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Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

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Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#121
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is explicitly called out as not being allowed: "An employer cannot post a $70,000-$100,000 range for a junior accountant position just because it pays senior accountants at the high end of that range. But it can post $70,000-$100,000 for an accountant if it does not limit the posting to junior or senior accountants, and genuinely might offer as low as $70,000 for a junior accountant, or as much as $100,000 for a…

Seems impossible to enforce in practice

Can they just audit the actual salaries paid vs the range listed at the end of every year?

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

November is pretty close to the whole year. If you choose a fixed % per paycheck and have a bonus that's not perfectly amortized then being off by a month is actually pretty good.

I assumed that employer contribution matching is generally a fixed percentage of the employee’s salary each pay period, which means that if you don’t contribute in one month you forfeit that percentage of your salary and thus about 8% of your total possible employer matching.

At least in my case as an engineer at a smaller tech company my 401k (and corresponding match) maxes out each January because that's when bonuses are granted.

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay bands are the minimum and maximum that employees at a specific level are paid. So this only works if a company is legitimately going to hire people for $5MM a year and/or have existing employees at that level paid that amount. Also, such large pay bands will raise eyebrows, as they are indicative of discrimination. Why such wildly different wages for the same role?

Because humans aren’t interchangeable cogs? Let’s consider the range of compensation for the “CEO” role.

These laws are not intended to help CEOs or people in tech already making 6-figure salaries before other compensation.

These ludicrous edge cases are not a "gotcha" for a type of law that greatly helps pay transparency for the vast majority of the population.

Even in tech this is helpful. What's the going rate for a new-grad SWE in Nashville TN? I certainly didn't know when I graduated. I had to get all the way to the offer stage before any numbers were discussed at all. Also no equity was involved anyway.

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#124
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally, a company is subject to state laws of their state of incorporation (usually Delaware, for various reasons) _and_ their state of 'domicile', usually where they are headquartered. They are also subject to state laws in states where they operate. So yes, in this situation, even if MS were incorporated in Delaware, Washington state could pass laws that bind how the company acts anywhere in the world. Washington…

> even if MS were incorporated in Delaware, Washington state could pass laws that bind how the company acts anywhere in the world This is not true [1]. It's especially untrue with respect to employment, a domain in which federal statute has a lot to say about who can regulate whom. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

You are misreading this. The Dormant Commerce Clause is relevant when talking about applying laws unequally for the purpose of protecting in-state commercial entities. For instance, if companies based out of state were subject to salary disclosure laws, but Washington based companies were not.

In this case, Dormant Commerce does not apply since the salary disclosure laws apply to any company operating in the state, regardless of where they're headquartered or incorporated. It applies equally to all.

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#125

Individual states’ pay transparency laws are already applying upwards pressure on salaries across the country. My company has multiple groups in different states including Colorado, and in anticipation of needing to post salary ranges for our open positions in Colorado, my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands to avoid anyone becoming frust…

I think your example might be more of an exception than a rule; the last company I was in that introduced pay bands only bumped up people who were below the bottom of the band.

The only people who were upset were those who found out some people were way over the new pay band and generated a bit of gossip over how those people were way overpaid for the quality of their work

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#126
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally, a company is subject to state laws of their state of incorporation (usually Delaware, for various reasons) _and_ their state of 'domicile', usually where they are headquartered. They are also subject to state laws in states where they operate. So yes, in this situation, even if MS were incorporated in Delaware, Washington state could pass laws that bind how the company acts anywhere in the world. Washington…

> even if MS were incorporated in Delaware, Washington state could pass laws that bind how the company acts anywhere in the world This is not true [1]. It's especially untrue with respect to employment, a domain in which federal statute has a lot to say about who can regulate whom. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

That's specific to state protectionism though. The law applies equally to jobs posted inside and outside the state so the Dormant Commerce Clause is not relevant.

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other news, Microsoft to comply with a new law Microsoft is under no obligation to comply with Washington law outside Washington. That's what they're doing here.

Probably easier to just do it for everybody than have two separate listings for WA and the rest of the US. I wonder if this is TC or just salary?

Everything I’ve seen so far is just salary. Which is kind of a huge loophole for tech companies where 20-60% of compensation is often in the form of stock and bonuses.

Re: Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings

#130

Individual states’ pay transparency laws are already applying upwards pressure on salaries across the country. My company has multiple groups in different states including Colorado, and in anticipation of needing to post salary ranges for our open positions in Colorado, my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands to avoid anyone becoming frust…

> my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands

Uhh, surely I'm not the only one seeing the obvious flaw here, right? Is the inevitable outcome here that pay bands will now cover a range where nobody is actually in the lower half, ever? That lower half of the range will just be there as a sort of psychological buffer?

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