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That's ridiculous. If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. You obviously cannot list it

That's ridiculous. If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. You obviously cannot list it any higher than you're willing to pay. So you'll end up listing it in such a way that people will figure out what this position is worth to you, and once that person gets hired, their background and experience will get scrutinized to no end by anyone with a comparable salary. If you've ever been a part of the performance review process, you will know that people will go very far to justify a raise. Looking at the current job listings on your company's career section will be the very first thing that everyone will do if those salaries were to be made public.

88913527 5y ago
Given how people already will say anything for a raise, I don't see how posting salary ranges in JDs changes those claims. As the employer, you still set the raise. If people want to double their compensation, they aren't vying for a raise: they're looking for a new job. So companies give 3-10% a year, and if the employee doesn't like it, it's up to them to walk. Most people don't want to walk, because leetcoding and job hunting is work. So, the employer can give modest raises without rocking the boat. Employees vote with their feet. Anyone with one eye open can look at levels.fyi and know that 2021 market rates != 2019 market rates. Been a role for 2+ years and want a meaningful comp change? You have to leave, that's how it is.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  > Been a role for 2+ years and want a meaningful comp change? You have to leave, that's how it is. That's even more likely to be the case when there are strict guidelines around compensation (eg: when salaries are public). When your manager has some wiggle room, you might be able to justify a bigger bump than average because of all the extra hard work you're putting in, even if your experience level doesn't qualify you for a straight up promotion.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Might is doing a lot of work there. They also might not even when they have more notional wiggle room. Or you’ll be given a significant bump that still leaves you underpaid versus your peers. The information asymmetry is there for the employer to exploit after all. What you’re really saying is that making the information available makes it harder for companies to retain employees using the status quo tactics. Which increases turn-over, which in reality is the businesses problem not the employees. So from the employee perspective what is the problem in being better informed about the price dynamics within the market?
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      If you’re asking about listing a 90% confidence interval guess as to what you expect to pay for a new position: no problem at all (other than if a small market leads alone which might push employers to decide “the benefit/risk of listing this job in Colorado is not worth the research, compliance costs, and uncertainty, so we’ll advertise this job to the other 98.5% of the US”) If you’re asking about listing individual salaries, I think some employees would object and, unless they signed onto the job with that expectation, as an employer I don’t believe I’m morally right to publish their currently private information without their consent, nor tell them “you can quit if you don’t like it”. (I have absolutely no problem with anyone voluntarily disclosing their own information, discussing it, comparing it, whatever.)
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  You would be right if it wasn't a well-known fact that people hired in 2021 on the same position you were hired on in 2019 may well have a 30-50% higher salary than you today, since companies almost always have an idiotic hard cap on yearly raises, but no similar cap on new hire offers. So, out of accounting spite, many companies are opting for churn instead of stability by simple raise vs new hire policy, making it worse for everyone.
fy20 5y ago
> If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates I'm not sure if it has changed now, but Gitlab used to have a big problem with the way they calculated compensation. Their calculations were very heavily weighted against the Numbeo rental prices, which meant you had someone living in London, UK would earn 40% more than someone living in Bristol, UK, even though the cost of living in both cities is pretty similar.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  ‘Big Mac / Median Income’ is my preferred index.
- dmurray 5y ago
  > even though the cost of living in both cities is pretty similar Never lived in Bristol, but I can't believe this. The calculations are heavily weighted against rental prices because accommodation is a large part of most people's expenses.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Aeolun 5y ago
> people will go very far to justify a raise I guess I never feel the need to justify a raise. If I need to justify it I’ve already failed I think.
salary_post 5y ago
The pithy summary of your views could be, “because it’s not in the company’s best interest”.
potamic 5y ago
