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NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes you can easily make a lot of claims. But I don't think they stack up, hence my request to "prove" it.

Also, of course, if you compare me (L5 Swe) and Jeff (L11 senior Google fellow/SVP) or Sanjay, you'll find that the roles we are hired into have vastly different compensation ranges. So even presuming this is true, it actually goes against your overall point that wide ranges for a single posting are justified. I'm not being hired for the same work as Sanjay.

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

#282
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies absolutely have fixed hiring budgets and salary guidelines. Yes, they hay budgets and salary guidelines. All of that is negotiable as a hiring manager. Just a matter of how many levels up the chain you need to go to get the approval and whether you (hiring manager) can convince them, which depends on how strong the candidate is.

If someone told you you are a ‘hiring manager’ but you don’t have responsibility for the budget that hire comes out of, they are lying to you to make you feel important . Hiring requires money. If you have to go ask someone else for that money, they are the one doing the hiring.

I can tell you first-hand, that's common. I control the hiring but not the ultimate say in the budget. Up to $X I can approve the hire, up to $YY I need to seek VP approval, up to $ZZZ I need SVP approval, up to $LOTS I need CEO approval. But all of those are feasible, given the right candidate. There is no hard ceiling on the budget, it's all about who I can convince.

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so rare for a superstar not to know their market rate as to be unlikely. What I can see happening is that more corporations start doing SDE 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12, with different ranges, and most of the interviews are at 7-10 and are "releveled" at 3-5. We will end up in the same place we started but with more games.

> It's so rare for a superstar not to know their market rate as to be unlikely You're no-true-scotsmanning 'superstar' here to assume, I suspect, that one of the attributes of a superstar is being in the know, and so on top of the industry and job market that they are aware how much their skills are worth. For a certain class of superstar that may be true, but there are many, many very strong developers who are worki…

> There are plenty of high skilled people who have been blown away by an offer they thought was incredibly generous, only to discover they were actually lowballed.

Been there done that - Not incredibly low balled. But probably 10%. But as you learn the industry, have a network of former coworkers who don’t mind sharing salaries and external recruiters, it gets easier and you just job hop. This is mostly on the enterprise/Corp dev side of development where most developers work.

It’s quite easy to find out compensation for the larger more well known tech companies at places like levels.fyi.

Before anyone thinks I’m putting down “enterprise developers”, that’s what I did my entire career from 1996-2020.

For all intents and purposes, that’s still what I do. I now also write a shit ton of yaml, HCL, PowerPoint slides, and PRFAQs at $BigTech and “consult”.

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

#284
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so rare for a superstar not to know their market rate as to be unlikely. What I can see happening is that more corporations start doing SDE 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12, with different ranges, and most of the interviews are at 7-10 and are "releveled" at 3-5. We will end up in the same place we started but with more games.

>It's so rare for a superstar not to know their market rate as to be unlikely. And you're getting this data from, where exactly?

How can you be a “superstar” who kept up with relevant industry trends and not keep up with compensation trends?

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

#285
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, do you think this NYC law is likely to get cut back by the courts, or would it be incumbent on another municipality to pass a contradictory law first?

I am not a lawyer. I just like to speculate about what feels reasonable, with a remarkable 10% success rate or lower in legal rulings. My thought is that it will be a Solomon split based on how the entities set up operation. If you have operations out of NYC and hire for operations to be based in NYC, then you'll be required to post (akin to Colorado today). There seems to be precedence for this with regards to taxat…

...given that a ruling can go one of two ways, either for or against the plaintiff, this is in fact a remarkable success rate. By choosing the opposite of whatever you predict, someone else could accurately predict the outcome of a case 90% of the time!

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst case is that I say I can't afford you. Actually, the worst case is that they employer lies and after 4 rounds of interviews and maybe take home assignments, the employer says "actually this job will be paying much less." (this has happened to me once, it wastes everyones' time)

You should always ask for your expected hourly rate for take home assignments. If they think it's too much, obviously they will low-ball you. And if they agree, at least it's not a total waste if they low-ball you anyway.

I just don’t do take home assessments anymore.

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

#287
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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…

I'm not saying it's the norm to post salary, and I'm not defending companies that don't. But some companies do, and some job seekers won't apply unless they do.

In the September HN who's hiring thread, two of the first four posts include salary info. Remote, and NYC.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677265

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

#288

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.

> 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

I guess that all comes down to how you measure it. I've worked with people who screw up the code base, suck time and productivity away from other team members, and require frequent management attention. So their productivity is negative or zero. Which makes me infinitely more productive than them.

I demand infinity dollars!

Just kidding of course, but the point is people aren't and can't be paid exactly mathematically proportionally to their productivity. About the best we can expect is for pay to be correlated with productivity. Or maybe monotonically increasing with productivity?

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

#289
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably stock--and perhaps variable comp bonuses--would not be part of a listed salary range.

If that's truly the case, then it is gonna be a complete nothingburger for most devs. Same for finance, where a large (and, a lot of times, the largest) chunk of the total comp is in the annual bonus. In that case, I don't understand the celebrations and arguments people keep having about how it is gonna affect "big tech". I guess it might end up being good for non-tech/only-cash-comped employees, so we will see.

> If that's truly the case, then it is gonna be a complete nothingburger for most devs.

Maybe. It might also let devs pre-filter companies that are salary heavy or salary light. Some companies let you choose how much compensation is equity vs. cash, but most don't.

If you have dependents or other standards of living, certain cash can be king over variable equity or potential bonuses.

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

#290

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…

> 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…

We do an initial 15 -20 minute screening interview. One of the questions we ask is what is your desired salary range? If it is out of range of what we are willing to pay for you experience and skill set level, we don’t do a follow up. Process closed.
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