Sixty Days of Public Salary Data: The Recruiter Experiment I Didn't Fully Think Through

Somewhere around 2 AM on a Tuesday, I updated my portfolio with a page titled "The Money Page." It listed every role I've held since 2015, the city, the salary, the bonus if there was one, and even the equity that turned out to be worth roughly a nice dinner. No anonymization. No ranges. Actual numbers.

Then I did what any rational person does after doing something unhinged: I closed my laptop and didn't look at it for two days.

Why I Did This (Besides Sleep Deprivation)

Pay transparency in US tech is in a weird half-state. A handful of states — Colorado, New York, California, Washington — now require salary ranges in job postings. EU pay transparency directives are coming. And yet most American workers still have no idea what their peers make, and sharing your own compensation with your employer can still feel like a fireable offense even when it legally isn't.

I wanted to know what happens when you skip the middleman entirely. If a recruiter can see that I made $94,000 in 2019 and $168,000 last year, do they skip the "what are your salary expectations?" dance? Do they lowball me harder? Do they just... not call?

So I posted the page, linked it from my homepage, and left it up for sixty days. I tracked every recruiter email, LinkedIn message, and interview invite that came through.

Week One: The Silence Was Deafening

The first week was quiet. Recruiter outreach dropped noticeably compared to my baseline — maybe 40% fewer InMails. I can't prove causation, but the pattern was suspicious. The ones who did reach out either didn't read the page (they asked about "compensation expectations," which, buddy, it's literally one click away) or opened with a weirdly defensive tone.

One message from a fintech recruiter read, in part: "I noticed you're transparent about comp — that's great, though our process requires a range from candidates." Our process requires it. Noted.

Weeks Two Through Five: The Numbers Started Working For Me

Then something flipped. Around week two, the quality of outreach changed. Recruiters who contacted me were arriving pre-qualified. They knew my band. If their budget topped out at $150K, they didn't waste either of our time. The ones who did reach out were hiring for roles that actually paid above my current number.

I got three interview invitations in that window, all from companies whose posted ranges cleared my most recent salary by a real margin. One recruiter straight-up told me the transparency page was why they reached out: "I knew you'd be in range, and honestly I knew you'd say yes or no quickly."

That's the part nobody talks about. Radical honesty doesn't just filter companies — it filters for recruiters who respect your time. The lazy spray-and-pray crowd bounced off the page entirely.

The Awkward DMs, Because There Were Awkward DMs

A former coworker messaged me to say I'd "made things weird" for the rest of the team — apparently my old salary was low enough that people were now renegotiating. Sorry, Doug.

A hiring manager at a startup I'd never heard of DMed to ask whether the 2021 number included the signing bonus, which felt like a tax audit conducted via LinkedIn.

And one anonymous message just said "bold move, hope it was worth it," which I've decided to frame as encouragement.

The Unexpected Offer

Week six, a company I'd never applied to reached out with a role scoped around something I'd written about on this blog. The recruiter said the salary history page made their internal case easier: "Nobody had to guess what it would take." The offer, when it came, was 22% over my current comp with none of the usual three-round negotiation theater.

I didn't take it — wrong stack, wrong timing — but the fact that it happened at all says something. The page did the negotiating before I ever got on a call.

So: Asset or Liability?

Here's my honest read after sixty days. Publishing your salary history costs you volume and buys you precision. I got fewer recruiter pings and dramatically better ones. The companies scared off by transparency were companies I didn't want to work for anyway — if a salary number on a blog scares your hiring committee, imagine what a salary negotiation would do.

The liability side is real, though. It's leverage you can never take back. Future employers know your floor, your trajectory, and your desperation level (or lack thereof) forever. I'm a mid-career guy with options; the calculus looks very different for someone early in their career or currently unemployed, and I'd never tell anyone this experiment is universally right.

But as a piece of my portfolio? It outperformed every project case study on the site. People don't email me about my React architecture decisions. They email me about the Money Page.

The page is still up, by the way. I've added a note at the top: numbers current as of last performance review, ask me anything. Doug has since forgiven me. Mostly.