I've been hired to a startup that uses Pave - they mentioned that they paid at the 75% percentile, and my offer ended up being more competitive than others I was getting. I think that while obviously some companies can use this data to pay less, the more likely outcome is that they pay MORE. You forget that companies are competing with each other for talent, they are not in the business of colluding together. So if I can see that other companies are paying X, I am more inclined to pay X + Y
Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
301–310 of 523 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am an investor in equifax. Let me clear up a misconception on where the data comes from. Half the data comes from large enterprise customers, who “sell” the data in exchange for Equifax doing I-9 verification for free. The other half comes from 39 payroll companies. Every single payroll company except for Rippling and Gusto sell paystub data to Euifax. (Rippling will start next year). Those are exclusive revenue sh…
Do you have a sense of why, according to you Gusto will remain the only company that doesn't sell payroll data to Equifax?
Seems like something gusto can turn into a marketing point. Surely there’s a desire for a privacy respecting payroll/hr platform.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they want my info, they can ask me. I would rather them not have this info before an offer is made.
That's normally how it goes. At least, I've always had the background check happen after an offer is signed. It's usually a separate company and they just report back whether your job titles/employment dates match your resume
I don't know how common it actually is. I've always provided references and probably OKd a background check but post-school my few jobs have always been through people I knew and there was really no reason to run a check except fr pro-forma reasons.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#304They already expect people to work for next to nothing simply because they're "startups". Instead, maybe they should focus on hiring decent people AND paying them industry-fair wages.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#305> My question is, isn't this specifically anti-competitive wage fixing? This seems exactly like RealPage but for employee compensation. As far as I know, colluding on wages like this is illegal. As long as Pave just helps employers look backward in time so to speak I’m not sure I’d call it collusion. But if they enable some kind of coordination between future potential employers, then yes, maybe it is. In the RealPag…
Companies compare pricing all the time even if it doesn't involve smoke-filled rooms with execs doing tit-for-tat. You don't think your local grocery store knows what the other local chain is charging (or what they're paying their employees)?
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Write a personal check for your next automobile? Personal check? What year is this?!? :-)
I did this for my recent automobile purchase. It's very convenient from my perspective to simply write a check and hand it to them.
But why not just pay by card, that must be even easier?
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
A company doesn't need to know they are under compensating for a role from a third party. They'll find out by the quality and number of applicants pretty fast. I've seen this in practice directly when we couldn't hire for certain roles, raised the range, filled the spots. On the other hand, to know that other companies are paying lower and still able to deliver roughly the same work is harder unless you know how much…
I have to disagree. If you're not getting quality applicants, how do you know if that's because of your salary range, the default applicant pool, or something idiosyncratic to your company? If you're a new startup founder, you don't always have a good sense of what the default applicant pool should look like. You might have a sense of what quality looks like but how would you know without recruiting experience what t…
Because when we raised the range it fixed the problem.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's widely understood and part of the job description of being a public servant. What's not widely understood is HR secretly selling your data while working at a private company.
Why would that be a widely understood part of the job description? Almost every American teacher, firefighter, planner, street engineer, health inspector, police officer, train conductor, bus driver, along with the managers, office administrative staff, janitors, and groundskeepers that support those activities are public sector employees. What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than…
>What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than you do?
That they receive their salary from the tax payer, the public is their employer, and it'd be pretty odd if your employer didn't know what they paid you. They're executive organs of the state, police and firefighters, unlike private workers, also don't get to choose what laws they enforce or what fires they put out. If you're a civil servant you obviously forego most of the rights of private sector workers in exchange for usually lifetime employment and set pay rates.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone else remember when HackerNews had an adventurous libertarian ethos before the school marms infested the place with irrelevant and low vibrational commentary?
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I think the critique was directed towards the attitude of being overtly scared of doing something illegal or breaking rules (which does not equal being unethical!). Backbag is simply a way to transport stuff in a backbag, which isn't illegal.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
#310Competitors making similar price adjustments or salary adjustments based on seeing each other's public announcements or sharing data is legal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion That's why it's "legal tacit collusion" when one leading law firm announces salary increases and other law firms immediately match it : https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/large-law-firms-... That type of salary matching ha…
Yes, but the information here is not public, since it's being sold as a service.
If it were public, employees and job seekers would also have the information.