She had ten years of HR experience, five to seven of them in leave and accommodations. The role was called Leave Specialist, but the work described on the calls — multistate compliance, FMLA and ADA cases, dealing with managers, payroll and employees — sounded senior. The process was not brief: multiple interview stages and a take-home assignment.
Then came the number. $27.50 an hour, for the Seattle area. Non-negotiable.
She had looked at market data before she left the process: senior leave work in the region paid in the high thirties to forties. When she asked whether the rate could move, the answer was no. Everyone, she wrote, was flattened onto the identical horizontal roof of the band.
What stayed with her was the mismatch. The company had asked for free hours from someone with more relevant experience than the role appeared to require. It had then offered a rate that did not reflect the experience it had just spent weeks assessing. Benefits had value, she wrote; routine benefits were not a substitute for base pay.