You're describing levels. If your range is so wide the top of the range is double the bottom of the range, you're hiring at multiple levels, and you should just say that. You should also have more detailed descriptions that help you and candidates differentiate what those levels are.

More broadly than that -- it's not that you need to pay everyone the same, it's that you need clear structure around how your pay works.

An example that became a problem with one previous employer was that they kept saying "performance" was their only determining factor for pay, after it had come out that exactly one person on our team had been offered bonuses as a performance incentive.

It's not actually performance-based if you have different and better reward structures, or if you can't/won't explain why gaps exist.

Then you should have more defined roles, even if organisationally they're the same, i.e. there's very clear expectations of differences in salaries (and business impact) between junior, mid and senior developers.

So then put up multiple job listings with different salaries. State what the skill expectations and senority requirements for each are.

This sounds like you don't know what the fuck your hiring for.

If you want juniors to fill out your team, why are you getting a bunch of seniors?

i make a similar judgement call when i look at hiring manager and the workplace

> When hiring I don't have a narrow range in mind, it can be 50% or more.

As an occasional hiring manager, having this sort of flexibility sounds really nice!

Unfortunately I have to define my requirements and justify a fairly narrow range when I want to add to my team, so it's not something I get to enjoy. There have definitely been candidates who stand out from the crowd and have higher expectations, that I have not been able to offer to.