Be careful what you wish for.
Also, such large pay bands will raise eyebrows, as they are indicative of discrimination. Why such wildly different wages for the same role?
Let’s consider the range of compensation for the “CEO” role.
These ludicrous edge cases are not a "gotcha" for a type of law that greatly helps pay transparency for the vast majority of the population.
Even in tech this is helpful. What's the going rate for a new-grad SWE in Nashville TN? I certainly didn't know when I graduated. I had to get all the way to the offer stage before any numbers were discussed at all. Also no equity was involved anyway.
My company has multiple groups in different states including Colorado, and in anticipation of needing to post salary ranges for our open positions in Colorado, my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands to avoid anyone becoming frustrated if they learned they were in the bottom half. Despite the preemptive adjustments, a colleague of mine became angry and quit when they found out their salary wasn’t at the very top of their position’s pay range.
So pay transparency laws are having a big impact—not only in the obvious cases of candidates negotiating salaries in the states that passed the pay transparency laws, but also for average employees in other states who didn’t even need to do anything except learn how much their labor was worth.
If you’re mad at anyone, walk down to city hall and tell them to build more housing.
Uhh, surely I'm not the only one seeing the obvious flaw here, right? Is the inevitable outcome here that pay bands will now cover a range where nobody is actually in the lower half, ever? That lower half of the range will just be there as a sort of psychological buffer?
Every place I’ve worked for the past 10 years has had salary bands, and I’ve always been paid far more than the highest band offered. Because I’ve never been an employee, it’s simply never applied to me. I don’t get counted in the diversity statistics either, which is also great.
I guess transparency regulations take the feeling of pressure off those who aren’t competent negotiators, but if the goal is to decrease inequalities, they won’t accomplish that.
Such an elegant implementation of the 'no assholes' policy.
The only people who were upset were those who found out some people were way over the new pay band and generated a bit of gossip over how those people were way overpaid for the quality of their work
In other news, Microsoft to comply with a new law.
In more concrete terms, I do think there are a fair amount of bots/paid-commenters on HN who push for anti-progressive agenda which helps maintain status quo.
Many commenters here are either currently on the employer side of a salary negotiation, or imagine that they will be some day.
It's just selfishness, not collective action.
This should be, by far, the top voted comment. I don't think MSFT sharing salary ranges is consequential in any way.
If more start to do it, it becomes an arms race. If a company is loading the compensation in other ways and coming in light on salary then their job posting becomes much less compelling for job seekers. So they have a choice: disclose the other compensation (in order to compete with the salary numbers of the other companies) or adjust their compensation to be heavier on salary so their numbers are in line with others.
Essentially this will push salaries up to match the massive inflation we've seen recently. Likely this will result in a homeostasis at some future point.
EDIT: just found out HackerNews is stripping out unicode emoji characters from comments.
I'm at a point where if a recruiter messages me "about an exciting opportunity" without any salary information, he/she will not get a response.
While there are some jobs that maybe I would consider a pay cut for, I generally want to make more money because that allows me to invest more so I can be free one day.
I am not sure I fully see how this is a problem, any minimum wage job says pay range (or a specific rate), any job for dish washers or line cooks say $18 a hour or what not, a tech job with a six figure salary should at least say a range, since it varies based on skill and department.
I haven't read a single response that I agree with as to why this is a negative? Can someone provide some insight in to why people seem to be against this? Also the silly comments about well $5 to $5 million is a range are just silly. They are going to provide a range like $42k to $55k. Because it is based on skill to some degree (7 years in the industry should pay more you more than 2).
Source: my company does recruitment advertising for many other companies, and including salary is something we coach our customers to do.
For instance, whereas before when salaries weren't explicit, a weaker candidate with some good qualities who was on the bubble for consideration might be able to get a job if the salary was more favorable than the company was initially planning. With explicit salary ranges, if the candidate isn't deemed good enough to warrant hitting that predefined range, they might be unemployable in that field and not gain the experience needed to progress. In the past, a weaker candidate might have been able to go for a lesser salary range, get the job and gain more experience, and maybe make it up down the line. Maybe that's no longer a path forward for a lot of people on the bubble.
And stronger candidates who are perfect fits and world-class performers might be lost for a lot of companies because the company has the excuse of a pre-defined salary range. So maybe firms miss out on some genius, perfect fits, because the bean counters can't be bothered to assess everybody's merits individually.
Including salary could let applicants avoid underpaying companies before they embark on a lengthy application process, which is beneficial, but don't companies already have strong incentives not to exploit people in this way since they'll only leave shortly afterward and those onboarding costs would be false economy.
