[CoastalCoder]

> Why not add it by default?

IIUC, it's generally held that in a price negotiation, the first party that posts a number is at a disadvantage. Starting salary is one kind of price negotiation. So I can understand why employers would be reluctant to do that.

[bluedevil2k]

Yeah, this isn’t correct. All things being equal, the first to post a number is at a big advantage. As another commenter pointed out, this is called anchoring. Think about a house being sold in a normal market, the price is always well above its market value to anchor the numbers high.

The reason companies don’t want to post a salary number is all things aren’t equal: they have far more information on pay than you do. Vastly more. So they have the luxury of letting your uninformed ask be the anchor point cause they know it’ll probably be low. Plus, if someone asks too high, they can ignore it and move on. They (often but not always) have the luxury of choosing the lowest asks to move forward with.

[noir_lord]

Also they might be underpaying their current staff.

[roflyear]

This is the truth of it. They have devs who are making $130k who have worked there for 4 years and they don't want to give them a raise to $200k.

[Sohcahtoa82]

I know a guy that works at a very well-known tech company and has been a software engineer for over 15 years for them and is only being paid $120K.

He says "They treat me well", and I'm like, no they fucking don't. They don't value your work anywhere close to what it should be. I told him that he could easily triple his TC by going almost literally anywhere else.

I used to work for said company. I left because the salary was way below market and literally doubled my salary from $100K to $200K at my new digs. I made it no secret to my old manager that money was the #1 reason why I was leaving (#2 being that the team I was working on was basically falling apart due to internal politics), and he acknowledged that salaries are significantly below market and that HR is promising updates to salary bands to bring them up to market within the next couple months. Spoiler alert: It's been 1 1/2 years since I left, and the couple people I talk to from there say nothing has changed.

[pixl97]

Just remember that these employers underpaying their staff are going to be the first ones on HN saying how unions are not needed because pay is already high in the tech world.

[shanebellone]

This is probably true but also bad practice imo. It instantly signals that employers value leverage rather than employees.

[bilsbie]

Wouldn’t the concept of anchoring say the opposite though?

I’ve always wondered that.

My guess is if you say too high of a number they don’t take you seriously so anchoring can’t work?