[HN Gopher] Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to a...
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Companies excluding Coloradans from remote jobs to avoid sharing
salary ranges
Author : NCFZ
Score : 394 points
Date : 2021-05-21 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.reddit.com)
| m3kw9 wrote:
| While that's employee friendly..
| jcomis wrote:
| As a Coloradan another thing that's happening is companies are
| listing their jobs as Remote, only advertising in CO, and just
| mentioning it's a CO only job verbally. They do the thing where
| they sit in the gray area due to pandemic "Oh, it's remote, FOR
| NOW, but it's a CO job" Or listing the job as Denver and a few
| other cities, but it's really just Denver/Boulder (Twitter
| currently doing this).
|
| Another pattern is listing the range as 40-250k so the disclosure
| is effectively nothing. Consulting companies Accenture, PwC,
| Deloitte are doing that one.
|
| A few companies are completely rejecting this whole law too. I've
| spoken with a few that still won't disclose (usually "We aren't
| CO based and it doesn't apply") or they just straight up aren't
| doing it with no comment. Experienced many recruiters completely
| flustered by it.
| mxcrossr wrote:
| > Another pattern is listing the range as 40-250k so the
| disclosure is effectively nothing.
|
| This feels like a losing strategy as other employers will be
| posting tighter ranges which will get more applications.
| Especially if the lower bounds is too low. Hopefully this sorts
| itself out.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| A higher upper limit encourages more applications because
| people see the company has room to grow.
|
| A lower floor encourages more people to accept mid-range
| offers because nobody likes getting an offer in the middle of
| the range.
|
| If someone gets an $80K offer for a job with a $40K-$250K
| range, they are happy to be paid twice as much as what they
| assume entry-level employees get, and they're happy because
| they think they can grow into the $250K range if they work
| hard enough.
|
| However if someone receives the same $80K offer on a listing
| with an $80K to $110K range, they're going to be upset that
| they were given the lowest possible value and also concerned
| that there isn't much room to grow.
|
| In our case, we have a wide salary range because we hire
| everywhere from juniors without college degrees up through
| ex-FAANG employees. We don't set out with an exact
| compensation or seniority in mind when we start recruiting.
| vsareto wrote:
| Data about how those job posts perform with large vs small
| ranges would be helpful in dissuading smaller companies from
| doing it. I think larger companies are going to do it
| regardless though.
| raydev wrote:
| The ones that post wider ranges will still benefit from the
| power imbalance.
|
| Many people looking for jobs don't have the means to be
| choosy, and many companies aren't looking for the best of the
| best, they just need people.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A lot of the problem is what the job pays is highly dependent
| on who is chosen for the role, especially for those catch all
| job postings that are just Software Engineer -- All Levels.
|
| So it genuinely could be anywhere between 40-250K.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's either a defect in the law or it's HR people thinking
| they're more clever than the legal system and violating the
| rule in a spirit which a court could easily find actionable.
| jcomis wrote:
| The law only requires a minimum for the specific title. So it
| does fail if a company is just looking generically and they
| don't wish to follow the law in spirit by listing the
| minimums per level. And once you are in discussion and land
| at a level the recruiter is essentially obligated to tell
| you, so it's not just job listings.
| aynyc wrote:
| I remember when NY/NJ came out with law preventing employers
| asking your previous wages (they used to ask for W2!!!). People
| were saying, oh, employers just won't hire in NY/NJ anymore!
| Guess what, job market is still hot as the sun and salary range
| went up across all my job searches and I don't have to deal with
| bullshit recruiters trying to play with comps.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Are the labor markets in New York and New Jersey substantially
| similar to the labor markets in Colorado?
|
| (And should we expect the specific regulations in NY/NJ
| (forbidding certain questions) and those in Colorado (requiring
| disclosure of information, and, requiring certain notifications
| of existing employees) to have the same effect?)
| ncallaway wrote:
| As a small business owner and someone who is currently hiring
| for remote positions, I will say the CO law will not in any
| way dissuade me from considering candidates from CO.
|
| Every jurisdiction has laws and compliance regulations
| specific to that jurisdiction. These requirements seem in no
| way onerous or out of line to me.
|
| I think the companies that will avoid CO applicants for jobs
| will be doing so because they want to avoid the wage
| transparency more than they want to avoid the regulatory
| burden.
| aynyc wrote:
| In terms of overall job market, no idea. In technology, I
| would imagine yes. I work in NYC, every job except capital
| market type I got reached out by recruiters have CO listed.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| How does that even work?
|
| Do they actually check that the data is real?
| aynyc wrote:
| How does what work? Asking for previous salary? I've been
| asked to provide W2s to prove my salary prior to the law. You
| can probably fake W2s but I just think that's too much work
| for 99.9% of job applicants.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > You can probably fake W2s but I just think that's too
| much work for 99.9% of job applicants.
|
| That was my question too.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I would hope this would work itself out. People (me at least) are
| more likely to apply to jobs that have the salary listed, so
| companies that try this would have a smaller pool of talent.
| kwdc wrote:
| Companies are using salary secrecy to benefit themselves and to
| lower salaries/competition/transparency. This is clear evidence.
| hash872 wrote:
| I think one reason why this is difficult for companies that are
| hiring software engineers, is that they can hire at multiple
| levels of experience. They just need good developers! A company
| that needs, say, a Golang developer, or Scala, or React, might be
| willing to hire a junior, mid-level or senior developer- they'll
| take whatever experience level they can get. Remember, saying
| that you _don 't_ want to hire someone too experienced is pushing
| the envelope on age discrimination laws....
|
| So if they're willing to hire someone with 2-20 years of
| experience, the salary range may be so broad as to be
| meaningless. $80-180k doesn't really tell anyone anything, and
| I'd imagine regulators can't do much if that's what companies put
| down as their range. I find that a lot of people imagine an open
| job & job description to be Very Rigid Categories, whereas in
| practice companies hiring in high-demand fields have to be
| flexible to find people. From the employer's point of view,
| that's why we find demands for the salary range to be
| frustrating- lots of companies really don't have a specific range
| in mind!
|
| If you mandate that companies use a tight salary band, they'll
| simply say OK, our Software Developer 1 pays $70-90k, Software
| Developer 2 pays $90-11k, etc. However- we _haven 't decided
| which level of software developer we're going to hire you for_.
| Tough for regulators to beat that approach too
| ativzzz wrote:
| So why not just list the position for a software engineer,
| along with 3 different salary bands for 3 different experience
| levels? Or does that not comply with the law?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They can. The companies not wanting to do it just don't want
| to give more information to the sellers (labor), especially
| their current labor who might be being paid less while the
| buyer (employer) profits from the arbitrage.
| ativzzz wrote:
| I don't think it's that massive, especially because you
| should be figuring out a salary range within the first 1 or
| 2 conversations with the company regardless. For software
| engineers anyway, not sure about other less-hot markets.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, this law will disproportionately benefit sellers of
| labor with a worse supply/demand situation. Price
| transparency is always better for the party (buyer or
| seller) in the worse supply/demand situation.
| ativzzz wrote:
| So maybe it should be limited to certain industries, like
| low skilled laborers and not white collar office jobs
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why? Prices are the signal to market participants for
| allocating resources. It is the whole basis of free
| markets and why they work.
|
| What would society gain by obfuscated pricing? Assuming
| the goal is to benefit all of society, and not certain
| individuals who happen to be able to take advantage of
| arbitrage scenarios.
| notahacker wrote:
| If you list three levels, you end up with [i] a lot more
| applications to sift through especially at the extreme end of
| the spectrum (which might be an advantage sometimes, but
| often isn't) and [ii] otherwise perfectly hire-able people
| applying to the wrong bracket or anchoring their expectations
| to the top end of a bracket they're actually not at the top
| end of. Worse still, your existing employees see top ends of
| ranges too.
|
| You also create the impression of massive growth (or team
| turnover) when actually you only want the one engineer.
| ativzzz wrote:
| You only list one position, with 3 different bands, but ofc
| we know nobody is gonna read that part.
| ska wrote:
| It doesn't really matter. Particularly if you are looking
| for (actually) senior people with specific experience,
| unless you are very careful with postings you will end up
| with an avalanche of inappropriate submissions. Either
| someone has to wade through them, or you use a terrible
| filter that everyone hates.
| tshaddox wrote:
| You'd only list 3 levels if you're actually intending to
| hire 3 different people, each at 1 of those levels.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Because then somebody applies for the top band, the company
| says they're slotted in the bottom band, and they've
| effectively recreated the situation as it stands before
| Colorado's worthless regulation, since they now have some 80k
| - 200k range which is effectively useless information.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Doesn't this happen already? In fact, that's how I got my
| current job, I applied for tech lead and they gave me an
| offer for senior and I took it.
|
| The difference being I know the salary ranges of the bands
| before I apply and talk to HR
|
| The idea is they have 3 ranges for 3 experience levels for
| 1 position, not a 80-200k range
| blacktriangle wrote:
| It absolutely happens today, except today people in
| Colorado can also apply for remote jobs. It's an example
| of government trying to regulate and failing to solve the
| problem while only creating new ones.
| yarcob wrote:
| Here in Austria we have a similar law that requires disclosing
| minimum salary for a role.
|
| Companies usually just post multiple ads if they are hiring for
| junior or senior roles.
|
| I don't think a job posting for both junior and senior
| developers would be appealing to a senior developer.
|
| I think the market in Austria is different. If your job ad
| isn't compelling enough, you won't get any applications.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| > ...our Software Developer 1 pays $70-90k, Software Developer
| 2 pays $90-11k, etc. However- we haven't decided which level of
| software developer we're going to hire you for.
|
| I have seen some companies do this in a sense. They will post
| their salary "grades" A1, A2, A3, B1, etc. But there isn't
| really any correlation to say a Software Developer 1 will be a
| grade A3 or B1 or whatever.
| injb wrote:
| These might be good workarounds, but they all assume that
| employers have some incentive to look for a workaround. This
| may be true for highly paid roles that are hard to fill, but
| for more competitive roles, they'll just skip CO entirely and
| avoid any risk. SO it'll be lower paid workers that suffer as a
| result of this regulation, as usual.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I find it very difficult to believe that an employer that would
| be happy to fill a certain position at $80k would also be
| willing to fill that same position at $180k.
| hash872 wrote:
| Did you happen to see the part where I explained that a
| company could hire someone at a relatively junior, mid-level
| or senior opening- in an extremely competitive market for
| software developers? Like, let's say you're X Startup, you
| desperately need a Golang developer, not having another good
| Golang developer on your team is costing you Y amounts of
| money per month, and you just can't find one in your
| preferred experience range. Do you A) do nothing and just
| continue to lose money each month for lack of a good
| developer, or B) hire someone who knows Golang, regardless of
| whether they're more junior or more senior than you were
| hoping? Does that kinda make sense?
| tshaddox wrote:
| I understand that some companies might want to do this, but
| it's explicitly _not_ giving clear salary ranges for
| certain positions. It's basically saying "we will pay you
| whatever, based on what we determine you are worth," which
| is precisely the status quo that transparent salary
| advocates want to change.
| ccmonnett wrote:
| I am actively interviewing someone with 4 years and someone
| with 20 years of experience for the same role. Our needs are
| quite specific but it is not our first or last hire in that
| area; as long as someone can fill them we are willing to be
| flexible about to what extent this _particular_ hire fills
| our overall need and will adjust accordingly down the line.
|
| Given the stage of my company, our hiring plan, and the fact
| we hire remote across the US, we absolutely could have a role
| with a salary range of $80k or more.
| matwood wrote:
| > $80-180k doesn't really tell anyone anything
|
| Not meaningless at all. The company is at least saying they are
| willing to pay senior level salaries. I think the companies
| really pushing back are those who want 2-20 years experience
| with a range of $50-$80k. The other group of companies pushing
| back are those who let their current employees get too far out
| of the current range, and can only keep them happy through
| hoping they don't find out.
|
| Both are signs of companies I want to avoid.
| tshaddox wrote:
| If I saw $80-180k on a job posting, I wouldn't think it was
| meaningless. I would think it means that they will pay $80k,
| maybe a bit more, but definitely nowhere near $180k.
| matwood wrote:
| Except now they have to actually give you some reason why
| it's not the top. Without the listing the common reason I
| would hear about my salary request was 'not budgeted'. Well
| if 180k is listed, not budgeted doesn't fly. They either
| need to explain why I didn't get the max in a way that
| makes sense, or I move on.
|
| Is it perfect for employees? No, but it's much better than
| no information. Also, keep in mind they will not just throw
| some crazy high number on their either because then they
| have to explain it to existing employees.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Do they actually have to explain this? Is this part of
| the Colorado law? I can't find anything about that.
| matwood wrote:
| Of course they don't have to, but it opens the door to
| make it easier for existing employees and candidates to
| ask.
|
| So many people are uncomfortable talking about money, and
| companies push that it's taboo. This law does a tiny bit
| to push the information asymmetry back to the employee.
|
| EDIT I've always been a pretty aggressive (not in a bad
| way) negotiator. So for me, asking why not the max would
| be question one and probing the answer would be the next
| set of questions. Maybe this wasn't obvious to those less
| apt to negotiate?
| offtop5 wrote:
| I'm actually not a fan of this law. My first salary position was
| for job which advertised a range of something like 80 to 90k a
| year. The highest I had made previously was $10 an hour, the CEO
| of the company was a nice guy who brought me in for an interview
| anyway.
|
| I took an offer at 40K or so, and within 3 years I was at 100k.
| With laws like this in play I'm not sure if that would still be
| legal. A lot of these ideas sound great on paper, but in reality
| you've completely eliminated any room to negotiate salaries
| downward in case an applicant isn't all that experienced.
|
| I imagine what's going to happen is you'll see companies become
| much stricter with documentable requirements. Such as a
| bachelor's degree, which I also lacked back then. Saying please I
| need a job, I'll take 50% less since I don't have a bachelor's
| will open up companies to lawsuits
| sidlls wrote:
| The company is free to offer you a _different job_ with the
| lower salary: that is, nothing requires a person to be offered
| the job to which they applied.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > I took an offer at 40K or so, and within 3 years I was at
| 100k.
