[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ...
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Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law
requires it?
I saw a few ads here for hiring over the last month for YC
companies in NYC that did not post their salary range, and clicking
through to the post on their portal the range was also nowhere to
be found. I can't comment on those posts, so I wasn't able to do
any type of callout. I thought I remember being able to comment on
them, but I think that functionality was removed ... Why is this
acceptable?
Author : roflyear
Score : 514 points
Date : 2022-12-13 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
| gjvc wrote:
| because everybody tries to get away with whatever they think they
| can get away with.
|
| If you maintain this wide-eyed innocence you will be no more than
| everyone else's victim.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Maybe they are fishing for a willing plaintiff in a planned test
| case to challenge the law on a constitutional basis.
| zcombynator wrote:
| You should stop making YC responsible for what any single
| portfolio company is doing. That's straight out hilarious. After
| the firms are out of batch they are independent and autonomous
| organizations.
| rtev wrote:
| They're advertising here on their platform, so the tie-in is
| strong.
| matsemann wrote:
| As long as these companies keep bragging about being related to
| YC, anything they do will also reflect on YC. You can't ask
| people not to associate these things.
|
| And in this case, _these ads are given special treatment here
| on HN_. So of course YC owns some part of the responsibility.
| [deleted]
| roflyear wrote:
| It wasn't a single company, it has been a pattern for a while -
| that's why I made the post.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| They want to get all the credit and positive PR when things go
| well and not have any responsibility when things don't go well?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Salary ranges with a 60k spread. Progress!
|
| At this point get rid of negotiation straight up. Ether someone
| is qualified or not.
|
| If not create a junior role for them, or not hire em.
| SamWhited wrote:
| A friend of mine asked about one of these recently and they
| wouldn't give him a salary range, so he reported them to the
| attorney general and they _immediately_ put one on their website.
| Can 't hurt to ask (although in that case they may only give it
| to you, if they do, move on to step 2 anyways), then if they
| don't update it report them and you'll be doing everyone else a
| favor too.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Is there a link for reporting to the attorney general?
| meltyness wrote:
| Yes[0]!
|
| [0]https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publication
| s/...
| roflyear wrote:
| Title of this post was changed btw: not all NYC companies are not
| posting salary ranges. And it isn't ONLY an issue in NYC, either.
| Very misleading title.
| xnorswap wrote:
| To those who think it's not YC / HN's problem, you're missing
| that HN literally has a Job Board:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
|
| This is a core part of their offering, it's not just user
| generated content, it's YC companies posting on YC's job board.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It's deeply bizarre to me that there are so many posters on
| here who think a fund that: 1) invests in, 2) advises, and 3)
| provides free job advertising to; various startups, has no
| responsibility to _advise_ them to follow the law when posting
| those job advertisements _on that fund 's own job board_.
|
| I understand the ones who raise the possibility that some of
| these aren't, in fact, breaking the law, for one reason or
| another, but the ones who seem to take offense at the notion
| that YC might have even a sliver of responsibility here in the
| first place are really surprising.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Never assume someone will do
| the right or legal thing, regardless of status or PR. Can't
| explain the Stockholm Syndrome ("but the ones who seem to
| take offense at the notion that YC might have even a sliver
| of responsibility here"), people can be emotional, irrational
| creatures due to life experience and belief systems.
|
| But Sequoia lost $200M on a fraud having done zero due
| diligence, so perhaps it's simply different shades of apathy
| all the way down.
| roflyear wrote:
| I'm glad this took off. I think some of the posts were
| fixed!! :)
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| in Silicon Valley style "first principles thinking", you
| start from the premise that laws don't exist. Airbnb and Uber
| wouldn't exist if their backers urged them to comply with
| state laws.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The craziest one is _The Muse_ , which is NYC based, and is
| literally a jobs board, but does not list salary for its own
| jobs. Doesn't inspire confidence!
| roflyear wrote:
| Lol missed that one!
| cheeze wrote:
| Isn't that the benefit of hackernews to ycombinator?
|
| You have an incredible reach with highly technical users, and
| you can inject your hiring ads into the posts.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| OP is likely referring to the "Who is Hiring?" posts. Those
| offerings are user-generated and likely fall under Section 230.
| Even if that weren't the case, New York City has no juridiction
| over a company's speech in the Bay Area.
| roflyear wrote:
| No, I mean the job ads that are sometimes promoted.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Unless you are a lawyer it does not seem prudent to err on
| the side of "don't worry about it" when it comes to the law.
| I'm also not a lawyer but this is the kind of thing companies
| get slapped with fines for all the time.
| shkkmo wrote:
| They clearly are not given the explicit mention of these
| being YC companies combined with the lack of the ability to
| comment on the posts, which is only ever true of the special
| job postings from YC companies that get placed on the front
| page without needing to be upvoted.
|
| They are also clear that they are talking about companies
| based in NYC that are clearly required to follow NY law.
| godelski wrote:
| Do we know why the Who's Hiring threads stopped encouraging
| wage posting? Wasn't there a template? I remember there also
| used to be a user led effort to upvote those who posted
| salaries and downvote those who didn't.
| notananthem wrote:
| Report to AG, if a company doesn't incentivize its staff to be
| legally compliant its a risk to the business
| Sidsaladi wrote:
| Awesome
| Sidsaladi wrote:
| Wow
| batrastard wrote:
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Because Internet? Because disrupt? Don't you know that human laws
| do not apply to the cloud? /s
| spullara wrote:
| What is the downside of posting a salary range of $1 to $1m for
| every job? Is there some kind of enforcement that it has to be
| someone at the company making the amount of money for the job
| with the same title?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think the difference is how loudly they're saying, "!@#$ you,
| we are in control and will manipulate this process to our
| advantage."
|
| If the goal is, in good faith, to find someone to do a job,
| then publishing all known constraints will drastically improve
| the search. But when they don't do that, it's usually because
| they want to hold their cards close so that they can both 1)
| hire someone to fill a _need_ the company has, and 2) pay them
| as little as possible.
