Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by BuckRogers » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #105

DeathArrow wrote: post #78

About salaries at Microsoft. I interviewed with them this year. I did a Codility test, followed by four interviews with four US based teams. I got an offer which is 5 to 6 times what they pay in US. I live in a country in Eastern Europe, and prices are a bit lower. I would have expected a lower offer, but not that much lower. It was less than I already make so I had to wish them good luck in finding another person an…

Now you know to ask for compensation up front.

Everyone always says this is a RED FLAG, so I've hesitated to do this myself. But I value my time more than I care about being "flagged" as a dissident against company interests. So I do that now with the initial HR interview. The energy put into this can be completely insane as per the GP's experience.

What we need is just a certificate that proves competency, so we can remove all these exams, quizzes and foolishness. Typically, that was a computer science degree, but there wouldn't be enough degree holders to fill all the roles, and wages would skyrocket. So some sort of interview meatgrinder it is I suppose.

As a result of all this, I wouldn't do this career path over again, and won't be recommending it to my kids. Companies will have to reap the rewards for their downward pressure on wages by going to India. They will continue to have to hire there for the next 20 to 100 years. And once the Americans are out of the industry, I think the Indians won't always take things lying down like we do in the US. I suspect they'll unionize and make life hell for these corporations. I hope the Indians become insanely wealthy from it, and US corporations will deserve it.

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

#262

Post by jjav » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #194

rednerrus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That sounds like an incredible amount of work. Who is "they" and who is paying them to do all of this auditing?

One "they" is the state government, who happens to already have the info sitting in their databases due to W-2s being reported.

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

#263

Post by BuckRogers » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

kirillbobyrev wrote: post #44

Victerius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another situation: You make 160k, the max range is 170k, but you'd like more than the max range. In the old world, this would work. You would gain more comp, and your new employer would acquire your talent. It's the free market at work. In the new world, neither of those will happen. I'm concerned about the consequences of that on economic growth and innovation.

Are you saying that the employers won't give 170k+ if the disclosed max range is 170k? I highly doubt that, the only change here is that the range that was previously only visible to the hiring managers within the company is now also visible to the candidates. If they could go beyond the internally visible range before, they would surely be able to do it now. The only difference is that before the candidates would ha…

I don't buy it either. I think overall more people will be lifted up, than some guy that wants 200K and the highest paid employee is currently 160K, will be held down. In fact, I think that's blatantly obvious. Companies are going to lose with this because this industry has so much exploitation going on, that San Francisco alone isn't counterbalancing it or even close.

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

#264

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #47

hef19898 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do that only for jobs in Washington state it is only a question of time until the first discrimibation law suites are filed. Plus it is easy good press.

and then the law would get struck down because, as said, washington state isn't allowed to regulate interstate commerce.

> and then the law would get struck down because, as said, washington state isn't allowed to regulate interstate commerce.

It isn't allowed to discriminate against or unduly burden interstate commerce; it can generally regulate the behavior of Washington persons (including corporations) in interstate commerce where such regulation does not discriminate against such commerce (which is clearly the case where the rule is identical to that for in-state commerce of the same type.)

The exception would be if the federal government preempted the kind of regulation Washington sought to make by exercise of federal commerce powers.

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

#265

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #61

DannyBee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then the law would get struck down because, as said, washington state isn't allowed to regulate interstate commerce.

Nit to pick: States can and do regulate interstate commerce all the time. California once banned the import of foie gras into the state, and IIRC are planning a law banning the import of foreign oil. Some states ban the import of firearms they don't wish to exist. Whether they should be allowed to engage in the regulation of interstate commerce for activities that occur entirely extra-state is probably more along wha…

> California once banned the import of foie gras into the state

No, it banned sale of foie gras entirely (it did not single out importation), and even so the ban, to the extent that it prohibited individual consumers from buying it for import from out-of-state vendors, was struck down by a federal trial court in 2020 as a violation of the dormant commerce clause, a decision this year upheld by the Ninth Circuit, so it's probably not a law you want to point to as an example of the state being free to regulate interstate commerce.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/california-f...

> and IIRC are planning a law banning the import of foreign oil.

Even if it was true that someone in California was planning on trying to pass such a law, it would be an even more clear, bright-line dormant commerce clause violation than the foie gras law.

