Another interesting wrinkle to this is the fact that hiring someone at a high salary is a big gamble. How confident can you really be after interviewing someone?
I'd love to see one of your job postings. I'd bet at least one of the following is happening:
1) unreasonable academic requirements
2) unreasonably broad list of required previous experience
3) unqualified HR people pre-screening and discarding resumes
You need to be willing to "kiss a lot of frogs", i.e. do phone screens and onsite interviews, of people who might generally be suitable. Then be willing to hire not-quite-perfect candidates who are willing to learn and are willing to work hard.
> How confident can you really be after interviewing someone?
I've seen an increase in contract employment postings. That might be a way to go. Start someone on a six-month contract. You might find some takers. Not everyone is ready to "get married" after a single days worth of job interviews.
What do you think is more likely, that no one is doing it because it's highly effective or that no one is doing it because it causes problems?
I've found that most practices that make for visionary, distinctive companies are both highly effective and cause large problems. For example, Google has a massive shared codebase, does promotion & performance reviews via peer feedback, and shares information very widely inside the company at the expense of being a black box externally. Fog Creek makes all salary data public within the company. Palantir, I've heard, pays all engineers the same (relatively low) salary but doubles down on perks and work environment. Apple under Steve Jobs let the CEO berate any employee over the slightest product detail. Facebook releases new software via IRC chatroom.
All of these practices cause major problems, but they also fix major problems. Moreover, they're distinctive. They draw a certain type of employee, one who's willing to give up convenience in some dimension to gain autonomy, or excellence, or collaboration. It's often better to be differentiated than good.
2. glassdoor.com
3. my network of people who work at various companies and will tell me what they make.
I'm assuming that you are a small company that doesn't actually show up in either of 2 or 3.
I see salary ranges advertised all the time in the New England area so its not impossible.
Like some else mentioned; when I don't see a salary range I assume it isn't great or maybe they don't want to piss off the current employees that are working for below market rate.
Of course, some bootstrapped company, or some company which had minimal angel funding or the like is taking more of a gamble, but everything is a gamble when you have no product/market fit and only 18 months or less worth of cash in the bank.