|
| As other comments have discussed, it's kind of a self-own that
| just makes the process slower and worse and leaves everyone
| less happy at the end.
| spullara wrote:
| I guess for me personally, I have almost always been paid
| above the salary range for the jobs that I have had so it
| feels limiting to me.
| bin_bash wrote:
| The law states:
|
| > employers advertising jobs in New York City must include a
| good faith salary range for every job, promotion, and transfer
| opportunity advertised
|
| I think the question is what is "good faith" and what is the
| legal test (if there is one) for such a description. I'd love
| it if a lawyer could pontificate on this.
| JakeStone wrote:
| They just immediately receive the delete button.
|
| Maybe 5 years ago or so, I got an email that sounded good in
| terms of domain and tech stack, and with good detail on tasks
| and responsibilities.
|
| As I reached the bottom, I saw a salary heading and assumed it
| would have a good range. It said something like $80k - $2
| million.
|
| Immediately deleted and a filter placed in my email to never
| hear from them again.
| [deleted]
| gregjor wrote:
| Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York
| City. The law has some exceptions, perhaps those apply. Why not
| contact the company and politely ask for the salary range?
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Maybe HN could require salary range in order to be promoted
| here (regardless of location or laws)?
| gadders wrote:
| You mean do the ethical thing, not just the legal thing?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > You mean do the ethical thing, not just the legal thing?
|
| Can you clarify what you mean by "ethical" in this case?
| It's not obvious to me which ethic / whose interests
| deserve priority in a case like this.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The more-powerful and better-informed entity deliberately
| leveraging those imbalances to extract more value from
| the weaker entity is unethical. Might be normal, might be
| expected, might be "just business", but it's unethical.
|
| It's also contrary to the ideals of a free market, if
| that matters to anyone.
|
| I'll admit that it's ethical if one's ethical framework
| is based on Pirates of the Caribbean. "Take what you can,
| give nothing back." Which probably is pretty common,
| especially among people who succeed at business.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _more-powerful and better-informed entity_
|
| With many of these roles, it's unclear who has the
| advantage: the seed-stage start-up or the key employee.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think the one counting YC folks as advisors probably
| have the information advantage more often than not,
| unless they're astonishingly incompetent.
| falcolas wrote:
| Respectfully, if someone can't comply with the laws
| they're subject to (or more accurately bother to look up
| the laws they need to comply with), they shouldn't be
| trying to run a business.
|
| It's literally their job as a business owner, and
| millions of people successfully do this every year.
| gregjor wrote:
| I can guarantee that every single business fails to
| comply with many laws. No one can know every law that
| might apply to them. A startup in California advertising
| a remote job that they hire a New Yorker for now has to
| comply with NYC laws. At best you can try to keep up
| with, understand, and comply with the most important and
| well-known laws. But you don't find out your toilets
| aren't ADA compliant or your storage shed breaks the fire
| and zoning rules until someone catches you. It's simply
| not practical to "look up the laws they need to comply
| with."
| wpietri wrote:
| > Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New
| York City.
|
| True, but irrelevant, as that's not the only reason to do it.
| YC has a brand whose value they surely wish to maintain.
| Presumably that gives them an interest in not directly aiding
| companies in breaking the law.
| gregjor wrote:
| Ethical behavior, to me, includes considering more than one
| reason someone or some company does something I don't like.
| Possibly these companies posting on HN deliberately intended
| to break the law. Equally possibly (more likely, in my
| opinion) those companies don't know about the law, or haven't
| had time to comply since the law went into effect just a few
| weeks ago. Any number of explanations present themselves, and
| only a few come down to "deliberately breaking the law" or
| doing anything unethical or shady.
|
| So I don't think a reasonable person should quickly (and
| publicly) jump from "this job posting apparently for NYC
| doesn't include salaries" to "the company broke hiring laws"
| and "HN directly aids companies breaking the law." Try a more
| generous interpretation on.
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't believe I said anything about intent. Indeed, my
| comment is rooted in the assumption that YC wants to do the
| right thing here. Did you mean to reply to somebody else?
|
| Even assuming the best of intent -- in fact, especially
| when we assume that -- YC's role as a guide to often-novice
| entrepreneurs means they should be helping out here. Both
| by educating them on changing hiring laws and by sending
| back inadequate job postings for reworking.
|
| Regarding your last paragraph, I'll also note that whether
| "the company broke hiring laws" is a purely factual
| question, as is whether or not HN publishes job ads that
| break the law. A generous interpretation involves why and
| how they did it, but can't include denying the facts.
| gregjor wrote:
| Since the OP didn't quote or link to any of the
| supposedly offending job posts we can't judge the "purely
| factual question." That would require seeing the job
| posting in question and then reading the text of the NYC
| law. We would have to determine if the NYC law applied to
| every specific case. If OP implies that job postings from
| YC companies "break hiring laws" then the OP should
| support that with some facts.
|
| The NYC Commission on Human Rights has a complaint
| process documented at NYC.gov/HumanRights. If someone has
| evidence of an actual violation perhaps start there
| rather than posting unsubstantiated accusations and
| implying illegal behavior on the part of un-named
| employers and YC.
| wpietri wrote:
| Again, are you sure you're replying to the right person?
| The one saying this happened is not me. I'm replying to a
| specific point about the extent to which YC would want to
| prevent this from happening.
|
| I'll also note that the person who did post about this
| perhaps left the company names out because they were
| being considerate, not wanting to invite trouble for
| people who could be entirely well meaning when they are
| just examples of a broader problem. So as long as you're
| arguing for assuming good intent, maybe you could try
| that yourself?
| gregjor wrote:
| I did think you wrote the original post. My mistake, I
| have corrected my comment.
|
| Whether YC would want to prevent illegal or unethical
| behavior is a question I can't answer. I would hope so.
| But I don't think it's reasonable to put the burden of
| enforcing various employment posting laws on YC/HN,
| especially when the laws are new and have jurisdiction
| questions and exceptions. My reading of the NYC law tells
| me job boards are not subject to any enforcement -- only
| the companies posting the job ads have to comply.
