[HN Gopher] Microsoft Announces It Will Include Pay Ranges in Al... ___________________________________________________________________ Microsoft Announces It Will Include Pay Ranges in All U.S. Job Postings Author : blue_box Score : 530 points Date : 2022-06-10 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.forbes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com) | Fargoan wrote: | I wonder if this applies to contractors working at their | campuses. From what I've heard, here in Fargo most of the people | working at the Microsoft campus work for Archway | indymike wrote: | Job posts with a pay rate get about 28% more applications than | those without. Some job boards that syndicate jobs from other job | boards will insert an "estimated salary" or "industry salary" | just to get more clicks if you don't include a salary. | | Source: my company does recruitment advertising for many other | companies, and including salary is something we coach our | customers to do. | ComputerGuru wrote: | Microsoft already posts salaries for remote or potentially remote | positions to comply with Colorado law - but I have not seen Meta, | Netflix, etc doing the same under similar circumstances. | ENOTTY wrote: | Given that most big tech companies' base salary tends to plateau | and total comp begins to be dominated by stock grants and | performance bonuses, just how much real transparency is actually | going to be provided? | wing-_-nuts wrote: | Yeah without TC this isn't really all that useful. | InefficientRed wrote: | Agreed 100%. At big tech salary is close to useless and rarely | the primary number that changes during negotiations. My highest | paying job -- a 3.5x raise -- came with a $75K salary cut | compared to my previous job. | | This should be, by far, the top voted comment. I don't think | MSFT sharing salary ranges is consequential in any way. | JamesSwift wrote: | Sure it is. | | 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. | bluGill wrote: | That depends on what the other things are. Most years I get | half of my take home pay in December because of my bonus | (some of that is my 401k maxing out in November), there | have been a couple bad years where the bonus was less, but | at least I was able to keep my job. Keeping my job is a | factor as well, since I have a family to support, if I'm | laid off (like most companies do all the time) that means | I'm scrambling to figure out how to get cash, while I can | live off of the smaller paychecks I get. | | 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. | r00fus wrote: | This would be included in total compensation (which | should include non-renumerative benefits as well). In | sales, where total comp could be mostly commission (I've | seen a 25/75% split in some cases) the company should | have some idea of what the bonus/commission range is. | tshaddox wrote: | Out of curiosity, why does your 401k max out in November? | If your employee does matching then wouldn't you want to | spread it as evenly as possible throughout the entire | year? | InefficientRed wrote: | November is pretty close to the whole year. If you choose | a fixed % per paycheck and have a bonus that's not | perfectly amortized then being off by a month is actually | pretty good. | tshaddox wrote: | I assumed that employer contribution matching is | generally a fixed percentage of the employee's salary | each pay period, which means that if you don't contribute | in one month you forfeit that percentage of your salary | and thus about 8% of your total possible employer | matching. | endianswap wrote: | At least in my case as an engineer at a smaller tech | company my 401k (and corresponding match) maxes out each | January because that's when bonuses are granted. | InefficientRed wrote: | Note: you can set your contribution % to 0 in January and | then change it in February. This can be worthwhile | because you then DCA throughout the rest of the year. On | the other hand, by contributing everything in January, | you get the employer match earlier. And over a 30 year | career it's likely a rounding error. | InefficientRed wrote: | I've seen it work different ways and different companies. | It's either a % of salary or a % of your gross paycheck. | In the latter case, bonuses can mess things up. | bluGill wrote: | Every company I've worked for accounts for that. I get my | full match no matter when I max my 401k out. Of course | different companies work differently. | com2kid wrote: | I'm sad more companies don't up their 401k contributions, | most people don't realize their employer can put in 40k a | year (!!!) into an employee's 401k. Due to the wonders of | tax law, that is equiv to 60k cash, and that isn't counting | the earnings or the flexibility to reallocate 401k | investments w/o having to pay taxes on earnings when | changing where the money is invested. | snuxoll wrote: | One benefit of not working for Big Tech and instead for a | privately held company, instead of stock grants I get | 120% match up to 6% of my salary and an annual 4% profit | sharing bonus into my 401(k). Sure, my actual salary | could be higher working for a "proper" tech company, but | I get more employer contributions into my retirement | savings than the Google's, Microsoft's, and Amazon's of | the world will give to an employee capping their | contributions. | pnw wrote: | If Microsoft put 40k a year into everyone's 401k they | would immediately trip the Highly Compensated Employee | test and have the IRS breathing down their necks. | joshuamorton wrote: | If microsoft put 40K a year into everyone's 401k it would | be impossible for them to violate the HCE test, as every | you'd have non-HCEs with a 401k contribution of 30% or | higher, something which HCEs are literally unable to | match. | tshaddox wrote: | > Due to the wonders of tax law, that is equiv to 60k | cash | | 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. | deelowe wrote: | BS. There's nothing stopping you from maxing your 401k | and then pulling it back out taking the penalty. This | applies to a ton of benefits people naively don't take | advantage of from HSAs to employee stock purchase plans | to 401k. It's almost always beneficial to maximize your | tax advantaged accounts even if you're paying penalties | on the back end. | afrodc_ wrote: | I don't know about you, but with tech salaries, rent is | the least for my concern. I think that's true for most | people that don't live in ridiculously high cost of | living areas. | tshaddox wrote: | Perhaps, although until COVID (and we'll see what happens | with remote work compensation in the long term) nearly | all people with huge big tech compensation packages lived | in ridiculously high cost of living areas. I suspect a | very large portion still do. In the Bay Area I've heard | no shortage of stories of couples/families with _two_ big | tech salaries still spending very large portions of their | paychecks on rent /mortgage. | nfriedly wrote: | Seriously! I've considered going back to contracting just | so that I could fully fund a 401k account. | sokoloff wrote: | For the longest time, Amazon's cash salary cap was well- | known to be in the middle $150K range. I don't see any | evidence