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You don't even need to be that hostile for this to be... difficult. I've seen salary bands for a specific role + level to be pretty wide - like 90k-150k. And th

You don't even need to be that hostile for this to be... difficult. I've seen salary bands for a specific role + level to be pretty wide - like 90k-150k. And then there's where you might be willing to accept mid level to principal dev - should you just publish a range where the upper is multiples of the lower? What's that really helping? I'm all for more transparency, especially when it helps to equal out the power inbalance in employer to employee, but these attempts seem rough.

sokoloff 4y ago
From the article: > They will not have to publish the precise salary due to fears that this could be commercially sensitive. If you're going to preserve the commercially sensitive nature of pay at a given firm, the tolerances that you must accept will be several multiples higher than the cited 13 percent difference in pay between men and women.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  .. why on earth would we preserve that? Should supermarkets not show prices?
  - WheatMillington 4y ago
    Supermarkets should not have to disclose their COST prices, because these are non public negotiations, not a public offer to buy/sell. That so many people wilfully choose not to understand this distinction frustrates useful conversation.
    - andyferris 4y ago
      I agree it's orthogonal to the original discussion, but I am interested in the hyptothesis that we'd be all better off if e.g. we could see the cost prices at supermarkets (and perhaps all their other relevant costs). E.g. is society better or worse off with less secrecy?
    - paxys 4y ago
      No the equivalent scenario would be a grocery store (or online store, hotel, airline etc.) not publicly advertising any prices at all. If you want something you have to take it to the cashier, and they will give you a personalized price based on whatever factors they choose. Should that be legal? Maybe, maybe not. But there are plenty of laws out there that mandate that companies make pricing more transparent, because that is good for the end consumer.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Is the analog for hiring a software engineer closer to buying: 1. An economy round trip on Airline A, with max 2 checked bags, leaving from JFK at datetime D1 to SFO, returning at D2. 2. A round trip on a plane starting in New York in month M, all other details unknown. Employees are different; how well matched they are for a given job is not knowable in advance of a first conversation, so for jobs were a range of value creation is possible, the range of possible agreement is wide and is certainly not a point. I have two SWEs where one creates twice as much value as the other. If you hired both of them into your firm, which one created 2x as much value could easily switch.
  - layer8 4y ago
    If job applicants were as standardized as supermarket products, that would seem reasonable.

sokoloff 4y ago

From the article: > They will not have to publish the precise salary due to fears that this could be commercially sensitive. If you're going to preserve the commercially sensitive nature of pay at a given firm, the tolerances that you must accept will be several multiples higher than the cited 13 percent difference in pay between men and women.

stefan_ 4y ago
.. why on earth would we preserve that? Should supermarkets not show prices?
- WheatMillington 4y ago
  Supermarkets should not have to disclose their COST prices, because these are non public negotiations, not a public offer to buy/sell. That so many people wilfully choose not to understand this distinction frustrates useful conversation.
  - andyferris 4y ago
    I agree it's orthogonal to the original discussion, but I am interested in the hyptothesis that we'd be all better off if e.g. we could see the cost prices at supermarkets (and perhaps all their other relevant costs). E.g. is society better or worse off with less secrecy?
  - paxys 4y ago
    No the equivalent scenario would be a grocery store (or online store, hotel, airline etc.) not publicly advertising any prices at all. If you want something you have to take it to the cashier, and they will give you a personalized price based on whatever factors they choose. Should that be legal? Maybe, maybe not. But there are plenty of laws out there that mandate that companies make pricing more transparent, because that is good for the end consumer.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Is the analog for hiring a software engineer closer to buying: 1. An economy round trip on Airline A, with max 2 checked bags, leaving from JFK at datetime D1 to SFO, returning at D2. 2. A round trip on a plane starting in New York in month M, all other details unknown. Employees are different; how well matched they are for a given job is not knowable in advance of a first conversation, so for jobs were a range of value creation is possible, the range of possible agreement is wide and is certainly not a point. I have two SWEs where one creates twice as much value as the other. If you hired both of them into your firm, which one created 2x as much value could easily switch.
- layer8 4y ago
  If job applicants were as standardized as supermarket products, that would seem reasonable.