FTA: Also, there is no target salary or salary range. This is a red flag for a couple of reasons:

- It sends a message that the actual compensation is going to be rubbish.

- It sends a message (combined with the evidence from the advert spamming) that the hiring company will be paying different levels of compensation based on where the applicant lives.

That last one is particularly inexcusable. We call it a 'compensation package' for a reason: the employer is compensating the employee for using their expertise, time, and energy to make the employer money. It has nothing to do with the CoL where you live, and everything to do with how much the company values you in that role.

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While I mostly agree with the sentiment I think this is pretty normal and not nearly as much of a faux pas as the author is making it out to be. Kinda applies to a lot of his points - some of these aren’t unequivocally bad hiring practices, they are just polarizing or a matter of pros and cons.

Hot take: a lot of job openings for highly specialized skills or from small-medium sized businesses are not posted with specific salary bands in mind, just “as much as it takes to get a great candidate, but not more than their expected value”. In some cases you could legitimately be open to candidates costing anywhere between $80k and $500k - it looks weird to list a job that way, would you do it? Maybe it turns some candidates off, maybe it prevents scaring off candidates who would be great fits and accept the offer. Maybe it’s not worth getting upset about

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ch33zer 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean it's the law in California that job postings must include salary ranges since 2023, so it's more than 'boy sure would be nice if I knew the pay range before applying': https://www.cda.org/newsroom/employment-practices/pay-scale-...

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weitendorf 16 hours ago | parent [-]

And the article is about Canonical making multiple job postings all around the world where California labor laws aren’t applicable…

Regardless, I think there are underrated issues with mandatory pay bands that aren’t obvious unless you’re on the hiring side. Let’s say you legitimately are open to hiring candidates from anywhere from $100k to $300k. For candidates closer to the $300k end they might not want to apply if they think they might get offered way less than they want, and it might attract a lot of candidates on the $100k end who will make it all the way through the process and then get upset when they’re not offered something closer to $300k. Also, for companies like Canonical, they have enough name recognition and genuine supporters that they probably don’t want to talk to candidates who are only applying because they saw a big number (and if they have to, it makes harder for candidates that are better fits to get noticed).

There’s understandably a lot of strong feelings about hiring practices right now and I know a lot of candidates will tend to assume the worst because of how they’ve been treated by other companies. But sometimes companies just make multiple listings so they show up for candidates around the world instead of as a spam tactic, are flexible on salary, and have a culture that values different things.

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0xffff2 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In California at least, nothing stops you from asking about expected pay as part of the application process and setting expectations for individual candidates early. From the applicant side, I'm constantly amazed at how many companies are shamelessly advertising senior level jobs with embarrassingly low salary ranges. Being able to weed out companies whose _upper_ bound is less than I'm making now as a government contractor (i.e. very much not FANNG pay) saves a ton of time.

	▲	FireBeyond 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Times are tough but I noped out of a Director of Product role that was offering $100-110K.

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marcosdumay 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I never had to work on that, but I imagine you would publish a position at the 100k-200k range, and another one at the 200k-300k range. In fact, that may still be too large a range.

Or are the people in that large range interchangeable from the employer's point of view?

	▲	0cf8612b2e1e 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Netflix posts bands something like $100-700k.