that hampered their ability to attract job | seekers. | Solstinox wrote: | Arms race (which will lead to bigger salaries) or price | collusion (salaries stay the same)? | rsanek wrote: | Wouldn't be the first time | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- | Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... | JamesSwift wrote: | I think its more likely to be an arms race now that the | "remote work" dam has broken and work location is not as | important as during the time of the previous well-known | collusions. | gigel82 wrote: | Not for Microsoft though; their stock grants are :peanut_emoji: | compared with other top tier companies (Source: levels.fyi); so | this probably a good thing overall... | | EDIT: just found out HackerNews is stripping out unicode emoji | characters from comments. | [deleted] | r00fus wrote: | The side effects of this move are probably bigger than the move | itself. Hopefully this induces other companies to advertise | their salary ranges as candidates (it's still a candidate's | market out there) use Microsoft's ranges as reference for | negotiating salaries on other non-MS jobs. | | 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. | llbeansandrice wrote: | More people work for Microsoft than just engineers. This | applies to all of their US job postings. Just because you | specifically don't get much benefit doesn't mean it's not a | good thing. | Victerius wrote: | Can a company make an offer outside its stated range? | | 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. | Gustomaximus wrote: | > If salary ranges can be bypassed, then they are not really | useful | | 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. | grimjack00 wrote: | > 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? | | 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. | Victerius wrote: | Another situation: You make 160k, the max range is 170k, but | you'd like more than the max range. In the old world, this | would work. You would gain more comp, and your new employer | would acquire your talent. It's the free market at work. In | the new world, neither of those will happen. I'm concerned | about the consequences of that on economic growth and | innovation. | kirillbobyrev wrote: | Are you saying that the employers won't give 170k+ if the | disclosed max range is 170k? I highly doubt that, the only | change here is that the range that was previously only | visible to the hiring managers within the company is now | also visible to the candidates. If they could go beyond the | internally visible range before, they would surely be able | to do it now. The only difference is that before the | candidates would have no idea whether they're already maxed | out on the given range or if there's still plenty of room | to negotiate. | BuckRogers wrote: | I don't buy it either. I think overall more people will | be lifted up, than some guy that wants 200K and the | highest paid employee is currently 160K, will be held | down. In fact, I think that's blatantly obvious. | Companies are going to lose with this because this | industry has so much exploitation going on, that San | Francisco alone isn't counterbalancing it or even close. | snowwrestler wrote: | Salary bands are tied to title. If the max range of the | listed position is $160k, and the company wants to hire you | for $200k, they will just hire you into a more senior title | (which has a higher range). | | This is how it happens now, and how it will still happen. | Disclosing the initial range target does not prevent it. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Probably easier to have multiple reqs for the same job under | different titles to cover a broader range or throw perks of | hard to define monetary value at the wall until something | sticks than to go through whatever process would be required to | offer outside the range. | ghaff wrote: | Or $170K is the most they're willing to offer for a | particular position. And, if someone wants significantly | more, they'll just pass. Companies will find ways to make | exceptions for someone they really want--including creating a | new position for them. But companies won't always salary | match. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > 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? | | 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. | DeathArrow wrote: | About salaries at Microsoft. I interviewed with them this year. | | 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. | cjbgkagh wrote: | I presume you mean 1/5 to 1/6th. | brianwawok wrote: | Maybe the low offer was due to an off by order of magnitude | math mistake? | masterof0 wrote: | Microsoft is known and memed on the "big tech community" for | paying "peanuts" (less than other tech companies). Is the rest- | and-vest kinda of place, or so they say. I'm sure there are | some teams that work pretty hard, is a big company. | TrackerFF wrote: | Interestingly enough, I know MS (engineering) managers in other | European satellite offices that make absolute bank. Easily 4-5 | times more than comparable jobs at domestic companies. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | Now you know to ask for compensation up front. | BuckRogers wrote: | Everyone always says this is a RED FLAG, so I've hesitated to | do this myself. But I value my time more than I care about | being "flagged" as a dissident against company interests. So | I do that now with the initial HR interview. The energy put | into this can be completely insane as per the GP's | experience. | | 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. | ChicagoBoy11 wrote: | This is going do to absolutely nothing. Most of this legislation | does nothing to really address the potential for folks to just | advertise incredibly wide potential salary ranges, to say nothing | of alternative ways that they can change total compensation "for | the right candidate," if you catch my drift. I would suspect that | the biggest effect of this is to actually lead to overall greater | distrusts, as folks will make all sorts of assumptions based on | the ranges they see for jobs at their companies, based on their | own biases. True transparency which would require something like | disclosure of average/median total compensation at the company | for that role, for instance, would be incredibly meaningful, but | it will never come. | _fat_santa wrote: | I live in CO and we recently had a similar law pass that | required companies to disclose salary ranges. Like you said it | does absolutely nothing, companies will list "Senior Software | Engineer" with a salary of "$70k - $240k". This often times | isn't even the range for the current position, but the "entire | range" of offers they extend to any level of SWE. | bfung wrote: | Even so, the bright side is that the applicant's expectation | of the low end has been set. | | 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. | athorax wrote: | That is explicitly called out as not being allowed: | | "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.c | olorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/INFO%20%239_%20Eq... | zeroonetwothree wrote: | Seems impossible to enforce in practice | kimbernator wrote: | Due to my recent job search for remote positions in the | US, I've seen a lot of postings in CO which include the | salary ranges. While some do use stupidly wide ranges, | most companies post more reasonable ones. I'm able to | filter out those in the former group because this law | they have has effectively exposed their dishonest hiring | practices, and the companies that aren't trying to | obfuscate their pay have also been exposed. | rednerrus wrote: | Can they just audit the actual salaries paid vs the range | listed at the end of every year? | nfriedly wrote: | That sounds like an incredible amount of work. Who is | "they" and who is paying them to do all of this auditing? | jjav wrote: | One "they" is the state government, who happens to | already have the info sitting in their databases due to | W-2s being reported. | nomilk wrote: | Not only are the salary bands meaninglessly wide, but I'd bet | that if someone was really great and justified more than the | upper bound, the company (Microsoft, but any other rational | company too) would, of course, pay that higher amount since | it's in their interest to do so. | lotsofpulp wrote: | They are not meaninglessly wide. These laws are of great | benefit to those earning the least in society. They get to | easily see which occupations and businesses pay more and | where their labor should be allocated. | KingMachiavelli wrote: | Even if the range is too large it is still extremely useful; | it shows the company _doesn 't_ want to post a meaningful | salary range which means salaries offered will be in the | lower portion. Companies that are prepared to offer a | competitive salary have every incentive to make the lower | number higher than their competitor's listings. | naikrovek wrote: | I want to be snarky and compliment you on your clairvoyance | while pointing out that you are only guessing, and instead I'll | just ask why you think this kind of thing is never coming, | given that some companies already do this. | rootusrootus wrote: | I tend to assume that, at best, a company advertising a range | of X-Y is going to offer something around (X+Y)/2. So if you | tell me some ridiculous range, I'm going to assume your offer | will suck, and I'll just skip it. | | Everyone is better served by accurate ranges, it avoids both | sides wasting time because of mismatched expectations. | xhkkffbf wrote: | I can see some heartache if they advertise the range as between | $X to $Y and then they make an offer that is much closer to $X. | Broken_Hippo wrote: | Possibly, but that's basically the applicants choice to go | ahead and apply (within the normal confines of "choice" in | work). At lest there is a bottom they can expect. This won't | even be that often if the company is actually upfront about | how it determines pay: Higher for x qualification, lower | without the optional qualifications/experience. | | 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. | ironlake wrote: | All regulations have limited effectiveness. This one is a step | in the right direction. The tech industry tends to dismiss | government action as misguided, unenforceable, or watered down. | Meanwhile, the free market gives us Ring cameras where the data | is fed directly to the state for illegal surveillance. | | Regulations are an integral part of a free society. | psyc wrote: | Internally, salary ranges at MS are quite narrow by job and | level. Particularly since they're more compressed toward zero | than at the FAANGs and Unicorns. Why would they invite trouble | by not simply publishing those? | brianwawok wrote: | Is this for like a level 6 dev? | | Will someone applyling know if they are a level 4 or a level | 7 dev? How? | Chinjut wrote: | It's incredible in these comments that so many of you who work in | the industry on the employee side are arguing against having more | transparency for the employee, and for having more leverage in | the negotiating process for the employer instead. I want all the | advantage as an employee that I can get. Any secret withheld from | me is not to my advantage. | kccqzy wrote: | I think for most people external tools like levels.fyi are | already good enough in that they provide a salary range with | sufficient accuracy. Of course these same people would hope | that the other candidates haven't heard of levels.fyi so that | companies can lowball them to have more budget for the salaries | of those who have heard of levels.fyi. | | It's just selfishness, not collective action. | rat9988 wrote: | It's misguided selfishness because other people raising their | price would raise yours too. | hcnews wrote: | In 2022, you have to assume a fair amount of activity on | popular boards/forums/subreddits/twitter etc. has been | purposefully influenced by nefarious parties. | | 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. | ketzo wrote: | I mean, you don't even need to reach that far. | | Many commenters here are either currently on the employer | side of a salary negotiation, or imagine that they will be | some day. | WalterBright wrote: | I would have been paid less in companies I worked for under this | system. | | Be careful what you wish for. | logicalmonster wrote: | Just to play Devil's Advocate: being explicit about salaries is | the kind of practice that sounds amazingly good on the surface, | but might have some unintended real-world consequences. | | 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. | pjbeam wrote: | Salary is just one component of total comp, and in my (tech) | experience not generally the biggest one. | bena wrote: | What do you think happens now? | | 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. | s1mon wrote: | Yes, these are both real risks. | | 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. | tcskeptic wrote: | Most companies have explicit and firm salary ranges for | positions already -- I would bet MS is one of them. They just | didn't put them in the job postings until now. | bluGill wrote: | We just made an offer to someone that was far more than | asked, our salary range doesn't go that low. It is to our | benefit to give a fair offer as we will train this person and | want them to stick around not leave in a year when they get a | better offer. | thebean11 wrote: | Most companies the size of MS, yeah | wfhordie wrote: | The problem you mentioned is already solved using the | contracting system. | mywittyname wrote: | I feel like most places would be open to hiring a senior in | place of a principle if they felt either, the senior could do | the job well enough. | | 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. | [deleted] | matwood wrote: | I don't think any of these ranges are binding. They simply give | the candidate more information to negotiate with. So a company | could end up offering more or less than the range, but they | need to be ready for a conversation as to why. | sokoloff wrote: | Job postings with a range use the term range in a much looser | than the mathematical sense. In mathematics, if I say the range | is 100-200, I'm telling you that 95 and 205 are not possible. | In job postings, if I say the range is 100-200, 95 and 205 are | still possible. 