Pay transparency: which states have laws and do they work?

58 pointsby mikecarltonover 3 years ago

9 comments

psim1over 3 years ago

At this point when I receive a note from a recruiter, I let them know I need to know the name of the firm (not "top firm in your field"), the full job description, and the compensation range. If they do not provide that, we are wasting each others' time and I will not correspond further. I understand that third party recruiters don't want to give away some information so that applicants won't end-run and apply directly to the firm. But, look at the job market. Games are not going to work right now.

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PragmaticPulpover 3 years ago

Companies usually exclude Colorado from remote job listings so they can post a separate Colorado-specific job posting that complies with the laws in that state. It doesn’t make sense to post the Colorado-specific pay range and job posting to every other state, especially when salaries vary so much between locations.In my (limited) experience hiring Colorado employees remotely, we had to make several different job postings with various ranges to make sure we didn’t exclude any possible applicants for having too high or too low salary bands. If someone applied for the $200-$300K job description but didn’t have the right experience or performance during the interview, we could offer for them to “reapply” to the $150K-$200K job title and pick up there. It felt like a lot of formality with no real benefit to either side.The Colorado law also doesn’t stop at the job listing. You have to follow specific procedures for various things after the employee is hired, too. I could see companies excluding Colorado just to simplify their operations and avoid opening themselves up to another state’s different employment laws.

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tlofresoover 3 years ago

I was excited about Colorado's law, though for the most part there's very little value. Companies either exclude candidates from that state [1], or provide cop-out salary range information of $x - $3x/yr [2]1: <a href="https://twitter.com/digitalocean/status/1395818629657149445" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/digitalocean/status/1395818629657149445</a>.2: <a href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/coloradoifsseniormanager.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/coloradoifsseniormanager.h...</a>

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joshuamortonover 3 years ago

I'll repost an old comment of mine on the colorado law:<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28875365" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28875365</a>Summarizing here: Google listed salaries from 125,000 to 250,000 (excluding one presumably mistaken entry), for roles from L4 (L3 is new grad, L5 is Senior) - L8+ ("Director"). These don't include bonuses or equity. Bay area salaries would be something like 10-20% higher.Facebook listed salaries from $111,000 (E3, new grad) to 239,000 (Director, E8?). Similar caveats to Google.Microsoft listed $115,700 - $224,500 across a number of roles, again salaries higher in the bay.Amazon, surprising no one, listed a range from 122,000 - 160K (their cap on salaries outside of the bay, where I think the cap is 175K).Lyft and Uber didn't list roles. Stripe, Netflix and Dropbox listed remote roles but without salaries, probably violating the law. Salesforce had really low ranges. Oracle wanted me to email them, which I think also violates the law, but also I didn't want to do that.As far as I know, the Colorado law has been interpreted (or at least theirs claimed intent by the Co legislature?) that you can't refuse to offer a remote job to Co employees to get around the law, although this only matters if you already have Co employees, in which case other provisions of the law also apply, so it's tricky.

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manuelabeledoover 3 years ago

Such a shame, but expected, that Texas does not have any such law.I work for a big corporation in Texas, and have found myself trying to determine what will my next steps be. Employees have a tool to browse the job openings, and the responsibilities of the positions, but again, salaries are given in ranges, so wide indeed, there is no real answer to the question "would my wages be raised if I switch jobs inside the company", which is ridiculous.I could also find myself making less money than someone who technically is on a lower leven in the hierarchy, even if we both are doing the same job.So every year, when my supervisor asks me where do I want my career to go to, I'm stuck between what I want to do, and how much more I want to earn, which is not great.

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willvarfarover 3 years ago

How much people pay in income tax is public information in the Nordics, meaning it’s trivial to compare yourself to coworkers or the names of people you interview with etc. Or neighbors, and so on.

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luxuryballsover 3 years ago

For our entirely remote company it has only been a hassle, I’m sure many places will just skip Colorado entirely. These kind of stupid laws always backfire in such a way. Like not interviewing black candidates for fear of a lawsuit if they don’t get an offer.

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zuhayeerover 3 years ago

One of the reasons why listed salary ranges for a role may be very wide initially is that interview performance can determine your level and hence your compensation. So you really have to wait until after you interview to know your true compensation range. Many companies usually don't disclose level outright when you are applying, it's usually a more general application you fill out initially (you'll almost never see an "L5" job listing). Once you know the specific level though, you can get much tighter ranges (by looking at sites like Levels.fyi – disclosure: I'm a founder). But even then, there are also out-of-band offers that companies can give out if you're a really strong candidate or have a valid enough reason (ie to buy out your unvested stocks etc), so should this be reflected in the range too? Then the range listed would become even wider and can misdirect people's expectations since not many people would actually get to that high end.But then again even knowing that range is super helpful regardless, and the Equal Pay Act has been instrumental in helping candidates not get lowballed. And before that, employers basically always asked what your current salary was, which is still unfortunately almost a required question candidates have to answer in other parts of the world. So all steps in the right direction, but there is some level of nuance where job listings as they are today are slightly divorced from the actual role / level / team that you end up at.We're working on building a job board specifically to help solve this. We plan to have roles within specific levels of experience and with much tighter ranges using the leveling standard we've developed as a backbone: <a href="https://levels.fyi/standard/" rel="nofollow">https://levels.fyi/standard/</a>We're also hiring! And we list our salary ranges here: <a href="https://levelsfyi.notion.site/Levels-fyi-Careers-969edc750f144e8b9fc6a197e0717523" rel="nofollow">https://levelsfyi.notion.site/Levels-fyi-Careers-969edc750f1...</a>

cherrywoodover 3 years ago

The Colorado law is silly, arrogant, unhelpful. And, it's backfiring in all sorts of ways. I have many friends in Colorado who are having a hard time finding work because they think that any company who "refuses to comply" with the law must be a terrible, unfair, toxic place to work. They've taken a moral high ground, preaching pay transparency and cataloging job descriptions from companies who aren't "following the law" and reporting them to the bureaucrats.There are many reasons a company doesn't list salary ranges on job descriptions. Hell, most companies don't even know the damn law exists—they're just hoping to hire good people to do good work.Yes, the hiring process at a lot of companies is not awesome. Yes, recruiters are useless, and technical interviews suck. But there are a lot of great companies out there that pay really well and care about their employees. If you want to talk about salary, put in a good application, make a good first impression, and you can talk money early on in the interview process. I've hired a lot of people throughout my career. These days, I'm absolutely dumbfounded by the amount of applicants who don't seem to care about anything at all—sloppy résumés, half-assed and poorly written cover letters, days go by in between scheduling emails.You want to make $200,000 a year? Become a better writer and don't be a fucking idiot during your interviews. Stop swaying in your chair, and playing with your hair, and reprimanding your dog. Fix your lighting and your audio, put a clean shirt on—take things seriously. You might be "qualified" for the role on paper, but no one wants to work with unthinking slobs who seem completely uninterested in actually getting the job.The longer people whine and complain about "pay transparency", the longer they'll remain unemployed.