Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado
coloradoexcluded.com
coloradoexcluded.com
[1] https://www.colorado.edu/hr/colorados-equal-pay-equal-work-a...
Still, you have my vote!
Why? Isn't hiring from within a win for employer and employee? I don't speak HR. Training up on culture and product is a huge deal sometimes.
1. The candidate has an opportunity to show how interested and qualified they are (or if the person we had in mind doesn't want the job)
2. Other people we didn't think would be interested have the same opportunity to show they do.
3. No one ends up feeling slighted for having been passed over.
Hi everyone. I made this website a few months ago. If there are questions or suggestions, happy to answer them.
The website was covered in the wallstreet journal and a few other places: https://www.wsj.com/articles/many-companies-want-remote-work...
Definitely overkill for the website itself but I also built it as a learning opportunity so it's a react frontend with Tailwindcss, Golang + gRPC gateway, hosted on an EKS cluster and backed by serverless Postgres Aurora. I hope the stack holds up with eyes from HN :D
> As required by the Colorado Equal Pay Transparency Act, Accenture provides a reasonable range of minimum compensation for roles that may be hired in Colorado. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific office location. For the state of Colorado only, the range of starting pay for this role is {$215,000 - $324,999 } and information on benefits offered is here.
How are you generating this list? The first link I clicked on showed the exact opposite of excluding Colorado hiring due to the law. Are these listings compiled by searching for generic terms like “Colorado”? Is anyone verifying them?
> > As required by the Colorado Equal Pay Transparency Act, Accenture provides a reasonable range of minimum compensation for roles that may be hired in Colorado. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific office location. For the state of Colorado only, the range of starting pay for this role is {$215,000 - $324,999 } and information on benefits offered is here.
> How are you generating this list? The first link I clicked on showed the exact opposite of excluding Colorado hiring due to the law. Are these listings compiled by searching for generic terms like “Colorado”? Is anyone verifying them?
> How are companies and listings added? > Job listings are currently user submitted with a manual review process to verify that a job listing is excluding Colorado. Anyone can submit listings to /new and our team will frequently review the submitted listings to see if they should be listed on the rest of the website.
Very inspirational to see work from an old colleague at the top of HN. Hope you're doing well!
https://jobs.lever.co/rackspace/d18e6926-5c2d-49fc-8553-ba61...
>Position is available for remote work in the following states unless otherwise specified. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Hawaii is excluded as well. I wonder if it for legal or timezone/travel/covid reasons.
edit - looks like they have a fair amount of openings, and all the remote ones have CO excluded.
A few restaurants around me have started listing their starting pay, plus sign on bonuses, so they are finally feeling the heat.
I enjoy CS, don't get me wrong, but I also enjoy history.
People like being in tribes, and they like standing for something. They love signaling those affiliations.
If someone can get paid to join a tribe on a mission they identify with, if they get to say things like “We are accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable transport!” without the extraordinary stress of being an entrepreneur, why quash that?
Your work and your life are two quite separable things - when you're young it's easy to be entirely consumed by work, but you'll grow out of that hopefully (whether or not you have kids - you can also just start valuing yourself more). The more they are intertwined the more you're putting yourself at risk of a serious sudden life shock.
I think being a founder is a bit easier life-shock wise - things can definitely go horribly wrong (they usually do in fact!) but you get a lot of warning and you should see the end coming before it slaps you in the face. If your company graduates to being a full corporation with a board and such - I think that's the time when you should regroup and step back a bit - since you are now a disposable employee.
I've noticed that at local fast food places here in the SF Bay Area for a few years.
This isn't true outside of FAANG.
I've seen past employers hire 20 unqualified people to fill the role of 2-3 qualified people who left. Often paying more in aggregate, but getting a "better deal" on each employee. Heck, the manager now gets promoted to Sr. Director for having so many people under them.
"It's to a company's benefit to miss twenty qualified applicants than to hire a single unqualified one." This one is true, but not universally. The assumption baked in is: Interviewing more candidates is less expensive than hiring an unfit candidate and then letting them go. That's usually true, which is why this piece of advice is brought up so frequently.