> Looking at the current job listings on your company's career section will be the very first thing that everyone will do if those salaries were to be made public. This right here I think is the real reason companies do not disclose compensation in their listings. Their current employees fall below the range and they do not want them to know. This is unfortunately a widespread problem in tech, where companies constantly offer more for new hires than what they pay their own employees for the same work. The new hires that have joined will then find themselves in the same position next year when their compensation falls below what someone will be hired at that year! And the cycle continues. It's absolute madness if you look at it from the big picture perspective and there are some fundamental problems with the way HR orgs are structured that need to change. From an employee perspective, the most optimal thing you can do for yourself is to move companies frequently and that is the reason for the crazy churn we see in this industry.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  I've seen this happen in a large company, and it caused terrible morale issues, as there were reasons good reasons why salary couldn't just be raised across the board to match new hire rates. For most companies, this will make them less resistant to boom and bust as they'll be forced to offer big annual payrises which they won't be able to roll back when the market contracts.
  - tpxl 5y ago
    Pray tell, what are good reasons to underpay experienced staff compared to new staff?
    - lelanthran 5y ago
      > Pray tell, what are good reasons to underpay experienced staff compared to new staff? GP didn't say that there are good reasons to underpay experienced staff compared to new staff, he said that there are good reasons that salaries cannot be raised across the board.
unethical_ban 5y ago
Summary once again, because I think you're going in a roundabout way. You assume: a) Companies will by necessity pay people doing ostensibly the same thing different amounts of money b) People do not necessarily wish for their salary to be made public c) Making a salary range requires the lower and upper bound to be equidistant from the expected starting pay d) Making too narrow a salary range would therefore reveal pay, in contradiction to b). Therefore, it is a necessity of employees' desired privacy and employers' ability to advertise the lowest, er, "most competitive" wage possible for the company to have a wide salary range. EDIT to add: I think your argument still falls a little flat, because salary ranges should still be accurate. "We would consider hiring someone with slightly less resume experience for the bottom range, we would hire a rockstar demigod at the highend, and just what we're looking for somewhere around the middle".
onion2k 5y ago
If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. So the point of not listing the salary is to attract highly qualified candidates who don't know they're worth more than the role pays? That doesn't seem to be a good thing.
- wiseowise 5y ago
  Not a good thing for the employee, good thing for the company.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    It's bad for the company too, in the mid- to long-term. As soon as anyone who accepted the low offer realises they've been screwed they'll either leave or their productivity will take a nosedive. Either way you end up recruiting someone again, which is expensive (in time) and tedious.
vladharbuz 5y ago
> people will go very far to justify a raise I would say "this new position you are hiring for gets paid more than I do for the same work" is a very good justification for a raise. :) If companies can be held accountable for injustices like this one, that can only be a good thing. Well, except if you're scared your employees will catch you out. For the record: I've played the part of the employer in this specific issue and learned my lesson.
- sneak 5y ago
  Paying someone an amount that you are willing to pay and that they are willing to accept is not an injustice.
  - vladharbuz 5y ago
    I disagree! You see this argument repeated around a lot: “well, the employee accepted this job, so since it's their choice, there's no injustice, they can always decide to go somewhere else!”. I think this is missing the point. Do you think employers coercing employees into accepting conditions below what they should normally get is not a thing that happens? The employer, as opposed to the employee, has the power to manipulate the socioeconomic circumstances around the employee. They can (and do) prevent employees from discussing politics at the workplace or unionising, they can (and do) hide (and manipulate) information about who is getting paid what, they can (and do) decline additional compensation when it should be given (overtime), and this is the least of it. You might think, “well, the employees should just get a different job then!”. But don't we want to fix the underlying problem instead of just churning our way through countless jobs? Sometimes it doesn't even work — you are often compelled to stay at a job for various reasons (you relocated with your family, you've worked there for a long time etc.), and you might not even realise this manipulation is happening to begin with. The above comment said that employees will go very far to justify a raise. Don't you think that, if employees had all of the information their employers had, a lot of employees _would be_ able to justify a raise that they deserve, perhaps even without having previously realised this because of the information asymmetry? That sounds like an injustice to me.
galfarragem 5y ago
> That's ridiculous. If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. No it's not. If you are paying under average salaries, why do you deserve above average talent? ... Unless you admit it's just another rigged game (masked as meritocracy). It's sad.

