Bill to require job postings to include salaries passes Washington Senate
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I don't understand how you can have a labor market where only one side has information on what the salaries are for an industry through a team that does market research. It depresses wages, mostly for internal employees who aren't paying attention bc they're content with their jobs.
Price transparency leads to more efficient markets, no reason the labor market is any different. A company hiring an employee under market rate, because the employee doesn't know what market rate is, is a failure.
EDIT: Wanted to add that this hits closer to home for me b/c I've personally experienced this.
Went out and jumped companies and got a 300% raise b/c I was underpaid at the prev, only know that thanks to levels.fyi. New hires at my level were making almost double what I was.
When other engineers at my current company talk about salary, or total comp more generally, they vastly underestimate the state of the market.
It is just wild to me that this is where society landed. Imagine you are a business owner. Wouldn't employees who are loyal and happy to come to work be the exact people you want to keep long term? These are people who know your industry, your business, your customers, and your product. They are your institutional knowledge. They are drastically more valuable than a new hire who has to spend years learning this all. But instead of rewarding that loyalty, we use it to squeeze out an extra few dollars of profit regardless of the consequences. It is bizarre.
I think it is simply short term profit maximalization. Why give an employee a dollar more than you have to give them? Whether giving them an extra dollar now might generate an extra two dollars down the road is rarely even considered.
You do, but you can achieve this by one of 2 ways: frequently adjusting salaries to match market rates, or rely on momentum, and hide information from them by strongly discouraging salary discussions among employees[1]. The latter approach results in more profits.
1. but sharing this information with fellow employers behind paywalls, like the work number.
My colleague was an immigrant who had moved up the ranks from a call center agent to a senior technical role.
I found out when fixing a technical problem that she made $25k, while I made $65k. Basically, they gave her a 25% raise from a call center supervisor to be a Unix SA, and in lieu of raises “gave” her comp time for 24x7 on-call.
> Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the evolution of pay practices within organizations. To address this void, we assemble a dataset combining detailed performance, demographic and salary data for approximately 100,000 US academics between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to wage transparency to explore how this change reshapes pay practices. We find evidence that pay transparency causes significant increases in both the equity and equality of pay, and significant and sizeable reductions in the link between pay and individually measured performance.
If this is true, why aren't large employers already publishing salary data? i.e. why do they have to be forced to do it by law?
I spent most of my career as a public employee, most years salary are searchable on the internet. It’s nice because it eliminates a lot of drama about salary, who has what formal title, etc.
When I was in sales, the smart salespeople were following their peer/competitors performance. The notion that “professionals” are above such things as compensation is just stupid.
Understanding job markets requires leg work and is definitely part of the competitive advantage of many businesses.
Also with all the talk of racism and sexism in the work place , especially by the Big Tech companies, they should have done this long ago.
Well they would have if they had truly cared about minorities versus creating a bigger labor pool to drop pay rates or create faux PR for their companies and industries.
Data could be sorted by years of experience, education levels, race, gender and so on.
As a hiring manager, I see that this is actually not so simple. You give someone a range, say $100-150k. I ASSURE you that they are thinking they are closer to 150k than 100. So good luck giving an offer for $100k, even though that might be what that particular candidate is worth to you.
It's never gonna happen, but what i'd rather see is an option to instead give current median total comp on the team i'm interviewing for, plus maybe the 25-75 percentile range. That gives me a sense of what I should expect, plus what the salary growth path might be.
If they are the same role and the difference really is 50k based on interviews and negotiations alone I am of course going to shoot for the full 50k.
Also, it is hard to come up with "particular requirements" that makes someone worth that extra $50k. Sometimes it comes down to a risk/reward calculation you have to do on the spot.
Hiring sucks and as much as I'd love to have some great A + B = $100k, A + B + C = $150k formula, there's just too many factors, especially in a small business.
I feel like a lot of companies already do this: interview candidates, then grade them at a specific level based on their performance.
It sounds like you need to figure out what X is worth to you.
i think that’s the point. X takes an engineer who’s worth $100k. if an engineer worth more than that comes along, you want to let them do X for $100k, but since they’ll get it done easier/faster either you’re only letting them work part time (silly restriction to force on them), or you let them help out around the org in general for extra money. hence, you advertise the role as $100k (for doing X) - $150k (a rough judgment of how much extra capacity the company could easily absorb from a candidate that tackles X quickly).
that seems… pretty reasonable to me.
> The General Schedule (GS) payscale is the federal government payscale used to determine the salaries of over 70% of federal civilian employees. An employee's base pay depends on two factors - the GS Paygrade of their job, and the Paygrade Step they have achieved (depending on seniority or performance).