|
| I don't object to a discussion about what responsibility
| YC and HN have in regards to allowing job posts that
| don't include salary ranges. Personally I would ignore
| job posts that don't voluntarily include that. I objected
| to the OP characterizing the job posts from YC companies
| as "breaking hiring laws." Whether the law was broken or
| not would require more facts than the OP gave. Maybe the
| OP didn't name the companies that supposedly "broke
| hiring laws" out of consideration, but in the original
| post it seems clear OP intended to call them out in
| comments but couldn't comment on the posts, not that the
| OP decided to take the considerate path of not naming
| them.
| wpietri wrote:
| > I don't object to a discussion about what
| responsibility YC and HN have
|
| How very generous of you to allow us to discuss things.
| gregjor wrote:
| Don't go all Musk on me. Me objecting to a topic does not
| "allow" or censor anyone else. I object to your snide
| comment but would not disallow it.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I'm not sure why you want me to politely ask a company to stop
| breaking the law?
| awb wrote:
| Because not every violation has bad intentions, so why not be
| polite?
|
| And folks at startups are usually wearing multiple hats. They
| might not have a VP of Recruiting/HR/Legal on board that
| knows all applicable federal/state/city laws. It might be a
| SWE posting these jobs.
| gregjor wrote:
| They might not have four employees yet. They might not have
| any employees in NYC yet. Either of those conditions would
| exempt them from the NYC law.
|
| I wouldn't jump to assuming deliberate illegal behavior.
| The NYC law went into effect last month, and waives the
| penalty for first offenses to give companies time to
| comply. If I saw a NYC-based job posting with no salary I
| would give the benefit of the doubt at least.
| alexiaa wrote:
| why does not having any nyc employees yet exempt them if
| they are hiring nyc-based people?
| gregjor wrote:
| The official explanation* of the law reads:
|
| > All employers that have four or more employees or one
| or more domestic workers are covered by the NYCHRL,
| including this new provision of the law. As with other
| provisions of the NYCHRL, owners and individual employers
| count towards the four employees. The four employees do
| not need to work in the same location, and they do not
| need to all work in New York City. As long as one of the
| employees works in New York City, the workplace is
| covered.
|
| I don't have a law degree, but I read that as the law
| only applies if the company currently has at least four
| employees, one of which "works in New York City." If a
| company intends to hire someone in NYC but has no
| employees there yet the law wouldn't apply to them yet,
| probably because NYC wouldn't have jurisdiction without a
| nexus in the city.
|
| * https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publicat
| ions/...
| gregjor wrote:
| That wouldn't count as polite. I suggested asking the company
| for the salary range. If they decline to answer then you make
| your own decision about that.
| tuckerman wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment but maybe you can see this post as
| them doing that very thing but aimed at YC. While I agree
| normal HN posts don't need to be policed, the ads for hiring at
| YC companies aren't normal posts.
| gregjor wrote:
| Sure. But if someone wants YC to enforce posting salary
| ranges in job posts they might want to take that up privately
| with YC management rather than starting with public
| criticism. In other contexts people usually advocate "praise
| publicly, criticize privately." If the OP thinks YC job posts
| break the law or fall short of ethical rules then I suggest
| asking YC about it rather than accusing YC companies of
| "breaking hiring laws" on a public forum.
| shanebellone wrote:
| OP didn't accuse. OP pointed out. NY evidently requires pay
| ranges. This job posting did not include the required pay
| range.
|
| There are also zero posts disparaging the company, YC, or
| HN. Any particular range you're upset about this?
| gregjor wrote:
| The original post title: "Why are YC companies breaking
| hiring laws?"
|
| I read that as an accusation. OP did not name any
| specific companies supposedly breaking hiring laws. New
| York City started requiring salary ranges in job postings
| for most companies (not all) just a few weeks ago. I
| would interpret a few job postings that don't include
| salaries as oversights or perhaps companies exempt from
| the law (which has a few exceptions).
|
| If someone posted "Why is HN allowing shanelbellone to
| break the law?" would you read that as an accusation?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Why are you so heavily invested in this accusation? HN is
| completely capable of responding to any accusations
| properly.
| gregjor wrote:
| I have invested exactly as much in this thread as you and
| everyone else have.
|
| I don't have any investment in the topic. I don't care if
| companies post salaries in their job postings. I just
| pointed out that the OP made a couple of accusations,
| including the implication that YC was allowing their
| companies to break the law in HN job postings. OP did not
| provide any examples.
|
| > HN is completely capable of responding to any
| accusations properly.
|
| Exactly, that was the point I made above. If OP thinks HN
| is complicit in something illegal, take it up with them.
| I didn't post unsourced accusations on HN. If I had an
| actual concern about YC allowing (OP's word) their
| companies to break the law I would contact YC about it
| privately.
|
| If someone posts in a public forum that some (unnamed)
| companies have broken the law (without any supporting
| facts), and that YC maybe allowed that because of their
| financial interest, making them complicit, I think that
| person should expect pushback. Either back up the claim
| or back off.
|
| My personal reasons for commenting make no difference.
| Questioning my motives or "investment" amount to _ad
| hominem_ , and don't address the issues raised by the OP
| or subsequent comments.
| shanebellone wrote:
| I don't understand how you can say this: "without any
| supporting facts"
|
| Your comments sound angry, defensive, and accusatory.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New
| York City.
|
| Okay? But this law exists in other places too.
|
| >Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary
| range?
|
| Because its not their responsibility to make sure some random
| corp is following the law? They're just getting burned by the
| effect.
| gregjor wrote:
| Not sure how someone gets burned by not seeing the salary
| range. That would come up in the first five minutes of talks
| with the potential employer.
|
| HN does not enforce NYC laws. Nor does it enforce Colorado
| laws, or any laws regarding jobs including salary ranges.
