Salaries in job posts

deweyzeph said:
Well then they must accept the cards they are dealt. Companies are not charities.
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Charity or not, they can simply state the salary in the job as, or at least range.

If that's too much to ask, at least get job descriptions and requirements right. Market related salary means very little.
 
ProfA said:
Why not post salary range upfront?
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1) Because your true hiring range may be too wide to make a range sensible.
2) People tend to think they deserve the high end of whatever range you post. (70% of developers think they are above average phenomenon).
3) It allows competitors or recruiters to build a comp profile of your company, so they can do some targeted poaching.
4) For high end roles, salary may not be a restriction for the right person, so a low range may lose talent, and a high range may create unrealistic expectations.
5) They offer non-salary based comp.

Personally, I think that if the role and compensation is well defined, narrow and run of the mill, there’s not a good reason to not have compensation, however, there are reasons why it doesn’t always make sense.
 
Willie Trombone said:
The fact that very few applicants fit into a salary range. Why would I not consider someone more senior or junior than a salary range dictates? Sometimes you have to go with the best candidate and shuffle the rest of the workforce around if you can’t find the round peg for the square hole.

If you want a certain range then say so up front. If you’re open to negotiation then negotiate.

What if I said salary range is R30k to R130k. What does that actually mean to an applicant? That I’m prepared to pay R130k, but only R50k for you. Nice one. Now we start off on a bad note.

This isn’t the US where there are loads of candidates. I’ve had times where I’m totally overwhelmed with unsuitable candidates and times where we get a handful of not great options. Occasionally you get a good fit and usually it’s by word of mouth in my experience. Someone a colleague knows. That conversation seldom starts with “how much you gonna pay me”. It always involves money of course.
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Why would you advertise a job with a R30k - R130k scale? I know it's an example, but that margin is insane. It's obviously not the same position.

I still see no good reason why salary cannot be mentioned.
 
Bliksis said:
Why would you advertise a job with a R30k - R130k scale? I know it's an example, but that margin is insane. It's obviously not the same position.

I still see no good reason why salary cannot be mentioned.
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There are a bunch of reasons the range can be that big (or even bigger in my experience).

Examples:

You're looking for someone who ideally would have around 7 years of experience, but if someone who only has 2 years of experience, shows a lot of potential, perhaps hire them as additional support, or for future needs that may come along, when they're properly trained up.

For the same search, imagine that someone with 15 years of experience comes along. A bit more senior that you intended, but given the opportunity, it may make sense to restructure some team, such that there are 2 teams, with the new person as a new team lead.

Consider another job that you would post range of say R40-60k/m if you had to. You know that this is a fair wage, and it's what you pay your employees. Also, your devs are complaining that they are being stretched thin due to some new requirement, so the hire is urgent. A fairly common scenario is that you can't find the right candidate for a while, since they all get rejected after the interviews, until eventually you get a candidate that all the employees love. However, it turns out that this person wants R100k/m - possibly because this employee is a top percentile developer, or possibly because they are already being paid R80k/m at some cash flush company. If you put in a range, you would have lost the opportunity to even talk to this person.

Another scenario is large companies that just want a pipeline of talent, not based on immediate need, but on expected future needs. These companies sometimes hire foreigners, that may take months (or in some scenarios, years) to get a work visa. They hire people, who have to wait out non-competes of 6-24months. They're not hiring for some narrow role, they want adaptive, smart people at varying levels of education and experience, and the role will be decided later, possibly only after start (Google often does this actually). There's no point on putting a range on the advert.

This is more typical at large US owned tech companies, but it happens in SA too - at my first SA dev job, some people would get paid R4k/m, and some R20k/m (this was a long time ago). The amount you got depended on how much you asked for, and whether or not your education, experience and interview performance justified it. If the person seemed sharp but less experienced, or less qualified we would put them on something like GUI, otherwise we would put them on some of the mathy or HPC stuff. The bar was high enough, and the company successful enough that we would always find a way to monetize smart developers. My current company (US based) is the same.

Note that I do believe that ranges should be there for certain jobs (well defined, narrow scope, good supply of developers), but there is a whole class of jobs where it doesn't make a lot of sense.
 
cguy said:
There are a bunch of reasons the range can be that big (or even bigger in my experience).

Examples:

You're looking for someone who ideally would have around 7 years of experience, but if someone who only has 2 years of experience, shows a lot of potential, perhaps hire them as additional support, or for future needs that may come along, when they're properly trained up.

For the same search, imagine that someone with 15 years of experience comes along. A bit more senior that you intended, but given the opportunity, it may make sense to restructure some team, such that there are 2 teams, with the new person as a new team lead.

