When people use "minimum" or "maximum" and then follow that with a range.
When people use "minimum" or "maximum" and then follow that with a range.
I once applied for a job where one of the requirements was "minimum 5 to 10 years experience in X". My friend told me to submit a CV saying I have 3 to 6 years experience in X and see if they shortlist me.
"Up to 50% off or more!"
That or when the range is so huge as to be meaningless - a $25k-150k range is completely useless.
Thankfully some states in the US have made this illegal, like Colorado.
I don't usually complain about how people convey what they want, but this one often annoys me a bit - because it's a matter of clarity.
Some might say "well, there's uncertainty on the min/max", but then the higher/lower boundary of the uncertainty doesn't mean anything. That's the case here - it's effectively "minimum 5 years experience", unless you say what would require more experience.
The higher bound is an indication of maximum salary. It's saying "we need at least 5 years experience, but if you have 30, we're paying you like you have 5."
The higher bound is an indication of maximum salary.
Is this something that you know, or that you're assuming?
Note that in both cases it only reinforces what I said about clarity. If the higher bound of the range:
- is indeed related to the salary - then it is not a requirement, nor should be listed as such
- is related to something else - are they expecting appliers to assume what the range means?
I don't agree. I'm currently looking for a developer with 5-10 years of experience. I don't want a guy so green he's grass, I also don't want someone that has so much experience that he'll be super expensive and or stuck in their ways. I want someone who knows what they're doing, but can still learn more.
So... You missed the point entirely?
I also don’t want someone that has so much experience that he’ll be super expensive and or stuck in their ways.
In your case 10 is the maximum. There's no contradiction, as in the OP.
IMO the "stuck in their ways" isn't about experience at all. It's about good or bad devs. I've seen green devs stuck in their ways.
Sometimes managers or devs who don't know any better think that knowing the right thing to do is the same as being inflexible, because they don't understand the rationale since they aren't experienced programmers.
Most IT job postings done by recruiters are hilariously bad, I scrolled through some and I'm just like "really? That's all you're telling me?"
"expert knowledge in NT, FreeBSD, Cisco IOS, Java, C#, Active Directory, Windows Server, Fortinet". Uh huh. Just be an expert at everything, I see.
Then you do the interview and they want like 2 of those things and less experience is fine. 🙄
A job I'm interviewing for now asked me if I had experience with libvirt, qemu,and KVM.
(For those not in the know, libvirt is a wrapper around qemu, KVM is the name of the technology, so if you have experience with one or both of the first two, you definitely have experience with the last one).
Recruiting is the great leveller. Those who don’t have any skills can at least make it harder for companies to hire people who do have skills.
I think it means that if you have 10 years of experience you are welcome to apply, but they are only willing to pay commensurate to experience up to 10 years.
Probably right, and they don’t need the word minimum at all
I would have assumed that the minimum could change based on the candidates. So if they get a bunch of 10+ year candidates, any 5 year candidates would just be skipped.
“Minimum” in this could refer not to the number of years but to the criteria of eligibility. The sentence might mean “At minimum you have to pass the following eligibility criteria: between 5 and 10 years experience.”
If they then give other criteria that you have to match, that’s nonsense :)
Or I suppose it could mean they’re looking for someone with a minimum of five years, and while they’re not looking for someone with more than 10 years they will consider them. “We want someone with (hard minimum of 5) to (soft maximum of 10) years experience.
Is the job for someone to improve the clarity of their communications by any chance?
Your first interpretation wasn't the case in this specific ad, because the "minimum 5-10 year experience" was on the list of "essential experience and skills" and there was a separate list of "desirables".
Your second explanation just supports my original infuriation - just state the range that you're interested in, without calling it a minimum.
Actually, I got that job, I'm still working for the company, but to your last point, I have to say it's hilarious how bad our communications dept is at communicating to the rest of the company.
I once had a colleague update a shitty webapp we had written to add a message saying "pages loading may take up to a minute or more"
Or say "an average of" and give a range.
This is just non-math language describing a standard deviation.
You need an average of between 6 years.
Or just give the range.
Yeah it's grammatically incorrect but don't we know what they mean? They would settle for 5 years experience if they had to, but 10 years is very much preferred and if they felt they could require 10 they would.
Most neurotypical people don't need everything to be ridigly perfect in definitions. We understand what they meant. I think the objection to this comes from the more autistic type folks. Which isn't to say they are wrong for being different.
Eh, I am not autistic and I am bothered by a lot of language things. But I also appreciate creativity with words when it gets a point across, especially if it would take 50 more words to get across the meaning that 3 creatively combined words can also communicate.
And offer them that sweet fresh-out-of-college salary
The thing is that despite my original post I actually agree with you and quietly hate myself for being mildly infuriated by this.
I recommend you read my reply to another poster who is mildly infuriated by incorrect grammar.
Seems like a linear algebra question. Are they trying to test you on the optimal region?
I, too, am irritated by this.
That means you put it outside of the 70% who have to match.
It also infuriates me if the use 'improving the optimum' or claim something is optimal without the proof, for example 'this is the optimal configuration of a production system' after a comparison of 2–3 different variants.
Because there are uncertainties regarding the minima and maxima? It's pretty obvious.
This comment is very dumb and frankly quite rude. The company is defining the requirements for the application themselves - so they have no reason to reflect scientific uncertainty or whatever you're getting at in their ad.
If a candidate is smart, I'm willing to accept less experience. If a candidate is less smart, I want them to have more experience. There is uncertainty in the minimum experience I'm willing to accept.
While there are certainly cases where this annoys me (as another poster pointed out "up to 60% or more!"), this is not one of them as it could have an explanation.
Let me tell you about monitoring and alerting, son...