| Whether YC/HN have an ethical responsibility or not comes
| down to one's ethical position. Laws do not necessarily equal
| ethics.
|
| Personally I would ignore job postings that leave out crucial
| information, including salary ranges. If we all did that
| (i.e. behaved according to our professed ethics) companies
| would post salary ranges just to get applicants. Compelling
| companies to post salary ranges by law may have some
| underlying logic I agree with, I don't know for sure.
| Compelling HN or any other public forum to enforce those laws
| (which vary and change by jurisdiction, with numerous
| exceptions) seems a stretch to me -- I would rather see the
| job posts and decide which to ignore and which to respond to
| rather than have HN try to enforce the patchwork of local
| laws by hiding postings. Once you get into the moderation
| business you have to invest a lot of effort in that and still
| you will piss off a lot of people.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Then not giving them a special soapbox and making them post
| like regular users would be the appropriate response, right?
| distantsounds wrote:
| HN is also not a hiring outfit, but if it wants to participate
| in that field it needs to follow the rules
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City_
|
| This is a good way to get subpoanaed, sued, and see every one
| of your start-ups fined for each and every violating post.
| gregjor wrote:
| The NYC has a documented complaint process. Start there if
| you have evidence of a violation. My quick reading of the NYC
| law tells me HN and other public forums for job postings do
| not have to enforce the law -- the person/company writing the
| job posting has to comply. If YC-funded companies break the
| NYC job posting law I don't see where in the wording of the
| law that investors have any legal jeopardy.
|
| The law in question only has vague enforcement provisions
| that include fines "up to $250,000," which means any actual
| cases brought for enforcement will end up in court in NYC. A
| civil judge will then get to decide what "good faith" means
| in each specific case, and also decide questions of
| jurisdiction and responsibility.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _HN and other public forums for job postings do not have
| to enforce the law_
|
| I don't think Hacker News faces liability for posting non-
| compliant ads. (Not a lawyer!) But if it turns out to be a
| trove of them, HN's essentially a honey pot.
|
| > _any actual cases brought for enforcement will end up in
| court in NYC_
|
| Precisely what you want your early-stage portfolio dealing
| with.
| gregjor wrote:
| The way the law reads it looks like someone has to file a
| complaint. I doubt the NYC Commission on Human Rights has
| the manpower to scour the internet for violations.
|
| Agree that investors should not tolerate illegal behavior
| from their portfolio companies, but realistically VCs
| can't manage every day-to-day detail of their portfolio.
| And even when they do get involved they can't always
| control the management -- see Uber, for example.
| Sometimes the VCs provide the legal cover for
| questionable behavior because the potential profits
| outweigh the potential fines and risk of enforcement by
| well-intentioned but ultimately toothless laws, as I
| suspect the NYC law will turn out.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _doubt the NYC Commission on Human Rights has the
| manpower to scour the internet for violations_
|
| New York City has no shortage of investigators with
| overlapping jurisdiction looking for troves of targets.
|
| > _VCs can 't manage every day-to-day detail of their
| portfolio_
|
| These are job postings on Hacker News!
| willio58 wrote:
| HN is being payed by these companies for these posts. Surely it
| wouldn't be too hard for HN devs to have a running list of
| states that require salary ranges to be posted, and check
| against that when the customer submits a request.
|
| Then it will make it easier as more and more states require the
| bare-minimum worker right of public salaries.
| duped wrote:
| > HN is being payed by these companies for these posts.
|
| that's not true afaik.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Right, I thought this site's whole purpose was to be a
| relatively high-value and _free_ (to the company posting
| the ad) place to display certain ads for the companies YC
| invests in.
| wskinner wrote:
| HN is not payed for these posts. Who's Hiring posts are like
| all others: anyone can comment, and no one on HN ever pays
| the site operator for the right to post.
| matsemann wrote:
| This isn't Whos's Hiring posts. These are the job ads you
| see in the middle of your frontpage. Like now, on spot 14 I
| see a special post like this:
|
| > Rutter (YC S19) Is Hiring a Senior Software Engineer in
| NYC (ashbyhq.com)
|
| > https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rutter/7b222f5f-cd46-4592-9cf8-6
| cd1...
|
| Which I can't comment on, it's just an ad for a YC company.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| And Who's Hiring posts are not covered by this law or
| requirement.
|
| Most jobs have official job postings. It's those that need
| to carry the salary requirement.
|
| If I'm telling a friend, Hey, there's an opening in my
| company, you wanna apply, I am not required to tell him the
| salary range. However, when I point him out to the job
| application page where he can get more official information
| on it and can apply for it, that should carry this
| information, or at least link to it.
| mbrubeck wrote:
| > Who's Hiring posts are not covered by this law or
| requirement.
|
| I don't think that's generally true.
|
| _"Any advertisement for a job, promotion, or transfer
| opportunity that would be performed in New York City is
| covered by the new law. An 'advertisement' is a written
| description of an available job, promotion, or transfer
| opportunity that is publicized to a pool of potential
| applicants. Such advertisements are covered regardless of
| the medium in which they are disseminated. Covered
| listings include postings on internal bulletin boards,
| internet advertisements, printed flyers distributed at
| job fairs, and newspaper advertisements."_ [0]
|
| > Most jobs have official job postings. It's those that
| need to carry the salary requirement.
|
| What is your reasoning for this? I don't see anything in
| the text of the law [1] about "official job postings."
|
| > If I'm telling a friend, Hey, there's an opening in my
| company, you wanna apply, I am not required to tell him
| the salary range.
|
| This at least is correct, because that case is not _"a
| written description [...] that is publicized to a pool of
| potential applicants."_
|
| [0] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/public
| ations/...
|
| [1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/Title-8
| -Text-o...
| gregjor wrote:
| If it's so easy then why not set up a site that enforces the
| patchwork of local laws and exceptions to filter out non-
| compliant job postings?
|
| If that existed today I would still choose to see the
| unfiltered job listings, because if I was looking for a job
| my goal would come down to "find a job" rather than "make
| sure all job postings comply with every regulation."
