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What she is saying does not line up with my experience regarding how this works. > As a woman... I’m unlikely to bring up the topic of salary with a potential

What she is saying does not line up with my experience regarding how this works. > As a woman... I’m unlikely to bring up the topic of salary with a potential boss. If you have that attitude you are going to make less money than someone who negotiates. Period. Companies will try to pay anyone, no matter their race, gender, or religion, less. There is also no reason to feel bad about discussing salary - it is a part of the process, just like submitting your resume and interviewing. Would publishing a salary in a job description make things more equitable? I don't think so. The keyword in job market is MARKET. It is not as simple as publishing a salary. Every role I've interviewed candidates for had a range we were willing to pay. The best candidate will get the maximum of the range, and a candidate that we are less excited about will get the low end. The candidates are always being judged against other candidates, and how much we think they will cost. What we are willing to pay fluctuates and depends on how we feel about the candidate after the interview, how badly we need someone, and how many other candidates there are at a given time. Just like in any market that is this small, there is negotiation involved. Employers want to pay less, employees want to make more. The way you arrive at a price is making offers until both sides agree. That is simply the way it works. It is a barter system. I don't buy the idea that women / bipoc can't navigate this system. It is something you have to learn. White men aren't born being able to navigate it - it took me about 5 years to be fully comfortable with the process. Before that I was underpaid.

