Most people don't know what a $400k Security Engineer actually does to warrant that pay because you can probably find a similar job at another company that pays much less and probably makes you work more. I sure as fuck don't and I at least have one pentesting cert FWIW.

This pricing scheme punishes people trying to be honest about their skill set. Otherwise why stop at the average? Just max it out and ask for $700k. Another $300k/yr won't break Netflix's bank and everyone else is getting rich that they won't care to call you out either.

Won’t they likely place you into a salary band once you actually start interviewing and they see what level you’re at? L1 starts at $100k and L7 tops out at $700k+. I would think a range that broad is using a single listing for all levels.

They should remove the L4 from the job post title if that's the case, or replace it with (L1 - L7) so it's clear it's for broad levels of experience

> This pricing scheme punishes people trying to be honest about their skill set.

I've really liked the rare company that advertises a narrow pay range and then makes a single, non-negotiable offer for the most they can get the candidate.

The company has more data. The company has an existing pay structure. The company knows its own budget. They should offer what they're willing to pay. Anything else is extremely disrespectful, frankly, despite being the norm.

Do ask for 700 but be prepared to be passed over for a candidate that's better but asked for less. And if you are exceptional (compared to others) then you damn well deserve it. Comparison to the rest of the market (on both sides) is the crux here, not being 'honest' or whatever (what does this even mean). Isn't it?

"... not being 'honest' or whatever (what does that even mean)." Wow. Remind me not to hire from HN.

>Comparison to the rest of the market (on both sides) is the crux here, not being 'honest' or whatever (what does this even mean). Isn't it?

That market comparison is fraught with conditions and often only follows ill-defined job titles.

If you take a look at one of these postings - https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/292552236 - you'll note that the way it's written, there aren't any exceptional job requirements here. It's hard to see why the salary range has such a high ceiling.

Obviously in the interview, they could have much higher requirements, but we don't know that unless someone from Netflix chimes in.

For example,

>You have knowledge of various regulations and controls (SOX, PCI, CCPA, GDPR, etc)

how much is knowledge of each of those worth towards the final salary? Pricing each of those would add more fidelity to the market's signals, but companies often don't do that. Same with technical skills or knowledge of individual products: how much is AWS knowledge worth at the beginner, intermediate, and expert levels to a job that needs AWS knowledge?

This is like buying a publicly traded stock (not yolo'ing) with roughly 80% of the company information not available to you. That information is there for a reason because it promotes market efficiency. It allows you to more easily compare two companies that do similar work.

This is what is meant by honesty, but the job market hides this information. And the job market is often dishonest because it does not price these things, because it is hiding information from applicants, because that gives an advantage to employers. An extremely wide salary range here only serves that goal.

And on the employee side, it would mean that I can go learn AWS to a certain level, and I know that skill would contribute $X amount to the final salary that I can ask for. I don't have to play games trying to sell my skills for more than they're worth.

Where are there plenty of $215k jobs? That's way above the range I'm seeing even on most "senior" or "staff" listings.

Are you in the US in a coastal market? $200k+ base is very normal.

I'm in Philadelphia which is definitely a coastal city in the US and $200k would be way above market here unless my understanding of the local market is dramatically wrong.

Philadelphia metro area has very weak wages compared to most other east coast cities for tech. We don't have much of a FAANG or tech company presence here to bid up market salaries(outside of a couple of satellite offices in the suburbs). I can tell you from my network that with ~6-7+ YoE you can earn about ~180-210k counting base & bonus at most of the banks or financial firms as a new hire at the VP or tech lead level.

My experience is based in SF and Los Angeles, but I personally know many new/recent-grads who were recently hired at $150-$180k (cash) comp including bonus, to say nothing of options, from FAANGs to well-funded later-stage startups to even run-of-the-mill legacy corporate tech positions.

Even GitHub, which pre-Microsoft was more stingy with its money, is offering $160k for entry-level new-grad hires last time I checked.

I don't know what tech cos hire out of there but a senior engineer in NYC would easily make $200k+ base at most companies

The issue is that if you're currently making $200K, it's hard to tell where they might think you might sit in that scale up-front.

It's a bit like saying "Employee - $10K-$10M p/a" - It's not very useful in a job posting, as you might reasonably assume someone being paid the top salary is not actually doing the same role as at the bottom range.

If they aren't doing the same role, then why are salaries for two different roles listed under a single job requisition?

Because outside of government and certain (but not all) bigcorps, knowledge worker jobs aren’t “find a cog to fit a precise position in a larger machine” things.

Heck, even in government they often aren't, though the rules governing government hiring force people to superficially hire as if they were.

> A big range like that means you should feel more than fine selecting the average— so $400k— at the minimum. Anything less and you’re essentially admitting you don’t think you’re worth what the salary range is.

But does this mean that no one who is "worth what the salary range is" should be paid in the bottom half of the range?

Yes. Given what Netflix pays in general, I would guess that the bottom parts of that range are negotiating shenanigans and no senior security engineer they hire actually makes that little. (Which sounds silly until you consider - how many good engineers would accept an offer at the bottom of a posted salary range?)