It tries to solve pay equity problems. https://hr.uw.edu/comp/pay-equity/salary-setting-guidance/
The kicker is "similarly employed". I've seen people with the same job title earn a differential of 3x, but that's simply because one negotiated better and was more economically valuable (had about 1.5 more decades' experience) than the other, yet they had the same job title. I guess we could argue to control for years' experience, but I've seen people who were better at a job after 6 months than those in the same job were after 10 years. There are even jobs where people get worse over time, which isn't intuitive but easy to find examples (e.g. you forget documentation if life gets busy for a year or two, and you're less effective because of that).
I suspect "similarly employed" is indefinable in any realistic sense. I'm not against trying, just very sober about the probability of crafting a policy that outperforms the imperfect but free-ish market.
What? I'm going to go through some bullshit interview process that includes some esoteric algorithm problem that has nothing to do with the actual position in question and, even if it did, I could "npm install"/google my way out of only to find out later on that the job pays the same (or less) than what I make right now?
That's just a waste of everyone's time.
I did a Codility test, followed by four interviews with four US based teams.
I got an offer which is 5 to 6 times what they pay in US.
I live in a country in Eastern Europe, and prices are a bit lower. I would have expected a lower offer, but not that much lower. It was less than I already make so I had to wish them good luck in finding another person and was feeling sorry that I lost so much time in the interviewing process and also invested a lot of energy.
What we need is just a certificate that proves competency, so we can remove all these exams, quizzes and foolishness. Typically, that was a computer science degree, but there wouldn't be enough degree holders to fill all the roles, and wages would skyrocket. So some sort of interview meatgrinder it is I suppose.
As a result of all this, I wouldn't do this career path over again, and won't be recommending it to my kids. Companies will have to reap the rewards for their downward pressure on wages by going to India. They will continue to have to hire there for the next 20 to 100 years. And once the Americans are out of the industry, I think the Indians won't always take things lying down like we do in the US. I suspect they'll unionize and make life hell for these corporations. I hope the Indians become insanely wealthy from it, and US corporations will deserve it.
E.g. What if Microsoft has a job opening with a range of $110k - $170k, and the candidate they selected used to make $180k and would like $200k? Will Microsoft offer him or her the 200k they seek or offer 170k and lose their candidate?
If salary ranges can be bypassed, then they are not really useful, and if they can't, by law, companies could skirt the law by offering higher bonuses and more stock, or else lose on talent. Or the company could close the job opening, and create a new posting with an updated range for the sole purpose of being legally able to hire their candidate. Which would still invalidate the spirit of the law.
I'm not sure these salary transparency laws are good for workers or companies alike.
As a result, some companies have started explicitly excluding CO from their job postings. I'm not a lawyer, but I think there's probably latent lawsuits there. Especially if they employ anyone in CO already.
I hope not. We've got states trying to regulate things like abortion rights across state lines, too. I prefer states not have the same reach as the federal government, because some of them are especially crazy.
As with all negotiations, once you've stated a number you've put a lower (or upper, depending on the side you're on) bound.
As you mention, if they really wanted to be transparent, it would be global, but I doubt they want to expose those differences.
Salary is almost always in a tight range at Microsoft at a given level -- but external candidates can get anywhere from peanuts (a so called "tier 1" offer) to jumbo stock allocations (a so called "tier 3" offer).
edit: not sure why the downvotes. Making information public increases market efficiencies, but market efficiencies don't always transfer to the workers. See: the last 30 years.
Microsoft is under no obligation to comply with Washington law outside Washington. That's what they're doing here.
[1] https://www.dwt.com/blogs/employment-labor-and-benefits/2022...
They want to streamline the job posting portion of HR. They don't want to have to worry about whether or not they have to post the salary range, so they just do what the most demanding law they deal with requires.
Now they only really have to deal with areas that have laws that contradict with laws in other areas. Then you'd default to the law that benefits you the most and deal with the contradictory areas explicitly. Since you have to do the work anyway.
For example, let's pretend that California had a really stupid law that forbid salary ranges from being posted on job listings. Now Microsoft has to be careful about how and where they post jobs. And since it's beneficial for them to hide the information, they'd likely only post the salary ranges where they were required to.
But absent that, don't do work you don't have to do.
Bob contributes 1. I contribute 1.25. Units don't matter, I contribute 25% more.
It used to be maybe the salary band is $100k to $130k. Bob gets $100k. I get $125k. My employer gets a total value of 2.25 for $225k.
Now my employer has to disclose salaries and has 2 options:
1) Don't make out salaries the same, Bob quits, now the employer has only 1.25 when they need 2.25 and have to go re-hire ($50k or more in a lot of times).
2) Make our salaries the same, so now Bob also gets $125k and employer pays $250k for 2.25. This is what will happen in the short term and what attracts people, but in the long term what will happen is
3) Make our salaries the same but slow raises so gradually they go to the inflation indexed amount of about the average, so $112.5k more or less. Now employer still pays $225k for 2.25. But now I am subsidizing Bob the less productive worker for $12.5k every year.