|
| These are not the same jobs. You took a junior position and in
| 3 years were promoted once, or maybe twice, into more senior
| position(s).
| offtop5 wrote:
| >These are not the same jobs. You took a junior position and
| in 3 years were promoted once, or maybe twice, into more
| senior position(s).
|
| Nope, I switched to a new company. You can't really expect a
| company to take care of you
| jcomis wrote:
| This law is about ending pay disparity for two people doing the
| same work. This is not what you are describing. In your
| scenario a new title could simply be created more appropriate
| for the experience/skill. That would then establish what is
| appropriate pay for that skill/experience level for future
| candidates.
| alejalapeno wrote:
| The act allows exceptions to the prohibition against a wage
| differential based on sex if the employer demonstrates that a
| wage differential is not based on wage rate history and is
| based upon one or more of the following factors, so long as the
| employer applies the factors reasonably and they account for
| the entire wage rate differential:
|
| - A seniority system;
|
| - A merit system;
|
| - A system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of
| production;
|
| - The geographic location where the work is performed;
|
| - Education, training, or experience to the extent that they
| are reasonably related to the work in question; or
|
| - Travel, if the travel is a regular and necessary condition of
| the work performed.
|
| The things you listed, like taking the job for less because you
| lack the relevant education are actual exceptions written into
| the law.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Does this law say that you cant offer someone below the salary
| posted in the job? I thought it was just a referance point more
| than anything.
| offtop5 wrote:
| I'd imagine companies wouldn't want to do that, because you
| could come up with an argument that you're being
| discriminated against.
|
| The road to hell is paved with good intentions
| thealfreds wrote:
| You could always hire the person for a different role. Say
| its a SE position in the company but then the person
| doesn't meet the requirements. The company can offer a jr
| position.
|
| Especially in your situation it would make sense to have a
| separate title at the start.
| alex_young wrote:
| Although not exactly the same thing, California already requires
| employers to give pay scales for jobs when requested by an
| applicant and bars asking about their salary history:
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
| lostcolony wrote:
| Asking for pay scales is a problem though. Do it at the start
| of the interview and you're flying in the face of all interview
| advice (i.e., don't ask about pay during the initial phone
| screen; the companies smart enough to save their own time will
| mention it upfront, and the companies that want to negotiate
| you as low as possible by hiding information will take it as a
| red flag), and at the end I don't care what the range for the
| position is; I want to know what they're going to offer -me-.
|
| I guess if at the end I felt especially lowballed, but at that
| point I don't really care what their scale is; it's too low for
| me to want to take it. I guess if I didn't have a job, felt
| like I had to take it, it provides some extra information at
| that point to try and negotiate with?
| alex_young wrote:
| Seems pretty straightforward to me. "For alignment, can you
| provide the salary range for this position?" If they hedge,
| just tell them you want to make sure we're not waisting time.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I used to think keeping salaries secret was a racket. And maybe
| it is.
|
| But I also think there might be people you work with who try
| hard, do decent work slowly, and are compensated accordingly.
| (Fairly) And who are delighted with their job and salary.
|
| How would it benefit that person to be confronted with the fact
| that someone else makes double or triple what they do?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Maybe it could serve as a much needed wake-up call to that
| person. I was him long ago, and finding out someone made 50%
| more than me for doing essentially the same job provided
| exactly the kick in the ass I needed to start job hunting
| again.
| lostcolony wrote:
| CEO salaries are made public. We object to them, but most of us
| don't intentionally avoid working for companies that have that
| outsized pay discrepancy.
|
| Likewise, if I'm making more than I could at any other company,
| but then found out a coworker was making twice as much as me,
| I'd still not leave.
|
| How much coworkers are paid doesn't affect whether or not we
| leave the company; it's how we're paid compared to the rest of
| the market that does. Just taking that off the table.
|
| What it DOES affect is our morale and our own performance. To
| that end, it benefits companies to either keep it secret, or to
| try and ensure that pay discrepancies within the same role
| match the actual performance. If that person making double or
| triple what you do is actually delivering 2x or 3x what you
| are, and you know that if your own performance increases, your
| comp will too, that seems like solid incentive. If it's
| completely disconnected, your morale will drop, and your
| performance likely -will- drop to be half or a third of what
| that person's is, and it becomes self-fulfilling.
|
| I think the main benefit to making compensation transparent is
| that it also forces the company to be very mindful about how
| compensation and performance are tied. They're supposed to be
| anyway; that's already a goal. It just raises the stakes for
| getting it right.
| garettmd wrote:
| Well, I think there's a difference transparency with salaries
| of existing employees, and transparency with the salary being
| offered to new employees.
|
| And it would benefit that person by giving them the information
| they need to decide whether to pursue a higher salary or not.
| jeofken wrote:
| "Man plans, God laughs".
|
| Centrally planned well meaning ideas seem to invariably fail.
| privacylawthrow wrote:
| The law also requires that Colorado employees be informed of all
| promotional opportunities. A promotional opportunity is "a
| vacancy in an existing or new position that could be considered a
| promotion for one or more employees in terms of compensation,
| benefits, status, duties, or access to further advancement."
|
| If a company doesn't already have Colorado employees, they may
| not be interested in having a remote employee in CO that requires
| special treatment.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >If a company doesn't already have Colorado employees, they may
| not be interested in having a remote employee in CO that
| requires special treatment.
|
| Generalize even further. If the company doesn't already have
| employees in <different regulatory jurisdiction> then they
| won't incur the cost of compliance in <different regulatory
| jurisdiction> all else being equal.
|
| If CO had very cheap labor it would pencil out and they'd
| gladly jump through the hoops to comply. But CO doesn't have
| particularly cheap labor for the kinds of jobs in question.
|
| Heck, my company wanted to hire a specific expert in a specific
| field. They were willing to pay the moon but but still almost
| didn't do it because of the compliance headache from having
| international employees. They hired a 3rd party intermediary to
| hire this person.
| refurb wrote:
| Wow. I could see companies excluding CO just due to the
| regulatory burden alone, even if they agree with the spirit of
| the law.
|
| I mean why create new HR processes when you have 49 other
| states to hire from?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Only as long as Colorado is the only state with this law. If
| California or New York adopts it, employers will probably
| just accept it nationwide.
| Finnucane wrote:
| "This offer only valid in the former Confederate states,
| where they know how to treat labor."
| bluGill wrote:
| Though it does seem like the promotion opportunity is one
| that any sane company will want to have anyway. It takes some
| time to learn the companies internal systems, and promoting
| from within saves a lot of that time.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| My curent company shares an email about open promotional
| opportunities every 6 months. I am continously amazon how on
| hackernews expecting basic decensy from corporates is a
| 'terrible burden'
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Is 6 months enough? Can't spots get filled between that
| time?
| privacylawthrow wrote:
| 6 months is not compliant. Employees have to be made
| aware of the posting _on the same calendar day_ the job
| is posted. For jobs that are in constant demand, the
| company has to either send a daily email or have some
| kind of banner on its corporate intranet.
|
| There is also no geographic restriction so if a company
| has any offshore service centers, it would need to post
| any promotional jobs to its Colorado employees as well.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Amazing, they have to notify about jobs in Thailand to
| Colorado employees?
|
| Love it.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Why not? When I worked at BT they did - a nice one or two
| year posting abroad on full ride expat status looks good
| on the CV.
| rswail wrote:
| We're talking about a spreadsheet that is posted to an
| intranet. If someone in Colorado wants to apply for a
| Thailand based job and is willing to relocate for the
| position, then why shouldn't they know about it.
|
| Of course, Thai employers can still discriminate on the
| basis of gender, sex, religion and a bunch of other
| things that Colorado employers can't.
|
| And any company operating in Thailand has a local Thai
| company established, which would be the actual employer
| for the local employees. So the Colorado law would not
| apply.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Our promotions happen every 6 months, so position appear
| and are filled on that cycle.
|
| There is also an internal jobs portal where you can
| search whatever you want
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Excuse me. You're not expecting, quote, "basic decency."
| You are expecting compliance with a specific regulatory
| framework. One of these requires a soul, the other requires
| lawyers and paperwork and record-keeping.
| lmm wrote:
| Since companies lack souls, the only way to get them to
| behave with decency is lawyers and paperwork and record-
| keeping.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The is nothing profitable a corporate bureaucracy won't
| do out of 'basic decency'
|
| Before we had 'spesific regulatory framework' companies
| enslaved people, exploited children, commercialised rape
| and commited serial murder to break up unions
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| I am having trouble reconciling your assertions, in which
| you seem to think HN should expect "basic decency" from
| corporations while simultaneously asserting that "'basic
| decency'" has never actually served as a meaningful
| barrier. It seems to me that the later statement rather
| undermines the original.
|
| Maybe "basic decency" is a very bad phrase to describe
| things here, and we should just leave it out. It's
| probably useful as invective, and if one is already
| predisposed to sympathize with the point, can galvanize
| one to action, but it serves poorly as a tool to actually
| communicate.
|
| I propose that if we avoid it, we can talk meaningfully
| about how the company finds it more convenient to avoid
| business than comply with regulatory burdens without the
| distraction of moralizing the matter, and draw
| conclusions about whether the passage of the law was wise
| under these particular circumstances, or what
| circumstances or structure might have made it better, and
| the like.
|
| Perhaps your vintage-1921 blue-collar labor dispute is
| more of a distraction than a help, as well :)
| SkyBelow wrote:
| By that view, does anyone expect "basic decency"?
|
| For example, I could say that I expect "basic decency" to
| not kill each other. But I also support having a law
| making murder illegal. As part of that law, you have the
| possibility of people being jailed, possible for months
| are years, before we even get to a court case. They may
| be able to pay a large fee to get back to their daily
| life (while part of the money is sometimes returned,
| there are plenty exceptions to this). Then you get to the
| court case, where people are expected to spend days in
| courts and small fortunes on lawyers to prove they didn't
| murder someone. Lots and lots of lawyers and paperwork
| and record-keeping, not to mention the costs to an
| innocent individual wrongly accused. Good luck getting
| any payments to make up the debt you incurred.
|
| Yet as a society we accept that we have to do things the
| legal way because just the expectation alone does nothing
| to stop bad people. As such the concept of "basic
| decency" is completely gone from the modern world, so I
| think it is safe to give it a new definition which
| includes the enforcement of a legal framework.
| syshum wrote:
| I am amazed that people do not understand that difference
| between Voluntary Action and Mandatory / Regulatory Burden.
|
| A Company could 100% already being doing everything to be
| in compliance with a regulation and still oppose the
| regulation, and take actions to ensure they are bound by
| that regulation
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Granted. But which of the following happens more often?
|
| A) Companies oppose regulation because of filing and
| compliance costs, despite already doing the required
| behavior
|
| B) Companies oppose regulation because they don't want to
| have a _requirement_ to do and maintain the behavior
|
| It feels like really we're talking about (B) as a primary
| motivator, and (A) is a smoke screen for PR palatability.
| syshum wrote:
| Of course B primary motivator and I do not see that as a
| bad thing
|
| I am not sure why you think anyone or any company would
| DESIRE to have external actors imposes requirements on
| their actions or why it would be unpalatable to say you
| do not want to have regulatory burdens imposes on you
|
| As a culture have we so lost the respect for freedom and
| liberty that is now bad if you want to have said freedom?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Freedom and liberty to discriminate is a slippery
| freedom. For whom? When?
|
| In a choice between maximizing efficiency for good
| actors, and curtailing behavior by bad actors, I tend to
| weight the latter.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >I am not sure why you think anyone or any company would
| DESIRE to have external actors imposes requirements on
| their actions or why it would be unpalatable to say you
| do not want to have regulatory burdens imposes on you
|
| Of course they desire to have external actors impose
| requirements on their own actions and other people's
| actions and other companies' actions. Just so long as
| they think those requirements benefit their bottom lines.
|
| Ever hear of the business lobby opposing union-busting
| laws on the basis that they create regulatory burden?
| syshum wrote:
| union "busting" laws generally speaking are about
| REMOVING regulations around who is required by law to
| negotiate with and/or join a union. So these laws by
| definition are not imposing any regulatory burden on
| anyone they are removing regulatory burdens
| bluGill wrote:
| Don't forget about C: companies that propose regulations
| because they know they can handle them and competitors
| cannot.
|
| Big companies will have no problem with these
| regulations. However small and medium sized companies
| need a bunch more busy work that needs to be done and so
| will avoid it.
|
| This last is hard to measure - regulations have a cost in
| this form but it is hard to figure out what would have
| been done but isn't.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| A huge point!
|
| IMHO, the US should have much more "larger than X" laws
| (and clauses that enfold organized subcontractors working
| for larger corporations).
| bluGill wrote:
| Beware of the unintended consequences of those laws (I
| have no idea what they are, but beware)
| syshum wrote:
| On of the consequences of those provisions is often
| either
|
| 1. Companies do weird divisions to keep under the limits
|
| 2. Companies are artificially restricted in their growth
| as they need to add employees but are unable to, for
| example if the cut of was 50 employees, adding the 49th
| employee is easy, adding the 50th employee is $$$$$ thus
| it will not happen, this would mean few companies grow to
| 50, rather you would see several 50+ employee companies
| merge as the cost burden for the new 100 employee company
| would spread over all 100 employees, vs the regulatory
| cost being hit with the single employee add
| psychometry wrote:
| Apparently now it's a "burden" to do the ethical thing
| because one state requires it even though you should be doing
| it anyway.
| [deleted]
| NCFZ wrote:
| True, but the most of the examples people found are of
| companies that already have Colorado employees.
| refurb wrote:
| Right, but this applies to job postings. Current employees
| don't require any additional work as they're already hired.
| paulgb wrote:
| Here's the act, it looks like it does have some additional
| requirements for companies with CO employees:
| https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-085
|
| If remote work sticks around (I think it will), it will be
| interesting to see how employers handle the additional
| burden of having employees in dozens or even hundreds of
| jurisdictions. I don't think it's insurmountable, but it's
| certainly something many companies have not had to deal
| with before.
