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

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

#321

Post by edanm » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

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…

Just out of curiosity - how do you know that YC doesn't advise startups to do exactly that? Advice can be ignored, after all.

(Note: I'm not saying they are or aren't, I have no idea either way.)

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

#322

Post by quickthrower2 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 8:02 AM UTC

runako wrote: post #220

wintogreen74 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can either side get an accurate assessment of the other in such a short time? I was hired by my current employer in less than 2 weeks from initial conversation and it was a bit of a smell that they weren't more thorough. Now I'm a hiring manager and am a little concerned with what I feel are "loose" practices that let too many marginal candidates through because otherwise "it's too hard to source talent". For me…

Consider the number of hours you actually spend interacting with a candidate during the interview process. If it's 40(!), bring them in for a full week and decide at the end of Friday. If it's closer to 10, bring them in Monday morning and decide by close of business Tuesday. All the delays are materially the fault of glitches in the hiring organization.

This is great for 1 candidate. Say you have 20 applications at once? Do you pick the one with the best CV and dedicate this week for them. Or try to do a filter stage? Not saying I have the answer, but it is not as simple as chucking all your resources at all the candidates full time.

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

#323

Post by badpun » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

ido wrote: post #187

next_xibalba wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, to me, is a really good signal of how well run a company is. After all, a company is merely a collection of people on whom its outcomes are entirely dependent. Thus, the single most important function a company can perform is hiring. If a company fails to recognize this or just does it incompetently, its probably a crappy company. Thus, slow responses == crappy company.

I would postulate the single most important thing a company can do is make money. Hiring is also important though.

> I would postulate the single most important thing a company can do is make money.

Nobody in the company "makes money" (unless the company is a bank, then they literally do, by giving out loans). The people perform various functions and the money made or lost by the company is a result of a sum total of their actions.

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

#324

Post by badpun » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #272

lazyasciiart wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting a response to your job application in less than a month sounds naive?

Month does sound long to me, but "a few weeks" isn't crazy given the reality on the ground. Note, I am not saying this is good or how it ought to be, I am just saying how it is. Let me ask you - if you were the recruiter at Apple and let's say you owned 5 roles each of which got 2000 resumes (I am stabbing at a number but it's Apple, so likely tons of people jump on every role) - how long would it take you to get thr…

> what would you do differently if you were HR here?

Hire more HR staff to reduce queue times? Apple literally has $100b+ of cash that they don't know what to do with, they could spend some of it on improving their hiring.

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

#325

Post by badpun » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:46 AM UTC

throwaway98797 wrote: post #241

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but... what kind of victim blaming nonsense is this? Seeing a salary range intimidates people?! That's 100% worth the cost, friend. Knowing what you're applying for/to is absolutely critical information, and having it before applying is a substantial amount of leverage in any negotiation. That's like saying people shouldn't post where a job is because some people might not live there, or not to post C++ job…

i’ve had nearly 10+ jobs and i never knew the range also on higher levels comp comes from equity base pay of $100k is immaterial if RSU/equity is $500k i do believe it hurts the people in weaker positions vs helping cause high comp individuals know how to play the game anyways

If you care about people in weaker positions so much, perhaps develop a web plugin for them which will hide the compensation amount on the job pages?

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

#326

Post by badpun » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:49 AM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #301

kuboble wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the companies indeed inflicting self harm? They might get less applications that way, but posting salary ranges for new employees has other downsides - e.g. it might tilt existing employees. Another downside is that it's easy to scrap and collect this data and companies might not like candidates or employees easily accessing historical data. Sharing salary range basically reduces the knowledge advantage of a comp…

> but posting salary ranges for new employees has other downsides - e.g. it might tilt existing employees. Fucking good . It's absolutely scummy to secretly pay new hires more than your experienced existing employees. It's also extremely short-sighted. You'd rather deal with attrition costs of losing a trained, experienced employee and having to find new candidates and train someone new, than to just give your curren…

> You'd rather deal with attrition costs of losing a trained, experienced employee and having to find new candidates and train someone new, than to just give your current employees the pay raise they obviously deserve?

The job market is a market, meaning it's a game between buyers and sellers. "Deserve" does not exist there. The companies are obviously counting on the fact that majority of people will prefer to stay put instead of risk jumping ship for a salary increase - which is in fact what happens in practice.

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

#327

Post by badpun » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 10:58 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #56

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.

People in "VC space" use laws aplenty to protect their interests as well, as is everyone else who takes part in any civilized society.

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

#328

Post by soneil » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 11:13 AM UTC

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…

I've seen the other side of this and it's not pretty. We had a round with a very indecisive manager who seemed to be apprehensive that an even better candidate might come along next week.

We interviewed 15-20 people over the run of 3 months, finally decided on someone and got in touch with them. They'd already taken a role. Tried our second choice. Then our third. Then we just started over.

Unless the candidate is looking for you in particular, the better than candidate, the sooner they'll be off the market. The only candidates still waiting 3 months later are the ones everyone else has passed over.

(This isn't particularly recent, and wasn't in the US. It's just stuck in my mind as a particularly educational experience.)

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

#329

Post by CJefferson » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 12:02 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #54

CJefferson wrote: post #32

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.

In my experience the police aren't polite when people are breaking laws, so I don't see why I should hold companies to a lower standard than my fellow citizens.

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

#330

Post by scrapcode » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #279

scrapcode wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will certainly move you to the top of the list for hiring consideration. /s

Yes, because everyone is absolutely jumping in their boots to work at a company where HR ignores the law, either through ignorance or malice the same.

Good way to filter out candidates that are either ignorant of the requirements and/or do not "buck" the system. Realistically, it's either a company that doesn't think this will be enforced, doesn't think the punishment would outweigh the benefits, or circumvents the requirements legally such as posting a single announcement in their lobby (public place) that does list the salary range.