Consider another job that you would post range of say R40-60k/m if you had to. You know that this is a fair wage, and it's what you pay your employees. Also, your devs are complaining that they are being stretched thin due to some new requirement, so the hire is urgent. A fairly common scenario is that you can't find the right candidate for a while, since they all get rejected after the interviews, until eventually you get a candidate that all the employees love. However, it turns out that this person wants R100k/m - possibly because this employee is a top percentile developer, or possibly because they are already being paid R80k/m at some cash flush company. If you put in a range, you would have lost the opportunity to even talk to this person.

Another scenario is large companies that just want a pipeline of talent, not based on immediate need, but on expected future needs. These companies sometimes hire foreigners, that may take months (or in some scenarios, years) to get a work visa. They hire people, who have to wait out non-competes of 6-24months. They're not hiring for some narrow role, they want adaptive, smart people at varying levels of education and experience, and the role will be decided later, possibly only after start (Google often does this actually). There's no point on putting a range on the advert.

This is more typical at large US owned tech companies, but it happens in SA too - at my first SA dev job, some people would get paid R4k/m, and some R20k/m (this was a long time ago). The amount you got depended on how much you asked for, and whether or not your education, experience and interview performance justified it. If the person seemed sharp but less experienced, or less qualified we would put them on something like GUI, otherwise we would put them on some of the mathy or HPC stuff. The bar was high enough, and the company successful enough that we would always find a way to monetize smart developers. My current company (US based) is the same.

Note that I do believe that ranges should be there for certain jobs (well defined, narrow scope, good supply of developers), but there is a whole class of jobs where it doesn't make a lot of sense.
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Instead of hiring the ideal candidate with 7 years experience, get a promising one with 2 years experience and pay him much less.
 
Bliksis said:
Instead of hiring the ideal candidate with 7 years experience, get a promising one with 2 years experience and pay him much less.
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Well, the idea is that you will probably do both in that case, since the junior dev is a risk, and has a longer on-ramp time.

Very often, the actual hires depend on who shows up out of the supply of developers. Perhaps they were thinking 2 juniors and an intermediate dev, but 2 juniors and a senior dev would work too, or 2 intermediate devs by then selves, or one hyper productive senior dev.
 
As an interesting anecdote: if you are only applying to jobs with ranges, you’re probably missing out. While not all companies that hide ranges are great, pretty much all great companies hide ranges.
 
cguy said:
As an interesting anecdote: if you are only applying to jobs with ranges, you’re probably missing out. While not all companies that hide ranges are great, pretty much all great companies hide ranges.
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Kak storie LMAO
 
cguy said:
Well, the idea is that you will probably do both in that case, since the junior dev is a risk, and has a longer on-ramp time.

Very often, the actual hires depend on who shows up out of the supply of developers. Perhaps they were thinking 2 juniors and an intermediate dev, but 2 juniors and a senior dev would work too, or 2 intermediate devs by then selves, or one hyper productive senior dev.
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If you want an appy/intern/junior, advertise accordingly.
 
A poll should be conducted to gauge the preferences of the MyBroadband audience.
 
Bliksis said:
If you want an appy/intern/junior, advertise accordingly.
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You’re missing the point: You’re not looking for junior developers in range R20-40k, intermediates at R40-60 and seniors at R60-80k - you are open to exceptional people with any level of experience. You’re willing to hire an exceptional person with little experience at R70k/m, and an exceptional senior at R200k/m.
 
cguy said:
You’re missing the point: You’re not looking for junior developers in range R20-40k, intermediates at R40-60 and seniors at R60-80k - you are open to exceptional people with any level of experience. You’re willing to hire an exceptional person with little experience at R70k/m, and an exceptional senior at R200k/m.
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My post still stand. If you want a good intern, hire one and advertise it as such.
 
Bliksis said:
My post still stand. If you want a good intern, hire one and advertise it as such.
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Who said anything about interns?

For full time work, the pay distribution tends to be log-normal for companies that hire for talent, rather than employees to plug a hole.
 
cguy said:
Who said anything about interns?

For full time work, the pay distribution tends to be log-normal for companies that hire for talent, rather than employees to plug a hole.
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If you want a senior, look for a senior. If you want a junior to grow, look for one.
 
Bliksis said:
If you want a senior, look for a senior. If you want a junior to grow, look for one.
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Sure, but if you put narrow ranges on them, you’re going to lose out on the best juniors and best seniors.

For the record, this is why almost no top companies put ranges on their TC in job posts. Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, etc.
 
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