| bladeaod wrote:
| You have to have a certain number of employees for these laws to
| apply
| mbrubeck wrote:
| Specifically, the NY law applies to businesses with 4 or more
| employees (including owners/founders).
| eduction wrote:
| YC's HN altered the submission in a way that erases the
| previously stated fact that this behavior is a violation of NYC
| law, which leaves the discussion unresponsive to the question and
| also risks the appearance of trying to hide the illegal behavior.
|
| There were probably other reasons behind the change but to
| preserve the meaning of the post something about this being a
| possible/likely violation of nyc law should IMO be added back to
| the post.
| dang wrote:
| I explained the title change here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33974170. I think you make
| a good point though, so I've edited it again.
|
| For those curious, the originally submitted title was " _Ask
| HN: Why are YC companies breaking hiring laws?_ " and the first
| edit was " _Ask HN: Why are YC companies hiring in NYC not
| posting their salary range?_ I 've just edited it a second
| time, to " _Ask HN: Why are YC companies in NYC posting their
| salary range, as law requires?_ ". I don't think that's a very
| good HN title, as it makes a general claim about "YC companies
| in NYC" which is almost certainly both untrue and unfair. But
| for reasons I explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33974170, I suppose it's
| ok as a tradeoff.
|
| Edit: whoops that second edit dropped the 'not', which was
| obviously critical. I've replaced it with _Ask HN: Why are YC
| companies in NYC not posting salary range, as law requires?_.
|
| Edit 2: I've changed it again in response to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33976153. It's now " _Ask
| HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law
| requires it?_ "
| wyldfire wrote:
| > "Ask HN: Why are YC companies in NYC posting their salary
| range, as law requires?"
|
| Is that the right polarity? I think the question was/should
| be why "aren't" they posting it. Right? Or do I totally
| misunderstand?
| dang wrote:
| Yikes, that was a typo. Sorry! Now I have to figure out how
| to squeeze 'not' in there without going over 80 chars.
|
| Edit: ok, fixed now.
| roflyear wrote:
| I never meant to imply all NYC companies are doing this
| FYI.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks, I appreciate the clarification.
|
| I've edited it again with that in mind - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33976352.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > without going over 80 chars
|
| The tyranny of the horse's ass, or rather the 60's
| terminal, strikes again.
|
| (reference: the width of train tracks are rumored to be
| based on the width of a horse's ass, from ye olden days.)
| [deleted]
| trifit wrote:
| joshuamorton wrote:
| The law did have a grace period of nearly a year. It was passed
| on early December 2021 and only took effect in November 2022.
| matsemann wrote:
| Why do you accuse OP of being on a "high horse" just for asking
| this? You're reading quite a lot into this.
| nathanappere wrote:
| And what's wrong with shedding some light on this behaviour so
| that it changes and starts complying with the law?
|
| Also: "Your jumping to defend YC companies make me wonder if
| you're not just a fan boy. Maybe come down form your high horse
| thinking that you need to defend these YC companies breaking
| the law?" See where I took it from & how bad it looks?
| [deleted]
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| Curious: can you post a job that isn't for folks in states that
| have this requirement? Would you have to explicitly say that or
| only upon inquiry?
| diehunde wrote:
| Yes. You add that the job doesn't apply to people from Colorado
| or NY. I've seen a lot of those.
| altdataseller wrote:
| Contact the company, and tell them they need to publish their
| salary range. Or else you'll report them to the NYC Attorney
| General (or whoever is in charge of this thing). Maybe they're
| ignorant. Or they're hoping noone calls them out on this. Either
| way, make sure they know the consequences if they don't publish
| it
| manholio wrote:
| That's not the point. YC lends credibility to these companies
| by funding them, so allowing them to post illegal job ads on a
| platform controlled by YC strongly implies that YC has no
| problem with that practice.
|
| This is the appropriate venue to talk about it and make YC
| aware of it.
| drstewart wrote:
| It's not YC's job to monitor global regulatory compliance for
| every company they fund.
| matsemann wrote:
| But when YC posts these ads on their HN front page..?
| fipar wrote:
| We're not talking global compliance here though, this is a
| US-based fund, these are US-based startups, and the
| regulations involved are by some US states. One would hope
| national regulatory compliance does fall at least partially
| under the things they monitor.
|
| I agree it's unrealistic to expect them to monitor
| compliance across the globe, of course.
| scrapcode wrote:
| This will certainly move you to the top of the list for hiring
| consideration. /s
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| There are polite ways of accomplishing that.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Yes, because everyone is absolutely jumping in their boots to
| work at a company where HR ignores the law, either through
| ignorance or malice the same.
| meta2023 wrote:
| The user in question sells alt data. If they're remotely
| competent at doing so, they have zero need to work at a
| startup much less a YC-funded one.
| eloff wrote:
| What's alt data? I've never heard that term before.
| sampo wrote:
| "What Is Alternative Data and Why Is It Changing
| Finance?"
|
| https://builtin.com/fintech/alternative-data
| yamtaddle wrote:
| TL;DR: Info gleaned from just about any source other than
| company statements and market data, used to guide
| investment choices. This includes stuff like satellite
| imagery, which has been used for a long time for these
| sorts of purposes, but also e.g. social media trends. I
| guess the news is that there's more of it happening now,
| because the practice itself isn't new.
| meta2023 wrote:
| Some tangible examples are: credit card transaction data,
| individual geolocation or foot-traffic data from mobile
| phone sdks or carriers themselves, receipts
| scraped/exfiltrated from email inboxes, individual
| browsing history, or highly targeted web scraped data.
|
| All "anonymized" of course.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I assume this doesn't apply to most YC companies, but the
| smallest companies (with fewer than four employees) are exempted
| from the law:
| https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...
|
| It's nice that there's a carveout for small companies, who don't
| need more friction as they're trying to get off the ground.
| TimPC wrote:
| For me the initial response time isn't the biggest deal (and I'm
| surprised the effect size of a single day delay is so large).