— https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2022
The job's pay grade range (from step 1 lowest to step 10 highest) is what would be published to comply with Washington's laws. What's missing in the private sector is, at most employers, any communication whatsoever on which 'step' one is at; while HR often has this data, it is almost universally withheld except upon request, and often gated behind an HR conversation and verbal-only replies.
The fact is, if X can be done by a $100k candidate, and you're hiring a $150k candidate, you probably expect more than X of them, and those extra expectations need to be communicated.
Because the world isn't black and white. There could be soooo many different reasons why you're willing to pay one person a lot more than someone else to do a job.
Interestingly, the architects of these laws would agree with this point.
Forcing them to be upfront about the requirements for more money results in candidates better aligned with the requirements I would think. And leaving that to some negotiation without those requirements seems like it just opens the door for bias. I want to hire engineers and keep them based on their qualifications, and negotiating abilities is usually not one of them.
The fact is, if there are reasons you're paying one candidate more than another, those reasons don't need to be secrets.
Surely if they are worth 50% more, you can give them a better title to go along with it.
It's not hard to post 2 positions, and it prevents issues like many people have been bringing up with candidates having the wrong expectations.
And I'll reiterate: $50k is a lot to pay for a "nice to have".
I'd say you need to really think about whether you need Y and Z. If you don't, just post a "$100k for X" position. If you do, post a "$150k for X, Y, and Z" position". If you must, post both--at least that's honest. But it would be better to come to a firmer conclusion about what you need before hiring.
This comes across as whining that you won't enjoy the same unfair advantage in negotiation as you previously enjoyed. Interviewees are almost universally expected to give a single number (not a range), sometimes in the application process, even before the interview. If I can put a single number on what I'm looking to be paid with incomplete information about the position, you can put a single number on what you're willing to pay with incomplete information about the candidate.
Also, a range as broad as $100-150k tells me that you either don't know what candidate you're looking for, or you're trying to snag a $150k candidate and only pay them $100k. There's no way I'd apply for that job as anything other than the lower end of that range.
A healthy business relationship starts from understanding that both interviewer and interviewee should have the same goal, trying to match an appropriate candidate with appropriate work and appropriate pay.
To be fair, that's not true. One person interviewing can say what number will make them happy to consider a move.
The company though, is open (usually) to all kinds of people who might fill the role. These people may range from a recent graduate to someone with tons of experience. Just depends who shows up and how good of a match they are. Open positions are hardly ever so statically fixed, there's always room to make the scope (and pay) smaller or larger, depending who shows up.
Software roles are fairly open-ended on what the person will ultimately end up doing, so it'll depend on their experience and interests. It's not like hiring someone for a widget factory where I know in advance they'll be stamping widgets 8 hours a day. In such cases, the pay can be predicted easily.
I think a better description of the situation is "prompted" or "demanded", not "expected". As many interviewing advice sites will happily point out, providing any salary information prior to an offer is not usually a hard requirement (though employers like to make it seem like it is).
We definitely wouldn’t hire an unqualified person as staff and just pay them less.
Or an overqualified person as senior and pay them way more. That just doesn’t make sense.
Companies also routinely have permanently open positions without exact numbers of positions.
I started just deciding what the pay for the position would be in advance and posting it. I don't negotiate, if that comes up I say we give very aggressive raises and promotions to people who exceed expectations (which is true) but I understand if that's not something you can rely on. As an exercise in transparency we're posting the actual exact starting salary and this is what it is.
Feedback has been across the board positive. Presumably some people look at the pay and feel like it's slightly too low and we don't get them. That's fine, it's a reasonable tradeoff for eliminating the confusion and bad feelings created by not being transparent. There's nothing stopping us from posting a similar position as well (perhaps with a slightly more senior title) with slightly higher pay.
I think the whole kabuki dance of not telling people the actual comp is inefficient and pointless and I'm fine if it goes away.
Plus, I feel like jobs that give double-digit raises also have better processes in place for performance reviews. Places giving out 3% a year almost always just go through the motions on performance reviews, since each manager can only give out one or two "good" raises. Even if you did a great job, they are kind of forced to hand over their one 5 star review to the person who always gets them.
Another job I applied to before graduating offered me $60k and told me I couldn’t negotiate. Guess who didn’t even bother responding to them?
If you find a candidate who you really think is worth 50% more than the average salary for Role X, then obviously that candidate is qualified for Role X + 1.
...
Role #125,798 - salary $125,798/yr
Role #125,799 - salary $125,799/yr
Role #125,800 - salary $125,800/yr
...Instead of offering to pay you less, company suggests you apply for a less valuable role (or demotes you), and then pays you less.
Instead of offering to pay you more, company suggests you apply for a more valuable role (or promotes you), and then pays you more.
If a company is trying to lowball or discriminate, they'll just do it by title and wage, instead of just wage.
