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> $80-180k doesn't really tell anyone anything

Not meaningless at all. The company is at least saying they are willing to pay senior level salaries. I think the companies really pushing back are those who want 2-20 years experience with a range of $50-$80k. The other group of companies pushing back are those who let their current employees get too far out of the current range, and can only keep them happy through hoping they don't find out.

Both are signs of companies I want to avoid.

If I saw $80-180k on a job posting, I wouldn't think it was meaningless. I would think it means that they will pay $80k, maybe a bit more, but definitely nowhere near $180k.

Except now they have to actually give you some reason why it's not the top. Without the listing the common reason I would hear about my salary request was 'not budgeted'. Well if 180k is listed, not budgeted doesn't fly. They either need to explain why I didn't get the max in a way that makes sense, or I move on.

Is it perfect for employees? No, but it's much better than no information. Also, keep in mind they will not just throw some crazy high number on their either because then they have to explain it to existing employees.

Do they actually have to explain this? Is this part of the Colorado law? I can’t find anything about that.

Of course they don't have to, but it opens the door to make it easier for existing employees and candidates to ask.

So many people are uncomfortable talking about money, and companies push that it's taboo. This law does a tiny bit to push the information asymmetry back to the employee.

EDIT I've always been a pretty aggressive (not in a bad way) negotiator. So for me, asking why not the max would be question one and probing the answer would be the next set of questions. Maybe this wasn't obvious to those less apt to negotiate?

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.

> ...our Software Developer 1 pays $70-90k, Software Developer 2 pays $90-11k, etc. However- we haven't decided which level of software developer we're going to hire you for.

I have seen some companies do this in a sense. They will post their salary "grades" A1, A2, A3, B1, etc. But there isn't really any correlation to say a Software Developer 1 will be a grade A3 or B1 or whatever.

So why not just list the position for a software engineer, along with 3 different salary bands for 3 different experience levels? Or does that not comply with the law?

Because then somebody applies for the top band, the company says they're slotted in the bottom band, and they've effectively recreated the situation as it stands before Colorado's worthless regulation, since they now have some 80k - 200k range which is effectively useless information.

Doesn't this happen already? In fact, that's how I got my current job, I applied for tech lead and they gave me an offer for senior and I took it.

The difference being I know the salary ranges of the bands before I apply and talk to HR

The idea is they have 3 ranges for 3 experience levels for 1 position, not a 80-200k range

It absolutely happens today, except today people in Colorado can also apply for remote jobs. It's an example of government trying to regulate and failing to solve the problem while only creating new ones.

If you list three levels, you end up with [i] a lot more applications to sift through especially at the extreme end of the spectrum (which might be an advantage sometimes, but often isn't) and [ii] otherwise perfectly hire-able people applying to the wrong bracket or anchoring their expectations to the top end of a bracket they're actually not at the top end of. Worse still, your existing employees see top ends of ranges too.

You also create the impression of massive growth (or team turnover) when actually you only want the one engineer.

You only list one position, with 3 different bands, but ofc we know nobody is gonna read that part.

It doesn't really matter. Particularly if you are looking for (actually) senior people with specific experience, unless you are very careful with postings you will end up with an avalanche of inappropriate submissions. Either someone has to wade through them, or you use a terrible filter that everyone hates.

You’d only list 3 levels if you’re actually intending to hire 3 different people, each at 1 of those levels.

They can. The companies not wanting to do it just don’t want to give more information to the sellers (labor), especially their current labor who might be being paid less while the buyer (employer) profits from the arbitrage.

I don't think it's that massive, especially because you should be figuring out a salary range within the first 1 or 2 conversations with the company regardless. For software engineers anyway, not sure about other less-hot markets.

Yes, this law will disproportionately benefit sellers of labor with a worse supply/demand situation. Price transparency is always better for the party (buyer or seller) in the worse supply/demand situation.

So maybe it should be limited to certain industries, like low skilled laborers and not white collar office jobs

Why? Prices are the signal to market participants for allocating resources. It is the whole basis of free markets and why they work.

What would society gain by obfuscated pricing? Assuming the goal is to benefit all of society, and not certain individuals who happen to be able to take advantage of arbitrage scenarios.

It's expected/appreciated that applicants should put in the effort to tailor their resumes and cover letters for each job posting they apply. So why are companies taking the lazy route?

A single job posting shouldn't aim for all levels of devs. There should be separate postings for each level with specific requirements/expectations and a salary range to go with it.

Bigger companies do/should know how many devs they need for each level. Smaller companies would benefit from being more organized too.

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.

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.

I find it very difficult to believe that an employer that would be happy to fill a certain position at $80k would also be willing to fill that same position at $180k.

I am actively interviewing someone with 4 years and someone with 20 years of experience for the same role. Our needs are quite specific but it is not our first or last hire in that area; as long as someone can fill them we are willing to be flexible about to what extent this particular hire fills our overall need and will adjust accordingly down the line.

Given the stage of my company, our hiring plan, and the fact we hire remote across the US, we absolutely could have a role with a salary range of $80k or more.

Did you happen to see the part where I explained that a company could hire someone at a relatively junior, mid-level or senior opening- in an extremely competitive market for software developers? Like, let's say you're X Startup, you desperately need a Golang developer, not having another good Golang developer on your team is costing you Y amounts of money per month, and you just can't find one in your preferred experience range. Do you A) do nothing and just continue to lose money each month for lack of a good developer, or B) hire someone who knows Golang, regardless of whether they're more junior or more senior than you were hoping? Does that kinda make sense?

I understand that some companies might want to do this, but it’s explicitly not giving clear salary ranges for certain positions. It’s basically saying “we will pay you whatever, based on what we determine you are worth,” which is precisely the status quo that transparent salary advocates want to change.

I know this is a bit of a loaded term, and I'm trying to use this in a non-political/nonpartisan context here- but isn't paying people based on rigid salary bands a bit, uh, Communistic? Like yes the company should pay you, an individual, based on what they're worth- if someone has 3 years of experience but they're better than someone with 10 years, shouldn't they be paid more? I thought tech culture was about individualism.

You know who definitely has preset salary ranges for years of experience and isn't paying based on individual ability? The government & heavily unionized jobs. Seniority Trumps Everything there. I dunno, is that the world we want? I thought tech was philosophically opposed to that kind of mediocrity?