| What matters more is having a quick turnaround whenever I give
| you a set of times from my schedule. Companies are so bad at this
| that I've started giving them only fractions of my available time
| (which makes it harder to schedule interviews). I'm not sure what
| the solution is because I can't give you 100% of my available
| time if you are going to sit on it for three days before
| scheduling. I'm talking to other employers and need to schedule
| things with them too.
| josefresco wrote:
| I found an example on today's front page (Rutter):
| https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rutter/7b222f5f-cd46-4592-9cf8-6cd1...
|
| No salary range posted, job is in NYC.
| cyrieu wrote:
| Hey sorry about that this is our job posting - we duplicated a
| another one and missed adding that information, thanks for
| catching that! We added in the salary range. Feel free to email
| us if you have any other questions!
| [deleted]
| codegeek wrote:
| To be fair, this law should be enforced on the platforms as
| well where if selected location = NYC, salary range field
| must be filled out. Seems like they just added the salary
| range as text in the description. I would put some more
| burden on these hiring platforms as well.
| josefresco wrote:
| Didn't mean to call you out specifically, just wanted to see
| if OP was correct. Thanks for being so responsive, it's a
| good sign for applicants!
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Why not add it by default?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Why not add it by default?
|
| IIUC, it's generally held that in a price negotiation, the
| first party that posts a number is at a disadvantage.
| Starting salary is one kind of price negotiation. So I can
| understand why employers would be reluctant to do that.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Yeah, this isn't correct. All things being equal, the
| first to post a number is at a big advantage. As another
| commenter pointed out, this is called anchoring. Think
| about a house being sold in a normal market, the price is
| always well above its market value to anchor the numbers
| high.
|
| The reason companies don't want to post a salary number
| is all things aren't equal: they have far more
| information on pay than you do. Vastly more. So they have
| the luxury of letting your uninformed ask be the anchor
| point cause they know it'll probably be low. Plus, if
| someone asks too high, they can ignore it and move on.
| They (often but not always) have the luxury of choosing
| the lowest asks to move forward with.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Also they might be underpaying their current staff.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Just remember that these employers underpaying their
| staff are going to be the first ones on HN saying how
| unions are not needed because pay is already high in the
| tech world.
| roflyear wrote:
| This is the truth of it. They have devs who are making
| $130k who have worked there for 4 years and they don't
| want to give them a raise to $200k.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I know a guy that works at a very well-known tech company
| and has been a software engineer for over 15 years for
| them and is only being paid $120K.
|
| He says "They treat me well", and I'm like, no they
| fucking don't. They don't value your work anywhere
| _close_ to what it should be. I told him that he could
| easily triple his TC by going almost literally anywhere
| else.
|
| I used to work for said company. I left because the
| salary was way below market and literally doubled my
| salary from $100K to $200K at my new digs. I made it no
| secret to my old manager that money was the #1 reason why
| I was leaving (#2 being that the team I was working on
| was basically falling apart due to internal politics),
| and he acknowledged that salaries are significantly below
| market and that HR is promising updates to salary bands
| to bring them up to market within the next couple months.
| Spoiler alert: It's been 1 1/2 years since I left, and
| the couple people I talk to from there say nothing has
| changed.
| shanebellone wrote:
| This is probably true but also bad practice imo. It
| instantly signals that employers value leverage rather
| than employees.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Wouldn't the concept of anchoring say the opposite
| though?
|
| I've always wondered that.
|
| My guess is if you say too high of a number they don't
| take you seriously so anchoring can't work?
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| posting a number can help confident people but hurts others
|
| example, developer makes 100k, has imposter syndrome, sees
| a great job that has an internal range of 150k-200k. if the
| dev knew the range they'd think no way they would qualify
| for THAT much money. the company would happily pay at
| bottom range for them, but instead they don't even see the
| developer.
|
| ranges select for confident people.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| I'm sorry but... what kind of victim blaming nonsense is
| this? Seeing a salary range intimidates people?!
|
| That's 100% worth the cost, friend. Knowing what you're
| applying for/to is absolutely _critical_ information, and
| having it before applying is a substantial amount of
| leverage in any negotiation.
|
| That's like saying people shouldn't post where a job is
| because some people might not live there, or not to post
| C++ jobs because not everyone knows C++...
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| i've had nearly 10+ jobs and i never knew the range
|
| also on higher levels comp comes from equity base pay of
| $100k is immaterial if RSU/equity is $500k
|
| i do believe it hurts the people in weaker positions vs
| helping
|
| cause high comp individuals know how to play the game
| anyways
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| There's just so much here in your small comment (you've
| burned through "nearly 10+ jobs" and you're giving advice
| to people?!) I can't really address this but to say
| you're completely wrong that it hurts people to know what
| they'd get paid for a job, and I think that's pretty
| obviously the case, as do most folks, including the good
| people of New York who passed a law requiring it.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| Read another way, hiding salary range let's companies
| take advantage of low confidence applicants by exploiting
| their labor at below market rates.
|
| Insecurity in pay only arises through hiding the true
| value of labor.
| Kalium wrote:
| OK. Let's take it as read that ranges discourage the
| uncertain and nervous. How should companies go about
| posting ads that treats those people compassionately and
| puts them on an event footing with confident people?
| Preferably while not denying people who would like to see
| it useful information?