vbtemp 5y ago
I completely agree. Just let the market be. Trying to optimize it will just create other unforeseen consequences. A normal part of an interview process is discussing salary, and if they won't give an answer then you know they are not trying to be competitive and it's not worth continuing the process.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Classical free markets rely on information transparency. This is making the market more efficient.
  - vbtemp 5y ago
    Fair point, however there is so, so much that is ambiguous and indeterminate. Some jobs, let's say line-chef or administrative assistant where roles are very clear and variance between a individuals is relatively low, often do have salaries or wages stated up front. In the line of work I'm familiar with, hiring developers is Pandora's Box - you have absolutely no idea what it's going to be like a year down the road. I've worked at startups, big tech companies, research labs - at absolutely none of those places did the work I end up doing match the specific requisition I had applied to. Furthermore, in almost all cases each staff member has an extremely unique specialty that do drastically different work - despite having the same job title and classification. Edit: Also, when a company does not disclose the salary range for the position it actually provides a very useful data point., You can pretty much be sure it's at most average -- but probably less-than-competetive -- market rates. The major and popular tech companies don't need to do this because they have a reputation, but the smaller companies can either show they too are competitive (by publishing above-market rates) or show they do not offer competitive salary (by not publishing their salary target).
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
    Yeah, this is like a market where you need to enter the shop, stand in a long line, and only at the cash register you are told how much the items cost. If you think they are too expensive, feel free to try your luck at the next shop, and if the day is long enough you might even try three or four shops. Great for people who have enough vacation days!
the_gipsy 5y ago
What exactly is the merit of knowing how to negotiate a salary?
- packetslave 5y ago
  For me, it was 25% more first-year total comp. I'd say that has merit.
  - the_gipsy 5y ago
    Do you think that, if you didn't know how to negotiate, you should be getting 25% less for the same work input?
    - packetslave 5y ago
      Doesn't really matter what I think: companies will offer you the absolute minimum they think you will accept. If you accept their first offer, you're probably leaving money on the table. If their first offer meets or exceeds what you're willing to work for, fine. If not, you either negotiate or decline.
- bufordtwain 5y ago
  You can get paid a lot more over the course of your lifetime.
danaris 5y ago
I mean, you're free to buy or not buy whatever ideas you want. But it's not really arguable at this point that women and people of color (especially black & indigenous) are treated less well, assumed to do a poorer job, and generally at a disadvantage when negotiating salaries. (This all completely aside from the fact that "good negotiation skills" should not be the reason Employee A gets a better salary than Employee B, unless the job itself is significantly about negotiation.)
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  Let's not forget class privilege (this may sound like a heresy, but difference in income between rich and poor people is probably even greater than between men and women). If you are a programmer born in a working-class family, it may be difficult for your parents to teach you proper interviewing and negotiation skills.
  - danaris 5y ago
    Indeed. Not just "difficult to teach," but such skills are simply not among those generally valued among the middle and working classes, in my experience (having grown up in them). This is part of why I speak so against them: to me, the idea that they're just "something everyone should have" seems so alien, extravert-centric, and elitist.
lordnacho 5y ago
There's a negotiation involved, once you decide you want to offer the job to someone. They might think they are less likely to get the job if they ask early, yet they might also not want to go through the whole interview process to find that your range is too low for them.
antasvara 5y ago
I think this is somewhat reductive, as it make a few blanket assumptions that I don't think can be assumed. The first is that better candidates will get the maximum salary out of a company, and less qualified candidates will get less. This seems to indicate that people who are qualified for a given job will also be excellent at negotiating for it. I don't think these two skills are in any way related. The second assumption I see in this is that candidates should "women/bipoc can't navigate this system." I think what you're missing (and the article states this) is that minority candidates will be looked at differently when asking for money. There's also the difficulty of determining one's worth, especially when companies don't post average salaries. It can be a difficult guessing game to even ballpark what your value is (even with companies like Glassdoor posting salaries), and if you made less money in your previous job, you're likely to ask for less again. This naturally disadvantages minority and female candidates that have made less historically. Yes, white men aren't born being able to navigate it. But this ignores the fact that our society is set up to encourage confidence in straight white men and discourage it in many other groups. In addition, posting a salary range has many positive downstream effects as mentioned in the article. My brother recently benefited from this, as his company posted a job listing for a similar position to his with a starting salary of 20,000 dollars more. He was able to use this to advocate for higher pay. Bottom line, posting a salary range just adds transparency to the process and evens the playing field a bit. Needing negotiation skills to even get in the ballpark of your true value is crazy; even car companies give you a price point to start from.
- alex504 5y ago
  > posting a salary range has many positive downstream effects I agree. I'm just not sure if I agree that it particularly benefits underprivileged groups. I don't see a compelling argument being made by the author that the system of negotiation specifically is biased. Whether a salary range is posted or not everyone has to negotiate and engage the market. There is no way to get around this and if you aren't willing to do it you are going to be taken advantage of. A salary range posted by the company who is trying to hire you is not going to tell you how much you should be making there. They are going to try to pay you less. It seems like what people really want is for employers to magically pay everyone exactly what they should be making without negotiating, which is simply not possible, because nobody knows what they should be making until the market sets a price. > The first is that better candidates will get the maximum salary out of a company, and less qualified candidates will get less. I'm not assuming this. In my experience whether someone negotiates more or not at all has more to do with their experience around the process in general. More junior candidates or candidates who haven't switched jobs more than once or twice are more likely to be underpaid. I personally screwed this up about 4 times before learning my lesson. > minority candidates will be looked at differently when asking for money I don't disagree with this. I don't see how posting a salary range changes this. If the company / market is willing to pay less to an underprivileged group, that is going to be reflected in compensation regardless of whether a salary range is posted or not. > There's also the difficulty of determining one's worth The way you determine what the market is willing to pay is to find out what the market is willing to pay. There is no other way to do it. For someone looking for a job you should try to get multiple offers, negotiate them, and see how much you end up with. That number is as close to your market value as you are going to get. > this ignores the fact that our society is set up to encourage confidence in straight white men and discourage it in many other group I guess I really just don't buy this argument as it pertains to this topic. Negotiating compensation shouldn't be a matter of confidence after a certain point in your career. After you have done it a few times it is not very intimidating. It is a fact of life and something everybody needs to learn to be comfortable doing. If you can't become comfortable doing this, you are going to make less.
