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Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges

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

#271

Post by vbtemp »

xyzelement wrote: post #135
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #55

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…

> A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and benefits and apply for the best job. I am always surprised to see comments that make it sound like jobs (or, employees) are fungible commodities that can be bought and sold purely on price. One simple example - two jobs may have the same title (Senior Developer, or whatever) but have totally different expectations of communication skills, leadership skills,…

> I am always surprised to see comments that make it sound like jobs (or, employees) are fungible commodities that can be bought and sold purely on price.

This!!

- At every company and institution I've worked for, I've never really been in a situation where two people, even if they have the same job title, are line-replacable for one another (unless they are very junior). Everyone has extremely distinct skills, experiences, capabilities whose value is extremely contingent on the needs of the moment.

- Making rules to make things for fair or transparent has the opposite effect. A major institution I worked for came up with an impossible-to-game, no-human-in-the-loop formula for bias-free and discrimination-free compensation. The result? People with equal responsibilities ended up getting paid _vastly_ different amounts. Similarly, people with equal salaries had vastly different levels of responsibility. I don't think a uniform compensation scheme simply works, other than just negotiating 1-on-1 with staff until agreements are reached, and when it no longer works out they ask Mr. Market.

- A company not disclosing salary already gives you enough information. Unless they are a flagship megacorp with well known salary bands and staff levels, and they are not disclosing the salary, then you know it's not competitive salary.

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

#272

Post by lostcolony »

alex_young wrote: post #219

Although not exactly the same thing, California already requires employers to give pay scales for jobs when requested by an applicant and bars asking about their salary history: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Asking for pay scales is a problem though. Do it at the start of the interview and you're flying in the face of all interview advice (i.e., don't ask about pay during the initial phone screen; the companies smart enough to save their own time will mention it upfront, and the companies that want to negotiate you as low as possible by hiding information will take it as a red flag), and at the end I don't care what the range for the position is; I want to know what they're going to offer -me-.

I guess if at the end I felt especially lowballed, but at that point I don't really care what their scale is; it's too low for me to want to take it. I guess if I didn't have a job, felt like I had to take it, it provides some extra information at that point to try and negotiate with?

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

#273

Post by molsongolden »

Most of this act seems pretty similar to what already exists in CA where employers are required to provide a salary range to applicants who ask and employers aren't allowed to ask candidates for salary history.

The "salary range in job posting" is new but, as others have noted, ranges cam be broad and based on experience.

The recent "no CO" disclaimers feel like a short-term reaction to uncertainty and they'll probably be phased out as companies/recruiters/HR providers verify their processes and policies are compliant.

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

#274

Post by 908B64B197 »

aynyc wrote: post #240
908B64B197 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that even work? Do they actually check that the data is real?

How does what work? Asking for previous salary? I've been asked to provide W2s to prove my salary prior to the law. You can probably fake W2s but I just think that's too much work for 99.9% of job applicants.

> You can probably fake W2s but I just think that's too much work for 99.9% of job applicants.

That was my question too.

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

#275

Post by Der_Einzige »

nradov wrote: post #136
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #118

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…

That's not sane, it's crazy! As a buyer why would I trust a surveyor selected by the seller? I would rather pay inspector myself for an independent opinion. In the US this only costs a few hundred dollars for a typical house, which is a tiny fraction of the overall transaction price.

In the current US housing market, you're expected to waive bringing in a house inspector because if you don't, the seller will sell to someone who will (and they likely have 3 all cash offers besides you ready to go).

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

#276

Post by ska »

908B64B197 wrote: post #238
xyzelement wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and benefits and apply for the best job. I am always surprised to see comments that make it sound like jobs (or, employees) are fungible commodities that can be bought and sold purely on price. One simple example - two jobs may have the same title (Senior Developer, or whatever) but have totally different expectations of communication skills, leadership skills,…

> One simple example - two jobs may have the same title (Senior Developer, or whatever) but have totally different expectations of communication skills, leadership skills, ability to handle pressure, etc and would pay very differently. So you (and everyone else) would be tempted to apply for the top-paying job but potentially not be qualified. That's because software engineering suffers from tittle inflation (same wa…

You sort of point this out, but title inflation in itself isn't a problem. If everyone could agree that "senior staff developer" in 2021 is what everyone meant by "senior developer" in 2005, we'd be fine.

The real problem, as you point out, is there is no consistency. In reviewing resumes basically ignore titles from any company I'm not very familiar with, and rely on their description of what they have done.

As an aside, many engineers, especially less experienced ones, are terrible at this. As a piece of advice, think about what your resume says about your work if the titles are blacked out.

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

#277

Post by Der_Einzige »

compiler-guy wrote: post #210
cblconfederate wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit most often rests on the asymmetry of information, thats why monopolies are so profitable

Monopoly profits are based on dominant market power, not asymmetry of information.

You can only get dominant market power with an asymmetry of information (about how to produce whatever thing it is that gets you dominant market power). This is why we have IP laws...

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

#278

Post by PragmaticPulp »

mxcrossr wrote: post #241
jcomis wrote: post #114

As a Coloradan another thing that's happening is companies are listing their jobs as Remote, only advertising in CO, and just mentioning it's a CO only job verbally. They do the thing where they sit in the gray area due to pandemic "Oh, it's remote, FOR NOW, but it's a CO job" Or listing the job as Denver and a few other cities, but it's really just Denver/Boulder (Twitter currently doing this). Another pattern is li…

> Another pattern is listing the range as 40-250k so the disclosure is effectively nothing. This feels like a losing strategy as other employers will be posting tighter ranges which will get more applications. Especially if the lower bounds is too low. Hopefully this sorts itself out.

A higher upper limit encourages more applications because people see the company has room to grow.

A lower floor encourages more people to accept mid-range offers because nobody likes getting an offer in the middle of the range.

If someone gets an $80K offer for a job with a $40K-$250K range, they are happy to be paid twice as much as what they assume entry-level employees get, and they’re happy because they think they can grow into the $250K range if they work hard enough.

However if someone receives the same $80K offer on a listing with an $80K to $110K range, they’re going to be upset that they were given the lowest possible value and also concerned that there isn’t much room to grow.

In our case, we have a wide salary range because we hire everywhere from juniors without college degrees up through ex-FAANG employees. We don’t set out with an exact compensation or seniority in mind when we start recruiting.

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

#279

Post by awa »

pmorici wrote: post #167
wbl wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Home inspection was super useful for us when we bought our new built house, they found a major issue with the house which would have cost us thousands to fix later

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

#280

Post by mywittyname »

falcolas wrote: post #58
commandlinefan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> favorable to employees Is it really though? Complete transparency in salary ranges also means that every other employer can see exactly what their competition is offering. I can't help but worry that this will lead to a sort of "price fixing" that will actually drive wages _down_.

It worked for CEOs. Their salaries were disclosed due to a new law, and their salaries skyrocketed. Competition is good, not bad.

Can things that happen to CEOs be extrapolated and applied successfully to regular workers?

Companies already buy salary information from brokers. So they already know what the competition is paying and generally try to keep in line with that. And that's pretty much a type of collusion. If everyone seeks to pay "market rates" based on these salary reports, then everyone will aim to pay about the same amount.

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