A lot like unions, making things more uniform often comes at some expense to the top performers. I always sit near that top so I say no this is stupid and I hate it. I don't give a shit what Bob is paid and I give even less if it costs me money for him to get more.
1c) Bob gets annoyed and tries to leave, but all the offers aren't really better.
I'm not sure if this even works for devs as there is so many opportunities.
The reaction you'll get is hilarious in some cases.
I've been in the employer position (as a hiring manager) and in the Employee position. I know how much I am worth (or what I want to be worth), so I don't really care about playing games and haggling. I'ts ok, my value might become lower in a recession, or when trying to get into new verticals. When that happens, I'll adjust my expectations.
For example, let's say a software job is listed with a range of $200k to $250k comp. And you want more than that. But will the employer be willing, or allowed, to negotiate with you an amount over $250k? After all, the job posting says $250k is the top of the range. Maybe it would be illegal to pay you more! But at a company that does not list salary ranges, maybe there is more wiggle room.
Transparency is good for people who are average at their jobs and get average pay. For other people, the benefits are unclear.
Why? Its like prop 65 cancer warnings being on 100% of the products and buildings in CA. Its just a thing you do so as to avoid liability. Now, we have these useless warnings pasted everywhere that have no meaning beyond compliance. Is CA better off with these warnings? I can't imagine so. Will companies post very broad salary ranges? With certainty, whats the downside? Will the ranges correspond to reality? Probably not. Are we better off forcing companies to do this? I'm not sure.
Regulations are an integral part of a free society.
"An employer cannot post a $70,000-$100,000 range for a junior accountant position just because it pays senior accountants at the high end of that range. But it can post $70,000-$100,000 for an accountant if it does not limit the posting to junior or senior accountants, and genuinely might offer as low as $70,000 for a junior accountant, or as much as $100,000 for a senior one."
https://cdle.colorado.gov/equalpaytransparency https://cdle.colorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/INFO%20%239_%20Eq...
Without this broad range, someone new to the industry, like a college grad, has no idea what the low range is. This at least prevents those people from getting lowballed and finding out later.
I’ve seen smart techies who are bad or oblivious to money subjects get way under paid, only to learn later, huge discrepancies in pay with the same or lower grade position due to other factors like gender, race, etc.
Everyone is better served by accurate ranges, it avoids both sides wasting time because of mismatched expectations.
Will someone applyling know if they are a level 4 or a level 7 dev? How?
On the other hand, some folks will be happy about that bottom since it will be either more than they expected or more than they are making now.
This is why we have different types of skill levels. If you can't hire the person as a medior but you have a junior position open, surely you can tell them with the associated benefits. If its a problem, surely you can justify given the requirements.
Hiding information only to waste people's time upfront isn't helpful when society expects job searching to a part-time job on the side of another job. Maybe this is too aggressive a measure, but getting "competitive" as an answer sure isn't helpful either.
>And stronger candidates who are perfect fits and world-class performers might be lost for a lot of companies because the company has the excuse of a pre-defined salary range.
I doubt you're going to pass a great candidate because they exceed your mentioned range when internal budget can still be stretched. At worst you could argue the high earners aren't going to pick your job because your range is too low, which can be solved by simply adjusting your range. If budget can't be stretched, odds are you weren't going to hire them anyway.
There are potential solutions. There are so many job levels at big companies like Microsoft. A candidate who is weaker could interview for software engineer 3 (made up title for example) and be offered a software engineer 2 position with the understanding that the company sees potential, but wants to start the person at what they see as an appropriate level.
The high performing candidate may ignore a job listing for a position which doesn't have a high enough top end to the range, but perhaps if they are being recruited rather than approaching the company, the recruiter could recognize the value of the candidate and find a higher role which would have a more competitive salary range.
Some companies can only hire specific advertised roles, but in many cases they advertise for one role/level and end up hiring candidates for others. Big companies could also have open reqs for more levels than they think they need, and then slot the candidates in to the level which makes sense.
Another approach they could take is to make the published salary ranges more broad than the are in practice. Hotels in many places have to publish the room rate, but typically this is an insanely high number which only happens when there's a special event or something.
Because that is pretty much what happens now, except now the applicant doesn't know the range.
The only thing that can happen with this is that people who think they're worth outside the range won't apply. And this isn't that much of a problem.
If the employer finds they aren't getting the quality of applicant they desire, they have an option: increase or change the range.
There is a lot of information asymmetry in hiring and most of it benefits employers.
At some places I've worked, level was determined after the decision to hire. A position would be open to levels I, II, & III, and a panel of people would determine which level they felt the candidate would come it at.
If I was reviewing job descriptions, and the max of the posted range is less than my current salary, I'm probably not going to apply.