| rswail wrote:
| The same way they deal with the asinine US sales taxes or
| how international companies deal with hiring
| internationally.
|
| They'll outsource it to companies that look after it for
| them. This is the "resources" bit of "human resources".
|
| In the meantime, maybe the actual HR people could get
| back to being "people and culture" managers and stop
| thinking of staff as "resources".
| inter_netuser wrote:
| There are companies that automate a lot of this,
| specifically to support remote-first companies.
| waheoo wrote:
| ...
| elliekelly wrote:
| Who says the CO remote employee requires special treatment?
| That would be a terrible leadership decision. The easy and
| obvious approach would be to treat _all_ employees under the CO
| standard. It's as simple as posting all open positions
| internally. Or even sending a firm-wide email when a new
| position is posted externally. I have a hard time believing
| _most_ companies aren't already doing this with the exception
| maybe of retail /labor-intensive positions where employees
| aren't regularly using a computer. Certainly most companies
| hiring remote workers would be though.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Or even sending a firm-wide email when a new position is
| posted externally.
|
| Please. No more emails.
|
| >It's as simple as posting all open positions internally.
|
| One of the problems that happens (today) with this is that
| companies decide to hire someone external for a position
| essentially created for them. So they may create a job
| posting as a formality. But it's effectively a fake posting.
| No one else actually has a shot at an interview, much less
| getting the position.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Ah the CEO's golfing buddy's son or daughter.
|
| Don't try this in Northern Ireland btw. I know of US
| mangers getting into some serious hot water over not
| advertising the job in Catholic and Protestant
| publications.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or just someone senior people have worked with before in
| some capacity. I had a job description written for me in
| my current US role.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Context: startup, 50ish employees.
|
| We don't necessarily want to advertise all open positions to
| an internal selection process, particularly more senior
| managers.
|
| The record keeping requirements in CO are concerning,
| particularly job description records. In particular, we don't
| yet have a full time HR person (there is a dedicated person,
| but that person has other job duties).
|
| There's 49 other states.
|
| edit: one more reason. We had a failing exec. Not enough to
| merit immediate firing, but failing enough that it was clear
| he or she was not going to last through the next round. We
| needed that person to continue doing a mildly-failing job
| while we found a replacement, due to lack of another person
| who could take on those responsibilities.
|
| Not sure how you manage something like that with an internal
| hiring announcement.
| logosmonkey wrote:
| Yeah, I don't quite get the rub here. The corporations I've
| worked for always post jobs internally first and normally
| they email the entire org with open positions. In general
| I've found most corporations want to hire internally since
| it's cheaper overall.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I think it depends on the company.
|
| In a past organization a friend was HR at, there were
| branch office jobs and corporate jobs. Officially you could
| get promoted to the corporate office. Unofficially, don't
| bother as they optimized for different things for each
| hiring pool.
|
| So they tried to keep the corporate jobs only available to
| the corporate people as otherwise the branch people would
| get excited and then end up having their dreams dashed from
| repeatedly applying and having their resumes chucked while
| an external hire filled their job.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, you _especially_ don 't want to proactively push
| out a bunch of job postings to people who have exactly
| zero chance of landing the position because the decision
| has already been made.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| That too.
|
| Plenty of job postings exist merely for compliance. So
| all you are doing is wasting a lot of time.
| sct202 wrote:
| The worst is when the hiring managers have to go thru
| with interviewing N people who applied to comply with
| policy.
| earlhathaway wrote:
| Hey -- opened your profile because I was curious. If you're
| working on a company and interested in chatting, email in my
| profile.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Many organizations just aren't structured that way. I had a
| coworker who worked alone on what was a small project,
| gradually transitioning to a technical leadership role over
| the project as it got larger, until eventually he became the
| manager of the team that owns it. So he got a promotion
| opportunity, but there was never an opening as such; it would
| be pretty unfair for the company to open up applications for
| anyone to come in and take his project away.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know how HR departments typically deal with this
| sort of thing. There's an obvious downside to posting a
| bunch of job openings that have effectively already been
| filled. The same applies to outside hires that effectively
| have had positions created for them (and job descriptions
| written with them in mind).
| sokoloff wrote:
| We have something like 15,000 employees and 20 some odd brand
| companies that operate largely independently. There is no
| reasonable way for us to wrangle every single opening into a
| single process to comply with a CO law (times all the other
| jurisdictions who'd like to put their own thumbprint on it).
|
| I would always rather take a qualified internal candidate
| rather than spend months to land someone outside. So, I do
| shop jobs internally now, but Even without reading the CO
| law, I'm pretty sure I'm not fully complying with it if I had
| an employee in CO.
| alistairSH wrote:
| At that size, I imagine you're already operating across
| several states, and HR already has processes in place to
| deal with differing regulatory requirements. Adding the
| latest CO rules to these processes isn't all that onerous
| in the overall scheme of things. It's not like "post a
| minimum salary" and "post listings internally" are crazy or
| complicated ideas.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| I can't see why the number of employees or companies
| complicates this. I work for an enterprise with over 60,000
| employees and they have decided to apply the Colorado
| standard to all job openings.
|
| _Editing_ This was poor word choice in the morning; I
| should say I can clearly see how the size or scope of a
| company could complicate this. I just don 't have any
| sympathy for them; you adapt your processes to match the
| desired state.
| grumple wrote:
| Any company over 1 billion in market cap probably already does
| this. Every company I've worked for has (mid sized to fortune
| 10). HR has to justify their existence by actually doing work.
|
| It's also in the company's interest to provide advancement
| opportunities internally, otherwise your employees just leave.
| In this case the regulations are in line with the incentives.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Would this have the effect of revitalizing local Colorado
| businesses as Colorado employees would no longer have the option
| of outsourcing their own talent out of state?
| injb wrote:
| >> Some companies however have decided that excluding all
| Colorado residents for a remote job that can be filled by someone
| in any of the other 49 US states is better than sharing how much
| they're willing to pay.
|
| Well, yes obviously that is better. If 2% of all poker games
| required you to hold your cards the other way around, would it be
| better to just avoid those games? Yes, it would.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| How is this expected to work in the real world?
|
| When I'm hiring, which I always am for software engineering
| roles, I am looking for talent at levels between college intern
| and multi-decade veteran.
|
| I don't necessarily have a roster of specific positions I need to
| fill; I have an idea of what kind of skills and experience mix I
| would like to see over time, but there's always going to be
| turnover at every level.
|
| Talent acquisition is multi-modal through campus programs,
| referrals, recruiters (both for targeted skill needs and passive
| candidates), and I guess probably some advertised positions.
| eecc wrote:
| So it' s basically a corporate boycott against labor laws
| favorable to employees?!
|
| I guess this will be first time a boycott won't be broken by a
| police charge and perhaps even becoming successful! /s
| HPsquared wrote:
| Not a boycott, it's perfectly explainable as just companies
| acting in self-interest.
|
| A boycott is a more planned, deliberate thing and usually
| punitive (i.e. boycotting usually has a cost to the boycotter,
| but greater cost to the one being boycotted)
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > favorable to employees
|
| Is it really though? Complete transparency in salary ranges
| also means that every other employer can see exactly what their
| competition is offering. I can't help but worry that this will
| lead to a sort of "price fixing" that will actually drive wages
| _down_.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Then said remote employees could go work for companies in
| other states. Or the companies that are actually willing to
| pay above the market because they need the talent. Which will
| cause more people to pay and that level and then eventually
| we are in the same situation we are in now where swe salaries
| are very strong in general.
| grumple wrote:
| Good luck in a competitive field like tech.
|
| Companies might not advertise salary ranges at a _few_ big
| tech companies, but the vast majority of recruiters tell you
| the salary range as soon as you talk to them (or you name
| your price and they say "that will work"). I already totally
| ignore the bottom 75% of salaries.
|
| The problem tech companies have is that many of them can be
| disrupted by a few motivated individuals, and there are
| always new opportunities for them. If you pay enough, you
| benefit from them. If you don't, somebody else does, or
| worse, they become new competition.
| Clubber wrote:
| >The problem tech companies have is that many of them can
| be disrupted by a few motivated individuals
|
| I'm convinced a primary motivation for hiring in mega-tech
| companies is to keep people from making startups to
| dethrone them. You can't legally compete with Google, etc
| if you've signed a non-compete.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| You can once you leave - just don't take the piss like
| the self driving car idiot did.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Non-competes are unenforceable in a lot of places. And
| even if they weren't, the time scales for a startup to
| evolve into a serious market mover is longer than most
| non-compete contracts last anyway.
|
| A founder of a now-popular startup worked for Google
| eight years ago, so what? Let's say Google remembers and
| decides to pursue action. They'd spend another 3-4 years
| suing a person who has a mountain of plausible
| deniability to hide behind. And for what? There's no real
| gain to Google for this.
| someguydave wrote:
| more like they bribe potentially competent founders with
| a high salary and "perks", which effectively raises the
| opportunity cost of making a competing startup.
|
| in this hypothesis most people working for google are
| actually not needed, but employed there primarily to
| waste their time
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Cartels are illegal ask the companies in SV that got caught.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| If wages were going to be driven down by this then
| corporations would not only be all for it, but would probably
| lobby to make it a law everywhere.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Corporations (at least mid-size and large corporations)
| already have a pretty good idea of what their competition is
| offering.
|
| There are companies that survey employees for salary
| information, collect all that knowledge, and then sell it to
| corporations.
|
| Medium and large businesses already have a _very good_
| understanding of the job market and what a competitive salary
| range is.
| eecc wrote:
| Exactly, the problem is that they keep lowballing it
| because these ranges are somewhat not so much public
| knowledge
| Clubber wrote:
| This already happens. If you look at most job postings, many
| will say "market value," for the salary. They are typically
| horrendously low.
| tyrust wrote:
| The existence of levels.fyi doesn't appear to have hurt Total
| Comp thus far.
| falcolas wrote:
| It worked for CEOs. Their salaries were disclosed due to a
| new law, and their salaries skyrocketed.
|
| Competition is good, not bad.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Competition is fairer, not so much good nor bad.
| chii wrote:
| but fairer is considered better, all things being equal.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Fairness is an objective good to most people.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I would disagree with that, because the requirements for
| fairness typically disadvantage a majority in favor of
| leveling the field for a minority. Ergo, most people will
| gripe about the actual policies, even if they agree with
| the abstract end goal.
| falcolas wrote:
| The alternative also has a name: The "Tyranny of the
| Majority".
|
| Fairness is better than tyranny, don't you think?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I would in the abstract.
|
| But then in the specific I would also tend to support
| policies that are good for me, even to the detriment of
| others.
|
| And since I'm a member of many majority classes... well,
| there you have my point.
| falcolas wrote:
| That stance is also known as, "Fuck you, I've got mine."
|
| I personally, despite also being in a number of majority
| classes, prefer to avoid being an asshole because of an
| accident of birth.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Be that as it may in your case, are you arguing that
| _most_ people will act contrary to their own best
| interests?
|
| That seems a shaky foundation to build policy on.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That depends on how 'fairness' is defined. Your
| definition of fairness appears to exclude a set of
| concepts which you see as unfair.
|
| It's not a good rhetorical tactic to cede the concept of
| fairness; better to argue "that thing being done in the
| name of fairness, is actually unfair".
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I would define fairness as equality of opportunity, for
| every person.
|
| Hence the previous comment's tautology that fairness will
| not be an objective good for most people, because (a)
| most people prefer their own self interest, (b) the
| status quo provides majorities advantages that minorities
| do not share, and (c) objective fairness will thus come
| at the expense of the majority (who are by definition
| more numerous than the minority).
|
| It's interesting most people are interpreting my comment
| as a preference, vs an observation.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| Can things that happen to CEOs be extrapolated and applied
| successfully to regular workers?
|
| Companies already buy salary information from brokers. So
| they already know what the competition is paying and
| generally try to keep in line with that. And that's pretty
| much a type of collusion. If everyone seeks to pay "market
| rates" based on these salary reports, then everyone will
| aim to pay about the same amount.
| ahelwer wrote:
| This is quite common. Corporations know the long game and are
| willing to pay in the short term to get it. Another example is
| those grocery stores that closed last year after hazard pay was
| mandated at the height of the pandemic, citing unprofitability.
| Unprofitability! Of a grocery store, one of like three places
| where people were spending money in 2020!
| ummonk wrote:
| They didn't close all locations with the hazard pay increase.
| They closed a few locations that were already struggling to
| be profitable, and had now become even more unprofitable.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Yes, that's what they said. There is no way to verify that.
| Punishing certain communities by withdrawing service to
| scare off future such wage increases is another
| explanation.
| ummonk wrote:
| What are you arguing happened instead? That they closed
| still-profitable stores just to send a message?
| ahelwer wrote:
| Absolutely. Corporations do things like this all the
| time. Amazon orders a crash-halt to office building
| construction projects whenever Seattle threatens to tax
| them, for example. As I said in my original comment -
| corporations can afford to play the long game and take
| the hit.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Volume doesn't matter if your margins are negative. Grocery
| stores typically run on very slim margins (3% or less) so
| it's pretty reasonable to think that raising employee pay
| significantly would make them lose money.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Maybe I'm not thinking about this right, but if they are
| getting way more business because of the pandemic and their
| costs have more or less stayed put, it's practically
| impossible that their revenue hasn't gone up considerably.
| Despite thin margins on their product, if they sell more of
| it they should be making more money (eliding some growing
| pains which should be surmountable). In that light, I have
| to say I kind of doubt their margins would be negative if
| they offered more pay during the pandemic.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Surely, it's easier to believe that than that some non-
| chain grocer is protesting paying more by shutting down
| entirely.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Would it be fair to say that the ones shutting down are
| not the ones receiving more business during the pandemic?