88913527 5y ago

Given how people already will say anything for a raise, I don't see how posting salary ranges in JDs changes those claims. As the employer, you still set the raise. If people want to double their compensation, they aren't vying for a raise: they're looking for a new job. So companies give 3-10% a year, and if the employee doesn't like it, it's up to them to walk. Most people don't want to walk, because leetcoding and job hunting is work. So, the employer can give modest raises without rocking the boat. Employees vote with their feet. Anyone with one eye open can look at levels.fyi and know that 2021 market rates != 2019 market rates. Been a role for 2+ years and want a meaningful comp change? You have to leave, that's how it is.

aerosmile 5y ago
> Been a role for 2+ years and want a meaningful comp change? You have to leave, that's how it is. That's even more likely to be the case when there are strict guidelines around compensation (eg: when salaries are public). When your manager has some wiggle room, you might be able to justify a bigger bump than average because of all the extra hard work you're putting in, even if your experience level doesn't qualify you for a straight up promotion.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Might is doing a lot of work there. They also might not even when they have more notional wiggle room. Or you’ll be given a significant bump that still leaves you underpaid versus your peers. The information asymmetry is there for the employer to exploit after all. What you’re really saying is that making the information available makes it harder for companies to retain employees using the status quo tactics. Which increases turn-over, which in reality is the businesses problem not the employees. So from the employee perspective what is the problem in being better informed about the price dynamics within the market?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    If you’re asking about listing a 90% confidence interval guess as to what you expect to pay for a new position: no problem at all (other than if a small market leads alone which might push employers to decide “the benefit/risk of listing this job in Colorado is not worth the research, compliance costs, and uncertainty, so we’ll advertise this job to the other 98.5% of the US”) If you’re asking about listing individual salaries, I think some employees would object and, unless they signed onto the job with that expectation, as an employer I don’t believe I’m morally right to publish their currently private information without their consent, nor tell them “you can quit if you don’t like it”. (I have absolutely no problem with anyone voluntarily disclosing their own information, discussing it, comparing it, whatever.)
tsimionescu 5y ago
You would be right if it wasn't a well-known fact that people hired in 2021 on the same position you were hired on in 2019 may well have a 30-50% higher salary than you today, since companies almost always have an idiotic hard cap on yearly raises, but no similar cap on new hire offers. So, out of accounting spite, many companies are opting for churn instead of stability by simple raise vs new hire policy, making it worse for everyone.

fy20 5y ago

> If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates I'm not sure if it has changed now, but Gitlab used to have a big problem with the way they calculated compensation. Their calculations were very heavily weighted against the Numbeo rental prices, which meant you had someone living in London, UK would earn 40% more than someone living in Bristol, UK, even though the cost of living in both cities is pretty similar.

Aeolun 5y ago
‘Big Mac / Median Income’ is my preferred index.
dmurray 5y ago
> even though the cost of living in both cities is pretty similar Never lived in Bristol, but I can't believe this. The calculations are heavily weighted against rental prices because accommodation is a large part of most people's expenses.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Aeolun 5y ago

> people will go very far to justify a raise I guess I never feel the need to justify a raise. If I need to justify it I’ve already failed I think.

salary_post 5y ago

The pithy summary of your views could be, “because it’s not in the company’s best interest”.

potamic 5y ago

> Looking at the current job listings on your company's career section will be the very first thing that everyone will do if those salaries were to be made public. This right here I think is the real reason companies do not disclose compensation in their listings. Their current employees fall below the range and they do not want them to know. This is unfortunately a widespread problem in tech, where companies constantly offer more for new hires than what they pay their own employees for the same work. The new hires that have joined will then find themselves in the same position next year when their compensation falls below what someone will be hired at that year! And the cycle continues. It's absolute madness if you look at it from the big picture perspective and there are some fundamental problems with the way HR orgs are structured that need to change. From an employee perspective, the most optimal thing you can do for yourself is to move companies frequently and that is the reason for the crazy churn we see in this industry.