Sure they are. With common sense and fines for clear ongoing breaches it will do as planned.
There are always exceptions so if occasionally a salary is bypassed to match the candidate, higher or lower this is going to happen and be reasonable.
If 30%+ of candidates get paid less than the advertised role there is a clear case of bait and switch for authorities to show a court type deal.
I feel you need to approach this from altitude rather than individual cases.
They can also negotiate seniority/level. So if they really wanted that person, and they were originally planning on hiring as a Level N Engineer, they could negotiate to hire at a Level N+1 engineer that has the desired salary.
> tech jobs are a dime a dozen
Be that as it may for some, I am a mix of a software engineer and a systems engineer. It's difficult for companies to find a place for me, much less test me. Personally, I'd like this saying to die, because even in a white-hot market like I started my search in it still takes months of rigor to filter out the BS and find a company that isn't going to string me through the ringer just to dump me at final interviews for something entirely arbitrary while giving me glowing feedback along the way.
The first words were “I'm leaving my company”. Am I missing something?
When I was an employee in Germany I always thought it would be fun to get stuck in B) and get an "offer" for like 5x my current salary and see what happens.
I used to work for Microsoft and was prevented from starting bigger projects as they didn’t want to expand the US team, instead wanting to expand their Chinese and Eastern European teams as they were cheaper.
Microsoft is a big, inefficient, and amoral company. You could have taken advantage of that and once inside and after a few years of demostrable good work and in making friends you might have been able to score an internal move to the US with the associated pay bump. I’m not saying it’ll be easy but there aren’t many ways to 5x your salary. US kinda sucks right now but money can generally shield you from a lot of that.
Directly from the article: "Pay experts have long predicted companies would not want to mess with different practices in different states. Doing so not only complicates hiring practices for human resources departments, ..."
There is probably a lot more nuance and qualifications of when it's necessary to disclose and from a company that employs more than 150k employees (according to a quick google) there's probably even more complexity and chaos.
The problem is that 'specific places' very dynamic, and is hard to pin down when it comes to employment. A candidate/employee may move to/from jurisdictions where this is a requirement, and job postings may or may not be shown across different jurisdictions.
Does Microsoft want to invest time wrangling in court concerning a Colorado resident not seeing the pay range when they are using a VPN? Or when a candidate becomes a Colorado resident some time between the phone-screen and the first interview? Should Microsoft recruiters stop using external job-boards, and instead wait for a salary geo-fencing feature to be implemented in their internal jobs tool? What is the case law for out-of-staters who will be moving into a state with such a law for employment? How about remote candidate in Texas, working for a team based in Washington - and the reverse? There are dozens of edge cases, and for a company the size of Microsoft, can easily result in hundreds to thousands of infractions per year - the juice may not be worth the squeeze.
Corporations are risk averse, they don't want to have to deal with potentially getting sued if a job opening starts out in one area and then moves to another one where suddenly the way the opening is described is illegal.
It's just easier to do it the same everywhere if the advantage they're giving up is small.
Not terribly helpful.
So, I give CURRENT_SALARY*30% and tell them it's that.
If they care to leave a message or send a text, I may read it. If they don't then I ignore (unless I'm expecting a call from that number in which case I'll call back in a day or two).
Sometimes (like when we were looking for a nanny a few years ago) I may let GV actually ring on my main line.
California started the trend with its “on reasonable request” pay range disclosure law, and has an proactive disclosure bill that has passed the Senate and is pending in the Assembly this session (DB 1162). But even without a proactive disclosure law, voluntary proactive disclosure reduces the request load for on-reequest disclosure, and consistency is cheaper to implement internally.
This is how it happens now, and how it will still happen. Disclosing the initial range target does not prevent it.
https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=5761&year=2021...
https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2021-22/Pdf/Bills/Se...
>disclose in each posting for each job opening the wage scale or salary range, and a general description of all of the benefits and other compensation to be offered to the hired applicant.
What is general description? Is that how many RSUs? Does it require showing what metal level health insurance is offered and specific the employer paid proportion?
“Colorado residents: Pay for this job starts at at $100,000/year commensurate with experience, plus additional compensation through bonuses, restricted stock units and a comprehensive benefit plan.”
The problem is jobs aren't homogenous, so comparing salaries is meaningless, not only for applicants but also for the company itself. Imagine you find 10 people whose resumes look similar on paper, but after you interview all ten you realise there are some you'd hire in an instant, others you think are just okay, and some you think are awful. It's so obvious why their salaries would differ, and I find it very challenging to make any good argument otherwise.
So, how can market participants ascertain supply and demand (and hence, price)? The answer is they can't, but they're no worse than companies, academics, government or anyone else - without assessing the individual, I don't think it's possible for anyone to know.