| Or are you saying that their new found success has
| actually killed them? Because the claim by the original
| comment here is that volume doesn't matter.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, I suspect they're saying volume increases are
| coupled with margin decreases to zero. Certainly I find
| it more believable that people are closing honestly
| because they can't make money rather than people are
| closing to protest hazard pay.
|
| The latter seems unlikely. If the business is viable, the
| business owner is going to want to run it. It's his baby
| and his life, he won't kill it just because he disagrees
| politically.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| This is why you need to organize and self report salaries. Like
| the game devs from a few days back or leverage sites like
| levels.fyi
| 627467 wrote:
| I also would prefer to know salaries (while not minding letting
| other know mine) but I certainly don't think this should be
| mandated. And, unless regulations force all my competitors to
| disclose this information (even those outside of these
| regulations jurisdictios) I don't see the point of these
| regulations at all.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's all about maintaining a monopsony-like advantage in
| bargaining position by maintaining information asymmetry with
| (current and potential) employees.
| gumby wrote:
| Those companies should be named and shamed.
|
| I say this as an employer BTW.
| aynyc wrote:
| From the post, it's Digital Ocean.
| gumby wrote:
| Thanks, but as a general rule (as the headline is
| "companies").
| ummonk wrote:
| We should build a blacklist of companies that do this.
| bdibs wrote:
| It looks like DigitalOcean changed their policies, I can't find
| the same messaging on the linked job post.
| xtracto wrote:
| Insightful to see DigitalOcean as the example company here.
| nulladdr wrote:
| I live in Colorado and received an offer from DigitalOcean a
| couple of years ago for a remote position. The pay was okay--
| roughly the same as the job I had at the time. But they
| insisted on keeping a non-compete clause in the employment
| contract, which can prevent an employee from joining a
| competitor for up to a year after their last day at
| DigitalOcean.
|
| Think about that for a second. You get a job at DO, working on
| cloud infrastructure. If you leave that job, you can't join
| another cloud provider for a year. Your options are A) ask DO
| for explicit permission to take a new role anyway, leaving it
| to their discretion, B) live in CA where these clauses are
| invalid, C) change industries with your next job, or D) take a
| year off between jobs without pay.
|
| Apparently these contracts are not uncommon in NY, MA, WA. But
| it was the only time I've personally encountered one, and I was
| not okay with limiting my future job options like that, so I
| turned it down.
| NCFZ wrote:
| I was surprised. I wasn't expecting a major tech company who's
| website is plastered with things about "valuing diversity" to
| be one to pick a fight over a such a minor requirement in a
| gender equality law.
| tssva wrote:
| I have a couple of droplets that I use to play around with
| things. Part of this weekend will be spent moving to a
| different provider.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hmm...looks like a good way to filter out companies not worth
| applying to.
|
| That's easy for me to say, though. I am not looking for work;
| especially not with corporations that want to begin our
| relationship on a platform of dishonesty. I'm fairly big on that
| whole "Integrity" thing. I know it's not in fashion, these days,
| but I'm a bit "old-skool."
| zuhayeer wrote:
| Curious how wide the salary ranges can be. Are there ways
| companies can just provide a wide range and get away?
| jcomis wrote:
| This is exactly what's happening and how a few companies are
| getting around it, specifically big consulting companies.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Might be counterproductive. If I, as an applicant, see a wide
| range and think there's a good chance that it's in bad faith, I
| might just skip them altogether in my search.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This law mainly benefits the lower end who are trying to find
| out if the fast food place will pay a dollar more than the
| hotel.
|
| People that already had the option of switching high paying
| jobs don't need this law, they can simply shop around
| themselves. Although they are also helped.
| molsongolden wrote:
| Most of this act seems pretty similar to what already exists in
| CA where employers are required to provide a salary range to
| applicants who ask and employers aren't allowed to ask candidates
| for salary history.
|
| The "salary range in job posting" is new but, as others have
| noted, ranges cam be broad and based on experience.
|
| The recent "no CO" disclaimers feel like a short-term reaction to
| uncertainty and they'll probably be phased out as
| companies/recruiters/HR providers verify their processes and
| policies are compliant.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Yeah, I was looking for this reply in this thread and I'm
| shocked that it took this long to find it and that it's not
| upvoted to the top. CA has a similar law (and in fact I link it
| to every recruiter who tries to play coy about salary bands).
| The actual text of the CA law doesn't hold all that much teeth
| - but just linking the relevant legal code is helpful
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
| .
|
| "An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay
| scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment.
| For purposes of this section, "pay scale" means a salary or
| hourly wage range. For purposes of this section "reasonable
| request" means a request made after an applicant has completed
| an initial interview with the employer."
| kolbe wrote:
| Reminder: people respond to (dis)incentives.
|
| You should really think about the rational response to a
| disincentive whenever you make a law. But we have politicians who
| neither care to, nor have the intellectual capacity to bother
| researching how these "feel good" laws will actually be reacted
| to in real life.
|
| I have a friend who calls SF "the city of unintended
| consequences" for this exact reason, and now Colorado is
| importing their attitude.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The way to fix this is by enacting similar laws everywhere
| else, not to go for the lowest common denominator on workers
| rights (or "feel good laws" as you refer to them here.)
| Somebody has always got to be the first to outlaw slavery.
| kolbe wrote:
| I can't even argue with someone who thinks so highly of some
| half-baked piece of local legislation that they're comparing
| it to the 13th Amendment. Lol.
| seoaeu wrote:
| The 13th Amendment decidedly _wasn 't_ the first law
| banning slavery. In fact, it was preceded was a rather
| notable war between states that already had laws banning it
| and those that didn't.
| rswail wrote:
| In the meantime, those looking for work in Colorado,
| particularly for low paid work, will be able to find out
| whether they can make more per hour at one place than another.
|
| This is the "intended consequences" and the slight impact on
| remote IT workers in Colorado is an unfortunate side-effect
| that is likely to be allieviated when the power of labor vs
| capital swings back towards labor, after 40 years of swinging
| in the other direction.
| auslegung wrote:
| What is the likelihood someone in Colorado sues for
| discrimination? I think 100% at some point in the next 5 years.
| swashboon wrote:
| Is being a Coloradoan a protected class?
| panzagl wrote:
| About half the state thinks so. The rest thinks being former
| Texans or Californians makes them a protected class.
| refurb wrote:
| Geographic location is not a protected class.
| mmillin wrote:
| Is discrimination based on current location illegal? I'm
| curious what case they would have given that many companies
| require certain time zones for remote employees.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Could California contractors sue when the job postings came out
| banning them from applying? I doubt it.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| You mean, sue an employer in another state who doesn't want to
| be subject to Colorado laws? Good luck with that. When CA
| passed AB5, lots of employers refused to hire people in CA
| because they didn't want to be subject to AB 5. This is how it
| works, employers choose whether the hassle of dealing with the
| state's regulations is worth the benefit of hiring employees in
| that state.
| javert wrote:
| Yeah, they should sue the state of Colorado. Or just leave and
| go to another state.
| eplanit wrote:
| I think it's legal to discriminate based on geographic
| location.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It is. Afaict, protected classes and characteristics as of
| 2021 are:
|
| Sex, race, color, religion, national origin, pregnancy and
| childbirth (and related medical conditions), age (including
| mandatory retirement), disability (including requiring
| reasonable accommodation), black lung disease (mine
| operators), bankruptcy and bad debt, citizenship status, &
| genetic information.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_la.
| ..
| ghaff wrote:
| >citizenship status
|
| It's a little more complicated. The person needs to have
| the legal right to work in the country of course. And, if
| there are any legal restrictions related to e.g. Federal
| contracts such as defense contractors often have, a job may
| be restricted to US citizens.
| ummonk wrote:
| "e.g. Federal contracts such as defense contractors often
| have, a job may be restricted to US citizens."
|
| While true, that seems like a rare occurrence. Most jobs
| I've seen just require US Persons (e.g. to work on space
| / defense technology) which includes permanent residents.
| croes wrote:
| So it's legal to discriminate people living in certain
| neighborhoods?
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Why not? Neighbourhood is not a protected status like race,
| gender, national origin, age, disability, etc.
| tguedes wrote:
| Except in America our neighborhoods are heavily
| influenced by race so I doubt you could legally ban
| against hiring from a neighborhood made up 90%+ African
| Americans.
| swashboon wrote:
| Well, you wouldn't be sued because you banned hiring from
| the neighborhood. You would be sued for discriminating
| against a protected class under a paper thin veil of
| banning a location.
| lmkg wrote:
| The thing you're looking for is the legal doctrine of
| "Disparate Impact."
|
| Discrimination against a protected class (like race) is
| illegal. Geography is not a protected class, and
| discrimination based on geography is not inherently
| illegal. But under the doctrine of Disparate Impact, a
| particular policy of geographic exclusion is illegal if it
| _happens_ to have outsized effect on a protected class (and
| has no business justification).
|
| Note that Disparate Impact does not require intention!
| bombcar wrote:
| Requiring that employees live at within X minutes of the
| job site - likely legal.
|
| Forbidding employees from certain locations as a proxy for
| a protected class - likely illegal.
|
| An example: during the sales tax wars many companies would
| refuse to hire from a state that would could the employee
| as a tax nexus. This is mostly gone now as the sales tax
| fight seems mostly over.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Is it? Even outside of sales tax, it's additional
| accounting overhead to handle the withholding and filing
| for states you aren't in. No idea how much, I would
| imagine it's dependent on the systems in use, but the
| organizational incentives for allowing and enabling it
| are probably horribly misaligned for many companies.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a hassle but not an huge one, and any company that
| is in a population center that straddles a state border
| already deals with this (think New York, Chicago,
| Portland, Minneapolis/St Paul) - once you can handle two
| states handling additional isn't that painful.
|
| More importantly the COST associated is fixed per
| employee roughly - having an employee in another state
| doesn't usually change the amount of tax paid, etc - just
| who it's paid to.
|
| This won't be entirely true, but it's close enough - and
| for companies with outsourced HR (think: ADP) it's even
| easier.
|
| Any company big enough to have a significant number of
| employees that this applies to would be big enough to eat
| the cost (and probably already has offices/etc in
| multiple states as is).
| vageli wrote:
| It seems in some cases, yes. For instance many police and
| fire departments require you to live within X miles of the
| station. It also wouldn't seem odd if a company decided to
| exclude remote workers from places in which the company
| does not have a nexus, to avoid further complicating taxes.
| KMag wrote:
| Presumably that's legal, as long as there isn't a clear
| correlation between excluded neighborhoods and protected
| classes.
|
| I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Not if the woke crowd gets their way. They got a guy fired
| from AAPL because they felt "unsafe" due to a book he wrote 6
| years ago where he called some SF women useless in a zombie
| apocalypse.
|
| Feeling "threatened" or "violated" by not being able to apply
| to a job seems just as reasonable.
| ausbah wrote:
| I'm sure how this is relevant to the discussion of possible
| discrimination on the basis of geographical location.
|
| either way, for others who want more context to what you
| are referring to - you're speaking about the rapid hiring
| then firing of Antonio Garcia Martinez by Apple due to
| several excerpts from his book "Chaos Monkeys" that many
| employees took as racist and sexist. The most notable of
| which being:
|
| "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and
| naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally
| full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement
| feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the
| reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion,
| they'd become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd
| trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of
| diesel...British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of
| woman who would end up a useful ally in that
| postapocalypse, doing whatever work--be it carpentry,
| animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast to someone's back--
| required doing."
|
| "PMMess, as we'll call her, was composed of alternating
| Bezier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and
| then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn't
| take your eyes off of. Unlike most women at Facebook (or in
| the Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style,
| form-fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay."
|
| "In his ill-fitting polyester polo shirts with color
| palettes stolen from the late seventies, he reminded me of
| the bored auto-rickshaw drivers in front of Connaught
| Place, Delhi, who'd overcharge you a hundred rupees to go
| down the street to Paharganj. "So is there anything we can
| do compensation-wise, Antonio?" asked Chander in his thick
| Indian accent."
|
| Feel free to interpret this how you may.
|
| [1] https://jezebel.com/apple-hires-gets-rid-of-man-who-
| called-w...
| bob33212 wrote:
| The message is loud and clear. If you write a book or say
| anything and then want a job after that you should expect
| no one to read the book except with the goal of finding
| the most offensive sentence and interpreting that as the
| most racist or sexist way possible.
|
| Look at it another way. What if someone said "I am not a
| supporter of gay marriage", would it be OK to call that
| person homophobic and cancel that person? What about
| people who were supporters of that person at one time?
| Should they be canceled too?
| jonfw wrote:
| Saying "I am not a supporter of gay marriage" in passing
| is very different than writing a book publicizing an
| opinion that gay people are somehow inferior to
| straights.
|
| A more applicable comparision would be someone who
| publicized that they thought that gays were weak minded.
| I wouldn't say you should 'cancel' that person (what does
| that mean?), but I would say that person should be
| disqualified from the opportunity to lead a team that
| includes gay people. And any business should always
| assume that their team could include gay people.
| bob33212 wrote:
| So what should happen to someone who doesn't support gay
| marriage? Can they be a leader?
| jonfw wrote:
| That seems irrelevant, unless your company weds people
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Literally yesterday, conservatives pressured AP into firing
| someone because of her social media history [1]. If you
| want to take that stance, at least stop pretending it's a
| "woke" issue.
|
| [1] https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Emily-Wilder-
| Associa...
| hasmolo wrote:
| this feels a little disingenuous. the dude is a public
| facing exec that said shitty stuff about women, working at
| a company that heavily signals it won't be like that. it
| seems like a lower level employee with the same views
| wouldn't write a book including them or be liable for those
| views.
|
| context is important
| waheoo wrote:
| It shouldn't matter what his role is. Saying some off the
| cuff stuff a few years ago in an obscure book doesn't
| make a workplace unsafe. That is disingenuous.
|
| I've seen people fired for similar "unsafe" bullshit.
| Literally anything can trigger these deranged
| individuals. They're just out to play victim and get
| attention.
