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New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

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Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#61

I've previously commented [0] on how broken this implementation is. It's frustrating politicians don't see how easy it is to circumvent what the law seeks to achieve. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37440358

While some engineers definitely get compensated in stock more, is it really the majority of engineers? I feel like it’s over represented because we’re in HN but the vast majority of software engineers in this world don’t get stock at all, it’s just mostly base salary

Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#63
post #33

I prefer inequality when it comes to pay because I will work harder than the majority.

Is this satire?

I was always the hardest worker in my class, but never found a job because companies said I would want to be paid too much, meanwhile I told them my salary requirements were zero because I was homeless. Was that satire?

Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#65
post #27

I think it’s better than nothing, but ultimately not helpful for job seekers working to learn how much a position will pay them. I work in a very regulated organization where all pay rates are published with postings. [0] But the ranges are $20-40k for each grade and it’s hard to tell what you will end up being offered and accepted. I think it helps prevent some mismatches of people confusing $20k and $200k positions…

The big ranges is a logical consequence of such stupid rules. People are not commodities, and only in the most trivial of work can you a priori know what an individual brings to it. It's typical government thinking that makes no sense in the real world. So employers are stuck publishing an absurdly wide band that reflects the difference in what different people might bring to the position. This is effectively populis…

I have yet to see a position where the company has no idea about the budget allocated for it.

Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#66
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same work should bring the same payment, period. Everything else just ends up rewarding those with the best "negotiation" skill which is completely unrelated to one's actually work-relevant skills.

There is no such thing as "same work" outside of a production line and the like. You learn this in the initial weeks of your career. In every tech company there are programmers, project managers, and sales people who have the same titles but deliver vastly different quality of outcomes. And everyone knows this because they instantly pick the good ones whenever they have the slightest optionality. You have a new proje…

So what, you can use a well defined bonus structure. At least that is transparent and related to one's own work skill.

Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#67
post #3

I have never worked in a job where you can give a reasonable pay band and routinely made 1.5-3x what other people with the same title did, before bonuses. This really only works for well-defined jobs in production, retail, and seems to bring little utility for the HN crowd.

If you’re making 3x what other people at your level are making, you’re at the wrong level. Unless you’re already at the highest level. If you’re worth that much more, I’m surprised that you don’t push for a higher level.

The point of levels is to provide an external signal of competence. And perhaps this law will push companies towards doing a better job of that.

In nearly 20 years of experience pay doesn’t generally correlate with performance. The people who I’ve seen with massive pay differences were the people who could negotiate well and knew how to play the game to come in with multiple offers. Those people aren't usually the most long term productive employees. Some of them are, but many of them are just better tangentially related skills.

The biggest single difference in starting pay by far is having multiple offers. If you make it through selective company A’s hiring process, you likely could have made it through a few similar processes. Whether you bothered to do that or not, says nothing much to me other than how much you care about compensation. But most hiring managers have a serious case of FOMO and this works in the majority of cases.

Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#68
post #27

I think it’s better than nothing, but ultimately not helpful for job seekers working to learn how much a position will pay them. I work in a very regulated organization where all pay rates are published with postings. [0] But the ranges are $20-40k for each grade and it’s hard to tell what you will end up being offered and accepted. I think it helps prevent some mismatches of people confusing $20k and $200k positions…

I have asked some HR people this question about ranges, and most of them tell me they expect to pay the midpoint of the range. That is, if you meet the qualifications, they’ll offer you the midpoint. However if you blow them away or got some competing offers, they will offer you the high end. And if you got very little experience, the low end. That’s the rule of thumb. It doesn’t matter if the range is as wide as 80k…

If the range spans an order of magnitude, should I consider the logarithmic or linear midpoint? That is geometric or arithmetic mean between the ends?

Re: New York employers must include pay rates in job ads under new state law

#70
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have asked some HR people this question about ranges, and most of them tell me they expect to pay the midpoint of the range. That is, if you meet the qualifications, they’ll offer you the midpoint. However if you blow them away or got some competing offers, they will offer you the high end. And if you got very little experience, the low end. That’s the rule of thumb. It doesn’t matter if the range is as wide as 80k…

If the range spans an order of magnitude, should I consider the logarithmic or linear midpoint? That is geometric or arithmetic mean between the ends?

The latter
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