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| my point was that ranges can hurt
|
| maybe a solution is to have a website that had to post a
| range but also require them to post it on another site
| where ranges are not allowed
|
| so those that want to see jobs and not be distracted by $
| can do so
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Write a greasemonkey script. Or pay someone to do it for
| you. _Reducing_ the amount of information available in a
| job posting is easily solvable client-side, especially
| since I disagree with you about the overall negative
| effect.
| awb wrote:
| Well done for acknowledging it and correcting it so quickly.
| Mistakes happen, especially at startups.
| [deleted]
| Osiris wrote:
| NY is not the only state that requires jobs postings to include
| salary ranges.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| NY state does not require job postings to include salary
| ranges, only New York City (and technically not for all job
| postings).
| roflyear wrote:
| I believe Rutter was one of the examples, tho I did not see
| them today - maybe an older post, but the UI of that page is
| super familiar.
|
| Glad to see they updated - but anything less than $220k is hard
| to swallow for non-remote in NYC.
| pimterry wrote:
| 14 minutes later, it now has a salary range:
|
| > $175K-210K base compensation
|
| 'Post about the problem on HN' shows its power once again.
| godelski wrote:
| Now let's see if they add maternity leave to their list of
| benefits. They add paternity leave, but do they expect all
| applicants to be male?
| giarc wrote:
| Just call it parental leave and cover all bases.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Now it's "parental leave" :)
| pitaj wrote:
| I suspect it was a mistake/typo (someone confused
| "paternity" for the general term).
| godelski wrote:
| Probably this. I'm also second guessing myself that _I_
| didn't read it wrong lol
| mediaman wrote:
| Fun to watch young tech companies learn how to do HR in
| real time!
| pyrrhotech wrote:
| This seems low for 5+ YoE in NYC
| rr888 wrote:
| Salary is much higher than most corporate IT jobs in NYC.
| [deleted]
| jcims wrote:
| That's because there's no penalty for paying someone
| outside of the range...so it's mostly posturing bullshit.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| It says base comp, 200k is quite a normal base salary.
| There could be 300k equity too, who knows.
|
| But yes, industry comp will decline if layoffs pick up
| steam. I've already noticed a tremendous easing in being
| able to hire competent people
| 1attice wrote:
| Conflict-of-interest evident in the HN re-title-fication of this
| post.
|
| Recall that making something less salacious _when you are the
| subject_ is quite different from toning down clickbait headlines
| when you 're wearing your neutral-editorial hat.
|
| Original title was 'Why are some YC companies breaking the law?'
| And frankly, that's a great question.
|
| Admittedly not-so-great is the absence of any specific example on
| the OP, but that's another matter.
|
| The post is about law-abidingness and to change that to protect
| YC on a chat board run by YC is sketch, YC.
| dang wrote:
| I changed the title as part of moderating this thread _less_
| than we normally would. We moderate HN threads less, not more,
| when YC or YC startups are part of the story--this has been
| established practice since the beginning: https://hn.algolia.co
| m/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
|
| The way we'd normally moderate a thread like this is by
| downweighting it as a generic riler-upper (https://hn.algolia.c
| om/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Posts like the OP
| are extremely common, because the internet is perpetually
| noticing something seemingly outrageous, jumping to the most
| extreme interpretation, exclaiming angrily, and then egging
| itself on. That's how the medium works. If we didn't downweight
| such posts, the front page would be be nothing but
| sensational/indignant material; there'd be no room for anything
| else. This is a no-brainer as a moderation call, and this
| practice has also been established on HN since the beginning.
| However, because the thread mentions YC startups, I haven't
| touched it or done what we normally would.
|
| Editing sensational/indignant titles to be more neutral and
| reflect the substance of a story (not that there's really a
| story here) is another well-established moderation practice on
| HN, again for what ought to be obvious reasons: if we didn't do
| it, then the front page would consist of nothing but that. So
| in this case I limited myself to the minimum viable title edit,
| while letting the post continue to burn at a much higher rank
| on the front page than it would ever normally get away with.
|
| For me the real conflict or tradeoff here is: how do we balance
| the need to not suppress criticisms (even when they are unfair
| or untrue--because the goodwill of the community is more
| important, in fact it's the only asset HN really has), with the
| need to preserve HN for its intended purpose. The ecosystem is
| fragile and takes a lot of tending to, and one of the most
| important forms of tending--which only moderators can really
| provide--is to not allow garden-variety internet indignation to
| drown out the quieter, more interesting material that HN is
| supposed to be for. It should be clear why the rule is "we
| moderate less when YC is the story", rather than "we moderate
| not at all"--the latter would be a loophole you could drive a
| convoy of trucks through.
|
| Therefore, when I asked myself what was the minimum reasonable
| thing to do, editing the sensational or (to use your word)
| salacious title to accurate reflect what (little) substance the
| post actually included, while _not_ downweighting the
| submission the way we usually would, seemed to me the right
| tradeoff. This post doesn 't deserve the hours on the front
| page that it's getting, but that's the local price we pay in
| favor of a global optimization.
|
| Edit: I changed the title again after posting this, in response
| to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973106, which made a
| fair point.
| 1attice wrote:
| I commend dang for listening to what multiple people were
| advising and backing out of a misleading edit.
|
| Thank you, I appreciate how difficult your job is. (And how
| difficult people like myself sometimes seem to make it.)
| roflyear wrote:
| Still misleading. It now implies it is only a NYC issue and
| that all NYC companies are at fault.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've tried once more--this time taking out NYC and
| taking out the implication that all YC companies are at
| fault. Is this better?
| braingenious wrote:
| That was a lot of words.
|
| The "minimum" reasonable thing to do would have been to leave
| the thread alone if it is in fact your policy to moderate YC
| threads less than usual.
|
| Can you point to some non-YC posts that you have explicitly
| removed references to breaking the law from?
|
| It is, in fact, breaking the law to list NYC jobs without
| providing salary range in the same way that it is breaking
| the law to jaywalk or piss on the subway. Do you find
| references to those laws to be salacious and sensational?
|
| It was a mundane observation that these companies were
| breaking the law in the same way that it is a mundane
| observation that editing a title to obscure that gives the
| impression that it was not motivated by some sort of stoic
| adherence to some objective ideal.
|
| Was "TikTok is an illegal fork of OBS" a sensational,
| salacious title?
| dang wrote:
| I admit it was a lot of words, but I believe that lot of
| words already answered most of your points. As for the
| rest...I generally haven't found it to be a good use of
| time to answer that sort of cross-examination. The bulk of
| the community seems quite happy when we explain our
| thinking in good faith and don't do anything too extreme,
| but the cross-examiner is usually impossible to satisfy.
