You have to have a certain number of employees for these laws to apply
Specifically, the NY law applies to businesses with 4 or more employees (including owners/founders).
Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
141–150 of 364 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
why does not having any nyc employees yet exempt them if they are hiring nyc-based people?
The official explanation* of the law reads:
> All employers that have four or more employees or one or more domestic workers are covered by the NYCHRL, including this new provision of the law. As with other provisions of the NYCHRL, owners and individual employers count towards the four employees. The four employees do not need to work in the same location, and they do not need to all work in New York City. As long as one of the employees works in New York City, the workplace is covered.
I don't have a law degree, but I read that as the law only applies if the company currently has at least four employees, one of which "works in New York City." If a company intends to hire someone in NYC but has no employees there yet the law wouldn't apply to them yet, probably because NYC wouldn't have jurisdiction without a nexus in the city.
* https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#143There 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, wh…
I think it's worth pointing out that this is a new law which has been in effect for just over a month
I hope you don't mind if I don't weep for the billion dollar VC's that encourage others to "move fast," but are unable to respond to changes in the law.
If only they had enough money to hire a lawyer!
This law didn't suddenly materialize overnight last month. No laws do. It was in the works for months, perhaps longer.
All companies are responsible for keeping tabs on legislation that may affect them. From the corner doughnut shop to billion-dollar startup incubators.
That Ycombinator missed this says something is wrong behind the curtain.
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#144What is the downside of posting a salary range of $1 to $1m for every job? Is there some kind of enforcement that it has to be someone at the company making the amount of money for the job with the same title?
I think the difference is how loudly they're saying, "!@#$ you, we are in control and will manipulate this process to our advantage." If the goal is, in good faith, to find someone to do a job, then publishing all known constraints will drastically improve the search. But when they don't do that, it's usually because they want to hold their cards close so that they can both 1) hire someone to fill a _need_ the compan…
I guess for me personally, I have almost always been paid above the salary range for the jobs that I have had so it feels limiting to me.
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet many job postings, even those that are only in Colorado, still don't have the salary on the job posting.
My point is that it’s not a new law. It’s new for New York but other states have required it for a long time.
Only one jurisdiction other than NYC (not New York State) requires it, which is CO, and only as of Jan 1, 2021. NYC started Nov 1, 2022. CA and WA start Jan 1, 2023.
NY state is waiting on governor’s signature, but seeing as how it has been months and she has not signed it, I assume she will not.
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#146I've been in the job board / HR Tech space for a while, and every time I see a state pass a law requiring advertising the salary range, I'm reminded of a few facts: * Showing your salary range as long as it is at market wage or higher delivers 14% more applicants. It is a good idea to show salary on job ads. * If you don't give the job board a salary range, they will use tools like salary.com or their own tools to sh…
> * If you advertise a job respond to applicants quickly - as in within minutes of the application. A single day of delay in response causes 28% of candidates to become unresponsive to recruiters (this is from our company's research). It drops to 51% become unresponsive 48 hours later. My experience with being hired at non-FAANG places over a career of more than two decades is that I'm usually through a process and h…
I have been through a process that took 4 months, from start to end, with almost two months of silence between. The only reason I knew I wasn't rejected was I had a friend on the inside.
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since the OP didn't quote or link to any of the supposedly offending job posts we can't judge the "purely factual question." That would require seeing the job posting in question and then reading the text of the NYC law. We would have to determine if the NYC law applied to every specific case. If OP implies that job postings from YC companies "break hiring laws" then the OP should support that with some facts. The NY…
Again, are you sure you're replying to the right person? The one saying this happened is not me. I'm replying to a specific point about the extent to which YC would want to prevent this from happening. I'll also note that the person who did post about this perhaps left the company names out because they were being considerate, not wanting to invite trouble for people who could be entirely well meaning when they are j…
I did think you wrote the original post. My mistake, I have corrected my comment.
Whether YC would want to prevent illegal or unethical behavior is a question I can't answer. I would hope so. But I don't think it's reasonable to put the burden of enforcing various employment posting laws on YC/HN, especially when the laws are new and have jurisdiction questions and exceptions. My reading of the NYC law tells me job boards are not subject to any enforcement -- only the companies posting the job ads have to comply.
I don't object to a discussion about what responsibility YC and HN have in regards to allowing job posts that don't include salary ranges. Personally I would ignore job posts that don't voluntarily include that. I objected to the OP characterizing the job posts from YC companies as "breaking hiring laws." Whether the law was broken or not would require more facts than the OP gave. Maybe the OP didn't name the companies that supposedly "broke hiring laws" out of consideration, but in the original post it seems clear OP intended to call them out in comments but couldn't comment on the posts, not that the OP decided to take the considerate path of not naming them.
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is not payed for these posts. Who’s Hiring posts are like all others: anyone can comment, and no one on HN ever pays the site operator for the right to post.
And Who's Hiring posts are not covered by this law or requirement. Most jobs have official job postings. It's those that need to carry the salary requirement. If I'm telling a friend, Hey, there's an opening in my company, you wanna apply, I am not required to tell him the salary range. However, when I point him out to the job application page where he can get more official information on it and can apply for it, tha…
> Who's Hiring posts are not covered by this law or requirement.
I don’t think that‘s generally true.
“Any advertisement for a job, promotion, or transfer opportunity that would be performed in New York City is covered by the new law. An ‘advertisement’ is a written description of an available job, promotion, or transfer opportunity that is publicized to a pool of potential applicants. Such advertisements are covered regardless of the medium in which they are disseminated. Covered listings include postings on internal bulletin boards, internet advertisements, printed flyers distributed at job fairs, and newspaper advertisements.” [0]
> Most jobs have official job postings. It's those that need to carry the salary requirement.
What is your reasoning for this? I don’t see anything in the text of the law [1] about “official job postings.”
> If I'm telling a friend, Hey, there's an opening in my company, you wanna apply, I am not required to tell him the salary range.
This at least is correct, because that case is not “a written description [...] that is publicized to a pool of potential applicants.”
[0] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/Title-8-Text-o...
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#149Is it malicious? Maybe... is it stupidity? Certainly.
Just inform the companies when you see it and then report them if they refuse to disclose and update the listing.
It actually tells you more about the moral compass of the company if they refuse to disclose which I would find valuable.
Re: Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not add it by default?
posting a number can help confident people but hurts others example, developer makes 100k, has imposter syndrome, sees a great job that has an internal range of 150k-200k. if the dev knew the range they’d think no way they would qualify for THAT much money. the company would happily pay at bottom range for them, but instead they don’t even see the developer. ranges select for confident people.
OK. Let's take it as read that ranges discourage the uncertain and nervous. How should companies go about posting ads that treats those people compassionately and puts them on an event footing with confident people? Preferably while not denying people who would like to see it useful information?