In any case, for any marker, the more real time information, the better.
For example, Google's board stipend is $100k, which is about half the median total comp of an average employee (less, counting benefits). Walmart I think pays their board $60k.
You may be thinking of executive comp, but even then it is generally not significant amount. You could completely eliminate and redistribute executive compensation at Wal-Mart and it wouldn't really make a measurable difference in employee hourly salaries.
But, to your point regarding prorated comp: I've been a salaried employee at a company like Google. I've also been a board member.
First, like many senior tech employees my total comp market rate is in the seven figures. A pro-rated 1.2M stipend would be appropriate to compensate me for my time. The average board retainer for less profitable companies is closer to $30k/yr. These are not entry level positions and the retainers are shockingly low in the vast majority of cases. (In my case, I'm on the board of a non-profit and I actually pay them)
Second, I think you are underestimating how little some salaried workers actually work. I think if you try you can find more than a few Google employees who only work one month a year ;) Conversely: I work far harder in my role as a board member than I used to in my salaried role. It's different for everyone of course, but I assure you no one is seeking out board seat retainers as a way to get rich. It's just not worth it.
Looking at some other companies, Activision-Blizzard's CEO alone makes enough to pay every employee a $15,000 bonus. Reed Hastings at Netflix makes enough to pay every employee $3800. And that's not counting any of the rest of the executive staff, or all the other ways money flows out of a company to non-employees, like dividends and stock buybacks.
https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-...
I think there's certainly a lot of room for wages to go up, though i'm skeptical that it will come at the expense of things like executive pay or share buybacks.
As you say, most goes to investors. Which makes sense as they actually own the company.
So... seems fair to me. Maybe salaries will actually increase enough that people won't have to switch jobs every three years to get a raise.
They can't, though; if you do that, now there are people in the bottom half, and they're upset that they're 'below average'.
You basically need a vanity range for pay.
Every time you read that headline, the company could have just cut pay by 15% and gotten the same profitability. Higher pay will force medium-small companies to hire less people
Some SV companies make Billions in profits per quarter. Some don't. I've seen far too many employees try to justify why they should be making Meta compensation elsewhere. It doesn't and shouldn't work that way
Washington state can't regulate how Microsoft hires people in Texas.
Microsoft Corp. isn't even a Washington legal entity. (EDIT: Never mind, I stand corrected [1]. In any case, the broader point stands. Delaware doesn't get to regulate how its entities hire outside Delaware. This is well-settled employment/interstate commerce law.)
[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/789019/00015...
So yes, in this situation, even if MS were incorporated in Delaware, Washington state could pass laws that bind how the company acts anywhere in the world.
Washington also isn't the only state passing this style of law. Putting up the systems and processes to comply with this law only for Washington-based positions would probably not be worth it.
This is not true [1]. It's especially untrue with respect to employment, a domain in which federal statute has a lot to say about who can regulate whom.
> Microsoft was incorporated in the state of Washington on June 25, 1981; reincorporated in the state of Delaware on September 19, 1986; and reincorporated in the state of Washington on September 22, 1993.
https://app.quotemedia.com/data/downloadFiling?webmasterId=9...
Washington (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation)
California passes a law, and because doing business in California is good for the bottom line they will comply with the law, and in so doing set a new defacto national standard. But, if this burden becomes too onerous, the business can simply not do business with California or move out of California. But, California is such a large market it's quite a high burden to reach.
Discriminating based on an employee's state of residence is totally fine. Californians get different disclosures and rights compared with say Nevadans. Nevadans can't sue for those benefits; they're not entitled to them.
Yes, a company headquartered in california is (in many cases) still bound by california law even if the employee is located in another state. The obvious example is non-compete clauses, a california company still usually cannot enforce a non-compete even if the law permits it in the employee's state.
However, this situation is what's called a "conflict-of-law" and it basically comes down to the way the court interprets it.
Take it from the actual lawyers:
> The circumstances that present the strongest case against enforcement of such an agreement involves a noncompete agreement between a California-based employer and a California-based employee. But not all cases are that simple; whether California law applies depends upon the application of “conflict of law” rules.
> “Conflict of law” rules allow courts to determine what state’s laws apply when the laws of more than one state might apply to a dispute but would produce different results. For example, a noncompete agreement between a California-based employer and a Nevada-based employee that was signed in Nevada could be construed under Nevada or California law, depending on the circumstances. If Nevada law applies, the restrictive covenant might be enforceable against the employee. If California law applies, it will not be enforceable.
> Because of these issues, parties often include choice-of-law provisions telling a court to apply a particular state’s law rather than determine what state’s substantive laws apply under a conflict-of-law analysis. In most cases a court will readily accept a choice-of-law provision and apply it as the parties intended. But that’s not necessarily so in the case of a noncompete agreement.