shusson 5y ago
> If you have that attitude you are going to make less money than someone who negotiates You may also end up being rejected [1]. > Companies will try to pay anyone, no matter their race, gender, or religion, less I tend to agree, but also in my experience there are some companies that try to pay people based on their experience not how well the someone negotiates. > Would publishing a salary in a job description make things more equitable? I don't think so Like you said before, some companies optimise towards lowest pay. By publishing salary ranges it creates a level playing field and people can still negotiate if they want. Gitlab does this pretty well: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/compensation-calculator https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation... [1] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Shopify-Offer-Rescinded-Due-to-Negotiating-Lp6vDomb https://www.teamblind.com/post/Shopify-Offer-Rescinded-Due-t...
xivzgrev 5y ago
She’s not saying she doesn’t have responsibility here, she’s saying women in general are less likely to do what you advise - it’s a systematic bias difference in the sexes and / or being raised in our culture. Yes, we could, as you advise, teach women to navigate this system. But isn’t that what we’ve been trying, and where has that gotten us? I think she has a unique point here pointing how companies are hypocritical - they want more diversity and transparency, yet actively take advantage of candidates by not being transparent, which overly falls harder on under represented groups.
- kqr 5y ago
  I agree. It's also the fact that diversity isn't about what letters people have in their passports. What we want is a diversity of perspectives, opinions, and philosophies toward life and everything. Part of why we want more women is tightly interwoven with the reasons they are less likely to negotiate hard on salary. If we hire only women who negotiate like men, we aren't getting that diversity at all. Obviously I speak in stereotypes now, but I think the general point still stands; we can't keep hiring with the exact same criteria and expect to magically get different hires. We want diversity in terms of who the person is, not what their biological sex or social gender is.
  - csa 5y ago
    > What we want is a diversity of perspectives, opinions, and philosophies toward life and everything. If only... My personal experience is that the folks who are most vocal about “diversity” (i.e., the letters in the passport you refer to) tend to be the least supportive of different perspectives, opinions, philosophies of life, etc. “Agree with the way I think, or you are part of the problem” sadly is a common rallying cry.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amelius 5y ago
I think it is stupid that you have to negotiate salary before you have even written 1 line of code, and then are stuck with it for like at least a year.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
I would argue that she is right, but for the wrong reasons. Whether the lack of salary ranges disproportionately affects this or that identity group (or doesn't) is a red herring. I'm a "white" man, I find it hard to navigate the very idea of salary negotiation, and I would very much appreciate salary ranges being required in job advertisements. I might very well be underpaid, and I'm sure that many individual women and people of other ethnicities find it much easier than me, be it because of experience, personality, or conscious effort to overcompensate. Others might find it harder than me. Regardless, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that opaque salary ranges on job advertisements are detrimental to the income of certain individuals, and the result of this is: - People with a personality more suited to negotiate their salary are paid better than those without, and (with a few exceptions) it is not correlated with the skill or abilities relevant to the job. - Other people may decide to learn and become fully comfortable with the process, with more or less success, by expending time and effort. - Businesses financially profit at the cost of less assertive workers, thanks to the information asymmetry [0] of salaries in the job market. None of these features generate any kind of value to society or to the economy at large, and there would be no downside to introducing a requirement to publish salary ranges in every job advertisement. Would it make salary negotiation obsolete? Absolutely not! Would it eliminate putative salary gaps between identity groups? I don't know. But would it make salary better correlate with skill at ones job, and improve the income of workers? I think so, yes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
II2II 5y ago
A lot of context was trimmed out of that quote: > As a woman, society brought me up to be polite — not to ‘stir the pot’— and certainly not to talk about money. I’m unlikely to bring up the topic of salary with a potential boss. If I look too money-driven, I’ll likely be seen as cold and ruthless where a man might be seen as ambitious and straight-shooting (if you don’t believe me, read the ‘Howard vs Heidi’ study). While it is easy to tell people to negotiate, some people are not equipped to negotiate in that particular context since they have not been brought up to negotiate in that context. It also turns out that it is very difficult to control this upbringing. I have had conversations with mothers who want their daughters to be strong and self-reliant, yet express frustration with teachers and child care workers conveying the exact opposite message. If they have difficulty in contexts where they can express their concerns directly to the people involved, their battle is utterly hopeless when it comes to society as a whole. The "cold and ruthless" comment also illustrates that the attitudes of the party being negotiated also plays a role here. If you are walking into a negotiation where your asks are perceived as ambition, you are more likely to be seen in a positive light. If you're walking into a negotiation where your gender automatically implies that the same asks are going to be seen as ruthless, you are more likely to be seen in a negative light. Unfortunately, social expectations mean that gender will play a role in how a candidate is perceived even if they are asking for the same thing in the same way.
emodendroket 5y ago
What is the downside, from any employee’s perspective, to knowing what the range is upfront? I certainly attempt to find that information before entering negotiations.
- extra88 5y ago
  A downside to an employer is it limits their options before they have all the information. They might be able to get a bargain on an employee who would have taken the job for less than the minimum. It can also be a bad starting point for a hire who takes a job for pay at the very low end, that their value has been pegged at the bare minimum. The new hire may be fine with it when the position is clearly an advancement for them but for others they may resent the assessment of their worth even though it's more likely based on market realities and/or the organization's finances.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    I meant employee but flubbed it and totally flipped around my post. Sorry!
    - extra88 5y ago
      No problem. A possible downside for a potential employee is they could be a very qualified candidate who passes on applying for a position because the high end of the range isn't high enough but they didn't sufficiently factor in the other benefits. Salary is only one part of the value of taking a particular job, there are other monetary (lower out-of-pocket heath coverage, profit participation) and non-monetary (better work-life balance, more interesting work, better workplace relationships, etc.) factors.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        Even if that's the case, it seems better to know those things up-front, and be OK with that tradeoff, than to waste time getting to the end and then have the whole thing fall apart because of lower than expected compensation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vbtemp 5y ago

