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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

#391

Post by noduerme »

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…

The bedrock truth behind this is that companies, even 20 years ago, were far more concerned about both retaining dedicated employees and maintaining customer satisfaction. Has anyone had to try to contact Paypal about a pending payment in the past few years? What about getting a human with authority over minimum wage on the phone at an insurance company?

What has taken place is that the mass of people who were "consumers" have become "users", and are replaceable and disposable; while the employees have been downgraded to associates.

It's not just the feeling of outrage you get when you're trying to establish, with a person, where $1000 someone sent you disappeared to for a month. It's the anti-human system underpinning the idea that we should build an algorithm to keep people on hold longer, the more pissed off they sound about an unwarranted charge.

There are a lot of points at which business logic taken to its fullest fruition turns out not to be good business. We tend to hope the market will rebel against the excesses of companies that treat users as interchangeable parts. But the reality is we (coders) are contributing to the de-humanization of the majority of humanity, in many of these small interactions and small-change money collecting circumstances. That's our job. But at some point we should be able to see the circle closing around us; we're exempt because we can hack our way through the thicket of junk it takes to get our identity back if it's stolen, a new job if our startup shuts down; we are constantly re-inventing ourselves and innovating.

But we are not our users. We wouldn't even want our users to be us.

The point as I take it, of this, is that screwing your employees is treating them as users; and treating users the way we have, for a long time, is also self-defeating and bad for society.

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

#392

Post by evgen »

borvo wrote: post #186
gambiting wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>With housing (in UK) there is no competition on quality because the seller doesn't have to disclose any problems with the house. If it falls of a cliff the minute you sign on the dotted line, it's your problem. I'm in the UK and that's absolutely not true. If you think the owner knew about the problem and purposefully omitted telling you, then you definitely have a court case and any law firm worth their salt will…

I’m looking at 5 houses and want to pick the best one. Of course I need to see the surveys now. Tell me which bank is this that will pay for the 5 surveys?

You make the offer contingent upon the inspection and have the inspection performed prior to signing. The purpose of inspection is not the find 'the best one' but to determine if there are any major problems that should shift the sale price for the house you have already selected.

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

#394

Post by ummonk »

ahelwer wrote: post #368
ummonk wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you arguing happened instead? That they closed still-profitable stores just to send a message?

Absolutely. Corporations do things like this all the time. Amazon orders a crash-halt to office building construction projects whenever Seattle threatens to tax them, for example. As I said in my original comment - corporations can afford to play the long game and take the hit.

Why would they close profitable stores instead of unprofitable stores?

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

#395

Post by dragonsngoblins »

hash872 wrote: post #116

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…

Couldn't they just advertise multiple positions with different ranges? I don't really see the issue with them having to do that if it is just a matter of tweaking how many years of experience they list as required on each one along with the salary band for that level of experience.

I'd also be ok with a minimum rather than a band, which means that they wouldn't be scaring away a best of the best type candidate by setting the ceiling too low.

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

#396

Post by Mauricebranagh »

inter_netuser wrote: post #384
Mauricebranagh wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? When I worked at BT they did - a nice one or two year posting abroad on full ride expat status looks good on the CV.

BT has operations in Thailand?

All over the world, this was in Kuala Lumpur I did some rereading up on the country and decided to pass, I would have had to cut my hair short for one.

One of my co-workers did this but his asthma could not stand the humidity and he had to come back.

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

#397

Post by dagw »

maccard wrote: post #264
nradov wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in Scotland, and the process here is the seller has to undertake a survey with someone who is accredited. In practice this means that the same 3-4 firms end up doing most of the surveys. It's not just some ranodmer saying "yeah, looks good mate". > In the US this only costs a few hundred dollars for a typical house, which is a tiny fraction of the overall transaction price. You know what's even better than _on…

The seller paying it once.

It's the same in Sweden, that the seller does and pays for a survey. Still common for the buyer to request to be allowed to get a second independent survey done. Of course the seller can refuse to allow a second survey, but that in itself is quite telling.

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

#398

Post by Wistar »

computator wrote: post #387
Wistar wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit tangential: Back in the early 90s — on a recommendation from a realtor who was a close friend of my brother's — I hired an inspector who was close to retirement. He worked with his wife who served as his assistant tasked with, in essence, taking dictation of her husband's near constant commentary as he conducted an incredibly thorough inspection. Every outlet tested for proper ground, every nook and cranny look…

> very fast sale of the house which we did without a realtor How did you find a buyer without a realtor? Are you able get into the listing databases without using a realtor? Any special tips for selling without a realtor?

Sorry, I missed this comment. Actually, I have sold two homes without a realtor. Both times were flukes more than anything I really planned.

The first time I mentioned to a co-worker that I was thinking about selling my (first) house. He said that he thought he could be interested. He came and saw the house and agreed on the spot to buy it. That was that. We established the price by asking the realtor who had sold us the house what the price should be and then reducing the price by an amount that was 50% of what the standard sales commission would have been. In essence, we split what would have been the commission with the buyer.

We also split the cost for a real-estate attorney — a few hundred dollars, total — and got it done in just a few days.

The second time was a little more planned. I carefully photographed the house and painstakingly built a website for it with tons of description. Whether or not we hired a realtor, I thought a website would help us sell. This was early 2001, a web presence for a house for sale was still fairly rare.

We contacted the same realtor who had sold us our first home and asked her for a market value for the house. I offered to pay her a fee for her expertise and she declined saying that she knew we'd end up hiring her anyway, and that, "You may have sold your first house on your own but you'll never be able to do it twice."

A few days after the website had gone up, I decided to put a small "for sale" sign in the yard and, no joke, as I was pounding the sign into the ground, a passing car stopped and, longer story short, within a few hours she and her husband agreed to buy the house. The husband was a building contractor and he was especially impressed by the aforementioned inspection report.

As we had done with our first house, we set the price at market minus half the commission so it was well-priced.

We hired the same real-estate attorney who put the sale together. It was super easy and done around the buyer's kitchen table in a single two-hour meeting, followed a few days later by an official closing at an escrow company.

Now that the market in our area is smoking red hot, I am pretty sure we could sell our present home on our own too. We might miss out on bidding war wins but, I think, in the end, we'd come out okay.

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

#400

Post by insert_coin »

PowerBar wrote: post #390
insert_coin wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they don't and yet you still have a job (I hope). And the reason is because when you are looking for a job other things are more important than knowing the salary even before you apply or they seriously consider you. Everyone does whatever they can get away with, and the moment we accept that everything becomes clear. They are all trying to benefit themselves, just as you are by trying to learn some information b…

Salary is the single most important thing to know about a position. If a job doesn't pay enough to cover my mortgage, I couldn't care less about the commute, the inclusive culture or how great their lunchroom is or even whether I'm qualified. It's a non-starter before I even read the description. Having to write a cover letter, customize a resume and sit through multiple interviews just to find out if I can literally…

> Salary is the single most important thing to know about a position.

That's like, your opinion. Millions of people go on job interviews everyday without first knowing the salary offered and in fact in most meetings the salary is the last thing discussed.

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