If a company is trying negotiate in good faith, it's made the process needlessly complex.
I don't see what problem this solves.
Internally managing that many positions and requirements and putting up that many job postings is a nightmare. For applicants, I'm going to almost immediately leave a page with that many listings and look at other companies.
It's only "logical" if you ignore all other pressures to job postings and are only trying to game these laws, which I presume have some baked-in preventions for this. I know Colorado's equivalent law does.
Also, hiring managers sometimes invented additional tracks.
Those levels are the same for any engineering track (IC or manager).
There are some exceptions like vendors and partner+ positions, but those levels won’t overlap with the typical engineering job postings.
Within the context of Microsoft: we often interview people for a Senior role, find a good candidate and make an offer, while at the same time making an SDE2 offer to someone else who did well on the interview but doesn’t seem ready for senior. Since the SDE2 salary range will be different than Senior (there is some overlap), I wonder how that works with the law.
This is exactly how markets are supposed to function. If you feel that a candidate isn't worth what they're asking for, then you have every right to pass on them. Keeping a lid on the salary range is a dark pattern that benefits employers at the expense of workers.
And typically those high performers either get promoted or leave to find higher paying jobs.
This claim appears multiple times in this thread but it doesn't actually make sense to me. If I'm currently making $x and I see a job listed for $1.2x - $1.5x, I'm not going to turn down a 20% raise just because I wanted a 50% raise.
If you're looking for "entry-level", then perhaps "starting at $100k", but if you really need someone with the experience or skillset pre-loaded, "up to $150k".
These bills are nice but I don't feel very strongly about it because whenever I talk to a recruiter, the very first conversation is where I'll give my comp expectations. If they want to proceed, great, if it's too much then fine.
Proceeding through interviews and waiting for an offer to see if they can match your expectations is not a good use of time.
Every single time I have ever given a range as a hiring manage, the candidate pictured themselves at the top end. But like you could have self taught 2 years of experience vs PhD and 12 years of experience for a similar position - there is no way everyone is at the same spot comp wise.
Why would you hire those 2 people for the same position? If the PhD with 12 years of experience is worth 50% more, then why not give them a better title?
Sure, they wouldn't ultimately get hired into the same job level.
You also don’t need put $50k-$5,000,000 just in case John Carmack applies. If he does happen to apply to your junior engineer position, you instead interview him for another position with a higher salary band.
In many cases hiring is an organic process where a company weighs options based on what candidates are available to them at the time, their budget, timeframe, and goals.
A 2 year junior dev may be able to accomplish the same goal as the 12 year one, but much slower due to lack of experience, and you don't know if you'll find either until you start interviewing.
This is why many job postings fairly say "Comp: DOE" or provide a salary range.
More transparent comp is great for avoiding lowballing and discrimination (which both suck), but sometimes one employee actually is a more valuable contributor than another even if they have the same title. This is why I personally find the idea of a "salary range" completely fair, but also welcome to be ignored during the offer phase.
If John Carmack and a junior dev both apply to the role of "Software Engineer", I see zero reason why a company shouldn't be allowed to offer him a substantially higher comp due to his experience. He'll likely accomplish the same goals more quickly, more efficiently, with better code practices in mind.
Having to put it under the guise of "a different position" is just befuddling to the process. It's the kind of unnecessary legislation that pushes companies to find shady ways of solving problems.
I have hired many employees throughout my career, and never once have we posted a position for which we would have taken a junior engineer or someone with 12 years experience and a PhD. Even at small startups. Not that we weren't hiring both types of people at the same time. But we weren't hiring them for the same position. At my current company we have open positions on our hiring page for 4 different levels of software engineer.
In the case where someone applies for a position that doesn't fit, we let them know and move them over to a different position in our applicant tracking system.
>A 2 year junior dev may be able to accomplish the same goal as the 12 year one, but much slower due to lack of experience, and you don't know if you'll find either until you start interviewing.
I have never worked somewhere where they would give both these people the same title. If the more experienced dev can do the job so much better that you're willing to pay them 50% more, they aren't doing the same job. Why would you give them the same title. I don't know anyone with 12 years experience (that would be worth 50% more) who would be willing to work somewhere with a junior title.
>If John Carmack and a junior dev both apply to the role of "Software Engineer", I see zero reason why a company shouldn't be allowed to offer him a substantially higher comp due to his experience.
Who is saying the company can't post 1 job title and a gigantic salary range. Of course they can. I'm just saying that it's stupid.
If you hire John Carmack and John Bootcamp grad, they aren't doing the same job, so what's the point of pretending like they are by giving them the same title. At that point you might as well just have one title for every position in the company. Just call everyone "Employee" and have a salary range of $1-$5,000,000.
