NYC Just Passed a Law Requiring Employers to Post Salary Ranges in Job Ads | Hacker News Reader

NYC Just Passed a Law Requiring Employers to Post Salary Ranges in Job Ads

inc.com

56 pointspmoriarty14 comments

Toothless law. It only applies to literal job ads.

“Covered listings include postings on internal bulletin boards, internet advertisements, printed flyers distributed at job fairs, and newspaper advertisements. The law does not prohibit employers from hiring without using an advertisement or require employers to create an advertisement in order to hire.”

If you want to avoid this law just use a recruiting firm and/or don’t directly advertise the position.

Or just use the full Glassdoor range as your “good faith” range and continue paying whatever you want based on the candidate.

Or the numerous other obvious loopholes in this silly law.

It’s funny that it only applies to salary as this law would be substantially more useful for hourly employees. I can always count on the NYC council to remain useless.

The posted article is dated December 17, 2021. Last I've read, there's been a last minute effort to modify the law and postpone the date it would go into effect: https://www.thecity.nyc/work/2022/4/4/23010811/salary-disclo...

The amendment Int. 134 can be found here: https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5...

There is a list of key points for the proposed changes at https://pfnyc.org/news/employers-call-on-city-council-to-ame...

One key issue is that Minority and Women Owned Business (MWBE) will have a harder time competing under the new bill.

It seems likely that the May deadline will be moved back.

I feel like posting a minimum salary would be sufficient.

It would be better than nothing. I like seeing the upper end of the range, though. It says "we're willing to pay some people this much, but any more and we'd be lying." As another commenter has pointed out, it also forces a company making an offer to answer the question, "what about the interview has you offering so close to the bottom of the range?"

In tech, often most of compensation is stock, but I always like to see the salary range advertised anyway.

Here's the law, by the way: https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3...

"any more and we'd be lying"

I live and work in Colorado, which has had a similar law for over a year. I have been offered positions over posted salary ranges, and I have confirmed others have taken positions with salaries over the posted range. Without an enforcement mechanism for the law, it seems like this behavior is unlikely to change.

Yes, good point. Who is going to find these cases, gather evidence, and sue? I can imagine an employee suing their employer after finding out someone was hired above the range, but is that even expressly illegal?

Short answer: the lawyers will decide whether this is enforced.

Is there any provision that you can't post a range like $20/hr to $∞/hour?

You’d probably be taken to court and lose.

Sue for discriminatory hiring. Cite the advertised $∞/hour as the actual loss.

The law says the specified range must be "in good faith"[1]. Your example would be easy to identify as bad faith.

Posting a large range also works against the employer for the most part. If I want to pay someone $15/hr, but I list the range as $15-60/hr, then any candidate offered $15/hr is going to think I'm valuing them very poorly.

1. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-york-city-to-requir...

There'd still be a lot of latitude. Some companies have 3 levels for software devs: normal, staff, and principal engineers usually encompassing 0-10, 10-20, 20+ YoE. The salary ranges for these would be massive.

Those various levels of software dev are all separate job postings.

Also this law is more about protecting people who are not in as high demand as software devs.

You could post a range like that.

at least the experience in Colorado where a similar law was passed, employers stopped doing this fairly quickly, because people strongly prefer to interview at companies with higher floors.

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