) take time to build and have huge associated returns in terms of monetary and customer trust.

For reference, my first SRE job was $75k/year.

The post says L4. That’s not junior or principal, it’s L4 (lower/middle).

Given the specific level, the salary range is indeed absurd.

Yeah, providing a range when they specify the level is unethical, I agree

A range appropriate for the stated level is reasonable, but a range that (apparantely) encompasses their entire set of levels doesn't make sense. I would seriously wonder if the 100-700k part of the post was a mistake, because that would probably turn off a lot of candidates (preventing them from even applying).

Earlier this year I read some commentary about how those wild salary ranges are in part a response to California's Pay Transparency Act -- basically, give a gigantic and irrelevant range to satisfy the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.

No clue if there's any truth to that though.

https://californiapayroll.com/blog/sb-1162-california-pay-tr...

Netflix is probably the _only_ company I can think of where that range is defensible.

> How is someone supposed to reasonably negotiate that role?

I don't think I fully understand this question. When I apply for a position, I already know what my minimum salary requirement is, and I negotiate based on that. Any published salary range doesn't affect that, except that if my minimum is above their maximum, then I know not to bother applying.

> $100k is clearly a joke, $700k is clearly...

These are just your assumptions, but I aggree. However, when I see job posts with ranges like these, I just avoid the company, since it shows me that the company is: -lowballing employees -not transparent (i.e., posting nonsense salary ranges just to tick off the requirement)

I just applied for an engineer position that listed it’s salary range as $130k-$190k - and part of the application process asked for a salary range, to which I replied $130k-$190k - what’s the point of that? Just say “this position starts at $130k” and let the details get worked out during the hiring process.

That’s my data, which you requested, so yes, there are absurd ones, but it’s not the vast majority by far. So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water based on one outlier you just found

[1] https://www.aihr.com/hr-glossary/range-spread/#:~:text=A%20g....

The scariest thing about the salary transparency laws is that it makes it blindingly obvious that companies do not regularly follow the law. Adherence is both very public and easy, but imagine all the other laws being broken all the time that aren't as trivial to comply with.

Do you mean it's a bad thing about the law? Or is a bad thing that is seeing the sunlight due to the law?

Almost certainly the latter

Since the job listings are public it should be trivial to compile a public shame list of companies who still do not follow the rules in those states.

Perhaps you could also use such a list to seek damages in states where the law allows for it (Washington state [1]) and provide the list to states where damages are not provided to encourage lawmakers to make the policy more robust.

> If a company violates the new requirement [2], “a job applicant or an employee” is entitled to remedies, according to a state Legislature website. Those remedies could include up to $5,000 in compensation [3].

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/months-after-wa-employ... ("Months after WA employers required to share pay info, a flood of lawsuits")

[2] https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.110

[3] https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.060

I think you are assuming that companies feel shame, at best they feel loss, and then only if it's a significant percentage of profits.

I'm shocked to see it's that high.

I'm simultaneously shocked to see it's that low in states that require it. I suppose I shouldn't be — no law is obeyed 100% afterall — but I would have expected higher than 60%. This makes me think there needs to be higher penalties for failing to follow it.

I am similarly shocked. I don't remember the last time I saw a job posting that had the salary range listed.

This is a strange American thing. As a Brit it is utterly bizarre and alien to me. Nobody here would ever look twice at a job that didn't state the salary. If you're trying to fill a position the salary is probably the most important piece of information you need to sell it. How can an employment market even function otherwise?

> As a Brit it is utterly bizarre and alien to me.

I’m really surprised you say that. 90% of the jobs I look at for ‘software developer’ do not state salary. I have seen a couple with a ‘salary range’ but most don’t mention it or say “dependent on experience”.

I’ve been working in software for 15 years now in the UK and that’s always been my experience. Even though it’s standard, I still don’t see it as normal that such a vital piece of information is always missing.

> How can an employment market even function otherwise?

Employee desperation to have income and health insurance means it's worth going into the interviews blind.

That, and on the flip side, the very American desire to beat the odds and get an especially high offer.

I admire that.

I've seen plenty of UK job listings that don't state the salary? Meta for example posts a salary range for their US jobs (https://www.metacareers.com/v2/jobs/1651941818579349/) but not UK ones (https://www.metacareers.com/v2/jobs/2274967272693600/). There are some fields and roles where it's expected in the US as well, and I suspect that's just where the difference comes in.

Without explicit salary ranges, the market functions through implicit cultural expectations about what an appropriate salary should be. Which of course has a lot of problems. For example, US software engineering salaries are stereotypically bimodal, and one of the staples of our mid 2010s job market discourse was people who'd only seen one hump insisting that the other can't possibly exist. (The question of whether there's actually two humps or just a wide range, I don't know if I've ever seen resolved.)

These "as a X" posts always read like propaganda to me lol

Not to mention Brit salaries are absolutely abysmal compared to most US tech salaries lol.

Not a user story?

This one makes sense, providing local British context. I think it is helpful here.

But usually it seems like they are used to claim superiority. "As a <identity politics tribe member>, this is why my perspective is more important than yours and you are wrong."

Ive seen good postings lately saying reasonable ranges like 130-200 and 180-250

this is absolutely welcome. yeah a wide range is still better than nothing.

it's actually very simple, surprisingly many job posts still miss them:

    * location, remote or relocation or hybrid
    * pay range
    * job description

this saves both sides' time in the end.

I also like the 'simple apply' and in fact I only apply for those jobs, i.e. just send out resume, instead of filling out lots of personal info. if the employer needs that, please parse the resume yourself with a script.