"It's to a company's benefit to miss twenty qualified applicants than to reveal their salary range during negotiation to a single one." The assumption baked in is: You "the company" will save money by never revealing salary info; by revealing salary range you're giving up dollars you could have negotiated for with the candidate. The money spent interviewing candidates who you can never hire is less than the money you'll save through the lower salaries you can negotiate for because you don't reveal pay info. This is also mostly true, since you can save so much over time through negotiating a lower salary.
"It's to a company's benefit to lose twenty qualified employees than to promote anyone from within." The baked in assumption is: Promoting from within is more expensive or yields worse results than hiring externally. In general, this is usually not true to a point. I'm not saying hiring a factory line worker to be the new CEO is a good "hire from within" practice. Hiring from within when there are jobs based around similar skill sets but variations in focus area/responsibility level is probably a good idea. After all, why spend a lot of money looking outside for someone who is good at X when you already know a load of people who are good at W or Y, which are very close to X. It's the same reason that referral programs are such good ways of finding candidates: it acts as a fantastic filter. The reason it's often not done is largely because skill gaps (or perceived skill gaps) are too big for a role change.
Edit: someone else pointed out that Accenture does this in one of their listings:
"For the state of Colorado only, the range of starting pay for this role is $58,700 - $94,1999" https://www.accenture.com/us-en/careers/jobdetails?id=964186...
Here we see there's even a benefit: Accenture will save time interviewing people who don't want to work for these horrible low wages.
It may lead to increased cost (paying higher salaries) if the market is not competitive and companies are leveraging the obscurity. But it may decrease cost if things are over valued.
The question is, is the labor market over or under valued? If it's over-valued then disclosing may actually cause salaries to equilibrate/come down -- which would be to the company's advantage. Does it imply that companies think the market is over-valued and aren't wanting to increase competition (both internally amongst current employees and externally with new hires)?
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-wage-range-disclosu...
>California law requires employers to provide job applicants with the salary or hourly wage ranges for positions upon the applicant’s reasonable request, provided the applicant has completed an initial interview with the employer.
California’s is “on applicant request” not “in advertisements”. Though the California Equal Pay Act has had annual amendments for the last several years so I wouldn't be surprised to see it picking up a Colorado-style disclosure rule soon.
"(2) AN EMPLOYER SHALL DISCLOSE IN EACH POSTING FOR EACH JOB OPENING THE HOURLY OR SALARY COMPENSATION, OR A RANGE OF THE HOURLY OR SALARY COMPENSATION, AND A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF ALL OF THE BENEFITS AND OTHER COMPENSATION TO BE OFFERED TO THE HIRED APPLICANT. "
Nowhere in the document do they define the term "range".
If an employer wants to discriminate, couldn't they just give a wide range?
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/2019a_085_signe...
"As required by the Colorado Equal Pay Transparency Act, Accenture provides a reasonable range of minimum compensation for roles that may be hired in Colorado. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific office location. For the state of Colorado only, the range of starting pay for this role is $62,100 - $122,799 and information on benefits offered is here."
Deleted that one quickly.
Ask HN: Are the salary ranges on Colorado job postings low? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27786282 - July 2021 (5 comments)
Colorado Requires Disclosure of Compensation and Benefits with All Job Postings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27732958 - July 2021 (6 comments)
Companies are avoiding hiring in Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576885 - June 2021 (2 comments)
Many companies want remote workers, except from Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569407 - June 2021 (99 comments)
Many Companies Want Remote Workers – Except from Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27546384 - June 2021 (3 comments)
Many Companies Want Remote Workers–Except from Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27539698 - June 2021 (4 comments)
Why Corporations Won’t Hire Remote Workers in Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27338931 - May 2021 (63 comments)
Why Corporations Won’t Hire Remote Workers in Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27295019 - May 2021 (4 comments)
Show HN: Colorado Excluded – Find companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27265447 - May 2021 (3 comments)
Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing salary ranges - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27233073 - May 2021 (394 comments)
I'm sorry if that comes at some personal cost to you, but there are very [ EDIT: few ] social changes that don't cost someone something.