bencollier49 5y ago
I've seen this happen in a large company, and it caused terrible morale issues, as there were reasons good reasons why salary couldn't just be raised across the board to match new hire rates. For most companies, this will make them less resistant to boom and bust as they'll be forced to offer big annual payrises which they won't be able to roll back when the market contracts.
- tpxl 5y ago
  Pray tell, what are good reasons to underpay experienced staff compared to new staff?
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > Pray tell, what are good reasons to underpay experienced staff compared to new staff? GP didn't say that there are good reasons to underpay experienced staff compared to new staff, he said that there are good reasons that salaries cannot be raised across the board.

unethical_ban 5y ago

Summary once again, because I think you're going in a roundabout way. You assume: a) Companies will by necessity pay people doing ostensibly the same thing different amounts of money b) People do not necessarily wish for their salary to be made public c) Making a salary range requires the lower and upper bound to be equidistant from the expected starting pay d) Making too narrow a salary range would therefore reveal pay, in contradiction to b). Therefore, it is a necessity of employees' desired privacy and employers' ability to advertise the lowest, er, "most competitive" wage possible for the company to have a wide salary range. EDIT to add: I think your argument still falls a little flat, because salary ranges should still be accurate. "We would consider hiring someone with slightly less resume experience for the bottom range, we would hire a rockstar demigod at the highend, and just what we're looking for somewhere around the middle".

onion2k 5y ago

If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. So the point of not listing the salary is to attract highly qualified candidates who don't know they're worth more than the role pays? That doesn't seem to be a good thing.

wiseowise 5y ago
Not a good thing for the employee, good thing for the company.
- onion2k 5y ago
  It's bad for the company too, in the mid- to long-term. As soon as anyone who accepted the low offer realises they've been screwed they'll either leave or their productivity will take a nosedive. Either way you end up recruiting someone again, which is expensive (in time) and tedious.

vladharbuz 5y ago

> people will go very far to justify a raise I would say "this new position you are hiring for gets paid more than I do for the same work" is a very good justification for a raise. :) If companies can be held accountable for injustices like this one, that can only be a good thing. Well, except if you're scared your employees will catch you out. For the record: I've played the part of the employer in this specific issue and learned my lesson.

sneak 5y ago
Paying someone an amount that you are willing to pay and that they are willing to accept is not an injustice.
- vladharbuz 5y ago
  I disagree! You see this argument repeated around a lot: “well, the employee accepted this job, so since it's their choice, there's no injustice, they can always decide to go somewhere else!”. I think this is missing the point. Do you think employers coercing employees into accepting conditions below what they should normally get is not a thing that happens? The employer, as opposed to the employee, has the power to manipulate the socioeconomic circumstances around the employee. They can (and do) prevent employees from discussing politics at the workplace or unionising, they can (and do) hide (and manipulate) information about who is getting paid what, they can (and do) decline additional compensation when it should be given (overtime), and this is the least of it. You might think, “well, the employees should just get a different job then!”. But don't we want to fix the underlying problem instead of just churning our way through countless jobs? Sometimes it doesn't even work — you are often compelled to stay at a job for various reasons (you relocated with your family, you've worked there for a long time etc.), and you might not even realise this manipulation is happening to begin with. The above comment said that employees will go very far to justify a raise. Don't you think that, if employees had all of the information their employers had, a lot of employees _would be_ able to justify a raise that they deserve, perhaps even without having previously realised this because of the information asymmetry? That sounds like an injustice to me.

galfarragem 5y ago

> That's ridiculous. If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. No it's not. If you are paying under average salaries, why do you deserve above average talent? ... Unless you admit it's just another rigged game (masked as meritocracy). It's sad.