Far more important is to know the salary target that you are aiming for. I think people would be more willing to accept this if the application process was no

Far more important is to know the salary target that you are aiming for. I think people would be more willing to accept this if the application process was not such a complete cluster fuck 99% of the time. So many sites want you to upload a resume, and then also re-type the whole thing into some clunky form so that the company can seemingly index it or search it or whatever Then after your resume has been randomly selected for review you get to waste more time with useless recruiters and/or HR people for some kind of preliminary screening process that makes little sense. If you're lucky enough to actually start to enter a real interview process you can plan to sink another 2-8 hours of your time before the discussion of salary ranges is even remotely danced around. Finally, after a ton of hassle you learn that the company wishes to pay approximately minimum wage for this position and wants to pay you in IOU's, bottle caps, or gift vouchers (only a slight exaggeration sometimes). If a company cannot give a salary range that is even +/- 20%, perhaps they're not actually ready to make a job posting and invite people to hopelessly waste their time on the application process.