Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 331 posts

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

#211

Post by e12e »

andrewstuart wrote: post #54

I'm a recruiter. I've known for a long time it drives people nuts that job ads don't have salary, or have a wide salary range. The fact is that many employers don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone . Until they have met them, assessed them, heard what they salary target is and weighed it up against their skills and experience and calibrated it against the team. The conversation almost always go…

I suppose if employers don't know what employees are worth - they certainly don't know what recruiters are worth? And I suppose that information assymetry works out in favour of the recruiters?

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

#212

Post by danijelb »

carlosdp wrote: post #204
andrewstuart wrote: post #54

I'm a recruiter. I've known for a long time it drives people nuts that job ads don't have salary, or have a wide salary range. The fact is that many employers don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone . Until they have met them, assessed them, heard what they salary target is and weighed it up against their skills and experience and calibrated it against the team. The conversation almost always go…

A lot of comments here saying corporations have hiring budgets and you're wrong, etc. I guarantee you startups Posting a salary range for many positions would only have the effect of making it look like you'd be able to get less than you actually could, because employers would always need to post the bottom of the range (since these laws have a maximum range you're allowed to post), which is dumb.

I wasn't an employer but I'm genuinely curious how is it possible that a company doesn't know what they are willing to pay for an employee of specific knowledge? They maybe don't have formal hiring budgets, but they know how much money they have, if some investments are coming, how much they pay other people on average, etc. Also, they obviously know the amount of money they are not willing to go over during the negotiation phase of the interview.

If they are looking for some super specific and rare skill, why not make a separate ad for that rare position? In that case if they are ready to pay 5x the market rate, they can put that in the salary range without influencing ranges of "normal" positions.

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

#213

Post by Dylan16807 »

cheath wrote: post #173
andrewstuart wrote: post #54

I'm a recruiter. I've known for a long time it drives people nuts that job ads don't have salary, or have a wide salary range. The fact is that many employers don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone . Until they have met them, assessed them, heard what they salary target is and weighed it up against their skills and experience and calibrated it against the team. The conversation almost always go…

Some of the responses here are a classic case of Fundamental Attribution Error - I see a lot of assumptions that imply that the employers must not be adding salaries because they are malicious or bad actors (which, of course there are some ). But the overwhelming majority of these employers probably don't even know for themselves the salary that they're willing to pay, since compensation is highly variable based upon…

> On the other hand, should we regulate them into compliance on this matter? Ironically, it seems like a great opportunity to add inefficiency and possibly even have a net negative impact on salaries.

It adds the inefficiency of a job poster spending 5-60 minutes figuring out a salary range.

It removes the inefficiency of hours and hours and hours of interviews from people that wouldn't have applied if they knew the salary range.

It's not like hiring someone is cheap. Companies can and should put this effort into ads.

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

#214

Post by xeromal »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #191
missedthecue wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fairly uncharitable way to phrase his point. I think what he's getting at is that it is hard for market participants to accurately price goods and services when they are working with insufficient information. If I asked you to tell me how much you'd pay for a shirt, you'd either have to give me a wide range, or start asking questions to understand what you're getting. A formal tux dress shirtfront? A dirty o…

No, I wouldn't say it is uncharitable at all. The balance of power and information already lies on the side that does more of these negotiations, and has less to lose in each one. It's time that balance starts to swing the other way, and if corporations don't like it, too damn bad.

What's your reaction to their shirt analogy?

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

#215

Post by edmundsauto »

BeefySwain wrote: post #163
throwaway292939 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh I'm not sure this argument holds up. You can post a job ad targeting the top people and list the top of market salary band. If you can't find such a candidate, you can delete the job ad and post the ad targeting the "average person". You may even be able to post the two ads simultaneously.

And what, everyone who encounters both of them will conveniently silo themselves into the appropriate bin?

If the roles and expectations are actually thought through before posting, perhaps. If not, the first contact can gently nudge them towards the appropriate slot.