Put it another way - the positions that this law are impacting around positions that lack a competitive market for people. This isn't affecting people who want to know if McDonald's or Taco Bell pays more. It's affecting people who are looking for high paying software development and management roles.
There is a constant pattern of the last decade of different institutions running special bills in Colorado before rolling it out on the west cost. This is just another example.
This bill might have made sense when everyone is going into offices. It makes no sense now.
https://www.businessinsider.com/pay-transparency-salary-rang...
> That's all about to change. A growing number of states are enacting measures known as "pay transparency," which force companies to disclose their compensation levels. New laws set to take effect in Connecticut and Nevada next month, and in Rhode Island in 2023, require employers to provide applicants the salary range they pay for each position at some point in the hiring process. Four other states and two cities have enacted similar mandates, some of which also require employers to disclose their pay scales to existing employees.
I think what really sticks in my craw about that statement is that it’s a bold-faced lie. If a company were to say “we are unwilling to share how much we’re willing to pay because we’d prefer to underpay every person possible “ I’d respect it more than “this remote job is impossible to perform because of, uhhhh, geography”
I was told this when I was considering moving to another state (in the US), and asked my employer. I was told no based on that they did not have nexus in that state, and it would be a hassle for them to do so. What I learned from that is that remote doesn't necessarily mean work / live anywhere, even if moving within the same country.
It is a true statement that there’s an extant possibility that some businesses are incapable of operating in the state of Colorado for reasons that have nothing to do with artificially depressing wages.
My comment about not wanting to work for or with these companies is due to them nakedly advertising that they’re valuing the artificial depression of wages. While it’s a neat thought that there maybe exists a universe where it’s a coincidence that “anywhere in the country but Colorado” became a common phrase in job postings, I’m not really sure why entertaining that fantasy is useful.
To clarify, I’m directly addressing clearly worker-hostile behavior that I can see happening plainly, not a theoretical that could be happening at a business inside of a thought experiment.
I doubt these businesses will suffer without my being employed with them so I don’t really care.
It would also be great if this current law forced companies to disclose accurate ranges (e.g. ±1σ from the median pay for a given title). Otherwise, they can specify arbitrarily huge ranges and make the whole thing meaningless.
Similar to military if you know someone's pay and years. You know their minimum. But they might get additional amount for other reasons.
I think a good starting place is say position x pays between 35k and 40k for 1 to 5 years in position.
Its removes a little burden on jealously of knowing exact amounts. And the range must be small enough to be reasonable. It can't just be between 30k and 300k. Or as GP said. Give a +- from median.
I know its be easier for some to say they make higher end of their range or above max than it is to share specific dollar amount.
Because value production is an exact function of job title and seniority?
Many companies have multiple levels for a given job title. Everywhere I've worked in software has had 'levels' with a finite range, and as you reach the upper bound of the range, you move to the next 'level'. There is some overlap in the level's ranges. Also as I originally stated, this is the 'minimum' for simply a starting talking point, it will still allow some to be hidden/obscured. There is always 'additional bonuses/awards' on per project basis. e.g. Project ___ grants an additional $$$ either 1 time bonus on start, on complete, or recurring.
If someone's value production is greater, than they should be promoted to the next 'level' which comes with increased compensation.
How is open salary information the same as paying everyone $1M/year?
Obviously it would be impractical to list all the possible geo-based salary bands on a JD. Is the intent to "shame" such a company into picking a single salary range that doesn't take geo location into account?
I feel as though that would either lead to (1) everyone being paid Silicon Valley wages (which has a number of consequences of its own, both good and bad) or (2) companies which can only afford to do so for certain positions, losing out on otherwise qualified candidates who happen to live in a higher COL area.
I know there's an argument that if the company can't pay competitive wages, then they shouldn't be in business. But it feels like in case (1), candidates who live in high-COL areas are actually getting penalized. Some of them could move to lower-COL areas and get the net benefit, but others may not be able to move.
I don't know the answer here, but I'm curious to see how others in the industry are thinking about the situation.
