[cheath]

Some of the responses here are a classic case of Fundamental Attribution Error - I see a lot of assumptions that imply that the employers must not be adding salaries because they are malicious or bad actors (which, of course there are some). But the overwhelming majority of these employers probably don't even know for themselves the salary that they're willing to pay, since compensation is highly variable based upon the individual's experience and complex market factors.

Should they all have better data, better perspectives, and better job specs? Sure thing. I agree. You'd hire much better people, that's for sure.

On the other hand, should we regulate them into compliance on this matter? Ironically, it seems like a great opportunity to add inefficiency and possibly even have a net negative impact on salaries.

I say, let them ship crappy job descriptions and let the market sort it out.

[Dylan16807]

> On the other hand, should we regulate them into compliance on this matter? Ironically, it seems like a great opportunity to add inefficiency and possibly even have a net negative impact on salaries.

It adds the inefficiency of a job poster spending 5-60 minutes figuring out a salary range.

It removes the inefficiency of hours and hours and hours of interviews from people that wouldn't have applied if they knew the salary range.

It's not like hiring someone is cheap. Companies can and should put this effort into ads.

[djur]

If you're trying to hire for a $100k+ role, it should not be a problem to take an afternoon to look up job postings for similar roles and figure out an appropriate salary range.

[cheath]

Agreed. they should. …But should that be the law?

[djur]

I think it's to the benefit of the vast majority of job seekers, reducing the economic power imbalance between employer and employee, and I'd personally consider that a worthwhile reason to pass a law in and of itself. In addition, I suspect it's also to the benefit of most employers, many of which are not actually large enough to squeeze any appreciable benefit out of salary secrecy but who would gain from having more information about labor prices.

To put it more simply: the socialist in me thinks it's good for workers -- the liberal in me thinks it's good for fairer competition in the labor market. Win-win.

[cheath]

Fair enough. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

My aversion to bureaucracy makes me hate the idea of the government adding more red tape, especially on something as trivial as poorly written job posts. I feel like we learned nothing from GDPR cookie banners.

But nonetheless, I don’t think your point is invalid.