|
| And no, I don't think all toxic workplace behaviour is
| like this, many places have narcissists and similar types
| roaming the halls making things extremely traumatic for
| many people. That stuff is real and I feel for the people
| that get out through the ringer by these environments.
|
| But a book? 6 years ago? In the context of a zombie
| apocalypse hypothetical? Get the fuck outa here.
| nzmsv wrote:
| Dude was hired as a senior exec. Part of the job
| description is being a public persona representing the
| company. And the majority of the public disagrees with
| him. What are we taught to do as engineers when we don't
| agree with the majority? Disagree and commit. What did he
| do? Throw a temper tantrum along the lines of "how come
| Dre gets to be sexist and I don't". Forget opinions, he
| screwed up a basic job requirement. It's OK, we all make
| mistakes, and his was big enough to get canned. Life goes
| on.
| hasmolo wrote:
| " They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism,
| and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality
| is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they'd
| become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade
| for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
|
| so this is ok because he's saying they're only useless in
| an apocalyptic scenario? he's literally saying that the
| core of women is useless in the "real world".
|
| i understand that it can feel like there's a group of
| anonymous "woke thugs" wondering the internet trying to
| get people. if you feel that way it might be useful for
| you to try and empathize with why someone would feel that
| way.
| refenestrator wrote:
| If I recall, the context was that he was dating a woman
| who was a bit of a tomboy and saying how cool it was that
| she was better at power tools and such than he was, and
| this comparison to typical SF tech women was part of that
| extended riff. It wasn't part of an incel monologue about
| 'femoids' or something.
|
| Ultimately, if we let this continue, it becomes a war on
| flavor and humor, where no rhetorical fun is allowed lest
| someone take it the wrong way.
| hasmolo wrote:
| your point is fair. i agree with the idea that allowing
| outrage to drive all conversations is terrible.
|
| at the same time, i feel like i'd have known better than
| to generalize like this and publish it. i understand
| there's context about how/why it was said.
|
| i'd really love to be able to express my thoughts that
| border on "anti-woke" but i don't. i feel like the only
| way for us to be honest about our feelings is to be
| anonymous.
|
| i guess at some level i would hope this person would've
| been smart enough to know that. there's a social game we
| all have to play, and just because it sucks we can't not
| deal with it.
| ghaff wrote:
| In a modern social media world, it's generally a pretty
| bad idea to make over the top controversial statements
| even if they have a context and you don't intend them to
| be taken seriously. And it's probably worth noting that
| in this case, it became an issue because the person in
| question wrote them in a published book and was being
| hired for a fairly high-profile position. But it can just
| as easily be some 20-something who posts something on
| Twitter (or gets captured for YouTube)that goes viral,
| given they're essentially disposable from the perspective
| of their current (and potential future) employers.
|
| And I don't even blame the companies. They're just
| looking out for their own interests and individual
| current or potential future employees have pretty much
| zero weight as balanced against any public PR hit.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| > context is important
|
| Funny you say that while clearly knowing nothing about
| the context of his comments!
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I understand the public reasoning why the law was passed. I am
| not sure it is the right solution.
|
| As a business I would be very concerned that the
| cost/compensation for those few individuals with the
| qualification in Colorado will become very expensive as my
| competitors outbid each other to the sky (CO pop. 5.759mm US
| Census 2019). I remember the pre-dot com boom. IT was "rolling in
| money"...
|
| As an employee, I am now concerned that I will be targeted
| because of the job I have. The criminal elements can now pretend
| to be "Robin Hood".
|
| As an employee, how will this "race to the top" salary battle
| backfire? Will I be stuck in Colorado? Are there loopholes (and
| there always are) where CO companies can hire outsiders cheaper?
|
| And, so on...
| [deleted]
| jorgemf wrote:
| Compensation doesn't have to be only the salary. The company
| can offer you other non-tangible things that might be worth
| work with them even for a lower salary. Maybe more free time,
| or more flexibility in your life it is worth less money in the
| salary.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Agree & I understand regarding creative compensation.
|
| Is this true for most jobs, or just for above a certain
| level? What percentage of CO workers fall below that
| threshold?
|
| I do not know. The average annual salary in CO in 2019 was
| $61,819 according to Statista. It will be interesting to see
| how this law impacts it over time.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Huh I didn't realize that Colorado had passed this law. I was
| looking at various remote jobs the other day and kept seeing
| notes about the pay range for people if they worked in Colorado.
| The first time, I figured it must be a Colorado based company
| providing information on what they would normally pay for workers
| in the state, but I kept seeing it more and more.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and
| benefits and apply for the best job.
|
| However companies don't want to compete on salary, and potentialy
| drive them up - they want maximum leverage. They get more
| leverage if process is obscure, so that you only agree salary
| late in the process and for the applicant, pulling out is risky.
|
| The market is not really free - its being manipulated by one
| side.
|
| Similarly with healthcare you don't know how much you will be
| charged upfront, so there is no competition on price.
|
| With housing (in UK) there is no competition on quality because
| the seller doesn't have to disclose any problems with the house.
| If it falls of a cliff the minute you sign on the dotted line,
| it's your problem.
|
| You have to pay for the surveyor to find out any issues the house
| might have, and that means you can only view a few houses before
| you've paid the house price in survey fees.
| dghf wrote:
| > You have to pay for the surveyor to find out any issues the
| house might have, and that means you can only view a few houses
| before you've paid the house price in survey fees.
|
| How much are you paying for surveys? Even a full structural
| survey -- which would be considered over the top for most
| purchases -- should only cost PS1,500 or so.
|
| And you're not going to get any sort of survey for most of the
| houses you view. You only usually bother with one once you've
| made an offer and the vendor's accepted it: if the survey
| reveals anything significant, you either pull out or try to
| renegotiate the price.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| > You only usually bother with one once you've made an offer
| and the vendor's accepted it.
|
| This is no longer the case in most of North America, where
| your offer only has a chance of being accepted if it's
| unconditional.
| nairboon wrote:
| There should be a job board exactly like that, with base salary
| x + y% per year specific experience for 1-10y, z% 11-20y etc.
| and u% per year for general industry experience.
| neves wrote:
| This is a strong signal that this law must be expanded to the
| other states.
| dboreham wrote:
| Hmm. I lived in the UK (both England and Scotland, which are
| slightly different) for 1st 1/2 of my life then moved to USA.
| In my experience the housing market is one of the few things
| that is handled pretty much the same.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The market is not really free - its being manipulated by one
| side.
|
| The market is free, it just isn't a healthy market. Those are
| different concepts. Participants in a totally free market are
| free to use their size/power/leverage as they wish. A free
| market is one where the little guy, the job applicant, will be
| hammered by the big guy. A 'healthy' market is one that is
| regulated in such a way that the little guy has at least a hope
| in the negotiation process. This then fosters competition,
| innovation, yielding a free-but-healthy market. Regulation
| needed to do those things that the "free" market cannot.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Exactly - if you are free to manipulate the market, then it
| decends into Mafia game.
|
| If you call that 'free market', then its like communism - a
| concept that never works in the real world
| Finnucane wrote:
| In the US, real estate sellers have to disclose known problems,
| but they can claim they didn't know, and then you might have to
| fight it out in court. It's still in your interest to get an
| inspection before closing.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| This varies somewhat by state, as I understand. Some states
| only require disclosure for specific classes of problems.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's why people include inspection clauses in their offer
| contracts. If the inspection reveals an issue it must then be
| disclosed by the seller going forward, if the buyer can back
| out due to the clause.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Profit most often rests on the asymmetry of information, thats
| why monopolies are so profitable
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Monopoly profits are based on dominant market power, not
| asymmetry of information.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You can only get dominant market power with an asymmetry of
| information (about how to produce whatever thing it is that
| gets you dominant market power). This is why we have IP
| laws...
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The at&t monopoly obtained power via government grant.
| There are many others. We have IP laws to avoid
| monopolies among other reasons, but they aren't the only
| way to get monopoly power.
| insert_coin wrote:
| Where is the "dominant market power" coming from?
|
| Asymmetry of information is what got you to the top. You
| know more than your competition, more on a productive
| process, on consumer behavior, on business partners, on
| leveraging financial avenues, on political "contributions",
| on questionable use of insider information, etc.
|
| And Information is what keeps you at the top: knowing who
| to "lobby" to create convenient regulation that hurts your
| competition the most, is the most effective way monopolies
| use to stay that way.
|
| Monopolies are not monopolies in the abstract, they have to
| fight everyday to keep being a monopoly and they do that by
| leveraging information asymmetry.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The at&t monopoly came about via government power, and
| the only fighting it did was to keep the government
| enforcing and maintaining the monopoly.
| insert_coin wrote:
| > The at&t monopoly came about via government power,...
|
| That is what I wrote, yes. AT&T knew who to "lobby". That
| is information asymmetry.
| dcow wrote:
| It's not simply asymmetry of _information_ though.
| Monopolies often have an incredible amount of financial
| power that they deploy against people trying to enter
| their market. Or maybe a company is on top because of
| their execution. I really don't think the entire
| phenomenon can be explained by information asymmetry.
| insert_coin wrote:
| The financial power comes from somewhere.
|
| > Or maybe a company is on top because of their
| execution.
|
| I already explained that part.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Dominant market power is maintained by having control of
| information in a market. Google has control on the
| information about advertising and user searches that
| competitors don't. Amazon uses comprehensive sales data
| that others don't. Apple uses its power to enforce
| ignorance of competition to its customers.
| [deleted]
| true_religion wrote:
| You know it'd break the cartel-like control companies have over
| employees if a law were made that all jobs _must_ payout within
| the salary range posted for the job.
|
| That prevents people from negotiating higher pay than is
| advertised publicly, so employers would have to tell everyone
| what their maximum salary could be. Employers would have an
| incentive to post high maximums rather than miss out on quality
| candidates.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Sort of, except recruiters definitely know salary ranges. I
| don't always use recruiters but I did previously and was placed
| well every time. They're a annoying middleman that can really
| help.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>With housing (in UK) there is no competition on quality
| because the seller doesn't have to disclose any problems with
| the house. If it falls of a cliff the minute you sign on the
| dotted line, it's your problem.
|
| I'm in the UK and that's absolutely not true. If you think the
| owner knew about the problem and purposefully omitted telling
| you, then you definitely have a court case and any law firm
| worth their salt will win this. I bought a house recently and
| the documents the sellers had to fill out for the solicitors
| very clearly say there are are no known issues with this house,
| so if that's a lie then the sale can be rendered null and void.
|
| >>You have to pay for the surveyor to find out any issues the
| house might have, and that means you can only view a few houses
| before you've paid the house price in survey fees.
|
| I've had a few mortgages so far and I'm yet to find a bank not
| willing to cover the cost of a full survey, as the bank also
| wants to know the house they are securing the loan against is
| actually worth the money.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In sane countries the seller must comission a survey and
| provide it to the buyer. The UK system where each buyer
| comissions a survey is absurd.
|
| I do not understand how the mortgage helps you - you are
| still paying for it, and if the survey uncovers issues, you
| either take mortgage on a house with problems, or you are out
| of pocket.
|
| If you pull out, and next house you view has issues too, you
| have to take it because at some poijt you run out of money
| Firadeoclus wrote:
| > The UK system where each buyer comissions a survey is
| absurd.
|
| UK excluding Scotland.
| wbl wrote:
| In the US the buyer hires an inspector after the contract
| is agreed and the transfer can be voided if the inspector
| finds serious issues. Typically the price gets adjusted.
| pmorici wrote:
| Home inspectors are a borderline scam. In my experience
| they never find any of the real problems and only surface
| superficial stuff that should be obvious even to a
| layman.
|
| This probably is because many buyers go with the
| inspector recommendation of their realtor and realtors
| aren't going to recommend someone that is too through to
| the point of risking the deal.
| awa wrote:
| Home inspection was super useful for us when we bought
| our new built house, they found a major issue with the
| house which would have cost us thousands to fix later
| cptskippy wrote:
| > Home inspectors are a borderline scam. In my experience
| they never find any of the real problems and only surface
| superficial stuff that should be obvious even to a
| layman.
|
| In most states, home inspectors are licensed and insured
| professionals so they can be held liable for obvious
| omissions from their reports. But there are a lot of
| holes in the system, and there's no clear guide for
| inexperienced home buyers to vet inspectors.
|
| The benefit of a good inspector is that they aren't the
| buyer and thus have no temptation to overlook things the
| buyer might miss. A good inspector is thorough and will
| take several hours to perform an inspection of even a
| small home.
|
| If you can find a very reputable inspector, it's
| generally a good idea to use them both when selling or
| purchasing homes. Inspecting your home before sale can
| identify issues you can quickly address and it gives
| comfort to buyers to see an inspection report on the
| counter when they do a walk through.
|
| I got burned with a home purchase early on in my life
| because I used my realtor's inspector who wasn't licensed
| in my state. When we later discovered a foundation issue
| we had no recourse because the inspection report had a
| disclosure on it.
|
| A general problem in the US is that it's mostly ok to be
| misleading as long as you have a disclaimer, and that
| disclaimer doesn't necessarily have to be upfront or
| obvious. As a result of have a lot of "Administrations",
| "Bureaus", and "Authorities" that superficially appear to
| be governmental or reputable but turn out to be scams.
| reedjosh wrote:
| In that vein realtors are basically a scam.
|
| A decent inspector can and will find things, but true it
| may be difficult to find one.
|
| I think the solution is going to be an unpopular take--
| learn about the world and be able to do a lot of this
| stuff yourself.
|
| I bought my house without a realtor and without an
| inspection. My house needed work for sure, but I got a
| great deal and learning experience in both the buying and
| repair/maintenance. I spend my evenings working on the
| house instead of watching tv and eating garbage. Three
| years later I have a few 100k in equity.
|
| I do wish the world was full of trustworthy people and
| life was easy, but no number of bureaucratic requirements
| are going to make these problems go away. If you live in
| a world you don't understand, you will be taken advantage
| of.