If an employer can't write a concrete job description that communicates the difference between junior and senior and staff/supersenior, that's on them. Get better at it before you waste the employee's time (or pay people for interviewing).

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

#216

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

andrewstuart wrote: post #54

I'm a recruiter. I've known for a long time it drives people nuts that job ads don't have salary, or have a wide salary range. The fact is that many employers don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone . Until they have met them, assessed them, heard what they salary target is and weighed it up against their skills and experience and calibrated it against the team. The conversation almost always go…

Yes, sometimes a company is just hiring for several potential roles at once with one listing.

The need for "more C# engineering skills on the team" might filled by a junior engineer for $X, a mid-career engineer for $1.5X, a senior engineer for $2X, or a rock star for $5x. (e.g. If you land a rock star, you might be able to focus on something else for your next hire.)

So, as a company, you put out a job posting for a C# engineer and say "the pay depends on how good you are." You don't want to lose the senior engineer by listing a pay range of $X and you don't want to miss the junior engineer by listing $2X. Not every hiring situation is as easy as "I need this exact cog for my machine and I'm willing to pay exactly X."

Not sure why a law is needed here. (I assume the intent is more to prevent discrimination than to un-frustrate tech job seekers, though I can't really see how it would do that.) I guess the easy solution for employers will be to either just list a very large range, or to post the same listing with several different comp bands. Either way they can still discriminate to their hearts' content during hiring.

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

#217

Post by danijelb »

BeefySwain wrote: post #163
throwaway292939 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh I'm not sure this argument holds up. You can post a job ad targeting the top people and list the top of market salary band. If you can't find such a candidate, you can delete the job ad and post the ad targeting the "average person". You may even be able to post the two ads simultaneously.

And what, everyone who encounters both of them will conveniently silo themselves into the appropriate bin?

The interview process will determine if the candidate's skills are suitable for the position and if they are not, they don't get hired. If there is a more suitable position open, the company can offer to hire the candidate for the other position.

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

#218

Post by actually_a_dog »

xeromal wrote: post #214
actually_a_dog wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I wouldn't say it is uncharitable at all. The balance of power and information already lies on the side that does more of these negotiations, and has less to lose in each one. It's time that balance starts to swing the other way, and if corporations don't like it, too damn bad.

What's your reaction to their shirt analogy?

If you don't have those questions at least mostly answered, you're not ready to go shopping. You don't show up at Target looking to buy a bespoke dress shirt, unless you want to be very disappointed and/or waste a lot of time.

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

#219

Post by Dylan16807 »

sokoloff wrote: post #38
joncp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen those postings, but I imagine that would make a terrible first impression to potential candidates, effectively signalling that the company is committed to playing games with salaries.

Or one which is committed to not kowtowing to every jurisdiction that comes up with their own custom laws.

Operating based on spite is not good either!

It's not like they're trying to avoid a bad law.

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

#220

Post by mikebenfield »

rednerrus wrote: post #189
gopalv wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're not doing that, they're wasting your time and their time. Actually, they're getting paid for the their time. I'm not. I'm actually burning my time. > Recruiters should be talking about numbers in the first interview. I'm going through the recruitment process right now and the numbers out of the gate are always lowball figures (possibly personalized to me), because of two reasons. Because they want to see…

If they're asking your number and you're not being straight forward, what's the problem? Them: "What's your number"? You: "$350k." Them: "Ok, cool lets move forward." or "That's a lot of money and we can't pay that much. Thanks for meeting with us." I'm assuming that you've done your homework and know what a reasonable top of the range is. If that's the case, just say what your number is and let them decide if it's t…

The candidate has just as much if not more ambiguity and uncertainty as the employer, so why is the burden on the candidate?

It's very possible for a candidate to be thinking something like "I'm currently making $200K. I think it's possible I could get $300K, but $250K would probably be acceptable, and I might even settle for a lateral move of $200K if I find the position really appeals to me." What should they say? $300K and possibly price themselves out? $200K and possibly lowball themselves?

Post reply on HN