California, Oregon, Washington state, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York would be ideal next states to push this legislation. Texas and Florida would, of course, not be likely to pass such legislation although they each have large populations that would benefit from such pro labor statute. Turn the ratchet.
To me, it's troubling: It implies a fundamental claim that a large corporation should overrule the people of the state, force or extort the people into doing what the corporation wants. I wish the people would react appropriately to this challenge to democracy. Also, often the threat is a bluff. Finally, it also seems to me that people used to be a lot more skeptical about power, especially corporate power.
Engaging in the philosophical question: You don't have power (unless you do); Amazon does.
Amazon is large enough to have substantial economic power in my community and country. For example, if Amazon threatens to pull their warehouse from my community, costing 100s (1,000s?) of jobs, that's a material threat. Also, Amazon provides services that are perceived as not easily replaceable. If J's Tobacco & Beer threatens, it will get a laugh at best, but more likely an awkward silence.
It probably took a year+ to pass this law, and took companies all of 1 month to figure out easy workarounds like huge ranges or avoiding hiring.
GPDR was first proposed in 2012. It was adopted in 2016 with a 2 year gap to become valid in 2018. Then every website threw up an "Accept Cookies" popup in a week...
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-085
This is about more than just salary/wage transparency.
"Companies are excluding Colorado from their remote employment opportunities in order to avoid sharing the salary range of their open positions.
In May of 2019 SB19-085, titled the Equal Pay For Equal Work Act, was signed into law in Colorado. It's a fairly short read if you're not familiar with it, but its main goal is enabling pay transparency to allow for people to know if they're being discriminated against with their wages and file a complaint with the CDLE.
The law went into effect January 1st, 2021.
The most visible part of the law has been the requirement for all job listings open to a CO resident to contain a salary range. If you've seen an increase in salary ranges on job postings recently you have this law to thank.
Some companies however have decided that excluding all Colorado residents for a remote job that can be filled by someone in any of the other 49 US states is better than sharing how much they're willing to pay..."
This law is absolutely a great step forward, but I've seen plenty of roles listing pay ranges like "Minimum - $30,200/annual Maximum - $289,200/annual," so I struggle to believe that the actual information disclosure is the issue at hand.
While I like the idea of forcing these companies to list salary on job posts I'm not sure I agree with the reason the bill was put in place.
If I were a company I'd avoid CO as well. Plenty of other places to pick up employees.
Why would they not be equally open to that risk right now? I am not seeing any special connection between publicly listing a pay range and an applicant's gender.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-085
Here's the bill's summary:
>Wage discrimination based on sex - complaints - civil action - exceptions to prohibitions against wage differentials - prohibited acts of employer - employment announcements required - enforcement - rules. The act removes the authority of the director of the division of labor standards and statistics in the department of labor and employment (director) to enforce wage discrimination complaints based on an employee's sex and instead authorizes the director to create and administer a process to accept and mediate complaints of, and provide legal resources concerning, alleged violations and to promulgate rules for this purpose. An aggrieved person may bring a civil action in district court to pursue remedies specified in the act.
https://www.colorado.edu/hr/colorados-equal-pay-equal-work-a...
Because if it's a theoretical minimum, I don't care about it; I want to know what the maximum is. If it's an actual minimum, I also don't care about it, but the person earning that might.
If a company offers $50k as a minimum for a role that most people earn $200k for, then they probably will not get many good people responding to it since who would want to work for a company that could lowball you by $150k? And another company can see that and up their minimum to take advantage.
It just helps weed the garbage employers out quickly. Perhaps it will not be as useful in a situation where employers have all the negotiating power where they can list $1, but at least now there is some time saved.
This is basically just letting employees do a similar first pass of employers that employers are doing on us - if your salary range is bonkers and your senior dev has a low range of 30k then I'm not working there - I don't care if you offer me 150k, you clearly have something toxic going on with your culture so into the bin you go.
> Companies are excluding Colorado from their remote employment opportunities in order to avoid sharing the salary range of their open positions.