100-200 was just a (hopefully) good-faith | estimate of the range. | willcipriano wrote: | It's really the low number I want. What is the least you | would offer someone who can fill this role? Jobs can have | dramatically different expectations depending on the company | and that number helps me understand what your level of | expectations are. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | >they might be unemployable in that field and not gain the | experience needed to progress | | 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. | stardude900 wrote: | I can only speak for when I was a hiring manager and we called | them bands, but it was essentially the same thing. We attached | a band to every job posting and we would occasionally interview | promising candidates and offer them the top end of a lower band | or we'd offer them a more junior position with a promise of an | early promotion review. Some took it, some didn't. | nomilk wrote: | What's the actual problem that including salaries tries to solve? | IMO if used strictly, it could only _limit_ the talent pool | (consider if someone more skilled than expected applies, but won | 't accept at or below the stated upper salary bound; the company | won't be able to pivot and hire them). | | 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. | nvr219 wrote: | > What's the actual problem that including salaries tries to | solve? | | It tries to solve pay equity problems. | https://hr.uw.edu/comp/pay-equity/salary-setting-guidance/ | nomilk wrote: | > Employers must provide equal compensation to similarly | employed workers | | 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. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Beginner microeconomics courses teach that for the best | allocation of resources, a market must have price | transparency. How else are market participants supposed to | ascertain the movements of supply and demand curves? | nomilk wrote: | > How else are market participants supposed to ascertain | the movements of supply and demand curves? | | 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. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Hence a salary range. No one is forcing anyone to pay | everyone the same, even if it is the same job title. The | most important part of these laws is actually just the | minimum. People need to know which business and employers | to avoid and which to go towards. Sorting job listings by | bottom of the pay range can help them save time. | | In any case, for any marker, the more real time | information, the better. | gigatexal wrote: | Awesome. I love this. This just granted +100 goodwill to MSFT. | givemeethekeys wrote: | Does this include executive roles and total compensation or just | the base salary? | rsanek wrote: | I see many concerns here mentioning how this may not be a useful | law because the company may create very wide ranges. It sounds | like there are some restrictions in the law that try to prevent | that, but I wonder if we should be looking at it a different way | -- provide both the salary range for the position _and also_ the | range of the salaries of the existing employees in that same | position. | awsrocks wrote: | epwr wrote: | > Microsoft said it would disclose salary ranges in all internal | and external U.S. job postings no later than January 2023. That | date is when Washington state, where Microsoft's headquarters are | located, will start requiring employers with at least 15 | employees to disclose salary ranges for each position. | | In other news, Microsoft to comply with a new law. | chrismeller wrote: | "Software Engineer I - 40-250k" | ekianjo wrote: | anything preventing them from doing very large ranges like | that? | treis wrote: | It says you have to post "the" salary range. So you can't | have an actual salary range and then post something | different. Most corps will have realistic salary bands and | when they create job reqs it will be for a specific level. | It's possible that some will call everyone engineers and | have a band like that when you include interns. But that's | not how most of them operate. | llbeansandrice wrote: | FWIW the similar Colorado law prevents this | PragmaticPulp wrote: | Yes, it would discourage some candidates from applying if | they see the average within that range is lower than the | average they could get anywhere else. Dirty tricks are also | a red flag for candidates. | | 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. | russellendicott wrote: | Yeah, I expect it will turn into a game and companies | will just explode the number of positions so "Software | Engineer 1" will become | | Software Engineer 1a (60k-70k) Software Engineer 1b | (70k-80k) Etc... | coding123 wrote: | If someone is a III and applied for a II, the company | would likely hire them as a II. | bombcar wrote: | They'd likely _offer_ at a II but _reoffer_ at a III if | there were competing offers, or really wanted the | employee. | | 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. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | I am _told_ that judges tend to be unimpressed with | technically following a law in a way that blatantly ignores | the intent; I suspect that if you tried to claim a larger | range than actually exists in salaries you actually pay | then they 'd still find you to have broken the law. But | IANAL and know nothing of the specifics; take with large | grain of salt. | chrismeller wrote: | Nothing I see in the bill [1] says what an acceptable range | is. | | 1: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5761&Year= | 2021... | pulse7 wrote: | "Any Job ... 0-1B" | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _In other news, Microsoft to comply with a new law_ | | Microsoft is under no obligation to comply with Washington law | outside Washington. That's what they're doing here. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Since their largest workforce is in Washington state, it's | probably just less risky to make this their overall US | policy. Making a different policy for HQ vs everywhere else | could easily lead to mistakes and accidentally breaking the | law. | Dylan16807 wrote: | It can't be _that_ hard to follow this law in specific | places. This is a meaningful policy decision, not just | following risk. | TulliusCicero wrote: | I think you'd be surprised. Though the problem isn't that | it's hard to follow in the general case, but that things | could potentially slip through the cracks. | | 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. | InitialBP wrote: | > It can't be that hard to follow this law in specific | places. | | 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. | pnw wrote: | There will be an army of lawyers trying to monetize any | errors by companies, since the WA bill 5761 allows a job | applicant to sue for potential lost wages plus interest. | Microsoft is just getting ahead of the lawsuit curve. | sangnoir wrote: | > It can't be that hard to follow this law in specific | places | | 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. | wing-_-nuts wrote: | Probably easier to just do it for everybody than have two | separate listings for WA and the rest of the US. I wonder if | this is TC or just salary? | sgerenser wrote: | Everything I've seen so far is just salary. Which is kind | of a huge loophole for tech companies where 20-60% of | compensation is often in the form of stock and bonuses. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I am curious what level of details the text of the law | requires: | | https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=5761&year=2 | 021... | | 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? | superfrank wrote: | My guess is they see the writing on the wall with this one. | Colorado and Washington both have laws about this now. I | wouldn't be surprised to see California and New York | implement something similar in the next year or two. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I wouldn't be surprised to see California and New York | implement something similar in the next year or two. | | 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. | bena wrote: | It's probably a move just to make it easier on themselves. | | 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. | bombcar wrote: | It also makes sense when you realize more and more jobs are | "Location, or remote" and "or remote" would cover | Washington and Colorado. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | It's simpler and easier to do it this way. Which is what | they're doing here. | epwr wrote: | This article [1] seems to state pretty clearly that the law | applies to all job posting by a company in Washington state. | Any sources saying it's only about jobs open to Washington | residents? | | [1] https://www.dwt.com/blogs/employment-labor-and- | benefits/2022... | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _sources saying it 's only about jobs open to Washington | residents?_ | | 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... | andjd wrote: | Legally, a company is subject to state laws of their | state of incorporation (usually Delaware, for various | reasons) _and_ their state of 'domicile', usually where | they are headquartered. They are also subject to state | laws in states where they operate. | | 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. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _even if MS were incorporated in Delaware, Washington | state could pass laws that bind how the company acts | anywhere in the world_ | | 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. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause | LargeWu wrote: | You are misreading this. The Dormant Commerce Clause is | relevant when talking about applying laws unequally for | the purpose of protecting in-state commercial entities. | For instance, if companies based out of state were | subject to salary disclosure laws, but Washington based | companies were not. | | 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. | lozenge wrote: | That's specific to state protectionism though. The law | applies equally to jobs posted inside and outside the | state so the Dormant Commerce Clause is not relevant. | paulmd wrote: | What are your qualifications to be dispensing legal | advice in this area, if any? | | 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.) | hef19898 wrote: | If you do that only for jobs in Washington state it is | only a question of time until the first discrimibation | law suites are filed. Plus it is easy good press. | DannyBee wrote: | and then the law would get struck down because, as said, | washington state isn't allowed to regulate interstate | commerce. | bmelton wrote: | Nit to pick: States can and do regulate interstate | commerce all the time. California once banned the import | of foie gras into the state, and IIRC are planning a law | banning the import of foreign oil. Some states ban the | import of firearms they don't wish to exist. | | 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. | DannyBee wrote: | Yes, that is fair. | | 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. | dragonwriter wrote: | > California once banned the import of foie gras into the | state | | 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. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _States can and do regulate interstate commerce all the | time. California once banned the import of foie gras into | the state, and IIRC are planning a law banning the import | of foreign oil._ | | This is fine. Sacramento can regulate what's coming into | California. It cannot set food labeling requirements for | Michigan. | [deleted] | dragonwriter wrote: | > Sacramento can regulate what's coming into California. | | 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. | connicpu wrote: | Washington has actually successfully enforced some of its | worker protection rules on a national scale in the past. | As a condition of having the harsh penalties for their | in-state violations dropped, they got fast food companies | to agree to drop non-compete agreements from all | franchise agreements nationwide[1] | | 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... | dragonwriter wrote: | > and then the law would get struck down because, as | said, washington state isn't allowed to regulate | interstate commerce. | | 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. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _you do that only for jobs in Washington state it is | only a question of time until the first discrimibation | law suites are filed_ | | 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. | willcipriano wrote: | I pretty sure if you headquartered your marijuana company | in a state where it's illegal you'd run into problems, | even if you didn't grow or sell it in that state. | oneoff786 wrote: | I don't think that's true? | willcipriano wrote: | "Conspiracy to commit drug trafficking" would probably | fit the bill. I think they could just call in the feds | because from the state and federal perspective you are | running a drug empire from that office. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | The feds don't seem very concerned with marijuana lately | fartcannon wrote: | That's hardly the point. | oneoff786 wrote: | But it's not trafficking if you don't move it across | state lines? | brewdad wrote: | But your state of domicile would happily seize your ill- | gotten gains the minute you try to bring the money home. | You may not be moving the drug across state lines but the | money certainly would. | oneoff786 wrote: | Pretty sure you're just making that up. That doesn't make | any sense. State laws don't declare something is illegal | anywhere. They declare they're illegal within that state. | It's perfectly fine to do such things in other states. | yieldcrv wrote: | Nah, state level would have no jurisdiction over the | criminal action and feds arent caring right now, but | focusing on the state level you can also just form a | branch | | 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 | willcipriano wrote: | "Your honor, this man, doing business as "weed.com", | collected the proceeds from four thousand individual | sales of marijuana from his office at 123 Fake Street." | | 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. | yieldcrv wrote: | It's legal to license