I completely agree. Just let the market be. Trying to optimize it will just create other unforeseen consequences. A normal part of an interview process is discussing salary, and if they won't give an answer then you know they are not trying to be competitive and it's not worth continuing the process.

joshuamorton 5y ago
Classical free markets rely on information transparency. This is making the market more efficient.
- vbtemp 5y ago
  Fair point, however there is so, so much that is ambiguous and indeterminate. Some jobs, let's say line-chef or administrative assistant where roles are very clear and variance between a individuals is relatively low, often do have salaries or wages stated up front. In the line of work I'm familiar with, hiring developers is Pandora's Box - you have absolutely no idea what it's going to be like a year down the road. I've worked at startups, big tech companies, research labs - at absolutely none of those places did the work I end up doing match the specific requisition I had applied to. Furthermore, in almost all cases each staff member has an extremely unique specialty that do drastically different work - despite having the same job title and classification. Edit: Also, when a company does not disclose the salary range for the position it actually provides a very useful data point., You can pretty much be sure it's at most average -- but probably less-than-competetive -- market rates. The major and popular tech companies don't need to do this because they have a reputation, but the smaller companies can either show they too are competitive (by publishing above-market rates) or show they do not offer competitive salary (by not publishing their salary target).
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  Yeah, this is like a market where you need to enter the shop, stand in a long line, and only at the cash register you are told how much the items cost. If you think they are too expensive, feel free to try your luck at the next shop, and if the day is long enough you might even try three or four shops. Great for people who have enough vacation days!

the_gipsy 5y ago

What exactly is the merit of knowing how to negotiate a salary?

packetslave 5y ago
For me, it was 25% more first-year total comp. I'd say that has merit.
- the_gipsy 5y ago
  Do you think that, if you didn't know how to negotiate, you should be getting 25% less for the same work input?
  - packetslave 5y ago
    Doesn't really matter what I think: companies will offer you the absolute minimum they think you will accept. If you accept their first offer, you're probably leaving money on the table. If their first offer meets or exceeds what you're willing to work for, fine. If not, you either negotiate or decline.
bufordtwain 5y ago
You can get paid a lot more over the course of your lifetime.

danaris 5y ago

I mean, you're free to buy or not buy whatever ideas you want. But it's not really arguable at this point that women and people of color (especially black & indigenous) are treated less well, assumed to do a poorer job, and generally at a disadvantage when negotiating salaries. (This all completely aside from the fact that "good negotiation skills" should not be the reason Employee A gets a better salary than Employee B, unless the job itself is significantly about negotiation.)

Viliam1234 5y ago
Let's not forget class privilege (this may sound like a heresy, but difference in income between rich and poor people is probably even greater than between men and women). If you are a programmer born in a working-class family, it may be difficult for your parents to teach you proper interviewing and negotiation skills.
- danaris 5y ago
  Indeed. Not just "difficult to teach," but such skills are simply not among those generally valued among the middle and working classes, in my experience (having grown up in them). This is part of why I speak so against them: to me, the idea that they're just "something everyone should have" seems so alien, extravert-centric, and elitist.

lordnacho 5y ago

There's a negotiation involved, once you decide you want to offer the job to someone. They might think they are less likely to get the job if they ask early, yet they might also not want to go through the whole interview process to find that your range is too low for them.