That being said, this will only equalize if job seekers from most or all states can get their state to pass similar laws. If that happens, then companies will have no choice but to list out their ranges.
I don’t see any value in mandating it.
Can you explain why you feel that way? It just seems like something similar to price transparency to me.
This law vaguely benefits workers who are nowhere near the poverty line. Just let the employee and employer figure out wages!
Unless I'm misunderstanding it, Colorado's new law applies to salaried jobs in all income brackets. For someone who's poor and desperately job hunting, knowing whether a job's salary range is 20k-30k versus 25k-35k before having to go through a gauntlet of interviews sounds like it could make a big difference.
But to be clear, you're just saying one of those is OK for the government to do and the other isn't. That's not an argument. Do you have some rationale behind that, like a philosophy or a reference to some constitutional clause? Or is that just how you feel?
How can anyone come between me and another adult trying to exchange services and money like this? It’s kind of insane if you think about it through that lens.
(If you don't think those sorts of things need solutions, then I expect we're not going to find any common ground, though.)
> It’s kind of insane if you think about it through that lens.
No, it's not. If that's the case, then you also have to believe that any kind of regulated commerce is insane, and I don't think that's a reasonable position to take.
Minimum wage basically states "A human's time is worth at least this"
So basically, you as a tax payer, as subsidizing someone's business so they can have cheap labour.
It's kind of insane if you think about it through that lens. Social benefits exist to help those who fall on hard times, not to give shitty companies cheap workers.
The worker needs to work to make money to buy food and shelter. Without a minimum wage, unskilled labor reaches a race to the bottom on wages. It's exploitative to allow an employer to pay $1/hr because no matter how low you go, you'll find someone willing to accept less because they're that desperate to survive.
If you wanna pay your neighbor's kid $15 for 3 hours of lawn mowing, you still can. Unmediated transactions of a certain scale don't require any government oversight, it's only when you start breaking out taxable income that it become a problem.
Can you, though, legally? Or is it just unlikely that you'd get in trouble for it?
This also raises the question of why it's even ok to do this. Isn't this is why labor laws exist? I imagine if you called up a local landscaping company and asked them to come do 3 hours of lawn mowing, they'd charge you something on the order of $300. I think it's pretty safe to say that they're not doing 20x the work your neighbor's kid would do, or would do it 20x better. Even if you were to find an adult handyman on Craigslist or whatever, I expect you're not paying less than $15/hr for that, and often will be paying quite a bit more.
So for some reason it's socially acceptable to pay kids a pittance because they have no leverage or negotiating power, and because they're "learning responsibility" (sounds like "we should be able to use your professional photographs for free because it gives you exposure" or "this unpaid internship will give you valuable experience!"), and well... they're just kids, so who cares? It's kinda gross when I think about it.
When I was in high school (14-17 years old), I was a referee for my local youth soccer club. I took the same training (with annual refreshers) the adults took, worked alongside them, and got paid the same amount for the same work. The pay varied by the age level of players (older kids play longer games and the expectations for referee rigor are higher), but for most games ended up being around $25-30/hr, which was pretty good for a part-time weekend job in the mid/late 90s.
What is this scale? As far as I know you only get away with this because no one knows or cares to enforce the law in that case. But police have been known to shut down kids lemonade stands for not having all the right permits, so I don't believe this is actually true in the law.
I would be happy if this was the case: I used to hire people all the time to do odd jobs for me, but I feel like it's too costly and too legally risky to actually be worth it for me, so I just don't do it anymore. And the people I used to hire aren't exactly relieved.
The fact that it isn't enforced doesn't make it not-illegal.
That's illegal just unlikely to be enforced.
At that end of the market the pay rates are generally pretty transparent anyway, because there's no negotiation and no "10x dishwasher" that the company worries about deterring if they disclose what the existing staff earn.
One company can go pretty long without hiring a given position.
One person cannot go very long without taking a job.
It is a detriment to the worker to not have good salary information, and the cards are clearly stacked in the employers' favor. Thus, government action.
I also think it's useful for consumers to know how many calories are in their food.
And for small restaurants, the overhead of computing calories is actually onerous. They are exempt.
