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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

#171
post #154

There's a lot of skepticism in this thread but I will just say that the other laws like this have had a huge positive effect on tech job searching in my opinion. Looking casually at jobs lately I would say that 80% of them have posted salary ranges. This has been enormously helpful in a) helping me avoid jobs with inflated titles but low pay and b) attracting me to jobs I might not otherwise consider because of very…

Sometimes, sure, but more often than not, I see salary range: 80k-180k depending on experience. Not very useful, that.

True, but that is also telling you something useful about the company.

I'm not defending it, I'm pointing out, that when a company tells you this is how they want to be seen by potentially new recruits then listen to them.

It is a red flag for one of two reasons:

- It is intentionally misleading (i.e. top of range is pure fiction).

- Upward mobility is so terrible, that they comingle multiple different tiers of expertise into the same job title.

There is no positive look from this.

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

#172
post #154

There's a lot of skepticism in this thread but I will just say that the other laws like this have had a huge positive effect on tech job searching in my opinion. Looking casually at jobs lately I would say that 80% of them have posted salary ranges. This has been enormously helpful in a) helping me avoid jobs with inflated titles but low pay and b) attracting me to jobs I might not otherwise consider because of very…

Sometimes, sure, but more often than not, I see salary range: 80k-180k depending on experience. Not very useful, that.

No, that's super helpful. You know to avoid that job. Likely the requirements listed will be inaccurate as well.

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

#173

I have 2 main critiques of this legislation. 1) This seems like a fairly decent bit of legislation for some standardized professions, particularly those that are often paid hourly, work in person and cannot be outsourced out of state, and in many cases are the most economically vulnerable. I'm thinking that it would be pretty decent for dishwashers, cashiers, gas station attendants, etc to know if a job is offering s…

The employer is much more likely to post a higher, unrealistic, salary ceiling that they have no intention of actually paying in order to attract more/better candidates.

that tends to self-correct. talking to candidates burns alot of time. sure, you can lie and try to get a better outcome. but you also spent precious time buttering them up only to have them walk away in a huff. I'm seeing the same kind of aspirational posts with respect to commutes.

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

#174

Also, what happens if both parties agree to a salary outside of the bound during the interview. Is the employer bound by that number? I am guessing there is no mechanism that would enforce it.

I imagine nothing happens. It's just an indication of what the company is thinking they're going to pay. This helps people who are bad negotiators from getting into trouble; "And what are your salary requirements?" "....uhhhh... 60k?" "Awesome, we were thinking we'd have to pay at least 100k"

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

#175

Also, what happens if both parties agree to a salary outside of the bound during the interview. Is the employer bound by that number? I am guessing there is no mechanism that would enforce it.

Who would be the one to make a complaint about that to begin enforcement action even if that were a thing?

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, sure, but more often than not, I see salary range: 80k-180k depending on experience. Not very useful, that.

No, that's super helpful. You know to avoid that job. Likely the requirements listed will be inaccurate as well.

> Likely the requirements listed will be inaccurate as well.

Where are the requirements actually accurate?

For what it's worth, the actual written requirements for many tech jobs are very questionable. In many cases, there's a big disconnect between the people writing the job ads and the people who actually communicate what they want.

And out of sheer laziness or lack of knowledge, there are plenty of recruiters that do things like post JavaScript jobs as Java jobs, as one example I've seen.

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

#177
post #157
post #38

We just post the actual compensation, not a range, and we stick to it. It’s worked pretty well, you discuss it in the first steps of the process to make sure they get that’s actually how it’s going to work and then you spend your time interviewing people who are OK with the comp. If the candidate pool isn’t any good then change the comp. And sure if you want to recruit a hotshot candidate or something nothing is stop…

What happens if you interview a candidate, and they're a great fit (team, enthusiasm, etc), but they're a bit more junior than you were originally hiring for? Would it be possible to adjust the role for the candidate in that case (my normal approach), or would you be forced to pass on them?

Part of the strategy is you have a lot of job postings going at once. So if someone applies for one and there's a more junior position that's a match you just tell them that.

That happens all the time by the way and it's fine. People often come to one job via keywords and don't see the various options.

I just think the whole premise is that we need this like ninja ability to react on the fly, and optimize the process to perfectly get the comp into this exact number that's the best possible deal for the company or something.

But it's not. It just makes the experience disorienting and confusing for applicants, the same way it does when they have to deal with some insane process to buy cars and mattresses and enterprise SaaS contracts, which they also hate.

Explain the job and then say what it pays. It makes the process so much simpler that the burden should be on people who don't do that to really prove why it needs to be more opaque and confusing for all involved.

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

#179
Given that TheWorkNumber exists (a service that does the opposite; allowing prospective employers to view your salary history as reported by your previous employers), this is a good counterbalance in negotiating power for workers. If you've been very underpaid, it'll be a lot harder for your next employer to offer you a 10% raise if you know the bottom end of their advertised range would be a 60% raise.

I think the commenters here focus too much on themselves and people like them. This law was not written for SWEs with a market value of $120k/year who are being paid $80k/year. 0-60th percentile income workers are getting absolutely hosed and need every bit of negotiating power that they can get.

Our working and hiring culture is very weird and favors employers. Anyone can be fired at any time for (almost) any reason, so your ability to pay rent and put food in your mouth depends upon your ability to find another job. When that process involves several dozen or hundred job applications, long hiring timelines, multiple interviews across days, weeks, and months, >60% rates of ghosting at every step, and exploding offers, lower income workers are often forced to accept the first offer they get regardless of how much lower it is than their true market rate. This wage transparency policy helps low-wage workers avoid entering the long hiring pipeline for jobs that pay abysmal wages.

It is a strong net-positive for these workers who need it most.

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

#180
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 work in a very regulated organization where all pay rates are published with postings.

> But the ranges are $20-40k for each grade and it’s hard to tell what you will end up being offered and accepted

Is it really that hard in fed land? I work for the state of California, and which has a similar level of regulation and similar posted ranges, but its pretty trivial most of the time to know exactly where you’d be set. I mean, its not 100% accurate, but this is right most of the time:

If you are apply from outside the system, you will be offered the exact bottom of the range and there will be no flexibility.

If you are inside the system, if its a lateral, you keep your pay. If its a higher range, you move up by the lesser of 5% or to the minimum of the new range. Also with no flexibility.

The circumstances with any flexibility are very limited, what you get is almost completely determined by how you got to the job.

> The privacy implications are serious and need to be accounted for.

Of by-employer actual pay distribution disclosure? Is that why public sector employers pay a hefty wage premium because their employees pay data is public on an individual level, which obviously has even greater concerns?

Oh, wait...

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