That doesn't work very well because if you have a large range then most candidates would be disappointed if they got towards the bottom end, even if that made pratical sense. Maybe you could mitigate this by making the range even larger at the bottom end, below the minimum that you would ever pay, but then you'd put off the best people (who are the people that you most want to avoid putting off).
Why would the best candidates be put off by a low minimum? Their salary isn't going to have anything to do with the minimum.
If anything, the best candidates should prefer a wide range. That would mean there is more opportunity for them to distinguish themselves beyond just "years served".
> Why would the best candidates be put off by a low minimum?
Because they now know they're competing for a position with (a lot of) people willing to work for half their salary, and they know employers like to pay as little as possible if they can get away with it - so their chances are pretty low. It becomes obvious that there is little point in going through the process altogether.
I don't have a problem with wide pay ranges for the same job as long as it's detailed - e.g. "job X with 1 year of experience pays this much, job X with 10 years of experience pays that much". It HAS to be made transparent, else people will just troll with a range of "minimum wage" to "trillions per second".
Because a low minimum signals that the position is not as senior and not as serious as the description claims it is.
If you advertise for a senior software engineer and your range is 50k-250k, why would I apply? It's clearly not a senior software engineer position if you're willing to hire someone for 50k.