a brand name to an organization in | another state | | Thats the only action that occurred in the state | [deleted] | lanstein wrote: | I believe it is a WA corp. | dnissley wrote: | Just to take this a bit farther... if Washington state | can regulate Washington incorporated entities, can it | regulate them to act in a way that would violate laws in | other states? | malwarebytess wrote: | Here's an example. | | 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. | CountSessine wrote: | This isn't epwr's claim. His claim is that Washington has | written and passed a law that binds Microsoft's | operations outside Washington state, which I'm pretty | sure would violate the commerce clause. | dragonwriter wrote: | > His claim is that Washington has written and passed a | law that binds Microsoft's operations outside Washington | state, which I'm pretty sure would violate the commerce | clause. | | 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). | [deleted] | zeroonetwothree wrote: | They cannot just like they can't regulate activities of | private individual when outside their state of residence. | [deleted] | AdrianB1 wrote: | California does regulate private individuals that lived | in California in the past. It also does regulate private | individuals with residence in California and working in a | different state. Just saying. | decebalus1 wrote: | What are you even talking about? | | > 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?webmasterI | d=9... | | Washington (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation) | nrclark wrote: | How do the Washington/Colorado salary disclosure laws interact | with bonus structures and stock grants? A staff engineer might | make $250k/year in base salary, but their total comp could be | much higher. | 0daystock wrote: | "250/year with bonus and equity options" is what I'd seen - not | very helpful. | llbeansandrice wrote: | These laws apply to all jobs, not just tech jobs. | billfruit wrote: | Why only in the US? Why not everywhere? | outside1234 wrote: | But will it include stock ranges too? This is where the huge | discrepancy occurs between candidates. | | 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). | ramesh31 wrote: | Any tips for landing a MS interview? | [deleted] | avgDev wrote: | This is the way. We need more of this. | | 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. | wonderwonder wrote: | I get ~4 recruiter emails a day and I don't think I have ever | seen the salary in the initial job description. If the job | looks interesting I will just reply asking what the salary is. | Usually they immediately call me rather than respond via email | which is pretty annoying. | silicon2401 wrote: | This is why I stopped putting personal info in my resume. I | once had a particularly aggressive recruiter try and recruit | me for a contracting position (I only consider full time | roles), and when I repeatedly declined his offer, he actually | found my resume somewhere and just called my phone. Needless | to say it was incredibly annoying and ever since then I've | kept all contact info out of my resume. | r00fus wrote: | I put my Google Voice on my resume (and other places like | my .sig) and I generally just forward all GV calls to VM. | | 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. | bluGill wrote: | Of course, they already know what they will get, it is a | fixed price. Anything they don't pay whoever they hire is | money they get to keep. (they can't hire a junior engineer to | a senior position - if the contract allowed that they would | though). I've seen cases where someone doesn't know their | value and thus accepts a very low offer. | avgDev wrote: | Pretty common sales tactic. They want you to invest as much | time as possible because generally the more time you invest | the more likely they are going to make a "sale". | | I'm not sure if this even works for devs as there is so many | opportunities. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | The whole prudish / secretive attitude around salaries has got | to be one of the most annoying parts. Just get the formalities | over with instead of wasting time, please. | xtracto wrote: | I just reply to everyone with my expected salary, which is 30% | increase of my current salary. If they are not close to that | number, then it is better to not waste our time. | | 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. | cfcfcf wrote: | Do you reveal your current salary? Or give a ballpark? | xtracto wrote: | I'll respond with a slightly different answer: In my | country, not only it is NOT illegal for a company to ask | you for your current salary. They can actually ask you to | provide a pay slip!! | | So, I give CURRENT_SALARY*30% and tell them it's that. | itqwertz wrote: | If you do follow up and eventually ask for a salary range, | expect vague terms like "competitive" or "market rate". | 908B64B197 wrote: | The correct way to interpret this is "Silicon Valley | competitive/market rate". | | The reaction you'll get is hilarious in some cases. | collegeburner wrote: | No not necessarily. Let me go over some scenarios: | | 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. | marlowe221 wrote: | If your job posting doesn't give some indication as to the | possible salary range, I'm just not going to apply. | | 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. | dubcanada wrote: | There are a ton of people here who probably make 6 figures | complaining about pay ranges in job postings. | | 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). | kansface wrote: | > I haven't read a single response that I agree with as to why | this is a negative? ...They are going to provide a range like | $42k to $55k | | 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. | Broken_Hippo wrote: | I'm sorry, I don't see how this is the same. Will you explain | why you think they are similar? | kansface wrote: | What is the incentive for companies to put down | meaningful/useful information? If that incentive exists, | why weren't they doing it before the law was enacted? | Alternatively, they weren't doing it before, so a priori | I'd wager that the opposite incentive exists (to hide | information from candidates). This law isn't changing | incentives so behavior won't change beyond nominal | compliance with the law. | twblalock wrote: | At some point as a high achiever you end up worrying about the | ceiling rather than the floor. | | 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. | disiplus wrote: | i don't think the salary has to be in the range, its just | that the range is based on current salaries. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | At the very least, MS is probably just "collateral damage" of a | law which could help low earners gain more transparency. If | you're already working at MS or any big tech, odds are you | aren't part of the target audience. Doubly so since information | from big corps is pretty readily shared and available already. | [deleted] | jorblumesea wrote: | Are they going to take a look a TC? Their "highest we can go | offer" was 100k below everyone else in my region (seattle) | galkk wrote: | Is it going to be salary or total comp? | xtat wrote: | Read this as "our initial offer" | potamic wrote: | I wonder why only the US. If they believe pay transparency is the | right way forward, they should do it globally. Surely there's no | legal hurdles in posting pay ranges for any country. | troon-lover wrote: | bombcar wrote: | For the US it may be this is the easiest way to comply with | Colorado's law. Worldwide may be rolled out later, but those | are probably separate business entities that have to work it | out. | | 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. | llbeansandrice wrote: | I believe WA has a similar law going into effect. Since | they're based/domiciled(?) in WA the state laws apply I | believe. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their | hearts. | mobiuscog wrote: | They don't believe pay transparency is the way forward - | they're just fending off some US laws and trying to gain kudos | for doing so. | | As you mention, if they really wanted to be transparent, it | would be global, but I doubt they want to expose those | differences. | mywittyname wrote: | Does anyone know if popular job platforms out there use your | location to determine whether or not to show the salary | information for a job posting? Or is it usually something that | have to request once you can establish that you're a resident of | Colorado? | llbeansandrice wrote: | Colorado's law is written so that it would apply to any job | that can reasonably be done by someone residing in the state. | So if you're hiring for a remote position, under CO law you | have to provide a salary range. It doesn't technically matter | where _you_ are located. | | 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. | another_poster wrote: | Individual states' pay transparency laws are already applying | upwards pressure on salaries across the country. | | 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. | zdragnar wrote: | I think your example might be more of an exception than a rule; | the last company I was in that introduced pay bands only bumped | up people who were below the bottom of the band. | | 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 | kodah wrote: | I'm leaving my company because it took so much "upwards | pressure" to make this happen. Literally hundreds of people | screaming in a townhall that the companies wages were so low | that housing was eating up most of their paycheck while | mandating a return to work from the top. This is in the Bay | Area. I do think there's something to be said about a company | that does not tend to the needs of its flock proactively. | anon291 wrote: | Why not just leave the company? I understand in many | industries jobs are hard to find, but tech jobs are a dime a | dozen. | lostlogin wrote: | > Why not just leave the company? | | The first words were "I'm leaving my company". Am I missing | something? | jzawodn wrote: | I see what you did there. | drewcon wrote: | I'm not sure why the company is responsible at an individual | level for what's going on in the Bay Area. They can't tell | you how to manage and interact with the expenses of your | life. | | If you're mad at anyone, walk down to city hall and tell them | to build more housing. | chrsig wrote: | Because the company chooses to have a policy that mandates | employees live within a viable commute radius of an office | located in the city. I don't know why companies can't just | take responsibility for their decisions. | | 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. | RexM wrote: | The last one seems to be the most popular choice. | fugalfervor wrote: | If the people in the company want to be good (and they | should, because being good makes you happy), they will | ensure the financial success of their workers. If the | people in the company want to be bad (and they shouldn't, | because being bad makes you unhappy), then they will | callously disregard the needs of their workers, and say | it's someone else's fault. | cogman10 wrote: | You say this as if companies don't chose where to have | their offices and their attendance policies. | | 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. | WalterBright wrote: | > they have a responsibility to pay a salary high enough | | 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. | throw10920 wrote: | This is correct. The most "obligation" that an employer | _might_ have is to pay the employee for the _value_ of | their work, and even that 's dubious. (show me the source | for your moral argument) They certainly have no | obligation to match CoL. | | 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. | kriops wrote: | Supply and demand. COL is a downstream price signal as | far as a rational employer is concerned. While they might | try to influence it to alter the supply of potential | workers in their favor, it is by no means their | responsibility to do so. | | And saying companies choose where the highest | concentration of available talent resides is dishonest. | cogman10 wrote: | > Supply and demand. | | 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? | connicpu wrote: | They don't have a responsibility to do so, but they | shouldn't be surprised when employees are angry at them | if they don't do one or the other | jonas21 wrote: | Companies may have more sway than an individual employee, | but that sway is still close to zero. Why? Because | everyone knows that once enough key employees live | nearby, they can't just pick up and move the company | somewhere else. | | 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. | cogman10 wrote: | Google still has options (which, granted, they've | exercised) including adding more remote offices. | | 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. | aerosmile wrote: | > 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. | | 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. | phpisthebest wrote: | >>Because everyone knows that once enough key employees | live nearby | | 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 | shrimp_emoji wrote: | Centralization is just a tool (if methods of organization | are tools). | | 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. | phpisthebest wrote: | your case to prove centralization is sometimes good is | SVN over git | | I can not envision any scenario in which I would choose | SVN over git | closeparen wrote: | Decentralization of people and housing == suburban | sprawl, car dependency, tens of thousands of fatal | collisions, the climate crisis, etc. Decentralization | shifts the difficulty into communication/coordination, | which is sometimes more tractable but also sometimes not. | donthellbanme wrote: | pnemonic wrote: | Companies are responsible at an individual level for | understanding the state of the environment they chose to do | business in. You seem to be implying that people in the Bay | Area are just bad with money and if they weren't, this | wouldn't be a problem. | | Some day soon, hopefully, companies that fail to do this | will fail to stay in business. | [deleted] | vkou wrote: | > I'm not sure why the company is responsible at an | individual level for what's going on in the Bay Area. | | 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. | kelseyfrog