Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by chrisbennet | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

chrisbennet

"Competitive" really means "market"

"Market" means "below market"

Thus "competitive" means "below market" :-)

Here are some reason's not to list salary:

(a) You're afraid of scaring off good people before they even hear your pitch.

(b) You aren't paying the rest of your team at true market and if they saw the ad they might ask for raises or get pissed and leave.

(c) You don't want to attract people who are in it for the money. (But it's OK for the company owners to be revenue driven of course.)

(d) You want to hire an "A" player who is more expensive than the "B" players you have and you don't want to explain it to your "B" players.

As they grow, companies tend to optimize for mediocrity - "We can't pay $X for someone really valuable because it would upset the (good but) less valuable team members."

View on HN

a-d are all valid points, and (c) is certainly one crux when it comes to listing a higher-paying jobs - is listing 'competitive' the only way of combatting this (what about the application process finding the most compatible skill-wise, person-firm fit-wise, etc)?

It's very easy for me to be critical when I haven't faced the very real problems that hiring companies face but I think there is some justification for being skeptical of an employers true motivations.

Just thinking out loud; what does it really mean when a company doesn't want to attract someone who wants to get paid a lot?

Does it mean that they are afraid of getting "spammed" with applicants that they have to weed out in the interview processes?

Does it mean that they want to select for people who won't ask for what they are worth i.e. someone they can get at a bargain?

Something else?

I think both followup questions are valid. As others have mentioned in addition to yourself, there is wariness of companies' intentions, which ties into getting someone for less/value/than what they're worth.

On the flip side, case may be they genuinely can't afford to pay as much - but potential applicants may be swayed if they trust in them, and choose to forgo a higher salary or accept other compensation methods or benefits.

Ah, I think I see the problem now.

Company "A" pays less but actually offers a higher total happiness level, lets call it "quality".

Company "B" pays more but is has a lower "quality", all things considered.

Applicants are going to tend to apply to Company B because salary is a simple metric that doesn't have to be explained. Company "A" needs to educate their applicants/"consumers" in order for the applicant to see their value proposition - and that is something that is hard to do in a job ad.

This sort of thing is very common in the retail market. For example, (in the U.S.) if you are under 30 you probably have never even seen a quality shovel. Good luck finding a shovel today that you can use without wearing gloves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com