[HN Gopher] Rising pay transparency causing an employer compensa...
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Rising pay transparency causing an employer compensation
information 'arms race'
Author : rustoo
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-11-06 19:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| ghaff wrote:
| So there's an _information_ arms race.
|
| But the story seems to suggest that the net effect isn't
| especially pronounced. For the candidate, more information is
| good I guess if it keeps you from wasting your time. On the other
| hand, the story also seems to suggest that it's maybe leading to
| more "take it or leave it" offers. (Though probably hard to
| factor out from overall hiring levels.)
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Need to pay someone more in order to hire them? New job title -
| "Staff Software Engineer, Algorithm Design". Wow I just created a
| new pay band that's no longer bound by whatever was set for
| "Staff Software Engineer".
| rc_mob wrote:
| Is this why companies have such weird job titles these day?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I applaud pay transparency, but reading the text of my state's
| legislation regarding it (RCW 49.58.110), all I see is that it
| says most employers must have a pay scale that is known to
| candidates. My initial adversarial response as an imaginary
| business would be to say "okay, the pay scale for this position
| is between $0-$10000000, depending on qualifications". Now we're
| back where we started, with the candidate having no valuable
| information, and the company seemingly in compliance with the
| law. Why wouldn't this work?
|
| Anyway, with regards to the actual article, I was wondering just
| what mechanism supposedly made jobs with pay transparency harder
| to negotiate from a recruiter's perspective. Is the implication
| that there were _no_ hard salary bands before this, so recruiters
| could sometimes offer 2x or 10x the salary? I 'm sure it happened
| for exceptional candidates, even though it certainly never came
| up when I negotiated my salary...
|
| But I'm wondering: did it happen so often that it affects the
| overall statistics? That would be a moderate surprise to me.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Because stating your pay range like that makes you sound like a
| scammer ?
| karaterobot wrote:
| That's an absurd example, but you see what I mean. Change it
| to $150-275k if that makes more sense. That's still a huge
| range: it probably fits 75% of software jobs in the U.S. The
| point is that you could still comply with the letter of the
| law without giving candidates very much actual information.
| ghaff wrote:
| Which actually seems pretty reasonable assuming a median
| somewhere around the middle. That's +/- ~$60K which is a
| fair bit of money but seems like rational range for a given
| role.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'd expect (hope at least) that the courts would see listing
| $0-$1000000 as an obviously bad faith tactic to subvert the
| law. If it became a real thing that companies did, I guess the
| legislature would just pass another law.
| chongli wrote:
| Then make it less obvious? Pay scale for this position:
| Grade | Pay Range E | 40k-50k D |
| 50k-60k C | 60k-70k B | 70k-80k
| A | 80k-90k A+ | 90k-150k
|
| Grade will be determined by qualifications. Doesn't this
| sound more like a good faith pay scale?
| bee_rider wrote:
| As long as it is possible to apply specifically for a grade
| that seems fine, right?
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| They should have to produce and justify it on the basis of the
| previous salary the position required to fill. And I mean this
| is the sense of them being forced to err on the side of
| disclosure, I'm sick of this shit where companies always get
| the discretionary aspect when they need cold, hard, regulation
| and absolute liabillity. The burden needs to start shiftingto
| the more facile and natural starting point: the business/hirer.
| They're running the ship, they need to start charting a legal
| and practicable course that respects the dignity of the sea of
| jobseekers.
|
| This whole "based on qualifications" is stupid because there's
| obviously a base level of competency required for candidates
| and successfull candidates and at the end of the day, its more
| reasonable to make the previous salary the baseline unless the
| position has radically altered. If they lie, charge 'em with
| wire fraud and swoop in as a lesson to the next jerk who wants
| to play games with hiring and payroll
|
| Hell crowdsource it and turn the panopticon back on the abyss
| where it belongs.
|
| Edit: just have a simple test like how much does the least
| qualified yet acceptable candidate demand and work your way up
| from there if they have your "special magic abillities"/quals.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| As mentioned, such an approach is an immediate red flag to
| anyone applying.
|
| But also, judges and courts really aren't impressed with the
| "but technically" argument. You will get locked up if you try
| to play the smartarse.
| contravariant wrote:
| I'm guessing it wouldn't work because it is quite a lot easier
| to tell when a company is being hostile when they're disclosing
| information, as opposed to a company being reluctant to
| disclose information. I mean, given the choice between a job
| listing stating a pay scale of $0-$10000000 or $75000-$125000
| it'd be very optimistic to assume the former will actually lead
| to a higher offer.
|
| Basically by forcing employers to state _a_ scale you force
| them to bid against each other not only on the total amount but
| also the specificity. When there 's only a few companies
| disclosing any information at all this competition has little
| effect, but this changes when they're supposed to say
| _something_ (and I think courts will rule that $0-$10000000 is
| not a real pay grade, one end is below minimum wage and the
| other is probably higher than can fit in the budget).