wrote: | Why artificially constrain the action landscape? In the | realpolitik world of getting desirable outcomes, if forcing | companies gets the results, then it gets the results. | anigbrowl wrote: | It isn't. Nor should the company expect people to keep | showing up if they are not being paid enough to live in the | area where their offices are. | | 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. | [deleted] | alistairSH wrote: | _They can't tell you how to manage and interact with the | expenses of your life._ | | 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 | sneak wrote: | It's the employee's job to remind an employer that they | don't have the right to cheap labor by leaving. The | market is two-sided. | TulliusCicero wrote: | > my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped | up everyone's salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands | | 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? | marricks wrote: | So the pay bands go up. Everyone gets paid more, board salary | go down a bit, and things hopefully become a bit more event. | Sounds good? Things have been going the other direction far | too long. | TulliusCicero wrote: | > So the pay bands go up. | | 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. | sangnoir wrote: | It's not a vanity range if it's leading to real-life | salary adjustments. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Vanity clothing sizing leads to real life changes in | clothes measurements too. | shmatt wrote: | More like: Pay bands go up. Company cuts 15% of workforce | "to achieve better numbers" | | 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 | jeremyjh wrote: | How does that follow? They will just lower the bottom of | the pay bands, and now people who in the bottom third are | at the midpoint without another dollar being spent. | eropple wrote: | And then, because law is not code and being technically | correct is frequently not the best kind of correct, the | question becomes "OK, are there actually any employees at | that point in the pay band?" and folks start tugging | their collars and going "well..." until that activity | becomes disallowed, either via judicial interpretation or | legislative amendment. | throwaway09223 wrote: | Board retainers aren't significant expense anywhere as far | as I'm aware. Often their stipends are less than an | employee's pay. | | 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. | showerst wrote: | Walmart is a bad comparison there; they have an enormous | headcount of low-paid staff. Many tech companies are far | lower headcount, but with high executive pay. | | 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. | TulliusCicero wrote: | The comment referred to specifically said "board | salaries", not executive pay more broadly. | throwaway09223 wrote: | Activision-Blizzard's board get 350k. If they earned $0 | instead, this would only give each employee an extra $35 | per year. That's including their stock compensation. | | As you say, most goes to investors. Which makes sense as | they actually own the company. | jeromegv wrote: | OP was talking about executives (CEO, VPs), not board. | throwaway09223 wrote: | I am OP's OP and I was talking about the board. | TulliusCicero wrote: | > board salary go down a bit | vlovich123 wrote: | That's not accurate. The board meets maybe 4 times a | year. Let's be generous and say they work one full | calendar month of the year. That means their pro-rated | stipend is actually 1.2 M/year. Google employees who only | choose to work one month of the year can do so, but the | median salary would be 16k dollars. AFAIK board members | don't put in a month's worth of work so that 1.2 M/year | is an underestimate. They also can sit on multiple boards | simultaneously whereas moonlighting in multiple companies | is not generally possible in the same way. | TulliusCicero wrote: | The pro-rated version is irrelevant, since the comment | was talking about board salaries going down in order to | fund higher salaries elsewhere. | throwaway09223 wrote: | We're discussing whether redistributing the board | stipends would change individual salaries and the clear | answer is it will not, even in the most extreme | situations. | | 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. | lmkg wrote: | I read somewhere that this is exactly what happened when | (publicly-traded?) companies were required to publicize | executive compensation. And it's a major reason why exec | salaries have increased while regular salaries have not | over the past few decades. | | 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. | bombcar wrote: | That's very common in anything that has a range. The pay | bands will shift to compensate for it. | collegeburner wrote: | We all now work at Lake Wobegon. Which means salaries will be | set to average value of the position and lazy people will be | subsidized by hard workers and better contributors. Not | everybody contributes the same value. | itronitron wrote: | >> quit when they found out their salary wasn't at the very top | | Such an elegant implementation of the 'no assholes' policy. | foobiekr wrote: | The noncompete thing is actually a much, much bigger deal than | the pay transparency thing. I have a friend who is waiting out | a 2Y noncompete that he foolishly agreed to in Texas. | social_quotient wrote: | It's a right to work state, so maybe there is more to it than | a vanilla NC? | lthornberry wrote: | I don't know anything about Texas non-compete law, but | "right to work state" refers to restrictions on unionizing. | It has nothing to do with non-compete clauses. | mkl95 wrote: | I wish all companies included pay ranges. When I was a junior / | mid level dev I was lowballed more times than I care to admit. | Nowadays if some recruiter messages me I ask for the range | immediately, and I end the conversation if I don't get a straight | answer. | DisjointedHunt wrote: | $100k - $5 Million is a valid range | mywittyname wrote: | Pay bands are the minimum and maximum that employees at a | specific level are paid. So this only works if a company is | legitimately going to hire people for $5MM a year and/or have | existing employees at that level paid that amount. | | Also, such large pay bands will raise eyebrows, as they are | indicative of discrimination. Why such wildly different wages | for the same role? | zeroonetwothree wrote: | Because humans aren't interchangeable cogs? | | Let's consider the range of compensation for the "CEO" role. | llbeansandrice wrote: | These laws are not intended to help CEOs or people in tech | already making 6-figure salaries before other compensation. | | 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. | killjoywashere wrote: | This will work for a while, but have a look at how this has | played out in other situations: 1) college tuition cost of | attendance calculators (shit goes up every year), 2) federal pay | scales (completely immobile), 3) healthcare standard charges | mandate. This will eventually become oppressive as the powerful | learn to communicate with this new node in the network. | | 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-10 23:01 UTC)