With wages, the bar is that you must pay the minimum. Anything more I think is onerous and not the role of government to get involved in, and should not be applied.
Companies are the ones gaining from the market failure. Why would they want to empower employees to better know their worth? Obviously companies don't want to support legislation that hurts their bottom line, even if it makes markets more efficient.
The bottom income/wealth deciles should definitely welcome price transparency, unless they are "temporarily" embarrassed members of the upper income/wealth deciles.
Efficient markets assume an infinite amount of indistinguishable goods sold by an infinite amount of producers with only marginal costs. This theory is useful because in many situations (e.g. commodities markets) this is a reasonable approximation. That is very different from how labor markets work, even in theory. Labor is not a commodity, there are heavy fixed costs (the costs of skill acquisition), and search costs dominate labor markets.
It is the whole reason why top down control and fascism or communism or Stalinism or Maoism are not ideal, because there is no better signal of supply and demand curves than prices.
The way prices move, over a sufficiently large dataset, indicate the way supply and demand curves are moving, and where the ball is moving so you can get to where the ball will be.
It is not perfect, of course, but it is better than the alternative (which is?).
Indeed, worrying about the efficiency of labor markets is a mug's game. We should be worrying about creating productive ecosystems and acquiring skills, and leave the labor market to be inefficient.
Here is a real world example I know from someone suffering due to their lack of interest in real world prices. Pay for most pharmacists has been flat since 2011, and declining since 2016. This is known from pharmacist sharing their pirate offers on pharmacy forums.
However, 22 year olds entering pharmacy school were not paying attention to this information, and instead were relying on the BLS's predictions that pharmacy demand would go up 10% and the schools' marketing showing that even though they will spend $200k on tuition, they will come out with amazing pay.
Now, if you read the forums, they are full of pharmacists regretting going into pharmacy, being crushed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, and not doing their jobs properly of double checking prescription medications in order to ensure they still have a job because they have that student loan debt gun to their head.
So due to lack of pay transparency, there are tens of millions of Americans going to CVS and Walgreens getting medications from overworked pharmacists who themselves admit cannot properly vet the prescriptions to the degree they should. In the meantime, the schools that inflated tuition and class sizes got to benefit and taxpayers are left holding the bag by subsidizing these student loans.
Norway has had public tax returns for a long time.
We’re all doing the same job, and I have no idea how the argument for geographic based pay holds water.
In a broader sense, this is one thing that can literally save the middle class. You can live anywhere, get the same pay rate, and actually buy that house in an affordable place instead of fighting for your life for your whole life.
"Companies that pay less than market rates"
I looked into LinkedIn's listings for Denver, Colorado [1]
Not all the companies that listed there were compliant with the Colorado Law, these are big companies and not just small startups that may not have the bandwith to keep up with various state laws.
The ones that do list the salary ranges, its insightful to compare those to where you reside, and make a judgement call about wether the salary matches up with the cost-of-living.
These can be combined with levels.fyi and other similar sites out there.
Thank you legislators in Colorado!
[1]https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Staff%2BEngine...
List the position in Colorado first, then we’ll negotiate.
And in case any of this sounds too reactionary I would look to the fact that some Govt. jobs/contractors are required to list pay bands for every position. example(see salary band): https://www.northropgrumman.com/jobs/San-Antonio-----TX/Engi...
You know right away if the pay matches what you are expecting, no crazy song and dance from a recruiter wasting your time.
Salary Range: 70582 - 105792 Salary Range 2: 87400 - 131100
This is "knowing right away"??? You could make 70K or nearly 2x 70K, how helpful that is to know? This is the shotgun approach to recruiting. The band is so wide, they want to pull in as much interest as possible while making offers near the 70k range as much as possible. It doesn't matter about your "disadvantaged background" the HR team works for the company and wants to give you(everyone) the lowest offer you'll take. If you have any type of advantage, you'll have negotiating power to get higher than 70K. I see this as having all the normal issues, except for those looking for higher than 130K. You get enough info to keep moving on without wasting your time if you're after >130K.