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

'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 143 posts

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#101

Post by zem »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #42
optionalsquid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every employer would send "We have decided not to continue with your application". That would still be a big improvement over just getting ghosted

Doubtful you would still feel that way if it became the legally mandated norm. The reason ghosting is offensive is it feels so disrespectful and impersonal. How is some bland automated message triggered by a cron job any better? The automated message doesn't respect or care about you, no person would have put any thought into it. It would be entirely automated. If that makes you feel better it is suggestive of a deep…

the reason ghosting is offensive is that it keeps you waiting to hear back, with the probability you have been ghosted gradually increasing over time, rather than just letting you close that mental channel.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#102

Post by optionalsquid »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #42
optionalsquid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every employer would send "We have decided not to continue with your application". That would still be a big improvement over just getting ghosted

Doubtful you would still feel that way if it became the legally mandated norm. The reason ghosting is offensive is it feels so disrespectful and impersonal. How is some bland automated message triggered by a cron job any better? The automated message doesn't respect or care about you, no person would have put any thought into it. It would be entirely automated. If that makes you feel better it is suggestive of a deep…

An automated message would be perfectly fine, since it would still allow me to cross off that application. The people behind the message are of little import. We are unlikely to have any further interactions anyway

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#103

Post by optionalsquid »

shaftway wrote: post #75
optionalsquid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every employer would send "We have decided not to continue with your application". That would still be a big improvement over just getting ghosted

Would it though? Thanks to CA Prop 65 every place I go has a warning that I'll get cancer if I take one more step. If I'm walking into a nuclear waste storage facility I'll never know because of warning fatigue.

I honestly don’t see how the two compare. I’m merely asking for a response to a query that I sent myself.

What you describe is more like SPAM: Unsolicited bulk rejections to applications that were never sent

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#104

Post by dccoolgai »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #42
optionalsquid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every employer would send "We have decided not to continue with your application". That would still be a big improvement over just getting ghosted

Doubtful you would still feel that way if it became the legally mandated norm. The reason ghosting is offensive is it feels so disrespectful and impersonal. How is some bland automated message triggered by a cron job any better? The automated message doesn't respect or care about you, no person would have put any thought into it. It would be entirely automated. If that makes you feel better it is suggestive of a deep…

At least this would give you the leverage of seeing that the role is or is not still posted. It would give you a job to do as a candidate in enforcing honesty and seeing that the company wasn't stringing others along with fake postings to create the impression of growth. I would much prefer this to a "no consequences" system for people actively wasting my time.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#105

Post by OutOfHere »

Grombobulous wrote: post #76
OutOfHere wrote: post #45

New York doesn't even enforce its salary requirement declaration law. It will most definitely not enforce this law either. It will just sit on the books being violated openly. --- https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8877

Perhaps I'm naive, but I've never seen a New York job without a salary range listed. I can't tell you whether it's being vigorously enforced, but it seems to me that it's having the intended effect. At the very least, even if enforcement is lax, it's a good piece of information for the job applicant: if you are applying for a job in NY and the posting has no salary range on it, you automatically know that employer is…

You must not have applied much to smaller and medium sized firms in New York because they're missing salary ranges all over the place.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#106

Post by CasualSuperman »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #88
autoexec wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have been using data brokers to get info on potential employees for ages in violation of the law. The law has almost zero enforcement and when something is done nobody does to prison. It's almost always just the government wanting a cut of the action. For example: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2012/06/... https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2014/04/...

Prison is a limitation of freedom of movement. The equivalent for a company should be the limiting of movement of shares (no shares bought/sold/traded) for the duration of an imposed sentence. Since corporations are people and all, there needs to be an equivalent punishment.

Distribute the jail time among the shareholders. That will get them to incentivize legality over profits REAL quick

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#109

Post by autoexec »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #100
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison is a limitation of freedom of movement. The equivalent for a company should be the limiting of movement of shares (no shares bought/sold/traded) for the duration of an imposed sentence. Since corporations are people and all, there needs to be an equivalent punishment.

Frankly, I'd just prefer really huge fines, preferably scaled as a percentage of either gross or net revenue or profit.

Unless that percentage was over 100% of the profit they'd still be making money from doing illegal things and the fines just become a cost of doing business.

Re: 'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York

#110

Post by Grombobulous »

OutOfHere wrote: post #105
Grombobulous wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I've never seen a New York job without a salary range listed. I can't tell you whether it's being vigorously enforced, but it seems to me that it's having the intended effect. At the very least, even if enforcement is lax, it's a good piece of information for the job applicant: if you are applying for a job in NY and the posting has no salary range on it, you automatically know that employer is…

You must not have applied much to smaller and medium sized firms in New York because they're missing salary ranges all over the place.

Admittedly, no, most of the time I see them they're multi-location corporate roles where the company has two or three choices of offices and one of them is in NYC.

I will point out that the state law has a number of exemptions: independent contractors and interns, companies with fewer than 5 employees, and commission-based roles don't need a salary range disclosure. NYC law is generally more strict on the subject.

Perhaps if you're seeing a lot of jobs that aren't listing a range, it's possible they fit into one of those categories. After all, the vast majority of businesses measured by quantity of firms are small businesses.

Post reply on HN