[jacquesm]

> If your primary reason for responding to an ad is based upon salary you are not going to be happy where you work. I promise.

I don't really care about your promise because after many (too many?) years in business and seeing a lot of companies from the inside without any restrictions I can tell you that companies that paid at or above market rates generally had better work/life balance than the ones that did not and the people I spoke there definitely seemed substantially happier than in the places where they were paying below market rate.

In those places salary was usually just one indicator of many where incompetent management was showing through. Either you're a founder or you should make a very decent wage and anybody that tries to tell you that their crap salary is made up trough fringe benefits is taking advantage of you (or at least trying to do so). That you managed to trick some more qualified people into responding that otherwise would have rejected you out of hand is not a positive for them, it's a positive for you.

Employees can use a salary range to quickly weed out the employers to avoid from the ones to talk to and I would reverse your statement to 'If you are looking for a place that won't make you feel bad start with salary'.

[mwigdahl]

This is a really good point. Bad management/strategy leads to all sorts of corporate dysfunction, and many times that shows through in either unwillingness or inability to pay market-level salaries for good developers who have options in the wider market.