Fuck that! I just hired two people and during the screener I told them the base and comp plan so we don't all waste our time in a mutual ruined-orgasm masturbation session.
As funny as it is when presented that way, it does make sense. After all if a company is using AI wherever possible, and yet hiring a person, then presumably it's because they want that person to do things they don't want to be using AI for.
I've also noticed “competitive” seems to mean “just above what they believe the competition's minimum is”, and together they and their competition drive the wages down.
entry level job; salary range $30,000 - $150,000 depending on qualifications and experience; 10 yrs experience required; high school diploma required, Phd preferred
My last job had close to that range. There is a hiring range is typically 50-70% of the maximum. Below 50% is the developmental range for laddering underqualified internal hires. Over 70% is for very experienced, overqualified candidates. Generally employers won't go more than 85% of max because they need a couple years of cushion for salary increases. If they hire at max they know the candidate is going to be back on the market in a year.
It almost seems like it would be better to quote only the range at which they intend to actually hire, rather than dangling the best case maximum you could ever potentially earn at the absolute pinnacle of your tenure in the position. But maybe other smarter-than-me people expect the top number to mean that?
Had a job interview once where they asked me how much I was expecting to make. I told them and they responded with "Yeah, I think we can do that." Then when they called me to offer me the job they had lowered it by a few bucks an hour. I took it because I had to at the time. They knew that people are desperate and this was their strategy with everyone. Fucking scum.
Correct answer: Your real target (based on your own market research for the position) +15%.
Why? Because they're going to target your acceptable range at -10%, and make the offer right around there.
Then, you can come back and say "I might be able to make that work, as long as X, Y and / or Z are part of the package" where XYZ is anything from remote work to reimbursement for commute mileage.
If they say no to the added XYZ and you're desperate, well go ahead and accept, because you've just earned yourself +5% of what you were targeting. If they say yes, well, even better.
Don't go higher than 15% - this could kill the offer entirely if you misjudge the interview. 15% seems to be the sweet spot in my experience, based on a 30 year career.
There was an article about staffing agencies spamming LLM generated CVs to companies to saturate the market and convince companies that hiring is impossibly hard
Hell even without that hiring is really really hard. Im the IT manager for my company and I'm looking to hire for some level 1 help desk type positions. They don't need to be super experienced, but they do need to know things like "what is group policy" or "how would you troubleshoot this hypothetical issue". Basically they should be able to pass the Comptia A+ test, even if they dont actually have it.
My God I got over 600 applications within a business week! The vast majority of those applicants were from people with no experience, lots of experience in a different field!
Like I was getting these applicants from people who have 15 years of plumbing or machining experience. Or people who clearly haven't been able to hold down a job (if you bounce from minimum wage job to minimum wage job every other month, that's a bad look). Or on the other end of the spectrum, I was getting people with decades of sysadmin experience applying too.
I had to start having HR filter the top and bottom out of the stack so I could actually see useful data.
One of the best ones I ever got was an ‘engineer’ who described driving around in his van ‘fixing things’ applying for a machine learning engineer position.
The fact that the majority of us are essentially forced to participate in the capitalist market means that we will always be at the mercy of greasy, compliant, ass-sucking 'bosses.'
We don't have any freedom with work unless we have the freedom not to work.