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Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

> Additionally, for internal transfers to a new position or promotion, the employer must provide the wage scale or salary range.

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.

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I agree with the sentiment of Open Salaries.

> 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...

> Even if that was 100% true, and it was obvious to everyone, there would still be envy and resentment to contend with.

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!

I think many people would rather be paid fairly but invisibly less than a higher-performing colleague than to be paid that exact same amount and know that a higher-performing employee was making 25% more than them. Even if “fair”, it’s likely to generate resentment.

That’s fair, although I think way more people would rather know that a lower-performing colleague is making 25% more than them and use this as leverage to ask the boss for a raise.

While some people might resent others’ well-deserved successes, far more people resent others’ undeserved successes.

> forces the advertised salary range to reflect the actual range

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?

> 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.

Then keep switching jobs. What's the problem that needs the government stepping in?

> What's the problem that needs the government stepping in?

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.

It seems highly improbable that the day one was born, out of 200,000,000 jobs in the US, one happens to find the one and only job they could ever have.

That's not what I said. Yours is too a quite narrow-minded position.

Also, screw companies doing this. The job market is completely asymmetric, and it shouldn't be. It's tiring and disappointing to have to blindly negotiate with recruiters, and akin to the car buying experience.

I get it if it's inconvenient or tiring to find another job. That's a looong way from "no choice".

No choice is when you are a soldier. You do what you're told, when you're told, and if you don't you go in the brig or get shot for desertion.

> blindly

Only if you're not willing to do some online research.

> akin to the car buying experience.

Which can indeed come off poorly for you if you don't bother doing some online research first.

> I get it if it's inconvenient or tiring to find another job. That's a looong way from "no choice".

Well, this tells me that you live in a bubble where you may not have any issues to find a new job.

"issues" is still a loooong way from "no choice".

There are always issues with everything. One identifies them, and then deals with them.

> All that means is the candidate won't get the offer if he's not worth the bottom end of the range.

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.

> How is this different from the status quo?

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.

> The company will not be able to adjust the salary to one more appropriate for the employee, so both parties lose.

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.

> forcing

Always with the force. What happened to free choices?

> limited-to-no way of knowing

Google is a very useful resource to researching pay.

If an engineer is doing *so much more* that they can't exist in the same pay band as their peers, why don't they get a promotion?

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