>He'll likely accomplish the same goals more quickly, more efficiently, with better code practices in mind.
If he's producing so much more/better work that he's worth huge multiples more, then he's not doing the same job. There's no reason to pretend that he is.
>Having to put it under the guise of "a different position" is just befuddling to the process. It's the kind of unnecessary legislation that pushes companies to find shady ways of solving problems.
None of these laws say a company can't post 1 job with a huge salary range. It's just stupid to do so because it sets the wrong expectations for everyone involved.
If these are really similar positions, then you don't need the PhD candidate with 12 years of experience--you're wasting money paying someone that overqualified.
The fact is, these probably aren't similar positions, and that's why they aren't at the same spot comp wise.
The funny thing about this is that if I see a range of $100-$150k, I would assume the actual budget is in the $130k range.
Further, with a range that wide, I would infer that the hiring team has no idea what the role is worth. That would lead me to expect the role to be ill-defined and poorly supported and that there would be significant work just to carve out an actual job there.
Given these and the huge number of open jobs, I don't see why anyone with capabilities at the high end of your range would waste time considering a posting like that. This reads like a posting for a $100k role where an applicant skilled at interviewing could earn $150k for the $100k role.
1. Before you go to the interview, let them know your expected compensation
2. Counter with your desired compensation. If you're worth it, you'll get it.
It seems that another way of solving this is for candidates to add their desired salary in their CV.
Given that the job market is already asymmetric and skewed in favour of companies, job seekers shouldn't be the ones giving away any signals, although, in reality, it is how it already works.
If those recruiters hook one of your low-balled employees, your recruitment costs have doubled, your projects have lost a productive team member, and the next person might ask for even more money.
My I low-balled myself on my first real job. The hiring manager flat out told me that the roll started at $15k+, and offered me $20k more than I asked for, which happened to be exactly the same salary offered to other members of my cohort.
> corpo can afford to spend tiem interviewing everyone
This is very untrue.
If a company gives a candidate a range, of course the candidate will pick the highest end of the range.
If the candidate gives a range, of course the company will pick the lowest end of the range.
Just give one number and then negotiate.
Example: A .NET shop uses Oracle. The salary range is $100K–$150K.
- Candidate 1 knows .NET but is new to Oracle. They know RDBMS concepts so they can be brought up to speed, but they start closer to the $100K end of the range because they're less valuable to the company initially.
- Candidate 2 has a long track record of .NET and Oracle work, has spoken at conferences, writes about it on their blog. Candidate 2 is closer to the $150K end.
The company may want a Candidate 2 more than a Candidate 1, but Candidate 2s are in short supply. The range acknowledges that the real candidate may not match the ideal.
How long would the ramp-up be? Are we talking an increase from $100K to $150K over a year, two, three? I've yet to encounter an employer ramping me up at even a remotely decent market rate, whereas I can give myself tens or sometimes hundreds of % increases every 2 - 3 years by shopping around.
"Candidate 2 has a long track record of .NET and Oracle work"
These should be two different JDs with different stated salaries.
Or explicitly say "+$50K for candidates with a long track record of .NET and Oracle work".
But I'm only hiring one person. Ideally, the one with all the perfectly matching experience. But I'm not going to wait around forever for the unicorn to show up, so I may likely settle for someone promising who doesn't quite have the experience.
> Or explicitly say "+$50K for candidates with a long track record of .NET and Oracle work".
That's the same as giving a range.
If it's an objective function of qualifications that's a lot more clear-cut.
This also allows discrimination based on "race, gender, and other things" since "long track record" is completely open to interpretation and if the interviewers are already operating in bad faith, they can find any BS reason to try and undermine an interviewee.
"$100-$150k DOE" is exactly the same, if not clearer, than "$100k (+$50k if XYZ)"
For those operating in good faith, it gives an honest comp range depending on experience.
For those who aren't, a format change on job postings isn't going to do anything.
Granted, I tend to interview for roles I'm already demonstrably good at. So less experienced/suitable people might have different experiences. But this kind of negotiation clearly doesn't follow the "obvious" path.
Remember, hiring managers are spending their own money and people do get excited for candidates. When you spent 20 hours interviewing people, and you finally get that unicorn, everyone is going to push for them.
I mean, if the pay is high enough I can deal with the benefits on my own?
I'd rather take a 500K job with no benefits than a 300K with full benefits, since the benefits can easily be procured for 200K as long as they're okay with unpaid time off [that prorates the 500K].
When we get to the point of an offer, I’m not going to say “@dheera, would you prefer to be paid X or 1.25*X? It’s up to you.”
"If you're a white male you'll get 1.25X and if you're a black female you'll get X?"