| jdeibele wrote:
| I've had the pleasure of working with 3 excellent home
| inspectors over the past 20 years. They tested and
| checked things that I never would have thought of. One of
| them flagged the water heater in our current house for
| immediate replacement. Sure enough, it started leaking
| the day after we moved in.
|
| We had asked for various fixes to be made but the seller
| only did a sewer repair and I think that is/was required
| for the house to be in sellable condition.
|
| With everybody looking for houses now, a big thing is to
| put in a bid without requiring an inspection. I'm sure it
| works out almost all of the time but I'd hate to do it.
| Frost1x wrote:
| In the US, there is a huge market for those peddling
| certainty and reduced risk while also taking on very
| little liability of risks associated with the work.
|
| People love security theater where some professional
| swoops in and assures them everything is fine. In some
| cases you have to rely on an expert but in many cases,
| I've found that for anything significant, I can't
| outsource risk assessment because it's not worth it most
| of the time. No one doing the assessments have enough
| liability or incentive to do a deep assessment, it often
| simply costs too much relative to what you're assessing.
|
| Now if you're completely naive or ignorant about
| something or the total risk is known and is relatively
| low, then it doesn't hurt to pay a small fee for the
| quick risk assessment passover made by an expert who will
| be more likely to spot things than you. Also, if someone
| really has significant liability for their assessment,
| they tend to be very direct to the point of pointing out
| low risks they normally would brush over.
|
| I recently purchased a home and it was hooked up to a
| private well. The seller said it was fine, the inspector
| said everything looked fine based on old test data, and a
| private well inspector said it looked fine. Not a single
| one of them thought it was worth testing the water
| quality beyond the bare minimum, only concerned about
| quantity. It turns out, I spent a part of 4-6 years
| developing water quality monitoring infrastructure and
| performing water quality analyses and had it not been for
| the knowledge I had and always skeptical attitude, I
| wouldn't have batted an eye. I told them to all stuff it
| and perform a water quality test or I was rejecting on
| other terms. Good thing I was difficult because there
| were all sorts of issues (bacteria, organic and inorganic
| issues) and I may have even gotten sick or a guest could
| have gotten sick.
|
| Years ago I had a health scare and saw three independent
| doctors that thought it was nothing, even after
| describing my symptoms but there were too many red flags
| for me to ignore accept their opinions. I suggested a
| specific condition to each of them and they brushed it
| off like I was crazy. They didn't have the same level of
| risk or incentive for their time in their assessments to
| push forward and didn't want to acknowledge that even a
| low level of uncertainty could be true. Sure enough, I
| found a fourth doctor to check, they listened, and did
| appropriate diagnostics eventually confirming via lab and
| in person diagnostics I was correct. This isn't something
| that frequently occurs, not a hypochondriac.
|
| Professional risk assessment can be useful but you should
| always be skeptical of it given the lack of liability and
| incentives many have. They want to get paid and move to
| their next transaction. Such is our highly transactional
| society where people really don't care about other people
| or can't afford to care about other people in the name of
| efficiency.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not sane, it's crazy! As a buyer why would I trust a
| surveyor selected by the seller? I would rather pay
| inspector myself for an independent opinion. In the US this
| only costs a few hundred dollars for a typical house, which
| is a tiny fraction of the overall transaction price.
| alistairSH wrote:
| And in the US, the inspector is typically only liable up
| to the cost of the inspection, or some pre-arranged
| value. He also isn't an actual engineer, so is mostly
| worthless. He'll check the roof with a pain of
| binoculars, but not necessarily get onto the roof. He'll
| check the age of appliances, but that's mostly obvious to
| anybody willing to do a base amount of research. Etc.
|
| If there's anything remotely questionable, they'll punt
| and tell the buyer to hire an actual engineer (or plumber
| or electrician), so even more money out of pocket.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's similar with the survey. In a mortgage survey, they
| basically verify that a house of the specified
| construction and square footage is on the property where
| it is supposed to be. Nothing you really couldn't see by
| just driving by.
|
| When I have bought a house, in order to get a proper
| survey with the property boundaries marked by stakes I
| had to pay for that myself.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| Does anybody know if there is a secondary market for home
| inspection reports? I know that the two times I was
| involved with a home purchase in the U.S., I needed to
| hire a home inspector. But the interested party in front
| of me also had to hire a home inspector. Would it not
| make sense for the interested parties to split the cost
| for one home inspector rather than reproducing the work?
| After all, copying information is almost free, but paying
| for the time of multiple inspectors is a redundant cost.
|
| Does anybody do this?
| Wistar wrote:
| A bit tangential:
|
| Back in the early 90s -- on a recommendation from a
| realtor who was a close friend of my brother's -- I hired
| an inspector who was close to retirement. He worked with
| his wife who served as his assistant tasked with, in
| essence, taking dictation of her husband's near constant
| commentary as he conducted an incredibly thorough
| inspection. Every outlet tested for proper ground, every
| nook and cranny looked at, wood moisture content, HVAC
| pitot readings, masonry, roof ... just a super-duper
| detailed inspection that took about 6 hours to complete.
|
| At the end of the inspection, he summed up by saying the
| house was good and that he had no qualms recommending the
| house.
|
| Two days later, he stopped by with a three-ring binder
| that contained his inspection report. It first contained
| a summary that concisely covered the positive and few
| negative aspects of the house. Then there was a section
| about the history of the house: the year built, the name
| of the builder, changes in the neighborhood since it had
| been built, earthquakes it had gone through, flood events
| in the area, and so on. It also included the manufacturer
| names of things such as the windows, door hardware, etc.
|
| The third section was lengthy, covering the precise state
| of the electrical, plumbing, structural, envelope, etc,
| and included all the notes his wife had taken during the
| course of the inspection. It included a sub-section with
| warnings about certain materials that likely contained
| asbestos and would need to be dealt with if we ever did
| remodeling.
|
| Finally, the largest section was what he called a
| "maintenance work order" arranged as a schedule for the
| ongoing, recurring upkeep of the house but beginning with
| things he thought needed to be done immediately,
| replacement of the circuit breaker box, splash blocks
| under each outdoor faucet, tuck-pointing some of the
| chimney's brickwork, etc. And then his estimates as to
| when he thought systems might need to be replaced, the
| water heater, furnace, roofing, etc. As I discovered when
| the water heater burst, his estimates were pretty much
| spot-on. Over time, I added notes as we upgraded things,
| added low-voltage wiring, and remodeled the basement.
|
| Nine years later, when I sold the house, the buyer was
| elated to have this owner's manual and I am fairly
| certain that the book was key to a very fast sale of the
| house which we did without a realtor.
|
| As I look back on it now, I realize that inspection was
| perhaps the best $350 I have ever spent.
|
| When we bought our next house, the inspection took about
| an hour and produced a few page report, most of it
| boilerplate.
| shard wrote:
| If anyone knows what the magic words are to finding this
| kind of thorough report nowadays, please share!
| ayewo wrote:
| How long was the duration between the 90s purchase and
| the next purchase? 20 years?
|
| This was fascinating to read!
| Wistar wrote:
| Spring 1993 to Spring 2001.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| If you happen to select the same home inspector as the
| other perspective buyer, you can rest assured that they
| will simply copy over the report and charge you the full
| amount. It's best to arrange to be there when the
| inspection happens to prevent this or drive-by
| inspections.
|
| One of the issues that keeps there from being a neutral
| third party holding the inspection results is the vast
| difference in quality in home inspections. Since home
| inspectors are not liable for anything they miss in the
| inspections, there are some really poor quality
| inspectors out there. The third party hiring the
| inspectors isn't going to be aligned with your interest
| in hiring the best inspector. Most likely they're going
| to go with whoever is the cheapest so they can keep as
| most of the fee you and other buyers are paying them.
|
| In states that license and regulate home inspectors,
| perhaps part of the requirements could be that every home
| inspection report has to be part of the public record for
| the property. If there are multiple inspections, each of
| them becomes part of the record. A sneaky seller might
| pose as a buyer and payoff an inspector to give them a
| good report that becomes part of the record so it would
| still be in the buyer's interest to hire their own
| inspector if there is only one inspection report. At some
| point though, there will be enough inspection reports
| that your risk of only seeing faulty reports becomes low.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| For the same reason you trust an auditor and accountant
| hired by Tesla to produce quartely earnings report - they
| are on the hook if they lie.
|
| Surely you do not hire an independant accountant every
| time you buy stocks?
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Lie vs. miss is relative. Every single inspector in the
| US at least has liability that only extends to the cost
| of their inspection (or, sometimes, 2x their inspection
| cost...). Hardly enough to cover any losses if there is
| major damage that is overlooked.
|
| I had a friend who bought a house with major termite
| damage (i.e., every wall had to be removed to repair the
| studs basically), and 2 inspectors overlooked the damage.
| He said in retrospect (after doing a bunch of research on
| termite damage), it should have been obvious to
| inspectors, but they missed it.
|
| He tried to pursue legal action against either the seller
| or the inspectors, and basically was told: impossible to
| prove seller knew (as there was no repairs done), and
| inspectors are not held liable.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Home inspectors in the US are barely useful.
|
| If you really don't know anything about houses (or feel
| as if you do not), then having someone walk you through
| some of the things you may have to face living in a
| particular house is probably a good idea.
|
| However, even as just an enthusiastic amateur, I know
| more about home construction and repair than most home
| inspectors. When I bought my current house I skipped the
| home inspector, and hired an electrician, a roofer and a
| structural engineer. It cost me more, but I got seriously
| informed reports about the property, not just boilerplate
| fill-in-the-blank PDFs telling me that one of the windows
| rattled.
| shard wrote:
| I like your solution of gathering subject matter experts
| and getting individual reports. Did the 3 of them cover
| all aspects of the house? I am not an expert so I don't
| know if anything is left out, does the structural
| engineer also cover plumbing? Or is that not an issue?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I know enough about home construction and repair to be
| able to assess other items. Actually, I can do my own
| residential wiring and stud framing etc., but I was
| moving into an adobe house. This required a knowledge of
| wiring, construction and roofing that I did not have from
| previous work that I've done. If the plumbing had been a
| part of the adobe construction itself, I'd have asked for
| a plumber too, but it was not.
| lfowles wrote:
| Hah yes, inspectors try to be as minimally liable as
| possible. Ours went to great lengths to get us to have
| someone come out and check the "stains" underneath a
| bathroom sink without actually saying the m-word that
| rhymes with cold :)
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| An auditor hired by the seller has an incentive to make
| the seller happy that you cannot eliminate, only reduce
| through legal threats.
|
| An auditor hired by the buyer has no such incentive.
| teddyh wrote:
| You're thinking of the monetary incentive only, which
| might be too narrow a view.
|
| The "regulatory capture" principle might apply here - an
| auditor only meets any one client once in their life, but
| probably meets some landlords many times, presumably
| develops a relationship with them, and might want to tend
| to not upset that relationship.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > For the same reason you trust an auditor and accountant
| hired by Tesla to produce quartely earnings report - they
| are on the hook if they lie.
|
| "On the hook" has different meanings when you have the
| enforcement power of the US federal government and
| criminal courts versus an individual who has to cough up
| tens of thousands for lawyers in civil court.
| jonfw wrote:
| If I was going to drop the kind of money that I did on my
| house on retail stocks, then you can bet that I'd be
| doing some due diligence on my end that's worth at least
| the same few hundred bucks
| InitialLastName wrote:
| >Surely you do not hire an independant accountant every
| time you buy stocks?
|
| Of course not, I let the short sellers do it for me.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Then you'd miss out on GME, TSLA, and all the stocks that
| make the most money. That's obviously a viable strategy,
| but it's certainly not the best in terms of ROI.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You also probably miss out on the fraud and negative ROI
| that the investigations would conceivably uncover.
|
| Also, making decisions around catching Tesla or GME at
| the right timing in the market... that's not a great
| starting point for investment strategy.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Also, making decisions around catching Tesla or GME at
| the right timing in the market... that's not a great
| starting point for investment strategy.
|
| I thought the same thing for years, and just avoided the
| market except for a 401k and stock granted by companies I
| worked at. Then I got into trading because I thought I
| could make money trading volatile stocks and I've never
| looked back (I've already made enough to retire). So far
| I've only lost money on my value stocks.
|
| To each his own.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Do you work on your own accord then and do not need to
| subject yourself to a boss?