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

#266

Post by closeparen » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #239

jonas21 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies may have more sway than an individual employee, but that sway is still close to zero. Why? Because everyone knows that once enough key employees live nearby, they can't just pick up and move the company somewhere else. Google, for example, has been trying for over a decade to build some medium-density housing near its campus. This goes beyond just advocating for political action (which they're also doing) -…

>>Because everyone knows that once enough key employees live nearby It is almost like, in any context, centralization is bad. I am not sure why we has a civilization have to keep learning this lesson, over and over and over again Anytime you centralize anything it results in bad outcomes. Diversity, Diversification, Distributed Models, etc are ALWAYS preferable, I dont care if you are talking about Stocks, People, Ho…

Decentralization of people and housing == suburban sprawl, car dependency, tens of thousands of fatal collisions, the climate crisis, etc. Decentralization shifts the difficulty into communication/coordination, which is sometimes more tractable but also sometimes not.

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

#267

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95

bmelton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit to pick: States can and do regulate interstate commerce all the time. California once banned the import of foie gras into the state, and IIRC are planning a law banning the import of foreign oil. Some states ban the import of firearms they don't wish to exist. Whether they should be allowed to engage in the regulation of interstate commerce for activities that occur entirely extra-state is probably more along wha…

> States can and do regulate interstate commerce all the time. California once banned the import of foie gras into the state, and IIRC are planning a law banning the import of foreign oil. This is fine. Sacramento can regulate what's coming into California. It cannot set food labeling requirements for Michigan.

> Sacramento can regulate what's coming into California.

It can regulated what is sold or produced in California, but, because of the Commerce Clause, it's more limited in regulating what comes in to California.

> It cannot set food labeling requirements for Michigan.

It absolutely can set food labelling requirements for food commercially produced in California, except to the extent such regulations are preempted by federal law, whether or not it will later be shipped to Michigan.

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

#268

Post by collegeburner » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #130

another_poster wrote: post #109

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?

We all now work at Lake Wobegon. Which means salaries will be set to average value of the position and lazy people will be subsidized by hard workers and better contributors. Not everybody contributes the same value.

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

#269

Post by throw10920 » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #253

cogman10 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this as if companies don't chose where to have their offices and their attendance policies. If a company places it's headquarters in a HCOL area and requires everyone come in 5 days a week, then yes, they have a responsibility to pay a salary high enough that their employees can survive there. If employers don't like the fact that COL is too high, THEY can go ahead and march on city hall to advocate for polit…

> they have a responsibility to pay a salary high enough No, they don't. The employee gets to decide if the salary is high enough to meet his needs. If it isn't, the employee can negotiate for more, or go elsewhere. Nobody is obliged to work for a company they find unacceptable.

This is correct. The most "obligation" that an employer might have is to pay the employee for the value of their work, and even that's dubious. (show me the source for your moral argument) They certainly have no obligation to match CoL.

If an employer doesn't pay their employees enough, those employees should leave, their employer will eventually die, and that'll add another data point to tell the shareholders to either elect CEOs that will pay more or to stop backing companies in high-CoL areas.

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

#270

Post by collegeburner » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 10:46 PM UTC

avgDev wrote: post #3

This is the way. We need more of this. I'm at a point where if a recruiter messages me "about an exciting opportunity" without any salary information, he/she will not get a response. While there are some jobs that maybe I would consider a pay cut for, I generally want to make more money because that allows me to invest more so I can be free one day.

No not necessarily. Let me go over some scenarios:

Bob contributes 1. I contribute 1.25. Units don't matter, I contribute 25% more.

It used to be maybe the salary band is $100k to $130k. Bob gets $100k. I get $125k. My employer gets a total value of 2.25 for $225k.

Now my employer has to disclose salaries and has 2 options:

1) Don't make out salaries the same, Bob quits, now the employer has only 1.25 when they need 2.25 and have to go re-hire ($50k or more in a lot of times).

2) Make our salaries the same, so now Bob also gets $125k and employer pays $250k for 2.25. This is what will happen in the short term and what attracts people, but in the long term what will happen is

3) Make our salaries the same but slow raises so gradually they go to the inflation indexed amount of about the average, so $112.5k more or less. Now employer still pays $225k for 2.25. But now I am subsidizing Bob the less productive worker for $12.5k every year.

A lot like unions, making things more uniform often comes at some expense to the top performers. I always sit near that top so I say no this is stupid and I hate it. I don't give a shit what Bob is paid and I give even less if it costs me money for him to get more.