I haven’t listened to the source podcast mentioned (it’s downloaded and in the queue), but I wanted to quickly respond to Marco Arment’s followup post this morning.

One relevant bit below:

If you see a job listing that doesn’t specify a salary range, assume it’s so low that they’re embarrassed to include it, they don’t respect you enough to tell you, or their heads are so far up their asses that they think you should just be dying to work there at any salary, none of which bode well for employment there.

Now, we know from past podcasts of Marco’s that he doesn’t hire (or at least like to hire) employees.

So, here’s the view from the other side:

When I start a hiring process for a position, I likely do have a theoretical salary range in mind, but it’s extremely flexible. It guides the recruiting and selection process ahead of time, sure, but for the right candidate, that range can be completely blown out of the water.

In fact, I’m hiring for a position right now, and have a candidate already in mind, interviewed and ready to go. But I haven’t even thought about salary yet.

Put another way: when hiring, you want to remain as flexible as possible. You might start off hiring for what you think is a junior developer position, but interview someone spectacular on the way. If you had put out that salary range for the junior position earlier, you might have missed out on a great hire.

In short, when I hire, I hire people not positions. Once I lock in on somebody I want, then we start talking salary, with an eye toward what it will take to get them hired and happy.