antasvara 5y ago

I think this is somewhat reductive, as it make a few blanket assumptions that I don't think can be assumed. The first is that better candidates will get the maximum salary out of a company, and less qualified candidates will get less. This seems to indicate that people who are qualified for a given job will also be excellent at negotiating for it. I don't think these two skills are in any way related. The second assumption I see in this is that candidates should "women/bipoc can't navigate this system." I think what you're missing (and the article states this) is that minority candidates will be looked at differently when asking for money. There's also the difficulty of determining one's worth, especially when companies don't post average salaries. It can be a difficult guessing game to even ballpark what your value is (even with companies like Glassdoor posting salaries), and if you made less money in your previous job, you're likely to ask for less again. This naturally disadvantages minority and female candidates that have made less historically. Yes, white men aren't born being able to navigate it. But this ignores the fact that our society is set up to encourage confidence in straight white men and discourage it in many other groups. In addition, posting a salary range has many positive downstream effects as mentioned in the article. My brother recently benefited from this, as his company posted a job listing for a similar position to his with a starting salary of 20,000 dollars more. He was able to use this to advocate for higher pay. Bottom line, posting a salary range just adds transparency to the process and evens the playing field a bit. Needing negotiation skills to even get in the ballpark of your true value is crazy; even car companies give you a price point to start from.

alex504 5y ago
> posting a salary range has many positive downstream effects I agree. I'm just not sure if I agree that it particularly benefits underprivileged groups. I don't see a compelling argument being made by the author that the system of negotiation specifically is biased. Whether a salary range is posted or not everyone has to negotiate and engage the market. There is no way to get around this and if you aren't willing to do it you are going to be taken advantage of. A salary range posted by the company who is trying to hire you is not going to tell you how much you should be making there. They are going to try to pay you less. It seems like what people really want is for employers to magically pay everyone exactly what they should be making without negotiating, which is simply not possible, because nobody knows what they should be making until the market sets a price. > The first is that better candidates will get the maximum salary out of a company, and less qualified candidates will get less. I'm not assuming this. In my experience whether someone negotiates more or not at all has more to do with their experience around the process in general. More junior candidates or candidates who haven't switched jobs more than once or twice are more likely to be underpaid. I personally screwed this up about 4 times before learning my lesson. > minority candidates will be looked at differently when asking for money I don't disagree with this. I don't see how posting a salary range changes this. If the company / market is willing to pay less to an underprivileged group, that is going to be reflected in compensation regardless of whether a salary range is posted or not. > There's also the difficulty of determining one's worth The way you determine what the market is willing to pay is to find out what the market is willing to pay. There is no other way to do it. For someone looking for a job you should try to get multiple offers, negotiate them, and see how much you end up with. That number is as close to your market value as you are going to get. > this ignores the fact that our society is set up to encourage confidence in straight white men and discourage it in many other group I guess I really just don't buy this argument as it pertains to this topic. Negotiating compensation shouldn't be a matter of confidence after a certain point in your career. After you have done it a few times it is not very intimidating. It is a fact of life and something everybody needs to learn to be comfortable doing. If you can't become comfortable doing this, you are going to make less.

shusson 5y ago

> If you have that attitude you are going to make less money than someone who negotiates You may also end up being rejected [1]. > Companies will try to pay anyone, no matter their race, gender, or religion, less I tend to agree, but also in my experience there are some companies that try to pay people based on their experience not how well the someone negotiates. > Would publishing a salary in a job description make things more equitable? I don't think so Like you said before, some companies optimise towards lowest pay. By publishing salary ranges it creates a level playing field and people can still negotiate if they want. Gitlab does this pretty well: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/compensation-calculator https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation... [1] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Shopify-Offer-Rescinded-Due-to-Negotiating-Lp6vDomb https://www.teamblind.com/post/Shopify-Offer-Rescinded-Due-t...

xivzgrev 5y ago

She’s not saying she doesn’t have responsibility here, she’s saying women in general are less likely to do what you advise - it’s a systematic bias difference in the sexes and / or being raised in our culture. Yes, we could, as you advise, teach women to navigate this system. But isn’t that what we’ve been trying, and where has that gotten us? I think she has a unique point here pointing how companies are hypocritical - they want more diversity and transparency, yet actively take advantage of candidates by not being transparent, which overly falls harder on under represented groups.

