Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

businesspost.ie

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 249 posts

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#41

Post by paxys »

WheatMillington wrote: post #10
stefan_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. why on earth would we preserve that? Should supermarkets not show prices?

Supermarkets should not have to disclose their COST prices, because these are non public negotiations, not a public offer to buy/sell. That so many people wilfully choose not to understand this distinction frustrates useful conversation.

No the equivalent scenario would be a grocery store (or online store, hotel, airline etc.) not publicly advertising any prices at all. If you want something you have to take it to the cashier, and they will give you a personalized price based on whatever factors they choose.

Should that be legal? Maybe, maybe not. But there are plenty of laws out there that mandate that companies make pricing more transparent, because that is good for the end consumer.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#42

Post by Aeolun »

ghaff wrote: post #38
badestrand wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a company wants to attract top talent they can just publicy offer +10% and they get the best people. Seems to me it could become a race to the top, heavily benefiting employees.

Now you're in game theory territory. A bunch of competitive companies can (don't say collude) mirror each other's salary ranges and maybe they're OK with not using higher salaries to hire away talent which may or not actually be worth more money anyway. Of course, this happens to some degree anyway as companies research this sort of information.

Hmm, this could only work if the entire industry is either stagnant or heavily regulated. You need only a few companies that don't go along to completely disrupt that plan.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#43

Post by jltsiren »

bdw5204 wrote: post #3

From the article, it isn't clear whether a pay range of minimum wage to 1 million euros would be in compliance with this new rule. This is an actual tactic that many US employers have used to follow the letter but not the spirit of salary transparency laws.

It's not clear, because the details don't exist yet. There is only a directive that requires the member states change their national laws within a few years. There will likely be at least 27 different interpretations of the directive, which will all evolve in response to the specific circumstances in each member state.

Many countries also have informal mechanisms of enforcement. For example, businesses may have learned that it's often better to comply with the spirit of the law voluntarily. That way the final regulations will be more flexible and reasonable than by forcing the government to spell out the details explicitly. Or there may be strong unions, in which case many issues may be effectively decided in discussions between unions, businesses, and the government. If businesses burn too much political capital on a minor issue, they will have less influence on bigger issues.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#44

Post by paxys »

I'm all for salary transparency, but I also miss the days when every tech company would have a single "Software Engineer" job posting on their board, and if you liked their vibe you'd apply for it. If they liked you in return, you were in. Everything else (your job title, seniority, salary, stock, what team and product you were actually going to work on, whether they had open headcount or not) were all just minor details that could be figured out later. And this wasn't just some tiny startup thing – companies like Google and Facebook were proud of this hiring process.

All of the laws and expectations around hiring today have made this model impossible to maintain. What exactly does this position entail? How much will the candidate get paid? What team is it for? How many open positions does the company have in total right now? What is the average salary for all of them? You have to answer all of this and more before you can even think of hiring someone new. The old response of "we just hire as many smart people as we can find and pay them what we think they are worth" doesn't cut it anymore.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#45

Post by nequo »

ghaff wrote: post #38
badestrand wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a company wants to attract top talent they can just publicy offer +10% and they get the best people. Seems to me it could become a race to the top, heavily benefiting employees.

Now you're in game theory territory. A bunch of competitive companies can (don't say collude) mirror each other's salary ranges and maybe they're OK with not using higher salaries to hire away talent which may or not actually be worth more money anyway. Of course, this happens to some degree anyway as companies research this sort of information.

In game theory territory, no company's best response is to stick to publicly posted salary ranges.

Suppose that you are among the top performing workers in the labor market. If you have two job offers, you could get those two companies to match each other's offers.

Each of the two company's best response is to match the other's offer to the point at which their offer is exactly equal to the value that you would bring to them. At that point, your net value to them is exactly zero, and beyond that, your net value is negative. So the highest salary that you can get is the value that you would produce for the company where you would be the second most productive.

If either company tries to stick to the publicly posted salary ranges even though you would bring them more value than that, then they are forgoing profits and not following their equilibrium best response.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#46

Post by ghaff »

nequo wrote: post #45
ghaff wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're in game theory territory. A bunch of competitive companies can (don't say collude) mirror each other's salary ranges and maybe they're OK with not using higher salaries to hire away talent which may or not actually be worth more money anyway. Of course, this happens to some degree anyway as companies research this sort of information.

In game theory territory, no company's best response is to stick to publicly posted salary ranges. Suppose that you are among the top performing workers in the labor market. If you have two job offers, you could get those two companies to match each other's offers. Each of the two company's best response is to match the other's offer to the point at which their offer is exactly equal to the value that you would bring…

And yet collusion has happened in Big Tech.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#47

Post by t-writescode »

paxys wrote: post #44

I'm all for salary transparency, but I also miss the days when every tech company would have a single "Software Engineer" job posting on their board, and if you liked their vibe you'd apply for it. If they liked you in return, you were in. Everything else (your job title, seniority, salary, stock, what team and product you were actually going to work on, whether they had open headcount or not) were all just minor det…

The unfortunate reality is that it's really difficult for the employees themselves to make sure that everyone is being paid equitably in a situation like that. At least with (reasonably sized) salary ranges, people will have a general feel of where they are - and then it's also easier to do other analysis, e.g. "does the company, for some reason, only ever promote men?"

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#48

Post by nequo »

ghaff wrote: post #46
nequo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In game theory territory, no company's best response is to stick to publicly posted salary ranges. Suppose that you are among the top performing workers in the labor market. If you have two job offers, you could get those two companies to match each other's offers. Each of the two company's best response is to match the other's offer to the point at which their offer is exactly equal to the value that you would bring…

And yet collusion has happened in Big Tech.

It did. That was a cooperative equilibrium in which they could share their gains from offering you a lower salary. In a non-cooperative equilibrium, they cannot share their gains so their best response is to match competing offers.

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#49

Post by t-writescode »

motohagiography wrote: post #14

The two reasons I disagree with publishing salaries and "ranges" are that a) the implicit collusion creates mean reversion that disadvantages talent, who can afford to leave and go where they are valued and b) the values behind it presume that a job is something paternalistic granted by a manager in return for supplication, and not due consideration for value offered. Together these create a race to the bottom in off…

True, incredible rockstars that are so good can have custom roles created for them that pay a different salary; or, you can have a special, incredible-pay band with a broader range. Say:

"Software Engineer Fellow, range: 1.5M to 5M"

Re: Companies to publish salary ranges in job adverts under new EU rules

#50

Post by wahnfrieden »

ecshafer wrote: post #28
slg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a) the implicit collusion creates mean reversion that disadvantages talent, who can afford to leave and go where they are valued Doesn't this logic rest on the assumption that companies that pay better than average are doing it accidentally? Facebook has a reputation for paying better than many other tech companies for example. If I know that, Facebook surely knows that. Why would they stop doing that just because o…

It goes a bit beyond that in reality. Companies buy salary data for certain industry segments, then have a goal to pay within a percentile range. A company may say aim to pay on the 50-60th percentile of insurance companies for example.

It’s a kind of laundering also. Company absolves responsibility to consultant research data on market, chooses percentile, and forces it onto managers and workers as a due process regardless of precision and accuracy. Can’t argue with a correct looking decision making process just because you don’t like the result. The data however is sus if you’ve seen it
Post reply on HN