> Like other common law doctrines, conflict-of-law rules vary from state to state. Most states will not enforce a choice-of-law provision that would violate the public policy of a state with a “materially greater interest” in the dispute or where the parties do not have a “substantial relationship” with the chosen state. In other words, a California employer cannot get around California’s prohibition against employee restrictive covenants by requiring his California employee to sign an agreement that includes a Nevada choice-of-law clause.
https://www.bonalaw.com/insights/legal-resources/is-my-out-o...
So yes, employment law in state X usually does bind a company headquartered in state X even if the employee is working in a completely different state. Doesn't matter where you live, you are employed by an entity in state X.
(or rather, it does matter, you still have to pay taxes in state Y and state Y also gets to pass rules of its own governing work in that state... practically speaking what you get is the union of the two sets of rules, you get the combination of both. In the event of a full-on "state X requires A, state Y forbids it"... then the lawyers get paid.)
However, while that range is an exaggeration, the truth is that salary ranges for positions are actually much wider than candidates may expect. There's a misconception that open positions have a single "correct" salary and that the negotiation process is all about getting the company to reveal that maximum number. It's not true, though. Ranges exist because even within a certain title, candidates have a wide range of skills and locations (especially when hiring remote/international) really do matter, whether or not you think they should.
More broadly, the salary range isn't even necessarily the only range they'd be willing to pay you. It's actually not uncommon to interview someone and realize that their career level is either above or below the position they're interviewing for. In that case, you "decline" the candidate for the position/title/pay range they applied for but continue the interview for a different position.
For example, if someone applies for SW ENG II but their compensation ask is in the range of SW ENG III (and their talents match) then you just bump them up. Conversely, if someone applies for SW ENG II but they're interviewing below the level of your SW ENG II candidates, you offer to continue the interview at the lower SW ENG I title/salary if they're willing.
So the ranges are still just a starting point. There is no magic trick to force a company to reveal the maximum number they'd pay you specifically. It's still a negotiation, but at least you can order job postings somewhat.
I actually think the bigger problem we're going to see is companies bait-and-switching candidates by putting a huge upper range number in the job posting but then offering them the bottom end of range while claiming that they can work their way up the range later. A lot of eager candidates are going to be pulled into companies who claim to have high upper limits, but who tell them they need to start at the bottom of the range and move up.
Software Engineer 1a (60k-70k) Software Engineer 1b (70k-80k) Etc...
Or, sometimes, the fight was already done internally for a III and the manager wouldn't want to lose that, and so will hire at a low III.
If it's a new position that's different from the roles your currently have, sure you can.
1: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5761&Year=2021...
Can they be leveraged for networking to get a CEO job in the future?
In this case, Dormant Commerce does not apply since the salary disclosure laws apply to any company operating in the state, regardless of where they're headquartered or incorporated. It applies equally to all.
The commerce clause does not prevent states from having laws which impact interstate commerce unless:
(1) They are preempted by federal exercise of commerce clause powers (though that's really a supremacy clause issue), or
(2) they discriminate against or excessively burden interstate commerce (the dormant commerce clause doctrine).
This would kind of be like the Exxon case, but if Maryland had tried to prevent Exxon from having gas stations ANYWHERE in the US if they started doing business in Maryland.
"Enter if you dare, but all your business in the rest of the nation will be affected and you will lose your competitive edge vis-a-vis recruiting firms that stay out of Washington!"
If a company places it's headquarters in a HCOL area and requires everyone come in 5 days a week, then yes, they have a responsibility to pay a salary high enough that their employees can survive there.
If employers don't like the fact that COL is too high, THEY can go ahead and march on city hall to advocate for political action. Companies have a MUCH larger sway with local politicians than the average employee does. That, or they can increase the salary or change the attendance policies.
Google, for example, has been trying for over a decade to build some medium-density housing near its campus. This goes beyond just advocating for political action (which they're also doing) -- they're actually offering to finance the project and assume all risk -- all the city has to do is stop saying no.
But every time it comes up for approval, local residents show up to complain, and the city council finds some arbitrary reason to say no.
They don't want to do that because they've already spent a bunch of money on their fancy HQ and don't want to see it empty out.
There are plenty of employers with < 1000 employees, however, crowding these downtown areas. They have way more flexibility in being able to move out of these city centers and into more affordable locations for everyone. They don't because part of the reason for their offices in these downtown location is rich people showing off to other rich people. You gotta "look" successful.
It is almost like, in any context, centralization is bad. I am not sure why we has a civilization have to keep learning this lesson, over and over and over again
Anytime you centralize anything it results in bad outcomes.
Diversity, Diversification, Distributed Models, etc are ALWAYS preferable, I dont care if you are talking about Stocks, People, Housing, Power, Government, you name, Consolidation and centralization is always bad
No, they don't. The employee gets to decide if the salary is high enough to meet his needs. If it isn't, the employee can negotiate for more, or go elsewhere.