More specifically, why can't someone who meets the JD get the stated number? If they interview and don't demonstrate the ability to meet the JD then don't give them an offer, it's that simple.
I think there's large spreads of productivity in many of those types of workers and if you pick a single number for a range of possible productivity, you either overpay some people or you cut yourself off from the most productive workers. (Some people argue that there's a 10x spread in SWEs, others that there's a -10x spread, but I don't think anyone thinks there's realistically less than a 2x spread at a given level among competent SWEs.)
If they don't meet it, pip them and then pip uninstall them.
If nobody is meeting it, adjust your expectations.
If they far exceed it, give them a bonus.
I can’t see any way that “everyone, no matter their interview performance and relevant experience in what we need done, either gets an offer of exactly $X/yr or gets rejected” is an optimal strategy.
Forcing employers to publish salaries on job ads will inevitably lead to wide salary bands (lets see how absurd they get) with a low ceiling on the upper tier. Employers know that if they publish a high number, job candidates are naturally going to want to shoot for it, and would be disappointed if they got significantly less than the maximum advertised, compromising offer acceptance rates. Hence employers will set a lower 'maximum' salary than they might actually pay if the salary was hidden.
See UK public sector for evidence of this; salaries must be published, maximum is always significantly lower than equivalent job in private sector.
Very few of us wake up and think "I'm not a top performer; I should be paid less than some of my colleagues".
So once a bell curve of salary is published, everybody will demand to be paid the same, and it'll very unlikely be the top performer's salary.
Or maybe we'll have massive reshuffle until all teams are equally performing - so we have a team of slackers in company A, team of solid performers at company B, and team of fantastic rock stars at company C.
Maybe I'm cynical and pessimistic in my old age; maybe we can employ coaching techniques and use the transparency to say "Fatima is getting $15k more than you because of this, that and the other thing. If you do those you'll be awarded the same". Maybe the person will accept that and be motivated. Maybe we'll even be accurate and honest about the reasons. Maybe those reasons won't include "because that person is 20 years younger with no family, responsibilities and life and works 90hr weeks on average" etc. Maybe it won't all backfire horribly.
The thing is, even if someone demands to get paid more, it won't necessarily happen. It's still going to be a negotiation. This is basically a shift to give workers power again, since most unions are gone. It's a lot easier for me to point to a stellar performance review AND salary band then negotiate blind.
My cynicism is other way around:
What happens when Bob the slacker, and also all the people along all parts of bell curve, demands to get same as Fatima the rock star? Or worse, make aspersion and assumptions that she is in fact Bob the slacker?
In other words, my cynicism is specifically focused on my perception of our general societal lack of, and interest in, self-awareness :-/
Fatima likely gets promoted, and you get transparency into paths to become someone like Fatima. In the case of Emily who toils away tirelessly holding up the backbone of the company, but isn't as visible as Fatima, now Emily has a clear path to advocate for higher compensation and if the company decides she isn't worth it, she can leave and that company will immediately feel the pain.
I don't really follow the logic that this pushes salaries to the bottom of the bands. Companies want to push them to the bottom, employees want to be at the top, if in a single instance a company and employee can't agree there's a more transparent market for the employee to explore. If they apply for jobs in a certain band and have zero success, they will need to adjust their expectations to find a job at all and should search out lower-bands or improve as an asset or be out of the job entirely.
By showing salaries, folks could have the knowledge to see other positions that match their current job but pay better (or at the least have the possibility of paying better given the range).
I'm not the only one who sees the obvious lurking variable here, no?
Honestly, I'd rather we try it and see what happens.
In the case of the UK public sector anecdote you've shared, I'm guessing it hasn't actually depressed salaries at all. It's likely lifted the bottom, and perhaps squeezed some high positioned "high ceiling" folks down. But I'd need to see evidence of an actual drop compared to the "hidden" times. Otherwise it's just speculation.
Also, while you say the maximum is always significantly lower than the equivalent job in the private sector, I would then ask "Is the median higher than the equivalent job in the private sector?" because if so, that's a win. It's not much good to folks if a single individual can make boatloads of cash.
The point I am making is that there 'are downsides to ostensibly good ideas', which are worth pointing out and discussing. This bill will likely pass regardless of any chat we have here, so this is all in the spirit of exploring the topic.
That candidate salary expectations will be elevated by transparent pricing is valid speculation given that it comports with what we know about pricing psychology - we see two numbers and typically go for something in between and to the right. It does not take a huge leap of empathy to understand that a candidate who knew the top salary and ended up being offered half that would be more disappointed than if that candidate never knew what the numbers were until the offer was made.
Another reason why salary suppression will occur is simply a lack of agility compared to employers who don't have to declare. Once you publicly state a salary band, you probably wouldn't be able to go above the maximum or below the minimum. This constraint won't apply to employers who don't need to declare and hence they will inflate overall market rate, leaving the public salary employers behind.
