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

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

#271

Post by gruez » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC

gopalv wrote: post #107

rednerrus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recruiters should be talking about numbers in the first interview. Employers should have a sense of what your number is and whether or not they can get there before moving forward with interviewing. If they're not doing that, they're wasting your time and their time.

> 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 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.

nit: "they" refers to the business, not the employee conducting the interview.

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

#272

Post by gruez » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 11:32 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #47

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...

It makes sense though. Wages going up could easily lead to a wage-price spiral.

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

#273

Post by llbeansandrice » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 11:34 PM UTC

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #223

llbeansandrice wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone. As an employee, sounds like not my fuckin problem. I'm not about to go through 3 phone screens, a take-home test, a full-day onsite, etc. just for the privilege to be low-balled or even worse denied. > I think it will be about $X Oh! So looks like it's not that hard to ball-park a number off the top of your head. I don't get this "how the world really w…

If neither prospective employee nor employer talk about salary up-front before investing many hours with interviews, travel, etc. that's just simply a screwup on both sides. This salary range thing won't fix that. Ready? The job listing is now "$100k to $200k depending on experience." If you are making $140k and hoping to make $160k the range doesn't help you at all. You still better talk about salary up front!

Oh I can make-up scenarios too! Ready?

I make $60k because my company underpays and I don't work in tech where jobs tend to be very cushy and compensation information abounds! I start seeing job listings for my position with a floor of $80k. Wow I just made $20k more thanks to reducing information asymmetry!

For a real example, I had plenty of recruiters and companies that _refused_ to "talk numbers" until the end of the process. Now that I'm further along in my career and finances I have the luxury of being able to shop around and kick companies to the curb that don't suit me.

When I was first leaving college and had no income and little/no savings? A huge power imbalance in favor of the companies and I personally didn't feel comfortable pressing about salary. A law like this that I could have pointed to to just say "you have to tell me, them's the rules" could have had immeasurable impact on my career.

This law obviously doesn't solve every situation, but you must be able to see the information asymmetry and power imbalance that exists that this will help resolve?

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

#274

Post by llbeansandrice » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

thunky wrote: post #266

llbeansandrice wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone. As an employee, sounds like not my fuckin problem. I'm not about to go through 3 phone screens, a take-home test, a full-day onsite, etc. just for the privilege to be low-balled or even worse denied. > I think it will be about $X Oh! So looks like it's not that hard to ball-park a number off the top of your head. I don't get this "how the world really w…

> > if the ad doesn't specify salary...just don't apply. > So all job postings before these laws have been put into effect? Looks like someone doesn't understand how the world really works. I think it does actually work like this a lot of the time. Either the candidate doesn't bother to apply, or they apply because they got a salary estimate from another source. A relatively unknown company that isn't posting salary…

> A relatively unknown company that isn't posting salary info is kind of a red flag

I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality than others in this thread. Even in tech I've had to put in a ton of legwork to find salary estimates for jobs and often the data was very incomplete. Combine the weirdness with roles/titles that companies can have, how do you search for salary info for "assistant to the guru of front-end"? Am I a devops engineer, SWE.Is there different pay for being on-call?

Not to mention it being even worse for everyone I've talked to that doesn't work in tech. Basically everyone I know has gotten the best salary info from the source, during the interview process.

In the rare exceptions, they are actively looking to leave their current job and are worried about cash-flow or even more extenuating circumstances like deciding whether or not to change careers.

I've _never_ seen a company offer salary information (numbers) in the job listing unless it was explicitly required by law (CO, soon to be CA and NYC, government jobs, etc).

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

#275

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

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…

> Go ask your team lead/CEO/CTO how recruiting works.

The point of laws such as these is to change how recruitment works. The fact that the hiring manager/person will offer more to a 6'4" person from their alma mater[1] more than a random person of average height with the same skillset is problematic - even if it is "how recruiting works"

1. Unconscious bias is a well-studied phenomenon.

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

#276

Post by djur » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 11:46 PM UTC

cheath wrote: post #262

djur wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're trying to hire for a $100k+ role, it should not be a problem to take an afternoon to look up job postings for similar roles and figure out an appropriate salary range.

Agreed. they should. …But should that be the law ?

I think it's to the benefit of the vast majority of job seekers, reducing the economic power imbalance between employer and employee, and I'd personally consider that a worthwhile reason to pass a law in and of itself. In addition, I suspect it's also to the benefit of most employers, many of which are not actually large enough to squeeze any appreciable benefit out of salary secrecy but who would gain from having more information about labor prices.

To put it more simply: the socialist in me thinks it's good for workers -- the liberal in me thinks it's good for fairer competition in the labor market. Win-win.

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

#277

Post by la64710 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 12:09 AM UTC

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…

Just curious as a middleman , what value do you even add? Most of the things can be done through software.

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

#278

Post by cheath » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 12:16 AM UTC

djur wrote: post #276

cheath wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. they should. …But should that be the law ?

I think it's to the benefit of the vast majority of job seekers, reducing the economic power imbalance between employer and employee, and I'd personally consider that a worthwhile reason to pass a law in and of itself. In addition, I suspect it's also to the benefit of most employers, many of which are not actually large enough to squeeze any appreciable benefit out of salary secrecy but who would gain from having mo…

Fair enough. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

My aversion to bureaucracy makes me hate the idea of the government adding more red tape, especially on something as trivial as poorly written job posts. I feel like we learned nothing from GDPR cookie banners.

But nonetheless, I don’t think your point is invalid.

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

#279

Post by colinmhayes » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 12:36 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #140

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The fact is that many employers don't actually know what they would be willing to pay someone. > Then they need better data. A great way to get that would be looking at all the other job listings with salary ranges if they don't already have access to back channel data. You're missing the point: the variable is the candidate , not the role. I know the market rate for a candidate that is just over-the-bar for my ro…

If you tell me the salary range is $200-300k and you offer me $400k I’m not going to be upset. If you offer me $125k, I will be. If I knew up front you had three roles, one paying $75-$125k, one $200-300k, and one $400-500k I could judge for myself what the chances were of the one I’m interested in (or higher). If you refuse to make ranges or publish $75k-$500k I have no idea if we are wasting each other’s time. It’s…

Adding a different listing for every job instead of role just means applicants can’t find the listing that fits them. So we end up with “senior” listings that are looking to hire engineers for 100k but would be willing to pay 300 for the perfect fit. Adding putting a range of 100-300 probably just pisses people off, especially since almost all of the offers are going to be in the 100 area since most employees are necessarily average. If you just say the range is 100-150 then the people you offer 300 probably just won’t apply.

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

#280

Post by deltree7 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 12:47 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #144

deltree7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ridiculou…

Can you prove it? I don't think I've ever met an engineer who is, by themselves, 1000x more productive than even the least productive person I've ever worked with.

You can easily make a claim that Google is a $1.4T firm vs may be a $40 Billion Twitter-like also ran if it weren't for this

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...