The number of jobs I've seen that have absolutely no mention of whether they are remote, hybrid, or on-site is astounding. I'm not wasting my time applying for something 1200 miles away just to find out that they want a 2/3 hybrid setup. Realistically I'd never find out because they'll see my address and never contact me.

The default is and has always been that employees will come into the office, I don't know why you'd expect this to be specifically disclosed. If it doesn't say remote it's almost surely not remote.

I would argue that the default for software engineers for the past 3-4 years has not been onsite, in person.

After the big tech companies all did their RTO last year I'm really not sure how remote work could be seen as the default. I recognize that it happens - there was a whole drama cycle last month from Amazon employees who seem to have believed the RTO was optional - but it's not a wise job searching strategy to expect remote opportunities from a company that doesn't advertise them.

Or remote with a country or timezone restriction. There's lots of US companies that just say "remote" but forget to mention that the candidate must be a US resident, or work within X timezones, etc. Contrast to worldwide remote companies, which really do hire in all timezones.

I'd take this number with some salt.

Most job boards I've seem correctly parse salary ranges buried in job descriptions about 75% of the time.

Also, this is just one job board; in all my time using internet career websites, I have never even heard of directly apply, so the headline seems a bit sensational in terms of what's being claimed.

Big tech salary postings are mostly useless, because bonus and stock aren't included and could be more than half of total comp.

As someone in tech looking for a role, I agree, though there is some utility for big tech companies where compensation data is available elsewhere. By looking at the upper bound of the salary, I can reasonably infer the level of the role. For example, level 6 SWE roles at Meta show an upper bound of $241k and level 7 SWE roles show $289 (or thereabouts, IIRC).

It's still of limited utility though, since one has to still use an external source to identify bonus percentage and possible range of equity values.

At the least, they are helpful for people who are not “in the know” for which types of labor are selling for the highest prices.

Maybe non native language speakers, immigrants, the immigrants’ kids, etc. more transparency in labor prices is helpful to at least the people earning less than the highest earners to show them where they can earn more.

I hope the next step is narrowing the ranges of "info" provided. You'll sometimes see postings like "Sr Staff Engineer at [fancy corp]: 135K-900K". Info like that is better than nothing, sure, but not by much.

Imo the important information is the floor. If I could be offered an offensively low number after the trouble of applying and interviewing, I don't want to bother. The upper bound is at best for outlier rock star devs that might apply, at worst it's just bait or some arbitrary max.

Have you seen those absurdly wide ranges outside Netflix? They pay all cash and computed their ranges in a pretty silly way that produces nonsensical lower bounds.

Netflix is particularly egregious but yeah there are postings with ranges like $150K-400K all over. 250K is an incredible swing imo.

I wonder if a future law could include a clause that the salary range must be smaller than the minimum salary. Like you can't have a 250k swing with a 150k minimum salary.

I've seen companies give the range for an entire career ladder even though the listing is for a specific level. The laws aren't comprehensive enough to require it, but they should actually break it down instead. E.g. SWE1 135-155, SWE2 150-175, Sr SWE 165-200, etc. They should also detail equity comp and bonus.

If you don't do this, somebody qualified for Sr Staff will see a ridiculously low minimum, assume that's total compensation, and ignore your listing.

This doesn't mean anything. Salary info could be as simple as "yes, there is a salary." This is like discounts that are "up to" a certain percentage. It doesn't actually mean anything.

Does anyone know what happens if someone posts a job at one range and then hires outside of it? Like if i get a competing offer outside their listed band, do they get in trouble for negotiating?

Hah, who is going to report: I got paid too much.

Salary ranges shouldn't be allowed - only minimums should be published.

Why? This doesn't line up to the reality of how headcount is allocated or how budgets are set. Every position has a range the hiring manager can place the new hire in given their experience and fit.

It prevents companies from wasting peoples' time going through a whole interview loop, claiming a job is 200k-400k and then offering 200k-250k regardless. If the 200k isn't attractive to job seekers, they have to raise the floor.

If the budgeted range is 200-400k (it's very likely not) then it's an accurate post. It also shows the applicant that they can get 300k or more if they have a good argument for it beyond "I want it."

A maximum on the band already existed, you just didn't know what it was.

First off marketing piece masquerading as a blog/information.

Secondly how many of those are ranges like $70,000-$150,000, or $15/hr-$30/hr type positions?

$70-150k is completely reasonable for mid/mid-senior developer position at a small but profitable and growing company, for example. And you can parse a lot of good info from that. $150k is a reasonable if slightly-below-market cap for a mid-senior role. It also tells you that if you're far enough in your career to be looking for $200-250k+ TC roles, you won't waste your time. And if you're stuck at an entry-level role making $60-70k it's worth your time to spend a little more time on that application because it could be a big leg up.

This will lead to universal low salaries, and real comp decided by bonuses and equity grants like with IB and Amazon. You don’t see full comp revealed, so since they have to show their hand it will trend down and make up the money for who they want to pay more with bonus etc

There are other sites these companies know people check more than a posted salary range eg levels.fyi which would include everything

Salary is money, bonuses are a bet. The 2 are not the same.

They're often not very bet-like in modern practice. One common setup is to have a "bonus target" of let's say 20% of your salary which is usually paid at par; perhaps you might get 25% if you get really great results or 15% if you have some big struggles.

You should look into how investment bankers bonus work.

If bonus was actual profit sharing, I would agree that it would be a different thing more akin to a bet, but the bonus is contingent mostly on your personal “performance” with some bail options if company hits the skids, but salary is a bet in that case as well, as you are an at will employee.

My company (USA located) paid less than the entirety of our bonuses because they lack money.

My personal "performance" was fine.

However performance without clear goals is useless, and with clear goals becomes a gamed metric.

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