I think this is basically what is going to happen. Good things will too - but I trust these have already been made in the bill about to be passed
One could make a case the other way - that companies won't lower public salaries, because they need to hire people, often desperately. In my experience, the lower the salary, the less response you get to your role, and certainly from people who are in-demand.
kind of is some sort of evidence, but yes not absolute proof of causality.
You mean like the salary depression when Google and Apple illegally co-ordinated the supression of worker salaries?
However, there was also profit sharing which was based on your W2 earnings (side bit, the profit sharing went into your W2 earnings for next year and became a sort of compound interest growth). Additionally, there were "goals" and "bonuses" which could, again, give a substantial boost to the total pay but wasn't part of the stated compensation.
So, yes, there are certainly ways to work around the posted salaries.
Well meaning legislation always produces outcomes like this
could be we need to rethink 'corruption', seeing as it is endemic in any system we make. It could be considered a form of hacking, which most ppl here wouldn't bat an eyelid at. Perhaps we need to 'build in' expected corrupt behaviours in systems design, seeing as we cannot eliminate we might as well manage it, maybe even make it work in the systems favour
I don't know about the UK situation specifically, but in other areas I'm more familiar with public sector salaries lag private sector for lots of reasons (job stability, pensions, old tech, etc.) which have little or nothing to do with the posting of ranges.
Public sector isn't a great thing to base conclusions on, while the published ranges are lower, so are the expectations. As someone with public sector experience, they absolutely get what they pay for.
Lower number cannot be less than 90% of upper number. Thus 72k-80k or 27k-30k.
If you want a wider range than that, advertise two jobs.
This doesn't seem to be in the bill today. [1]
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5761&Initiativ...
The bill is really short.
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5761&Initiativ...
Unintended consequences suck.
Why would I ask my state to pass a law that's going to get it excluded by employers?
As long as the west coast and northeast coast and IL and CO pass the law, then it will effectively be nationwide since most of the higher paid employees are in those states anyway. Just need CA to WA/CO/IL/NJ to MA to fall in line with each other, and employers will not really have a choice.
I've also never minded having to do some research before undertaking a job search or considering an offer.
On one hand, it’s already possible to know how much most people bought their house for and what their rent is, on the other hand, the data is relatively obsfucated and not directly relevant since most people bought their house in the past and aren’t new homeowners)
Would all businesses simply price discriminate if there were a very easy way to determine someone’s salary?
I feel most of modern personal finance is basically just taking advantage of information asymmetry.
Haven't heard stories in a while, but I think it made some interactions awkward and in general lead to more equality.
One wrinkle is that it's not anonoymous in Norway to search, which skews it a little
> "We saw a significant drop to about a 10th of the volume that was before. I think it has taken out the Peeping Tom mentality."
This is just genius. And yet I'm imagining some simple ways around this that would inevitably pop up were this a thing in my country.
Generally I find that younger people I meet with are very open to talking about salary, assuming you're working in the same industry.
Definitely a sharp contrast to HR policy on the subject.
Just try asking what salary bands are at companies and you'll get shifty bullshit.
Note, the data there is getting better but it is not perfect. As they accept both offer letters and W-2's, which can be wildly different as share prices move.
Note that one of the bill's sponsors, Sen. Joe Nguyen, coincidentally my state Senator, is a Program Manager at Microsoft.
[1] https://leg.wa.gov/legislature/Pages/Overview.aspx
[2] https://lmtribune.com/northwest/washington-senator-per-diem-...
...were always rich men of leisure, with appropriate class sympathies guiding their decisions.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
This was changed in 2019. Employers must provide a salary band, but it can be after an initial interview, and is not required in job postings.
The same code prevents employers from directly asking a candidate about their salary history, or relying on salary history to make a hiring decision.
(Employers can ask about a candidate's salary expectation, though. And the law doesn't say anything about benefits or non-salary compensation.)
Previous compensation matters to the employee, it's only a wage-suppression technique from the employer's side.
Granted, status and prestige are intangible assets. The hiring manager will find themselves in the position of spending brand status for financial flexibility. I can see a handful of companies getting rolled on social media for this as the game gets started and then less of it as things settle down. Long term, I'm more interested in seeing how companies optimally size spreads in order to signal to the labor market "you should" or "you shouldn't" work for us. Job search toolmakers are in a fun position bc they can set the stakes on metrics like 10% spread and influence the labor markets in powerful ways.
If I see a company that specifically excludes Colorado residents, I already know the company is going to be doing all kinds of unethical shenanigans to employees and is likely a bunch of fools not worth bothering with.
Laws can be passed to make this painful for companies.
