Live data from Hacker News

Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

reddit.com

161–170 of 406 posts

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#161

I think one reason why this is difficult for companies that are hiring software engineers, is that they can hire at multiple levels of experience. They just need good developers! A company that needs, say, a Golang developer, or Scala, or React, might be willing to hire a junior, mid-level or senior developer- they'll take whatever experience level they can get. Remember, saying that you don't want to hire someone to…

Here in Austria we have a similar law that requires disclosing minimum salary for a role.

Companies usually just post multiple ads if they are hiring for junior or senior roles.

I don't think a job posting for both junior and senior developers would be appealing to a senior developer.

I think the market in Austria is different. If your job ad isn't compelling enough, you won't get any applications.

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the definition of "perfect competition" in economics includes that all participants have perfect information. But, that's actually the reason companies hate this law: in "perfect competition" no long-term economic profit is possible. Long-term profits are the result of when a market disobeys the definition of "perfect competition," such as when there's information asymmetry, patents and trade secrets to prote…

> I recently had to play a round of "don't give a number" with a recruiter last week. Needless to say, that didn't go very far. I had this happen to be last week too. I am not sure what ppl say to recruiters when they keep asking this question.

In my case, it was more that the recruiter wouldn't give any sense of what their number was. I told them it was like they were selling a home and advertising an open house without an asking price or any pictures of the inside. I wouldn't waste 20 minutes on an open house for a place that wouldn't work for me, would you?

They just clamped down on "I'm not at liberty to say." So, I told them to get back to me when they have a little more liberty.

What I usually say in those initial conversations is something like "I don't have any real requirements beyond the amount that pays my bills. And, at this point, I don't know enough about the job, the team, management, benefits, etc. or the value I could bring, to give an educated number."

That usually satisfies them on the first phone call.

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#163
I'm actually not a fan of this law. My first salary position was for job which advertised a range of something like 80 to 90k a year. The highest I had made previously was $10 an hour, the CEO of the company was a nice guy who brought me in for an interview anyway.

I took an offer at 40K or so, and within 3 years I was at 100k. With laws like this in play I'm not sure if that would still be legal. A lot of these ideas sound great on paper, but in reality you've completely eliminated any room to negotiate salaries downward in case an applicant isn't all that experienced.

I imagine what's going to happen is you'll see companies become much stricter with documentable requirements. Such as a bachelor's degree, which I also lacked back then. Saying please I need a job, I'll take 50% less since I don't have a bachelor's will open up companies to lawsuits

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#164
post #3

My sympathy is with the employers. Colorado did this to itself with such an anticompetitive law. Beyond this effect, it also encourages sending the work offshore altogether.

Oh no, how can these companies underpay their employees now?

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't quite get the rub here. The corporations I've worked for always post jobs internally first and normally they email the entire org with open positions. In general I've found most corporations want to hire internally since it's cheaper overall.

I think it depends on the company. In a past organization a friend was HR at, there were branch office jobs and corporate jobs. Officially you could get promoted to the corporate office. Unofficially, don't bother as they optimized for different things for each hiring pool. So they tried to keep the corporate jobs only available to the corporate people as otherwise the branch people would get excited and then end up…

Yeah, you especially don't want to proactively push out a bunch of job postings to people who have exactly zero chance of landing the position because the decision has already been made.

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#166

I think one reason why this is difficult for companies that are hiring software engineers, is that they can hire at multiple levels of experience. They just need good developers! A company that needs, say, a Golang developer, or Scala, or React, might be willing to hire a junior, mid-level or senior developer- they'll take whatever experience level they can get. Remember, saying that you don't want to hire someone to…

These might be good workarounds, but they all assume that employers have some incentive to look for a workaround. This may be true for highly paid roles that are hard to fill, but for more competitive roles, they'll just skip CO entirely and avoid any risk. SO it'll be lower paid workers that suffer as a result of this regulation, as usual.

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#167
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In sane countries the seller must comission a survey and provide it to the buyer. The UK system where each buyer comissions a survey is absurd. I do not understand how the mortgage helps you - you are still paying for it, and if the survey uncovers issues, you either take mortgage on a house with problems, or you are out of pocket. If you pull out, and next house you view has issues too, you have to take it because a…

In the US the buyer hires an inspector after the contract is agreed and the transfer can be voided if the inspector finds serious issues. Typically the price gets adjusted.

Home inspectors are a borderline scam. In my experience they never find any of the real problems and only surface superficial stuff that should be obvious even to a layman.

This probably is because many buyers go with the inspector recommendation of their realtor and realtors aren’t going to recommend someone that is too through to the point of risking the deal.

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#168
post #18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's legal to discriminate based on geographic location.

So it's legal to discriminate people living in certain neighborhoods?

The thing you're looking for is the legal doctrine of "Disparate Impact."

Discrimination against a protected class (like race) is illegal. Geography is not a protected class, and discrimination based on geography is not inherently illegal. But under the doctrine of Disparate Impact, a particular policy of geographic exclusion is illegal if it happens to have outsized effect on a protected class (and has no business justification).

Note that Disparate Impact does not require intention!

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#169

A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and benefits and apply for the best job. However companies don't want to compete on salary, and potentialy drive them up - they want maximum leverage. They get more leverage if process is obscure, so that you only agree salary late in the process and for the applicant, pulling out is risky. The market is not really free - its being manipulated by one side. Simila…

In the US, real estate sellers have to disclose known problems, but they can claim they didn't know, and then you might have to fight it out in court. It's still in your interest to get an inspection before closing.

This varies somewhat by state, as I understand. Some states only require disclosure for specific classes of problems.

Re: Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

#170
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the company. In a past organization a friend was HR at, there were branch office jobs and corporate jobs. Officially you could get promoted to the corporate office. Unofficially, don't bother as they optimized for different things for each hiring pool. So they tried to keep the corporate jobs only available to the corporate people as otherwise the branch people would get excited and then end up…

Yeah, you especially don't want to proactively push out a bunch of job postings to people who have exactly zero chance of landing the position because the decision has already been made.

That too.

Plenty of job postings exist merely for compliance. So all you are doing is wasting a lot of time.

Post reply on HN