Nobody is obliged to work for a company they find unacceptable.
If an employer doesn't pay their employees enough, those employees should leave, their employer will eventually die, and that'll add another data point to tell the shareholders to either elect CEOs that will pay more or to stop backing companies in high-CoL areas.
And saying companies choose where the highest concentration of available talent resides is dishonest.
I don't see why employers can have efforts to address climate change and social justice problems, but cost of living for their local communities is too much.
Yup, there's a low supply of employees and a high demand for them. So guess what the absolute dumbest thing is an employer can do when employees start clamoring for COL adjustments?
Or the company can walk down to city hall and tell them to build more housing, because they're unable or unwilling to pay enough for people to live in a viable radius.
Or the company can relocate or establish a satellite office in a lower cost of living area.
Or the company can pay people commensurately with the cost of living in the area.
Or the company can deal with the inevitable attrition of their workforce as it happens, all the while denying that they have any agency and deflect blame onto individuals.
No, but they can move to a lower cost area, allow WFH, or gasp pay a fair wage for the region. Employers don't have a right to cheap labor
This is just suppliers (of labor) advising that their costs are going up, and thus so is the price of their economic input. It's just business.
Some day soon, hopefully, companies that fail to do this will fail to stay in business.
No, but it's responsible for not paying well, while mandating that everyone working for it must live in the most expensive region in the country.
> If you’re mad at anyone, walk down to city hall and tell them to build more housing.
Or walk across the street to a competitor. It is the Bay area, after all.
Just like how if you don't like the mandates issued by your government, you are free to move to a different country. Or to petition it to change them. They are still mandates, though, despite you choosing out of your own free will to submit to them, by virtue of not leaving.
This website also has mandates about how its posters are expected to behave, that you submit to - despite being here voluntarily.
Feeling good makes people happy. What's measured to produce that feeling is the outcome of the am-I-good thing in your brain's evaluation of whatever you did, and Goodhart's law is always in effect. You can pay the cost of being good and earn a good evaluation—or you can do whatever you want, enjoy the rewards, and trick the am-I-good thing into always saying yes.
Since the latter method makes you feel good cheaper and faster, I'd expect it to be fairly common. In my experience it is.
So it's really option 3: do bad things and don't feel bad, with views on right and wrong aligned suspiciously precisely with your personal interests.
(Hopefully I've made it clear I'm not endorsing this, just describing it.)
And equivalent to 0 cash for paying the rent. I suspect that’s why it doesn’t seem to be a prominent concern in discussions about tech compensation.
That is me - what is the above worth to you? If you are risk adverse like me, then you like that plan. Others want the cash now but can accept the risk of losing their jobs. Some have a high risk tolerance and like getting their money in stocks - in the best case this is the most money, but in the worst case it is the least. There is no right answer.
In the end you need a certain amount of money to live. That is different from your actual value.
This strategy is getting reamed this year, but it's historically been a good bet about 85% of the time.
Whether they should be allowed to engage in the regulation of interstate commerce for activities that occur entirely extra-state is probably more along what you intended, but even that you could probably find allowed or as-yet-indeterminate exceptions to.
This is fine. Sacramento can regulate what's coming into California. It cannot set food labeling requirements for Michigan.
It can regulated what is sold or produced in California, but, because of the Commerce Clause, it's more limited in regulating what comes in to California.
> It cannot set food labeling requirements for Michigan.
It absolutely can set food labelling requirements for food commercially produced in California, except to the extent such regulations are preempted by federal law, whether or not it will later be shipped to Michigan.
No, it banned sale of foie gras entirely (it did not single out importation), and even so the ban, to the extent that it prohibited individual consumers from buying it for import from out-of-state vendors, was struck down by a federal trial court in 2020 as a violation of the dormant commerce clause, a decision this year upheld by the Ninth Circuit, so it's probably not a law you want to point to as an example of the state being free to regulate interstate commerce.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/california-f...
> and IIRC are planning a law banning the import of foreign oil.
Even if it was true that someone in California was planning on trying to pass such a law, it would be an even more clear, bright-line dormant commerce clause violation than the foie gras law.
We all have opinions on what states can and can't do, and while I agree that precedent should prevent something like this, the fact remains that while you and I agree that they shouldn't be able to, there's nothing to stop them trying, and even perhaps succeeding (at the very least, for however many years it takes for someone to show injury and maybe get it overturned.)
Sincerely, I appreciate you.
They can even regulate interstate commerce in ways that discriminate between in and out of state companies (IE something that seems a very clear commerce clause violation), though this is historically limited mostly to alcohol shipment :)
Honestly, though, the current SC seems much more likely to strike that all down than they have in the past, and give much brighter lines.
