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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4057 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Why are salary or yoe ranges in job descriptions a thing? Maybe I'm just especially unimaginative today, but I can't crack it. And everytime I see them in a JD it makes me irrationally angry. Oh also gpt-4 is being a bitch and not willing to play along with why this is a stupid practice, and just hitting me repetedly with empty corporate speak.

Salary should be a max not a range. Why would you tell a employee the lower bound? The lower bound should be 0 or negative infinitity.

Same with years of experience. Why is it not a min? The upper bound should be infinity.

Think of what would happen if companies took your advice and only listed max salaries and minimum years of experience. You'd see postings like "Salary up to 100k minimum 3 yoe". This doesn't tell the prospective applicant anything. If the company is only offering the 100k salary to people with 10+ years of experience but most of the applicants are in the 3–5 year range and get offered 65k then you're going to waste a lot of time interviewing people who think their 5 years will gat them somewhere in the neighborhood of 100k and laugh in your face when you give them the real offer. If, on the other hand, the post lists a salary range of 65k–100k and 3–10 yoe, then the implication is that those with more experience will get offers at the higher end of the range and vice-versa. Also consider the factor that if someone has another job they're usually not going to waste their time interviewing with a company that's offering less than they already make, and being up front about the minimum can avoid that as well. You can obviously negotiate, but the company is more likely to get the offeree to sign if he knows going in that he's going to get an offer in the range that he's looking for.

Yes htey make sense when ranges for both are given. I've seen JDs with mins/maxs and ranges for the other.

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