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Comment by DEF14A | Hacker News Reader

As a salesperson at a large SaaS firm, I wouldn't want to work for an organization that doesn't have wide variability in compensation. My team had one rep who earned around $180k, and another who earned more than $400k, even though they have the exact same job title and responsibilities, which is how it should be.

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I’m guessing the difference in pay was because of commissions? Sales is about the only role with fairly crystal clear performance metrics that can be evaluated unbiased (ie how much they made in sales).

For most other roles, compensation is largely based upon negotiation (which is not a core job skill for a random engineer), and variability in salary tends to be more inequitable — if they have he same job title and responsibilities, metrics on performance are not going to be clear cut like sales numbers, but be more subjective and interpreted by management.

In what role, other than sales, does that make sense? Same exact job title - I'm aware of jr / normal / sr / lead, etc role differences.

I worked at a hedge fund where almost everyone was "Member of Technical Staff". That could be a 21 year old college graduate or a 50 year-old ex-staff engineer. I'm pretty sure the ratio of highest to lowest paid was 3:1 and likely even greater.

Most of the laws which require public disclosure of compensation in job postings apply only to base salary, not to total compensation. What you describe makes sense for performance-based portions of a compensation package like commissions or performance-driven bonuses, but not for base salary.

Do you really think a wide base salary range makes sense for the same job title and responsibilities, aside from maybe any location-based differentials? I don’t.

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