I get why employer's tendency is to withhold pay information. But ultimately, it's a waste of my time and their time if we're not close enough. So disclosure seems win/win.

Employers are still used to an employer's market, where they could string desperate applicants along, then hit them with, "This is the salary, take it or leave it." They're slow to adjust to today's job market.

Not when the objective is to increase the companies Visa quota not to find talent at market rate.

I assume you're not in the USA? As a network architect, even non-coastal jobs are easily had for $120,000 and go up from there...

I don't think that's true at all. If it were so easy, why don't I have one? More people are paid below $110k than above (median).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't seem to agree with you: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

They report a median of $116k.

Ok, so it's $6k off. That's still $4k short of the $120k mentioned. Meaning you still have more people making under that amount. Especially when accounting for location (they state midwest).

How big an environment are we talking about? More then about 50 servers, you're underpaid if you aren't making 6 figures.

I don't think it's controversial to assume that most non-helpdesk IT staff are being underpaid for the value they bring to their companies.

I'm not a network administrator. I have training in that space. If it were really that easy to find a job paying that, then I would go do it.

You should look around.

I have. Nothing has panned out. Very few things have even look good.

Levels.fyi Teamblind.com Leetcode.com

study these 3 for 6 months and you will easily get over 200k.

I can't. My family mostly consumes all my free time. I'm also not able to relocate since my wife doesn't want to. $200k would be highly unlikely in my area.

PS I hate how people say 'easily' for salaries that are basically double the median for devs. If it was easy, everyone would have it.

I've seen decent salaries in the UK advertised, hell I even had an interview for a 2nd line support role, fully remote, for £75k ($100k) - a small pay rise, but far less varied and thus less interesting than what I currently do, so I decided to thank them for the opportunity during the interview and put them in touch with someone I knew.

For an interesting job I could be happy with £75k. In fact in the last 20 minutes I've had contact on linkedin for a pre-sales network architect, which sounds like it could be varied and relatively interesting.

However they only list "competitive" as the salary, which I would assume means £35k ($50k)

Agreed. I'd be happy to see a range, any range, rather than vagueness.