Whether it happens as a direct consequence of the word of the law feels less relevant than the fact they made it happen in practice via a settlement.
[1]: https://table.skift.com/2018/07/12/some-fast-food-chains-dro...
It isn't allowed to discriminate against or unduly burden interstate commerce; it can generally regulate the behavior of Washington persons (including corporations) in interstate commerce where such regulation does not discriminate against such commerce (which is clearly the case where the rule is identical to that for in-state commerce of the same type.)
The exception would be if the federal government preempted the kind of regulation Washington sought to make by exercise of federal commerce powers.
The upthread claim is that it globally binds Washington entities, not that it globally binds foreign entities doing business in Washington. If it did the latter, and the practical impact was as described, it might be considered an undue burden. It might not. Its a lot easier to find cases finding substantial but non-discriminatory burdens on interstate commerce not to be violations of than to find ones holding them in violation of the dormant commerce clause, and this clearly isn't a discriminatory burden in the sense that it would place restrictions on out-of-state actors that are not placed on Washington-based actors.
> This would kind of be like the Exxon case, but if Maryland had tried to prevent Exxon from having gas stations ANYWHERE in the US if they started doing business in Maryland.
I think that’s a wildly invalid analogy, and, in any case, what you want in an analogy to make your case is an analogy to a case where the courts found a dormant commerce clause violation, not a analogy to a hypothetical variant of one where they did not where you conjecture that they might have ruled differently.
So you go online and fill out an LLC for another state, and just say you are licensing your brand name to that LLC in another state that is doing all the sales in that state
It's illegal to do that. What's the defense, it's legal to do that somewhere else?
That part of the justice system doesn't play around. There are people in jail for felony murder for selling the baggies to the guy who sold the drugs to the guy who overdosed.
You choose the company you work for, and you can leave at any time, and you don't owe them a thing.
So no, it's not at all "just like"
If an office is moved to a less densely populated area, the average commute time of all employees collectively ends up increasing.
The way rich people actually show off to other rich people is by doing what's right for their companies, thereby increasing the value of their equity - which then allows them to buy luxury goods and impress other rich people that way.
Not necessarily. I've lived in rural areas and the number of miles you could travel per minute is significantly higher than the miles per minute in an urban area. My current commute time would be the equivalent of around 15 miles in the very much less urban area. Also when you factor in that property is cheaper for things like parking and factor in extremely easy door to door parking, commute times drop down even more. At one point I lived in a condo and had to walk 8 minutes from my condo door down the garage to my parking spot. I now have a house and my car is directly out my side door.
Population density relative to commute doesn't seem to be such a clear cut relationship. In theory in a dense area you have to travel less, in reality people work where they can and don't want to move constantly so commute times can get quite long.
Thats the only action that occurred in the state
Google: Greater of 100% up to $3000, or 50% up to contribution limit (whichever is greater)
Amazon: 50% up to 4%, vests after 3 years
Microsoft: 50% up to contribution limit
Facebook: 100% up to half of limit, 50% for the rest
Netflix: 100% up to 4%
I also don't just get the 120% up to 6%, I also get a fixed 4% of my salary contributed every year. So it's a hyothetical
200 * .06 * 1.2 = 14.4
200 * .04 = 8
14.4 + 8 = 22.8Assuming you can get a gross offer that matches net, having the money in post-tax accounts is better because the tax rate on the 401K at withdrawal will likely be higher than the 15% capital gains rate.
Decentralization of cities - competition - sometimes helps even more, but the societies that never centralized never got as far. (And that decentralization can backfire sometimes too, e.g. military competition instead of economic.)
This is my problem with the studies on suburban sprawl is they do not factor in all of the things, they are generally only looking at one thing namely car and home pollution
Then you have Higher Crime, and a whole host of other matters that come with Dense Urban Centers that you do not get when people spread out.
On Balance I will take suburban sprawl over Urban Density every day, and twice on Sunday
Suburbanites are at very high risk of life-altering consequences from the actions of other humans. Many of those actions are crimes (DUI, distracted driving, reckless driving), but worse, some are not even crimes (incompetent driving, tired driving, intentional killing of annoying cyclists). That we feel so differently about these compared to more traditionally urban forms of crime is just cognitive bias with a helping of racism.
And with respect to density, produce for NYC was grown within sight of Manhattan as late as 1960. The impact of the belt of suburbia from Richmond, VA to New Hampshire is far more harmful that the cities.
Sometimes, it's clearly the right choice (where are program settings settings? `~/.config`).
It's also VERY simple. If all you want is client/server version control, and you don't mind the constraints, SVN's UX and learning curve beats git's by a long shot.
Decentralization buys you flexibility, but entails tons of complexity.
I can not envision any scenario in which I would choose SVN over git