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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?

#151

Post by varispeed »

Are salary ranges actually meaningful?

To be fair I don't reply to an offer that does not state the pay, but I've been a victim of bait and switch many times.

Notably, when going through all the interview stages and being told I have been accepted only to find out in the contract that the salary is much different from what has been offered.

They were hoping that I would agree given I have invested so much time going to interviews and so on.

The excuse? "We have gone over budget with hiring and unfortunately now that the maximum we can offer, we are very sorry."

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

#152

Post by brightball »

Osiris wrote: post #61
paulgb wrote: post #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, wh…

This has been law in Colorado for 2 years and applies to anyone offering jobs to any Colorado resident including remote jobs. The law passed in 2019 and went into effect Jan 1, 2021.

It would be interesting to see if remote jobs were posted with a qualifier that they weren't available to potential employees living in those states. I just always wonder about inverse effects for this type of thing.

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

#153

Post by Joel_Mckay »

Regional laws differ, and the exact same text can have completely different implications in another jurisdiction.

For example, Employee-at-will contracts popular in the US are illegal in other zones, and not worth the paper they are printed on in places like Canada.

This is a good reason to always hire a local law firm to review your paperwork, and immigration lawyers to check the intended working arrangements.

Trust that no matter how you personally think things should be done, the law becomes rather expensive if you assume local laws apply internationally.

This lesson is expensive if you learn it the hard way. Also, one may find most firms are allergic to legal posturing, and candidates with an aggressive lack of impulse control. =)

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

#154

Post by gregjor »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
gregjor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYC has a documented complaint process. Start there if you have evidence of a violation. My quick reading of the NYC law tells me HN and other public forums for job postings do not have to enforce the law -- the person/company writing the job posting has to comply. If YC-funded companies break the NYC job posting law I don't see where in the wording of the law that investors have any legal jeopardy. The law in qu…

> HN and other public forums for job postings do not have to enforce the law I don’t think Hacker News faces liability for posting non-compliant ads. (Not a lawyer!) But if it turns out to be a trove of them, HN’s essentially a honey pot. > any actual cases brought for enforcement will end up in court in NYC Precisely what you want your early-stage portfolio dealing with.

The way the law reads it looks like someone has to file a complaint. I doubt the NYC Commission on Human Rights has the manpower to scour the internet for violations.

Agree that investors should not tolerate illegal behavior from their portfolio companies, but realistically VCs can't manage every day-to-day detail of their portfolio. And even when they do get involved they can't always control the management -- see Uber, for example. Sometimes the VCs provide the legal cover for questionable behavior because the potential profits outweigh the potential fines and risk of enforcement by well-intentioned but ultimately toothless laws, as I suspect the NYC law will turn out.

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

#156

Post by toomuchtodo »

yamtaddle wrote: post #88
xnorswap wrote: post #48

To those who think it's not YC / HN's problem, you're missing that HN literally has a Job Board: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs This is a core part of their offering, it's not just user generated content, it's YC companies posting on YC's job board.

It's deeply bizarre to me that there are so many posters on here who think a fund that: 1) invests in, 2) advises, and 3) provides free job advertising to; various startups, has no responsibility to advise them to follow the law when posting those job advertisements on that fund's own job board . I understand the ones who raise the possibility that some of these aren't, in fact, breaking the law, for one reason or an…

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Never assume someone will do the right or legal thing, regardless of status or PR. Can’t explain the Stockholm Syndrome (“but the ones who seem to take offense at the notion that YC might have even a sliver of responsibility here”), people can be emotional, irrational creatures due to life experience and belief systems.

But Sequoia lost $200M on a fraud having done zero due diligence, so perhaps it’s simply different shades of apathy all the way down.

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

#157

Post by tinco »

twelve40 wrote: post #126
indymike wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can dive through US DOL JOLTS report if you want to understand this. Big tech did layoffs. IT departments still need people.

you'd think it's on the person making the statement about IT hiring numbers to do the diving.

He did the diving, he told you the statement and the properties of it and he told you where he gets his data.

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

#158

Post by roflyear »

josefresco wrote: post #4

I found an example on today's front page (Rutter): https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rutter/7b222f5f-cd46-4592-9cf8-6cd1... No salary range posted, job is in NYC.

I believe Rutter was one of the examples, tho I did not see them today - maybe an older post, but the UI of that page is super familiar.

Glad to see they updated - but anything less than $220k is hard to swallow for non-remote in NYC.

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

#159

Post by vsareto »

yamtaddle wrote: post #97
indymike wrote: post #78

I'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…

They hire closer to average talent, who will typically wait because they don't have offers swarming in. The places that hire fast and choose good talent often screen those folks out.

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

#160

Post by roflyear »

noir_lord wrote: post #119
bluedevil2k wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this isn’t correct. All things being equal, the first to post a number is at a big advantage. As another commenter pointed out, this is called anchoring. Think about a house being sold in a normal market, the price is always well above its market value to anchor the numbers high. The reason companies don’t want to post a salary number is all things aren’t equal: they have far more information on pay than you do…

Also they might be underpaying their current staff.

This is the truth of it. They have devs who are making $130k who have worked there for 4 years and they don't want to give them a raise to $200k.
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