Department of Labor, either at the state or federal level, can enforce companies trying to play a game with their numbers.
Also the collective pressure of the market would have a mitigating effect. Game theory comes to mind, would you apply to a job listing like that? Would you apply if every other job listing has a more "honest" range posted, or would you spend your time applying to companies that are cooperating with the state government?
But if you think it's worth (say) $200k, you will not get a good view into the labor pool at that level because your posting looks like you don't value the job at $200k, so $200k-worthy applicants will not apply.
Either way, you will get too many applicants who are not a fit and take longer to fill the opening. Plus, your firm will build a reputation for dishonesty.
Regulatory-wise: Colorado's equivalent law has language about "good-faith" and "reasonable" ranges and you can report companies that do this sort of thing to Colorado's state government to face fines and such.
When Colorado did the same thing, the Colorado department of labor issued rules that required employers to use a "good-faith and reasonable* estimate" of the salary range. You can expect the same of Washington.
*"good faith" and "reasonable" are legal terms with specific tests and judicial precedent around them
> Other companies have disclosed pay information in ways that make it difficult to draw comparisons. For instance, some firms are setting pay ranges that are specific to Colorado, hinting that the pay might not be the same elsewhere. Others are posting salaries with ranges of as much as $100,000 or more between the low and high ends. A pharmacist job posting at Walmart said applicants can make anywhere from $52,416 to $153,920 annually for the same job.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/not-sure-how-much-you-should-be...
Nice. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first bill to mandate this; all other bills simply mandated that external job postings include a salary range.
I hope this bill includes language that forces the advertised salary range to reflect the actual range. Otherwise, companies will just say that the range is $50-$500k.
I would still like to see a bill go one step further and mandate that everyone’s salary be public knowledge to everyone else within the same company. If this generates resentment, it means the company is poorly managed. The company would therefore either be compelled to fix their pay discrepancies (thereby allaying the resentment) or risk losing resentful employees to other companies.
> If this generates resentment, it means the company is poorly managed.
You can't honestly hand wave away human nature like this though.
"You are paid 20% less than Bob because you are 20% less valuable to us."
Even if that was 100% true, and it was obvious to everyone, there would still be envy and resentment to contend with.
Still I'd rather have it that way, than how it is today where I have to have private text messages with my coworkers to figure out who is getting screwed by management...
we had open levels at the previous company i worked for (70-ish engineers). if you asked certain seniors at the company, you could trivially get the mapping from level -> annual compensation salary/ISO grant.
positive experience IMO. it forces managers to “get it right” when it comes to performance reviews more often than what i’m used to at other companies. being a not-too-large company, the easiest way to get a higher level is to take on more responsibilities (not to just output more code within your team). that might differ from your own goals or expectations, so it’s great that you can look around and see for yourself what behaviors actually correspond to level/salary raises!
While some people might resent others’ well-deserved successes, far more people resent others’ undeserved successes.
All that means is the candidate won't get the offer if he's not worth the bottom end of the range.
> pay discrepancies
Some people are simply more productive in the same job as other people. Why shouldn't they get paid more?
The fact that most people would get a pay bump by just switching jobs, disproves any hard relationship between productivity and wages.
I think it's quite obvious.
There is an imbalance in the job market, and those offering jobs do not have any incentives to resolve it. In fact, they usually take action against any corrective measures, e.g. by suggesting employees that discussing their wages is unsavoury or even illegal (it is not).
"Just switch jobs" is not a solution, because sometimes there isn't even a choice.
How is this different from the status quo? If you don’t get hired for a specific position, it means the company didn’t think you were worth the salary for that position, whatever that might be.
> Some people are simply more productive in the same job as other people. Why shouldn't they get paid more?
They absolutely should, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I meant “pay discrepancies that would foster resentment,” i.e. undeserved discrepancies.
The company will not be able to adjust the salary to one more appropriate for the employee, so both parties lose.
> undeserved discrepancies
People in the same company will always have different views on what is deserved and what isn't. This is not fixable.
Got it, you are concerned that this wouldn’t allow the company to hire someone as the lowest paid member for a given role. This is easily solved by either (a) forcing the company to publish two ranges: the range they’re willing to pay, and the actual range of current employees, or (b) making the published range nonbinding. If the company decides to lowball the job candidate, it is up to the candidate to take or leave the offer, knowing that it is indeed a lowball, which without a salary transparency law a candidate currently has limited-to-no way of knowing.
BTW, I prefer the latter approach: the law ought to be focused on mitigating salary information asymmetry between the company and candidate, not heavy-handedly enforcing a specific salary range.
> People in the same company will always have different views on what is deserved and what isn't.
Of course, but this has no bearing on whether salary information ought to be transparent or not.