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Yep, I quit my job in tech and just do whatever I want
| currently. I may take another regular job, I may not. I'd
| hardly even call what I do now "work," although I am
| still actively investing.
| shard wrote:
| Do you think your case is a typical case? How much does
| experience count? How much did you need to educate
| yourself to reach this level? Were there any major
| stumbles or obstacles? I am encouraged by your story, but
| am also weary that it only sounds reasonable because all
| the harrowing details were left out.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| In the current US housing market, you're expected to
| waive bringing in a house inspector because if you don't,
| the seller will sell to someone who will (and they likely
| have 3 all cash offers besides you ready to go).
| kbelder wrote:
| That's what we're finding right now. Any attempt at
| negotiation just means your offer gets binned and the
| house will go to somebody who'll pony up the money, no
| questions asked.
| maccard wrote:
| I live in Scotland, and the process here is the seller
| has to undertake a survey with someone who is accredited.
| In practice this means that the same 3-4 firms end up
| doing most of the surveys. It's not just some ranodmer
| saying "yeah, looks good mate".
|
| > In the US this only costs a few hundred dollars for a
| typical house, which is a tiny fraction of the overall
| transaction price.
|
| You know what's even better than _only_ a couple of
| hundred dollars? The seller paying it once.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Suppose the seller got a bad report. Wouldn't they just
| shop to a new surveyor to get a better one? The
| incentives are bad in this situation.
|
| Also, even if the money first comes out of the sellers
| pocket, it's still being paid by the buyer in the houses
| cost.
| rapind wrote:
| Easy way to solve that is making sure there's a record of
| all accredited inspections that potential buyers can
| access. So you have a do-over after fixing something but
| there's a trail for the buyer.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > The UK system where each buyer comissions a survey is
| absurd.
|
| In the US if a buyer does provide an inspection report to
| the seller and backs out, then the seller does at least
| have to disclose any issues found.
| borvo wrote:
| I'm looking at 5 houses and want to pick the best one. Of
| course I need to see the surveys now. Tell me which bank is
| this that will pay for the 5 surveys?
| gambiting wrote:
| >> Of course I need to see the surveys now
|
| Fair enough, I don't know anyone who bought a house this
| way though. For me personally it was always 1) find a house
| 2) ask the bank to do the survey 3) based on the survey
| either carry on with the mortgage or retract my offer. Yes
| I probably couldn't do 5 houses at once, but I have done 3
| houses consecutively this way before, no issues whatsoever
| with the banks.
| cptskippy wrote:
| What does a survey consist of and why are they so
| expensive?
|
| In the US we have home inspectors, and we have surveyors. A
| home inspector is generally responsible for auditing the
| structure and mechanicals of the home for issues. A
| surveyor is only responsible for identifying property
| boundaries.
|
| A home inspection is under $1000, usually $250-500. I don't
| know what a survey costs as I've never been involved in a
| property boundary dispute as US homes are generally on
| large enough plots that encroachment issues aren't that
| common.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>What does a survey consist of and why are they so
| expensive?
|
| They aren't, OP makes it sound like it costs an arm and a
| leg. The costs are around PS300-400, about PS500 if you
| want to pull out all the environmental reports as well,
| which while not insignificant in itself, is not really a
| big deal when buying a house for hundreds of thousands of
| pounds.
| [deleted]
| aaronax wrote:
| The bank may be requiring the survey but you are paying for
| it. If not directly then at least in a very clear indirect
| way.
| gambiting wrote:
| The last mortgage I took was with Bank of Ireland, they
| offered a full survey for PS400 but I rang them and asked
| if they would do it for free if I took their mortgage on
| completion - they said yes, so I paid nothing for the
| survey. Other mortgages I had the survey was just included
| in the mortgage, no extra cost.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and
| benefits and apply for the best job.
|
| I am always surprised to see comments that make it sound like
| jobs (or, employees) are fungible commodities that can be
| bought and sold purely on price.
|
| One simple example - two jobs may have the same title (Senior
| Developer, or whatever) but have totally different expectations
| of communication skills, leadership skills, ability to handle
| pressure, etc and would pay very differently. So you (and
| everyone else) would be tempted to apply for the top-paying job
| but potentially not be qualified.
|
| Or the situation where a company is very flexible on who they
| hire and thus would pay a lot more or a lot less depending on
| what the individual brings to the table.
|
| In a way, I think there's a bit of "you don't know what you
| don't know" principle at play here. If someone has limited
| perspective on how career development, seniority, and hiring
| work, they may really believe that the big problem is "I can't
| sort my opportunities by salary." Someone with more experience
| and understanding may recognize how non-fungible people and
| roles can be in a way that a simple "sort by price" cannot
| capture.
|
| To use your real-estate analogy, would you ever buy a house
| that came up first in a price-sort? No, you'd both want to
| really understand the nuances of the house (location,
| condition, etc.) and how it compares to your needs and your
| ability to pay. IE, you'd often take "not the best price"
| because either there's something wrong with the property or
| it's just not suitable to your needs." Hiring is much the same.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| > two jobs may have the same title (Senior Developer, or
| whatever) but have totally different expectations of
| communication skills, leadership skills, ability to handle
| pressure, etc and would pay very differently. So you (and
| everyone else) would be tempted to apply for the top-paying
| job but potentially not be qualified.
|
| What do you think makes this a problem here? You apply, you
| interview, the company either gives you the position or not.
| I don't think anyone would use the salary range as the one
| and only factor to decide where to apply. It can help to
| decide where to make more effort or what the comp potential
| is if I improve my skills.
| tshaddox wrote:
| If I'm looking for a job, it's already on me to try to limit
| my search to positions I'm qualified for. Providing me with
| the salary information for each job doesn't make that task
| any more difficult.
| insert_coin wrote:
| But they don't and yet you still have a job (I hope).
|
| And the reason is because when you are looking for a job
| other things are more important than knowing the salary
| even before you apply or they seriously consider you.
|
| Everyone does whatever they can get away with, and the
| moment we accept that everything becomes clear. They are
| all trying to benefit themselves, just as you are by trying
| to learn some information before the other party feel the
| need to share it with you.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| We do recognise that, and that's why you publish a salary
| range. If your salary range for a dev is 50k - 90k, then
| publish that. The point, a candidate who know they are a good
| developer can know what to expect.
|
| If someone shows up for interview with leadrship skills so
| amazing they can run the whole company and you want to pay
| them 4x, then it's probably a different job, maybe a
| TeamLead.
|
| Publish several jobs and just fill one of them, cancell
| others.
|
| But the argument is bordering on "we are so flexible we have
| no structure at all and we have no clue what we are doing"
| and is difficult to taje seriously.
| sidlls wrote:
| It's a bit presumptuous to suggest the OP "has limited
| perspective on how career development, seniority, and hiring
| work".
|
| Also, I most certainly do sort by price when I'm looking for
| real estate: I have a budget, after all. Same thing with
| employment: most people have needs that salary requirements
| can meet, and it's pointless to look for jobs outside the
| range one can accept. Therefore it's almost certainly the
| best and most useful first thing to sort by.
|
| Others have more freedom. For example, thanks to a recent IPO
| I can literally work for no salary and be fine. I have far
| more freedom to consider other details about a job than 99%
| of the population.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > It's a bit presumptuous to suggest the OP "has limited
| perspective ...
|
| This is going to be very meta and not about salary so feel
| free to skip :)
|
| When I disagree with someone, I try to find where we are
| disconnected. It's usually one of two things: we reach
| divergent conclusions either because we are aware of
| different facts, or because we're interpreting those facts
| through different values lens.
|
| A good quick heuristic of a fact missing if when someone
| talks about either one side of the equation or even worse,
| makes both sides line up to their conclusion.
|
| For example: "we should use Python - it's the best dev
| experience, we are only using C++ cuz our lead engineer is
| stupid" versus "We use C++ because of performance
| attributes, but I argue we can be fast-enough in Python and
| get better dev-experience"
|
| The 2nd statement shows awareness of both sides of the
| argument and then proposes a solution that accounts for
| them. The 1st side is missing the context for why someone
| would do something other than what they want to do -
| suggesting they don't have perspective on that and making
| it likely that their solution doesn't account for it (or if
| it does, only by accident.)
|
| In the discussion at hand, the original poster clearly
| prefers salary ranges and his model for why companies don't
| publish them is that they are evil. To me that suggests
| that they are lacking perspectives on the cases where
| salary ranges are either impossible to share or end up
| working in the employee's favor. Having had this
| conversation many times before, I attribute this lack of
| perspective on not having the senior hiring experience
| either from candidate or company side where one would have
| picked up the perspective.
|
| To sum it all up, yet there's a bit of presumption in my
| suggestion but at the same time - you have to be able to
| assert things or else you'd never be able to make any
| points.
| piaste wrote:
| > I am always surprised to see comments that make it sound
| like jobs (or, employees) are fungible commodities that can
| be bought and sold purely on price.
|
| I highly doubt that the parent comment meant that he would
| literally apply to the job with the biggest number with no
| other consideration.
|
| I read it as the far more modest claim that, if even _seeing_
| the number requires a significant investment of time and
| effort on your side, the efficiency of the market is highly
| restricted. Especially since, once you do see the number, you
| usually need to take it or leave it within a short time
| frame; you can't "open up" a lot of job offers and then pick
| the best.
|
| To use the real-estate analogy again, how would the housing
| market be affected if buyers had to put down a deposit to
| even _see_ the listed price? And if the sellers had the
| ability to get a complete profile of the buyer before
| revealing their price? It seems pretty clear to me that the
| average house price would significantly increase, despite the
| supply and demand both staying the same.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Eh. I wouldnt buy a house that came up first based on price
| sort but I would rule out most/all houses that cost less than
| X. Salaries are the same thing. I'm not going to consider a
| job that is X amount do if the top range is below that I'll
| skip it. It's a time saving tool.
|
| Sure there are about a billion other factors to look at but
| if the salary is a non starter then why waste the time to
| interview even if everything else was perfect?
| mywittyname wrote:
| > So you (and everyone else) would be tempted to apply for
| the top-paying job but potentially not be qualified.
|
| I don't do this, and I feel like most reasonable people
| wouldn't do this either.
|
| Let's say you manage to actually get a job that you're not
| qualified for. There's a strong possibility that you'll be
| fired, maybe within the 90 day probationary period. At a some
| large companies, you might get some cover and get passed
| around from department to department for years. But I've
| definitely seen a fair number of people fired for non-
| performance in my career; it's not exactly rare.
| analog31 wrote:
| Interestingly, I use price-sort extensively when doing online
| shopping. I don't often buy the thing that comes up first,
| but I certainly use it to help figure out the tradeoff
| between price and quality, and to filter out items that I
| have no reason to consider. Also, price-sort eliminates one
| of the psychological burdens of shopping, which is the
| manipulative presentation of products by the vendor.
|
| Price-sort is a very crude version of an even more powerful
| tool, which is: "Show me everything about every product,
| without trying to manipulate me, and let me organize the data
| by criteria that I choose, not that you choose." This is why
| Excel pivot tables are so popular in business.
|
| Anything that makes the job search function less
| psychological has to be beneficial. Nothing prevents me from
| taking a pay cut for a particular job that I absolutely love,
| in a favored location, etc.
|
| Oddly enough, product marketing and hiring share a common
| feature, which is that both fields have endless amounts of
| verbiage about how psychological manipulation is actually
| beneficial to the person being manipulated. If so, it should
| be an opt-in feature, perhaps even one that people are
| willing to pay for.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Or the situation where a company is very flexible on who
| they hire and thus would pay a lot more or a lot less
| depending on what the individual brings to the table.
|
| You're making it sound like the companies are being forced to
| pay the same salary for the same role - _they are not_ , and
| this is a straw man argument. The companies should publish
| the salary _range_ - they are free to adjust the offers
| within the range depending on skills & experience of the
| successful candidate. If the range is $20k - $180k to cater
| for the "rockstar" who brings a lot - then they ought to
| publish that range and be prepared to explain to a candidate
| why the company thinks a candidate deserves $20k/yr and see
| how that goes.
|
| An equivalent scenario to what's happening on the job market
| outside Colorado would be houses being sold without
| displaying the asking prices - all potential buyers would be
| expected to jump through all the hoops and be asked to "make
| an offer" without being able to make comparisons on how much
| other similar houses on the market are going for. Instead,
| they'd be asked "How much did you pay for the last house you
| bought?" or "How much are you currently paying in rent?"
| vineyardmike wrote:
| My friend interviewed for an SDE 1 position but after
| interview, was then offered a role of SDE 2 on the team,
| since the team was hiring for both, and he was more
| qualified as a 2.
|
| I think this is an example of flexibility that people bring
| up. Not that they shouldn't publish the range, but my
| friend had no idea the other range was open to him.
|
| TO be clear, i agree that they should have to explain "why"
| if they chose the part of the range, like you say, but i
| think it misses some edge cases that are not uncommon.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > [...]but my friend had no idea the other range was open
| to him.
|
| This asymmetric information is the _intention_ of the
| employer, but sadly, in most cases it goes the other way:
| person gets hired as an SDE 2, but earns less than some
| /all SDE 1's because they are terrible at negotiating, or
| their salary history was always below market rate and
| they do not know it. I'm all for companies paying
| commensurate salaries and having the flexibility to do so
| - publishing salaries ranges when posting jobs is
| orthogonal to that.
|
| > i think it misses some edge cases that are not
| uncommon.
|
| In your friends case, I hope/wish the law covers that
| scenario whereby the employer is forced to disclose the
| range for the upgraded when asked - so that all your
| friend needed to do was ask.
| vbtemp wrote:
| > I am always surprised to see comments that make it sound
| like jobs (or, employees) are fungible commodities that can
| be bought and sold purely on price.
|
| This!!
|
| - At every company and institution I've worked for, I've
| never really been in a situation where two people, even if
| they have the same job title, are line-replacable for one
| another (unless they are very junior). Everyone has extremely
| distinct skills, experiences, capabilities whose value is
| extremely contingent on the needs of the moment.
|
| - Making rules to make things for fair or transparent has the
| opposite effect. A major institution I worked for came up
| with an impossible-to-game, no-human-in-the-loop formula for
| bias-free and discrimination-free compensation. The result?
| People with equal responsibilities ended up getting paid
| _vastly_ different amounts. Similarly, people with equal
| salaries had vastly different levels of responsibility. I
| don't think a uniform compensation scheme simply works, other
| than just negotiating 1-on-1 with staff until agreements are
| reached, and when it no longer works out they ask Mr. Market.
|
| - A company not disclosing salary already gives you enough
| information. Unless they are a flagship megacorp with well
| known salary bands and staff levels, and they are not
| disclosing the salary, then you know it's not competitive
| salary.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Agree with your first point.
|
| > Unless they are a flagship megacorp with well known
| salary bands and staff levels, and they are not disclosing
| the salary, then you know it's not competitive salary.
|
| Frankly that's not been my experience. I find that
| especially on the senior level, the variance is so high for
| what a person could make in a role that publishing the
| range would just be meaningless. Thus, I take the "lack of
| range" as a non-signal.
| vbtemp wrote:
| I see what you mean. If I could refine what I said, I'd
| put it that for those flagship mega corps, you generally
| know that it will _at least_ be competitive, and it's
| just a matter of how far beyond it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > One simple example - two jobs may have the same title
| (Senior Developer, or whatever) but have totally different
| expectations of communication skills, leadership skills,
| ability to handle pressure, etc and would pay very
| differently. So you (and everyone else) would be tempted to
| apply for the top-paying job but potentially not be
| qualified.
|
| That's because software engineering suffers from tittle
| inflation (same way grade inflation works really).