kqr 5y ago
I agree. It's also the fact that diversity isn't about what letters people have in their passports. What we want is a diversity of perspectives, opinions, and philosophies toward life and everything. Part of why we want more women is tightly interwoven with the reasons they are less likely to negotiate hard on salary. If we hire only women who negotiate like men, we aren't getting that diversity at all. Obviously I speak in stereotypes now, but I think the general point still stands; we can't keep hiring with the exact same criteria and expect to magically get different hires. We want diversity in terms of who the person is, not what their biological sex or social gender is.
- csa 5y ago
  > What we want is a diversity of perspectives, opinions, and philosophies toward life and everything. If only... My personal experience is that the folks who are most vocal about “diversity” (i.e., the letters in the passport you refer to) tend to be the least supportive of different perspectives, opinions, philosophies of life, etc. “Agree with the way I think, or you are part of the problem” sadly is a common rallying cry.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

amelius 5y ago

I think it is stupid that you have to negotiate salary before you have even written 1 line of code, and then are stuck with it for like at least a year.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

I would argue that she is right, but for the wrong reasons. Whether the lack of salary ranges disproportionately affects this or that identity group (or doesn't) is a red herring. I'm a "white" man, I find it hard to navigate the very idea of salary negotiation, and I would very much appreciate salary ranges being required in job advertisements. I might very well be underpaid, and I'm sure that many individual women and people of other ethnicities find it much easier than me, be it because of experience, personality, or conscious effort to overcompensate. Others might find it harder than me. Regardless, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that opaque salary ranges on job advertisements are detrimental to the income of certain individuals, and the result of this is: - People with a personality more suited to negotiate their salary are paid better than those without, and (with a few exceptions) it is not correlated with the skill or abilities relevant to the job. - Other people may decide to learn and become fully comfortable with the process, with more or less success, by expending time and effort. - Businesses financially profit at the cost of less assertive workers, thanks to the information asymmetry [0] of salaries in the job market. None of these features generate any kind of value to society or to the economy at large, and there would be no downside to introducing a requirement to publish salary ranges in every job advertisement. Would it make salary negotiation obsolete? Absolutely not! Would it eliminate putative salary gaps between identity groups? I don't know. But would it make salary better correlate with skill at ones job, and improve the income of workers? I think so, yes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

II2II 5y ago

A lot of context was trimmed out of that quote: > As a woman, society brought me up to be polite — not to ‘stir the pot’— and certainly not to talk about money. I’m unlikely to bring up the topic of salary with a potential boss. If I look too money-driven, I’ll likely be seen as cold and ruthless where a man might be seen as ambitious and straight-shooting (if you don’t believe me, read the ‘Howard vs Heidi’ study). While it is easy to tell people to negotiate, some people are not equipped to negotiate in that particular context since they have not been brought up to negotiate in that context. It also turns out that it is very difficult to control this upbringing. I have had conversations with mothers who want their daughters to be strong and self-reliant, yet express frustration with teachers and child care workers conveying the exact opposite message. If they have difficulty in contexts where they can express their concerns directly to the people involved, their battle is utterly hopeless when it comes to society as a whole. The "cold and ruthless" comment also illustrates that the attitudes of the party being negotiated also plays a role here. If you are walking into a negotiation where your asks are perceived as ambition, you are more likely to be seen in a positive light. If you're walking into a negotiation where your gender automatically implies that the same asks are going to be seen as ruthless, you are more likely to be seen in a negative light. Unfortunately, social expectations mean that gender will play a role in how a candidate is perceived even if they are asking for the same thing in the same way.

emodendroket 5y ago

What is the downside, from any employee’s perspective, to knowing what the range is upfront? I certainly attempt to find that information before entering negotiations.

extra88 5y ago
A downside to an employer is it limits their options before they have all the information. They might be able to get a bargain on an employee who would have taken the job for less than the minimum. It can also be a bad starting point for a hire who takes a job for pay at the very low end, that their value has been pegged at the bare minimum. The new hire may be fine with it when the position is clearly an advancement for them but for others they may resent the assessment of their worth even though it's more likely based on market realities and/or the organization's finances.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  I meant employee but flubbed it and totally flipped around my post. Sorry!
  - extra88 5y ago
    No problem. A possible downside for a potential employee is they could be a very qualified candidate who passes on applying for a position because the high end of the range isn't high enough but they didn't sufficiently factor in the other benefits. Salary is only one part of the value of taking a particular job, there are other monetary (lower out-of-pocket heath coverage, profit participation) and non-monetary (better work-life balance, more interesting work, better workplace relationships, etc.) factors.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      Even if that's the case, it seems better to know those things up-front, and be OK with that tradeoff, than to waste time getting to the end and then have the whole thing fall apart because of lower than expected compensation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]