Always with the force. What happened to free choices?
> limited-to-no way of knowing
Google is a very useful resource to researching pay.
Stopping in both NYC and WA state would cut you out of 16 million, so the equation becomes a bit different.
Was on HN recently.
"If applicant lives in CO, they will receive paid sick days."
Labor laws in this country are nutty.
I highly doubt Microsoft would up and leave over this one piece of legislation. See multi-year spending on new campus which isn't open yet: https://news.microsoft.com/modern-campus/
Seems like an ax to grind fantasy.
But I agree, at some threshold it becomes an untenable position.
I've worked at several places that say 'we pay at the market rate', and it's very hard to verify. It leads to gossip, or interviewing and getting offers etc.. This should make it easy. If you work in an area with multiple competitors this is going to be great for employees.
When is this likely to go live?
Hopefully companies don't start using the job posting as an excuse not to negotiate higher salaries, otherwise it could depress wages for highly qualified applicants.
I see this as a personal issue: you gotta apply to jobs you don't think you're qualified for and be okay with being told "no" sometimes. If you don't test the upper-bound, you'll never find it.
"What a candidate brings to the table" is likely defined in a leveling guideline. If they bring more to the table, maybe they should be in a different bracket.
If someone is so special (and 99.9% of the people aren't), then maybe give them their own special role with special titles; but we're not talking about exceptional people here, we're talking about an average developer at this company, which I hope has an average relative skill level. Sure, one person may be better at X or Y and worse at Z than another but that's why we have several people: distributing load and specialization.
https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/05/24...
It will turn out just like California Proposition 65: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_...
People who come up with these schemes need to consider the "spam response" and engineer in some kind of countervailing pressure, otherwise you just add noise.
I recently asked the pay band for an upcoming promotion and was treated by HR like I had just shot their dog in front of them.
Software Engineer
Comp: 50k-350k d/o experienceThen what about the candidates that are so good that you want to pay them more?
I fully expect that best candidates will still be able to negotiate better than the official salary range.
Companies that don't want market transparency will simply restructure compensation packages -- "bonuses" doled on on a 24 pay period amortized schedule are an option even when equity isn't.
In tech, salary being mostly useless as a measure of total comp is already the status quo... if someone tells you that their salary is $160,000 then could be making $160,000 or they could be making >$1M. Expect to see similar behavior but even at the $60K/yr jobs.
Most employees in Washington State receive neither. Step out of the tech bubble for a second.
What stops non-tech employees who want to conceal salaries from restructuring compensation as salary + a bonus earned in biweekly installments?
To repeat myself,
> Expect to see similar behavior but even at the $60K/yr jobs.
As is the discrepancy in titles is significant.
Honestly, I'm okay with that.
If someone was making 500k and their coworkers were making 100k, maybe their coworkers _should_ be being paid 150k or 175k and that 500k worker should be either promoted or pulled back to like 250k
Maybe at the margin it'll lower the salary of non-tech employees, since they are also bringing resentment with them.
I've also read that just including the line, "not available in Colorado" is not a valid legal recourse to skirting the law.
Law makers are generally pretty good at estimating people's willingness to try to get around laws like this and include all kinds of gotchas.
Where are all those robots who would have replaced people flipping burgers ten or fifteen years ago?
- candidates who get an offer at the bottom of the range will take it personally and keep hunting for a job elsewhere
- candidates who get an offer at the top of the range will (rightfully) assume that the next significant pay rise is far away (basically, only upon promotion)
- the hiring managers will have to shoot a salary range first without having seen a candidate, so the range will have to be astronomical, else they will miss on top performers on the market
Well done!
1. The difference here is that previously (currently), you still decline the job if you know the market, or you accept a low offer because you don’t know the market well. So the difference with the new approach is better: at least you know to decline or negotiate.
2. This isn’t really different from the status quo. Companies can have internal bands of where they expect comp to be for different positions, and then they stay within it when giving raises. Either they do that, which is the same as before, or they give great raises, which they also would have already been doing. Not sure how the law changes how raises work in the cases where you negotiate a higher salary up front. In either case, it’s always better to get paid more up front and then find a new gig if you aren’t getting raises as expected.
3. The status quo is already this, but no one knows. Clearly a great applicant will have a lot of room to negotiate upwards. If you know up front the job won’t meet your requirements, you’ll pass. And if you weren’t expecting a lot but see the big range, you’ll think, “ok, how do I get that?”
So I don’t really understand why any of that is bad. Doesn’t seem like any of the things you suggested suppress wages.
Companies will post their 0% - 80% quantiles (in fact, the lower number will be slightly lower than the lowest salary they give for that level, if only to give comfort to people starting at the bottom of the range), so they will post something like -10% - 80%.