|
| Internally there are several "levels" of Senior Engineers at
| most companies. But what the levels map to is completely
| arbitrary. I've seen places where senior really means 20
| years of industry experience and others where it's more like
| 5.
| ska wrote:
| You sort of point this out, but title inflation in itself
| isn't a problem. If everyone could agree that "senior staff
| developer" in 2021 is what everyone meant by "senior
| developer" in 2005, we'd be fine.
|
| The real problem, as you point out, is there is no
| consistency. In reviewing resumes basically ignore titles
| from any company I'm not very familiar with, and rely on
| their description of what they have done.
|
| As an aside, many engineers, especially less experienced
| ones, are _terrible_ at this. As a piece of advice, think
| about what your resume says about your work if the titles
| are blacked out.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > In reviewing resumes basically ignore titles from any
| company I'm not very familiar with, and rely on their
| description of what they have done.
|
| That's the correct approach. Same holds for job
| descriptions: what have others at this level band shipped
| and what were their contributions.
| bawolff wrote:
| > To use your real-estate analogy, would you ever buy a house
| that came up first in a price-sort?
|
| No, but if they also weren't giving me an asking price,
| that's a huge red flag.
|
| You're right that price is but one attribute of a job, but it
| is an important attribute. Its not the only thing i am
| evaluating, but it is one of the things, even one of the more
| important things.
|
| So yes, i would like to know what the salary range is at the
| get-go.
|
| Also this is true for pretty much everything - when buying a
| car, you dont generally go with the cheapest option, there's
| lots of attributes to evaluate, but if someone refused to
| tell you the price you wouldn't go with them either.
| matwood wrote:
| Exactly. And to emphasize your point, a company (or car
| sale) who is being coy with the price/salary is a huge red
| flag. They know it's not good and are trying to lure you
| far enough down the path that you won't turn around.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and
| benefits and apply for the best job.
|
| There is no fixed salary for a job. That's the whole point.
| It's a negotiation, where candidates with unique skills can
| negotiate higher compensation that reflects their unique skill-
| sets and contributions. What you want is to impose a one-size-
| fits-all rule on the market. That's going to produce
| misallocation and inefficiency.
|
| > view a few houses before you've paid the house price in
| survey fees
|
| Surveys and inspections cost a few hundred dollars. Houses cost
| several hundred thousand dollars at least.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "It's a negotiation, where candidates with unique skills can
| negotiate"
|
| Every snowflake is special and unique too, but nobody cares
| when they are shovelling their driveways. Stop spreading
| incredulous fantasies, companies that hire 3000 JS-React
| mashing "agile' dev have salary ranges, HR has them, and you
| can find out about them once you are hired. They just don't
| want to publish them upfront.
|
| Maybe if we are talking top leadership positions this
| argument has credence, but for most of us they aren't bending
| over backwards and putting together unique compensation
| packages.
| ramblerman wrote:
| > A competitive market would enable me to sort by salary and
| benefits and apply for the best job.
|
| The idea that there would be a bunch of generic job listings
| with fixed salaries makes you essentially a replacable drone
| with no unique value, and sounds horrible to me.
|
| Also a free market doesn't need to be absolutely transparent.
| That's just something you would want because it sounds like it
| would be easier, but uncertainties about the future, unknowns,
| and consumer wants is what drives the whole pricing game to
| begin with.
| bb123 wrote:
| Thats just nonsense. There absolutely is a requirement to
| disclose known faults with the property, and if a survey (which
| every buyer does) shows up something serious, there is a legal
| requirement to disclose it to all parties. Also most banks will
| cover the cost of a survey.
| mountainb wrote:
| Inspections are pretty cheap at least in the US.
| Inconsequential compared to the price of the house or any
| other expense related to buying, really.
| bb123 wrote:
| Correct - the homebuyers report on my house cost PS300.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The buyer is the only one bringing money into the
| transaction. Regardless of who signs the check, the buyer is
| paying for all of the things.
| bb123 wrote:
| Thats true, but you really can't have it both ways. You
| either want a professional opinion on the quality of the
| house or you're willing to run the risk. Anyway, the banks
| aren't doing inspections for the benefit of the buyer. They
| want to know that should the house be repossessed they are
| likely to recoup their investment. The fact the buyer might
| find something out about the house is a happy side effect.
| brundolf wrote:
| Weekly reminder that sometimes a functioning market can only be
| maintained via regulation.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| If people want to better negotiate their salaries, they have to
| unionize. Everything else is just unproven, speculative,
| untested pitter patter.
| gryn wrote:
| why do you think a union would help in this ?
|
| I live in france and all big enough companies are mandated to
| have union, doesn't mean that they help with salaries.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Is this a managerial / professional union?
|
| Those normally negotiate the banding and the COL increases
| and also know what the rates are.
|
| Unions in the entertainment industries do :-) underpay or
| stiff workers and you get put on the "call first list" this
| is the PC name for another type of list.
| ck425 wrote:
| > With housing (in UK) there is no competition on quality
| because the seller doesn't have to disclose any problems with
| the house.
|
| Note that that's an issue on England (and presumably Wales
| too?). It's not the case in Scotland. Not sure about NI.
| alaxsxaq wrote:
| Interesting since this coincides with a different issue I am
| facing. I had an employee move to California (we are a single-
| site business on the east coast) and everything was fine during
| covid. Now I'm being told that there are concerns about
| California's employment laws since they are out of sync with the
| laws in our state and might require HR to do some additional work
| and the organization to incur added expenses. Currently, we are
| awaiting a decision from HR. Our mitigation plan centers around
| moving this person from employee to contractor. It might be the
| only option for us - the employee has plenty of other
| opportunities.
| eplanit wrote:
| My sympathy is with the employers. Colorado did this to itself
| with such an anticompetitive law. Beyond this effect, it also
| encourages sending the work offshore altogether.
| zachrose wrote:
| What competition is being hampered by this law?
| dominotw wrote:
| I don't know what is being hampered but in general there is
| no free lunch. You always are making a tradeoff when you make
| a law, there is no such thing as only good law.
|
| So there has to be some downside for even this law.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| All laws have downsides is about as interesting as "PI
| isn't always good. Sometimes you want to multiply by 2".
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Indeed, the definition of "perfect competition" in economics
| includes that all participants have perfect information.
|
| But, that's actually the reason companies hate this law: in
| "perfect competition" no long-term economic profit is
| possible. Long-term profits are the result of when a market
| disobeys the definition of "perfect competition," such as
| when there's information asymmetry, patents and trade secrets
| to protect innovation, or when barriers to entry are
| significant.
|
| In this case, hiding salary ranges from employees provides
| the employer an obvious benefit in that they know how much is
| budgeted for the position, but a candidate doesn't get that
| information when giving their salary requirements. I recently
| had to play a round of "don't give a number" with a recruiter
| last week. Needless to say, that didn't go very far.
| dominotw wrote:
| > I recently had to play a round of "don't give a number"
| with a recruiter last week. Needless to say, that didn't go
| very far.
|
| I had this happen to be last week too. I am not sure what
| ppl say to recruiters when they keep asking this question.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| In my case, it was more that the recruiter wouldn't give
| any sense of what their number was. I told them it was
| like they were selling a home and advertising an open
| house without an asking price or any pictures of the
| inside. I wouldn't waste 20 minutes on an open house for
| a place that wouldn't work for me, would you?
|
| They just clamped down on "I'm not at liberty to say."
| So, I told them to get back to me when they have a little
| more liberty.
|
| What I usually say in those initial conversations is
| something like "I don't have any real requirements beyond
| the amount that pays my bills. And, at this point, I
| don't know enough about the job, the team, management,
| benefits, _etc._ or the value I could bring, to give an
| educated number. "
|
| That usually satisfies them on the first phone call.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This "you say a number first" game has to end. I had a
| memorably surreal conversation with a recruiter that kind
| of went like this:
|
| RECRUITER: Tell me what your current salary is.
|
| ME: No. I'm not going to disclose this. Why don't you
| tell me what the range is for this role.
|
| RECRUITER: It depends on what you're currently making.
|
| ME: How does what I'm currently making change what value
| I'm offering to the company? I have a range, you have a
| range, let's just figure out where it overlaps.
|
| RECRUITER: OK then you tell me how much do you want.
|
| ME: $500K (knowing this was a ridiculous number)
|
| RECRUITER: HAHAHAHAROTFL
|
| ME: See how stupid this is? You obviously have a range
| and that number is outside of it. I'm not going to
| negotiate against myself.
|
| We didn't get much farther than that.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Yeah, that's roughly how my conversation went, too. It's
| too bad, because if the role had had competitive comp
| (and, I strongly suspect they wouldn't have been
| competitive, based on what little info I was able to drag
| out of the recruiter), I would have totally gone through
| with the interview process. Oh well.
|
| The only way I know of to break through that kind of BS
| gamesmanship is to do a lot of research and determine
| what the market salary distribution is for comparable
| roles. Sites like comp.fyi and payscale.com have been
| helpful for me here.
|
| BTW, if you just want to get offer numbers on comp.fyi,
| use 0 years at company. If you need more data, you can
| try including 1 or 2 years at company, but, if you start
| including too much, you're going to lose the original
| offer numbers in the noise.
| bo1024 wrote:
| I would think more information about the jobs improves
| competition and efficiency of the labor market. Unfortunately
| politics uses the term anticompetitive to mean bad for big
| businesses, which is almost the opposite meaning.
| eplanit wrote:
| Coloradoans looking for remote work will now be competing in
| a smaller pool (with each other), and for fewer positions,
| than if the whole country were open to them. If other states
| start this then more will go to India and China.
| woeirua wrote:
| LOL. What? If other states do this, then employers will
| just have to comply. The only problem right now is that CO
| is kind of by itself.
|
| If a company is going to outsource they were going to do it
| anyways.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Companies hiring remotely that avoid Colorado forfeit the
| good talent there. I'm skeptical that this law scares every
| company, as plenty put salary ranges on job postings.
| [deleted]
| CrazyStat wrote:
| What is anticompetitive about requiring salary disclosure?
| artemonster wrote:
| Why?
| SlimyHog wrote:
| Oh no, how can these companies underpay their employees now?
| newsclues wrote:
| Open transparency is bad for the labour market?
| javert wrote:
| "Anticompetitive" is an invalid concept invented to manipulate
| people. It's not a coherent concept; it doesn't describe
| something specific in reality; it doesn't have a useful purpose
| in honest thinking.
|
| But I agree with you that CO has committed a rights violation.
| phh wrote:
| I've been taught in school that perfect competition
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition ) requires
| perfect information (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information ), so I
| assume giving more information would increase competition.
| Could you share why this is anti-competitive?
| matz1 wrote:
| Competition doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the
| amount of information. https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/competition
| seoaeu wrote:
| That's like responding to an article about new Python
| language features by pointing out that the author doesn't
| know anything because actually pythons are big snakes:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/python
| [deleted]
| Siira wrote:
| Merriam-webster, the height of technical excellency. We
| should all strive to educate ourselves using this
| indubitable resource.
| LargeWu wrote:
| "Perfect competition" is a specific economic concept. The
| dictionary definition of "competition" doesn't really apply
| to this discussion.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| My favorite comment on that Reddit post is one where the guy says
| his company is on Digital Ocean and this news about how the
| company engages in antiworker practices is enough to push him
| into migrating to AWS.
|
| I have no dog or pony in the show on either side but if I was
| writing a fiction story I wouldn't be able to include something
| like that because no one would believe that decision making...of
| that caliber...actually exists out in the wild.
| Bishop_ wrote:
| My current employer migrated from AWS to GCP (Before my
| employment with them) because they don't like Jeff Bezos,
| things are sometimes... odd when dealing with very small
| businesses.
| DTrejo wrote:
| If you'd like some talking points to help you start this
| conversation with your HR team, here's an article I wrote:
|
| https://dtrejo.com/why-share-salary
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Reminds me of the outrage(tm) when US newspapers blocked
| connections from Europe over the GDPR.
|
| Regulations have consequences. Not all those consequences are the
| consequences you want. Sometimes exiting a small market looks
| like a better option than compliance.
|
| Sometimes HN downvotes posts for challenging a political crusade
| by pointing out what it did to those who promoted it. ;)
| frankbreetz wrote:
| Is Europe a small market?
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| "European readers of American newspapers" is.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| When America asserts itself as the dominant power,
| international readers American newspapers is not a small
| market. At the very least, it doesn't match the spirit of
| the web to have region locked content.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yeah, but international readers of the Lacrosse Tribune
| are probably few and far between.
| fogihujy wrote:
| For many U.S. businesses I'm sure it's pretty much
| irrelevant. For others, not so much. That's why you see some
| U.S. businesses complying with EU directives, while others
| simply block visitors from the EU.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yes, if you are a local US newspaper.
| [deleted]
| pydry wrote:
| Similar to GDPR it's waving a giant flag announcing how shady
| you're being.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I get why companies are increasingly focusing on referral hiring.
| it lets you sidestep so much compliance.
| sbarre wrote:
| Compliance is one thing but if you trust your employees, then a
| referral hire also potentially lets you skip a ton of vetting.
| langitbiru wrote:
| I'm making PredictSalary (https://predictsalary.com). It's a tool
| to predict the salary ranges from job opportunities. I collect
| job opportunities with salaries and create a Deep Learning model.
| Right now, it only supports three job opportunities websites.
|
| Soon I will create a tool to share the salaries. I'm inspired by
| the story below.
|
| https://www.axios.com/salaries-game-developers-break-silence...
| cma wrote:
| Don't all companies have to share it for H1B listings anyway, as
| federal law, which legally are supposed to be commensurate with
| non-H1Bs (not that they necessarily are in practice)?
|
| https://h1bdata.info/
| rodonn wrote:
| But these numbers can be very deceptive, since they don't
| include RSUs or bonuses. e.g. when you look at Amazon you won't
| see any salaries about $200k even though total compensation
| goes much higher than that.
| toast0 wrote:
| Only companies that hire H1B have to do those filings, AFAIK.
| Lots of companies don't hire H1B because it's a lot of work.
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