|
| Of course is there's no enforcement at all it can still devolve
| in the same meaningless pay scale everywhere.
| karatinversion wrote:
| But then you need to run your business with that salary range -
| if you put it in writing to your hr people or hiring managers
| that the maximum they can actually offer is $less_than_that,
| those emails will come out in discovery.
| yowzadave wrote:
| And if the floor of your salary range is lower than that of
| all your competitors, it will make it harder to attract good
| applicants to the position; I definitely notice the bottom
| end of the range when looking at job postings.
| slg wrote:
| >Now we're back where we started, with the candidate having no
| valuable information, and the company seemingly in compliance
| with the law. Why wouldn't this work?
|
| Maybe that doesn't tell a candidate the actual pay range of the
| job, but it definitely is valuable information that tells you
| about how the company operates. I wouldn't want to work
| anywhere that does that because it shows a contempt for both
| the law and prospective employees.
| blibble wrote:
| > I applaud pay transparency, but reading the text of my
| state's legislation regarding it (RCW 49.58.110), all I see is
| that it says most employers must have a pay scale that is known
| to candidates. My initial adversarial response as an imaginary
| business would be to say "okay, the pay scale for this position
| is between $0-$10000000, depending on qualifications". Now
| we're back where we started, with the candidate having no
| valuable information, and the company seemingly in compliance
| with the law. Why wouldn't this work?
|
| tighten up the disclosure requirements
|
| example: produce the distribution, at 5% resolution with a
| range 2 SDs around the median
| jdwithit wrote:
| Netflix literally does (or at least did) this. It's not even a
| hypothetical.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/90000-to-900000-pay-transpare...
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Netflix actually does pay $900k to a non-trivial amount of
| employees though.
| johnny99k wrote:
| Pay transparency only helps the employer in the long-run. It
| essentially allows every employer to collude on how much they
| will pay a candidate. It also allows the employer to take most of
| your negotiating power away.
|
| It might work right now because not every company is transparent,
| but if these laws were in place everywhere, it will be a
| different story.
|
| "Pay transparency in some ways moves the competition away from
| salaries, away from wages and toward non cash benefits, or toward
| equity comp, toward flexibility,"
|
| This puts more of the risk on the employee with very little
| control over how the company is run. Equity often forces you to
| stay at a poorly-run company or with a terrible manager because
| you won't be able to cash-out for at least a couple of years (if
| at all).
|
| I would much rather have the money up front and invest as I
| please.
| programmarchy wrote:
| I doubt this take. How is every employer going to collude?
| johnny99k wrote:
| It will be public information, hence 'transparency'.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Employers already can pay for this data through companies
| that literally provide this. Employees do not have access
| to the same data due to cost (unless you count stuff like
| levels.fyi or Glassdoor). How would making this info more
| public help employers more than employees?
| cjensen wrote:
| Employers already had a form of pay transparency in market
| research. Typically business pay to receive compensation ranges
| in return for money and for data.
| jghn wrote:
| Why would this reduce negotiating power outside of cases where
| one *shouldn't* have leverage in the first place?
|
| Someone who just happens to be a smooth talker shouldn't be
| earning more than someone else. If they actually bring more to
| the table, that is why they should earn more.
|
| In a company with transparent compensation you have access to
| what everyone else is making so you can demonstrate you bring
| more value to the company than other people making $X.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I looked at some job listings in last week's whoishiring thread
| out of curiosity. Saw one company listing a salary range of
| $1K-1M on one job and $10-100K on another.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| This kind of malicious compliance is what everyone said would
| happen, but to be fair most companies with any sense are too
| risk-averse to give that wide a range, and they actually give
| you a realistic idea of what the role will pay, with the low
| end being their lowest CoL location and the high end being
| SF/NYC/etc. YMMV of course...
| Etheryte wrote:
| I mean, that's a good signal, they're actively letting you know
| you should avoid them at all costs.
| airstrike wrote:
| You also sort of know it's definitely not a $1M or $100K pay
| for either of those
| alwaysrunning wrote:
| The problem with the added benefits is that you don't get their
| true value until after you have started working. To say that the
| employer covers your cost for health care might sound great until
| you see the level of HC they offer, or we cover PPO but not HSA.
| We offer 401K but no matching, or 1% matching, or ...you get the
| idea. So these perks can be misleading and you may turn down a
| higher base thinking you are getting a better overall package
| when in fact the opposite is true.
| jghn wrote:
| 100% of job offers I've had over the last few decades has come
| with access to information like "we cover PPO but not HSA" and
| "but no matching, or 1% matching".
| ghaff wrote:
| Typically information about things like matching are available
| up-front and pretty easy to value.
|
| Medical, including things like disability is the major benefit
| that's hard to value. Even if you get all the information, it's
| hard to know how good or bad a given plan is and the value of
| various options for your specific situation. How do you even
| value disability plans.
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(page generated 2023-11-06 21:00 UTC)