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Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#51
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey sorry about that this is our job posting - we duplicated a another one and missed adding that information, thanks for catching that! We added in the salary range. Feel free to email us if you have any other questions!

Why not add it by default?

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#52
post #2

Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City. The law has some exceptions, perhaps those apply. Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary range?

HN is being payed by these companies for these posts. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard for HN devs to have a running list of states that require salary ranges to be posted, and check against that when the customer submits a request. Then it will make it easier as more and more states require the bare-minimum worker right of public salaries.

If it's so easy then why not set up a site that enforces the patchwork of local laws and exceptions to filter out non-compliant job postings?

If that existed today I would still choose to see the unfiltered job listings, because if I was looking for a job my goal would come down to "find a job" rather than "make sure all job postings comply with every regulation."

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#53
There are some comments in here that verge on assuming bad faith on the part of the companies involved, so I think it's worth pointing out that this is a new law which has been in effect for just over a month. It's been on the way for a while, so it's not “sudden”, but it’s still a new thing that people are figuring out and it’s easier to forget about if you’re in the habit of re-using old listings. (Not about OP, whose reminder is helpful and in good faith!)

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#54
post #2

Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City. The law has some exceptions, perhaps those apply. Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary range?

I'm not sure why you want me to politely ask a company to stop breaking the law?

Because not every violation has bad intentions, so why not be polite?

And folks at startups are usually wearing multiple hats. They might not have a VP of Recruiting/HR/Legal on board that knows all applicable federal/state/city laws. It might be a SWE posting these jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#55
post #2

Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City. The law has some exceptions, perhaps those apply. Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary range?

>Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City. Okay? But this law exists in other places too. >Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary range? Because its not their responsibility to make sure some random corp is following the law? They're just getting burned by the effect.

Then not giving them a special soapbox and making them post like regular users would be the appropriate response, right?

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#57

You should stop making YC responsible for what any single portfolio company is doing. That's straight out hilarious. After the firms are out of batch they are independent and autonomous organizations.

They want to get all the credit and positive PR when things go well and not have any responsibility when things don’t go well?

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you want me to politely ask a company to stop breaking the law?

Because not every violation has bad intentions, so why not be polite? And folks at startups are usually wearing multiple hats. They might not have a VP of Recruiting/HR/Legal on board that knows all applicable federal/state/city laws. It might be a SWE posting these jobs.

They might not have four employees yet. They might not have any employees in NYC yet. Either of those conditions would exempt them from the NYC law.

I wouldn't jump to assuming deliberate illegal behavior. The NYC law went into effect last month, and waives the penalty for first offenses to give companies time to comply. If I saw a NYC-based job posting with no salary I would give the benefit of the doubt at least.

Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?

#60

The real question is why HN is filled with people that have values completely orthogonal to the VC space, like people wanting to leverage the law to make other people do things.

> like people wanting to leverage the law to make other people do things.

This is literally everyone in the world, including yourself unless you’re in favor of a lawless society.

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