NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings • Hacker News Board

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#41

Post by mathattack » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #2

I get why employers would hate this, but overall, wouldn't greater transparency in the labor market drive economic growth by virtue of making the labor market more efficient by doing a better job of connecting skilled, hard-working and motivated employees with employers who can pay more?

Companies get a huge financial lift by underpaying some percentage of their employee base. Consider any company whose main cost is people, and revenue is roughly proportional to headcount. (Consultancy, school, security, etc)

Let’s say they can utilize an information asymmetry to underpay half their workforce by 10%. That cuts their cost by 5%, and it’s all to the bottom line. If they were a 10% net margin business, now they’re 15%.

This is why they fight transparency. It’s a form of price discrimination.

A libertarian might say “It’s a free market, and everyone enters the contract willingly.”

I am sympathetic to that, though markets tend to work most efficiently when there is more information.

The one downside is some remote jobs might not be available in New York any more. NYC wage levels make remote work more difficult from a cost arbitrage anyway.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#42

Post by deltree7 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

CompleteWalker wrote: post #22

gsk22 wrote: post #5

While I am supportive of this, I expect a lot (majority?) of listings with ranges like "$40k-200k based on experience". (Or the example from the article, "$17-50/hr")

NYC's Fact sheet about the new law notes that minimum and maximum stated salaries must be in "good faith". Not a lawyer, but maybe this is space for class action lawsuits or something... Salary Transparency Fact Sheet: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...

A knowledge worker's productivity can easily (and provably ) range from -10x to +1000x.

So, it's much easier to prove in the court of law that the ranges are justified.

Dude who created the React Framework is always 100x valuable to the company than an average Javascript developer. A couple of brilliant dudes is all that is required for a company to be a mere $100 Million company vs $1 Billion company.

It's ridiculous to pay the same $100,000 for each of them

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#43

Post by jakub_g » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

gsk22 wrote: post #5

While I am supportive of this, I expect a lot (majority?) of listings with ranges like "$40k-200k based on experience". (Or the example from the article, "$17-50/hr")

Something like this is an extreme range (clearly no one in engineering would be at 40k) and would make the employer look quite bad IMO.

FWIW GitHub https://github.com/about/careers has eng salaries for US positions be like "min 110 max 250" and while the range is high, it's still more useful than no information at all IMO.

I wonder though how this would look like for non-tech jobs.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#44

Post by bberenberg » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #37

I genuinely wonder how this would work for non-cash portions of the total comp. Would they have to declare the dollar value of the shares issued? What about non-public companies that offer a significant chunk of the comp in illiquid stock options?Would they have to be included as a part of the salary range? Disclaimer: I am neither opposed nor in support of this. I don't mind taking that route and seeing how it works…

I have a hard time believing this will meaningfully help workers. It's a way for large companies to crush smaller competitors who offer anything other than base salary. Small co that offers more flexibility in location / hours? You will get filtered out because adding a salary filter is the easiest thing possible. Getting someone to read the JD that explains why working for you makes sense is hard.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#45

Post by elromulous » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

Does salary==total comp for these purposes?

For large enough companies, posting total comp distribution by position would be way more useful.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#46

Post by matteotom » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

matteotom wrote: post #40

My biggest annoyance with most salary transparency law compliance is companies pretend they'll accept anyone in any location at levels between 1 and 5, resulting in ranges like "$85k" (lowest paid location, level 1) to "$250k" (highest paid location, level 5) - when they're (internally) looking for "level 3 or 4".

My hope is that the internal posting requirement will help with this, since internal postings are maybe more likely to be more specific about what level/location the team is looking for.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#47

Post by wnevets » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #2

I get why employers would hate this, but overall, wouldn't greater transparency in the labor market drive economic growth by virtue of making the labor market more efficient by doing a better job of connecting skilled, hard-working and motivated employees with employers who can pay more?

No, you have gotten it all backwards. You are only allowed to use the more efficient market rationale when are you defending low wages and higher prices for regular people. Regular people getting higher wages is seen as a disease that must be stopped at all cost. [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/powell-tr...

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#48

Post by TrackerFF » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

I remember seeing this ad for a (direct) sales position. The headline was something like: “Do you want to earn up to $150000 a year?” and then a bit down with the caveat that the position was 100% commission based, with salaries ranging between $10k-$150k/year.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#49

Post by matteotom » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

elromulous wrote: post #45

Does salary==total comp for these purposes? For large enough companies, posting total comp distribution by position would be way more useful.

I think every salary transparency law I've seen (including this one) only includes base salary, and not bonus, stock, etc. Realistically the laws probably cover 90+% of available jobs by only requiring base salary/hourly rate.

Re: NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

#50

Post by throwaway292939 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

gsk22 wrote: post #5

While I am supportive of this, I expect a lot (majority?) of listings with ranges like "$40k-200k based on experience". (Or the example from the article, "$17-50/hr")

It's a red flag for me when the range from the company is too broad. It sounds like they don't know what they want.

If they truly need people of different levels of experience, it would make more sense for them to write separate job descriptions that accurately describe the responsibilities of the role.