Rising pay transparency causing an employer compensation information 'arms race'

Because stating your pay range like that makes you sound like a scammer ?

I’d expect (hope at least) that the courts would see listing $0-$1000000 as an obviously bad faith tactic to subvert the law. If it became a real thing that companies did, I guess the legislature would just pass another law.

They should have to produce and justify it on the basis of the previous salary the position required to fill. And I mean this is the sense of them being forced to err on the side of disclosure, I'm sick of this shit where companies always get the discretionary aspect when they need cold, hard, regulation and absolute liabillity. The burden needs to start shiftingto the more facile and natural starting point: the business/hirer. They're running the ship, they need to start charting a legal and practicable course that respects the dignity of the sea of jobseekers.

This whole "based on qualifications" is stupid because there's obviously a base level of competency required for candidates and successfull candidates and at the end of the day, its more reasonable to make the previous salary the baseline unless the position has radically altered. If they lie, charge 'em with wire fraud and swoop in as a lesson to the next jerk who wants to play games with hiring and payroll

Hell crowdsource it and turn the panopticon back on the abyss where it belongs.

Edit: just have a simple test like how much does the least qualified yet acceptable candidate demand and work your way up from there if they have your "special magic abillities"/quals.

As mentioned, such an approach is an immediate red flag to anyone applying.

But also, judges and courts really aren't impressed with the "but technically" argument. You will get locked up if you try to play the smartarse.

I'm guessing it wouldn't work because it is quite a lot easier to tell when a company is being hostile when they're disclosing information, as opposed to a company being reluctant to disclose information. I mean, given the choice between a job listing stating a pay scale of $0-$10000000 or $75000-$125000 it'd be very optimistic to assume the former will actually lead to a higher offer.

Basically by forcing employers to state a scale you force them to bid against each other not only on the total amount but also the specificity. When there's only a few companies disclosing any information at all this competition has little effect, but this changes when they're supposed to say something (and I think courts will rule that $0-$10000000 is not a real pay grade, one end is below minimum wage and the other is probably higher than can fit in the budget).

Of course is there's no enforcement at all it can still devolve in the same meaningless pay scale everywhere.

But then you need to run your business with that salary range - if you put it in writing to your hr people or hiring managers that the maximum they can actually offer is $less_than_that, those emails will come out in discovery.

>Now we're back where we started, with the candidate having no valuable information, and the company seemingly in compliance with the law. Why wouldn't this work?

Maybe that doesn't tell a candidate the actual pay range of the job, but it definitely is valuable information that tells you about how the company operates. I wouldn't want to work anywhere that does that because it shows a contempt for both the law and prospective employees.

> I applaud pay transparency, but reading the text of my state's legislation regarding it (RCW 49.58.110), all I see is that it says most employers must have a pay scale that is known to candidates. My initial adversarial response as an imaginary business would be to say "okay, the pay scale for this position is between $0-$10000000, depending on qualifications". Now we're back where we started, with the candidate having no valuable information, and the company seemingly in compliance with the law. Why wouldn't this work?

tighten up the disclosure requirements

example: produce the distribution, at 5% resolution with a range 2 SDs around the median

Netflix literally does (or at least did) this. It's not even a hypothetical.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/90000-to-900000-pay-transpare...

Right now, at least in my field there are some companies listing very wide ranges, say $75k-$270k, however, most are not so there is value in knowing that the max a company is offering for a role is say, $160k upfront vs. going through a bunch of interviews and negotiations just to learn that's the ceiling and then turning it down. If more and more companies provide huge ranges then this won't be useful except as another commenter said that you can favor jobs with realistic ranges that actually bracket your desired comp.

Even when there were rigid salary bands, I've seen companies regularly work around it by inventing new roles with new salary bands. At one company where I worked, a specific title could refer to one of several different independent roles with their own salary bands. The headline title was not the primary key of the system.

I would imagine this would increase the risks an employer would face for discriminatory compensation claims. If you're really saying that the range is that varied for the role and you don't have anything like a reasonable distribution of compensation across people in that role...

100% of job offers I've had over the last few decades have come with access to information like "we cover PPO but not HSA" and "but no matching, or 1% matching".

Typically information about things like matching are available up-front and pretty easy to value.

Medical, including things like disability is the major benefit that's hard to value. Even if you get all the information, it's hard to know how good or bad a given plan is and the value of various options for your specific situation. How do you even value disability plans. (There are market actuarial rates I guess but still doesn't say what the plan is worth to you personally.)

Not in the US, so the specifics are different, but 1) my offers have always included the details important to me either from the start or after I've pointed out what I want confirmed, 2) what really matters is the contract, and my assumption is that anything not in the contract doesn't exist.

It's fine if they don't want to put something in the contract or the offer, but if so I tell them straight up that I will pretend it doesn't exist when evaluating how their offer stacks up.

I do that because I agree perks can often be misleading, and the solution is to make clear you'll err on the side of caution. If their perks are actually really good, odds are they're prepared to promise them in writing.

This kind of malicious compliance is what everyone said would happen, but to be fair most companies with any sense are too risk-averse to give that wide a range, and they actually give you a realistic idea of what the role will pay, with the low end being their lowest CoL location and the high end being SF/NYC/etc. YMMV of course...

I mean, that's a good signal, they're actively letting you know you should avoid them at all costs.

I don’t think this will fly legally in the end even though it is a very common practice.

It seems like there would likely be an LCA violation since there is a prevailing wage for a specific role if the company utilizes foreign labor (for example h1b) … but one is federal and wage transparency laws are state based so dunno how it’ll play out.

The states themselves might be irked by the loophole as well. I think, if a major employer who also hires h1bs does this it would be worth challenging in court. I guess the state att general would bring it vs an individual but maybe a person who is down leveled could as well.

Is this why companies have such weird job titles these day?

These laws make that easier to do. Not hard to pull up the job listing at your company and make sure youre making what's offered.

>Absurd people ever thought not to compare pay

It's unfortunately because the employee risks being retaliated upon (be it management or peers) instead of peers focusing down on management for better pay. It's also just general financial practice to never flaunt your cash around, so that spreads to the workplace. I'm more than happy to confide in anyone who asks privately, or to anonymously say my salary online. But I don't have much to gain sharing it with immediate co-workers.

The way modern tech companies are (outside of entry level) makes it less reliable anyway. My immediate coworkers in my last two jobs were at least 5 years more experienced than me; I gain less from asking them and they never asked me.

The vast majority of jobs do not have equity, even in tech. Also bonuses are discretionary and aren’t guaranteed, so there’s no easy way for employers to mention an amount they can stick with in the job posting.

"a financial privacy violation"?

Asking the candidate how much they want to make, as annoying as it is, is not the same as asking to see their credit card statements and bank records.

I doubt this take. How is every employer going to collude?

Employers already had a form of pay transparency in market research. Typically business pay to receive compensation ranges in return for money and for data.

Why would this reduce negotiating power outside of cases where one *shouldn't* have leverage in the first place?

Someone who just happens to be a smooth talker shouldn't be earning more than someone else. If they actually bring more to the table, that is why they should earn more.

In a company with transparent compensation you have access to what everyone else is making so you can demonstrate you bring more value to the company than other people making $X.

Entities like The Work Number already give companies 100% transparency, to the cent, of your full compensation history.

>I would much rather have the money up front and invest as I please.

Find a company that offers the pay you want then, simple. If that ceases to exist somehow, change your skills for those positions or prove your worth with your own product.

That's another thing that makes startups attractive, they have no equity to offer. So more cash upfront.