| I'm not talking about you here! but in my past experience,
| patiently answering a cross-examination usually only
| produces a longer cross-examination. I'd rather spend those
| resources making HN better for the rest of the community.
|
| But you did get me curious to see if I could find a past
| example of this kind of title edit. I did find one from
| earlier this year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30680267. We changed "
| _Google Fi Illegally Bricked My iPhone 11 Pro Max_ " to "
| _Google Fi bricked my iPhone 11 Pro Max (2020)_ " That's a
| typical example of HN moderation because we not only took
| out the sensational/disputable word, we also added the year
| --which besides being a normal edit, has the side effect of
| damping the riler-upper aspect. (The internet only likes to
| get angry about fresh things.)
|
| Re the Tiktok bit, you seem to be asking about this post:
| _TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592103 - Dec 2021. I
| couldn't find any record of us moderating that post, so my
| first thought was that perhaps we just didn't see it. But I
| commented several times in the thread, so that can't be it
| either. Given that
| https://twitter.com/Naaackers/status/1471494415306788870
| was exactly the sort of riler-upper that we routinely
| downweight, and in this case neglected to, my guess is that
| I was too busy in the comments and forgot to look at the
| article.
|
| In a case like that, it would be normal to add a question
| mark as a way of making the title more neutral. We did
| that, for example, here: _The only way of being anonymous
| in Sweden is illegal?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33343681 - Oct 2022
| (246 comments)
|
| Now I have added another lot of words. I hope some of this
| is useful!
| roflyear wrote:
| Bro, the post effected positive change (several updated job
| posts before regulatory bodies were involved), and could have
| been done with a lot less tact. For example, I could have
| screenshotted or even just mentioned offenders.
|
| Maybe the tone wasn't perfect - but isn't it YOUR job to pay
| attention to what gets posted here? Were you not aware of the
| labor laws in these states? It isn't something that happened
| just a couple of times.
|
| Get off your high horse, buddy. HN has gone down hill in the
| last 10yrs and part of that is because of these stupid
| policies and actions.
|
| There's no transparency into what you do. Your words are just
| words.
| dang wrote:
| Hey, I'm sorry. I acknowledge the positive effects of your
| post, your good intentions, and the fact that you could
| have been a lot less tactful.
|
| I was writing from a place of general irritation and even
| defensiveness. I wasn't thinking about your point of view
| or how you would feel reading my general putdowns of this
| type of post. If I were in your position, I'd be pissed off
| too.
|
| Even after doing this for a long time, I still find myself
| making unhelpful assumptions. All I can tell you is that
| I'll continue to work on it.
| roflyear wrote:
| Sorry for going off. Inappropriate on my part.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Did you consider mailing Dan about this issue before
| making it an 'Ask HN' post?
| paulgb wrote:
| There are some comments in here that verge on assuming bad faith
| on the part of the companies involved, so I think it's worth
| pointing out that this is a new law which has been in effect for
| just over a month. It's been on the way for a while, so it's not
| "sudden", but it's still a new thing that people are figuring out
| and it's easier to forget about if you're in the habit of re-
| using old listings. (Not about OP, whose reminder is helpful and
| in good faith!)
| roflyear wrote:
| How much of a heads up did people get?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _this is a new law which has been in effect for just over a
| month_
|
| So what? The idea of transparency on salaries is not a new one.
| Why would I want to do business with a company that won't even
| tell me how much they're offering for a job when asked? That
| just wastes people's time.
|
| I don't care for this legalistic and disingenuous approach to
| business, it's an indicator that management is not going to be
| transparent with people who work there and is relying on
| information asymmetries rather than actually trying to build a
| team. Anyone acting like they don't know that potential hires
| have a strong interest in knowing what a job potentially pays
| is BSing you.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Do you make the same argument for new speed limit signs?
| Abortion restrictions? Minimum wage requirements?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I think it 's worth pointing out that this is a new law which
| has been in effect for just over a month_
|
| I hope you don't mind if I don't weep for the billion dollar
| VC's that encourage others to "move fast," but are unable to
| respond to changes in the law.
|
| If only they had enough money to hire a lawyer!
|
| This law didn't suddenly materialize overnight last month. No
| laws do. It was in the works for months, perhaps longer.
|
| All companies are responsible for keeping tabs on legislation
| that may affect them. From the corner doughnut shop to billion-
| dollar startup incubators.
|
| That Ycombinator missed this says something is wrong behind the
| curtain.
| Osiris wrote:
| This has been law in Colorado for 2 years and applies to anyone
| offering jobs to any Colorado resident including remote jobs.
|
| The law passed in 2019 and went into effect Jan 1, 2021.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Has Colorado actually enforced the law?
|
| The major difference with the NY law is that NY is actually
| expected to enforce it. That being said, the law is
| deliberately expected to be leniently enforced, starting with
| warnings, and only after the warning has been issued will
| fines be enforced.
|
| Also, another big difference is that other major states (CA &
| WA I believe) are expected to enact similar laws in 2023, so
| most US companies are pretty much switching over to
| displaying salary ranges by default nationally.
| monocasa wrote:
| CO has enforced the law.
| prh8 wrote:
| CA has passed their law and it takes effect on January 1
| ntonozzi wrote:
| And yet many job postings, even those that are only in
| Colorado, still don't have the salary on the job posting.
| Osiris wrote:
| My point is that it's not a new law. It's new for New York
| but other states have required it for a long time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Only one jurisdiction other than NYC (not New York State)
| requires it, which is CO, and only as of Jan 1, 2021. NYC
| started Nov 1, 2022. CA and WA start Jan 1, 2023.
|
| NY state is waiting on governor's signature, but seeing
| as how it has been months and she has not signed it, I
| assume she will not.
| [deleted]
| googlryas wrote:
| I was just in a Walgreens near Boulder a few days ago and
| noticed that they were advertising for pharmacy assistants
| and didn't post their salary range, and also didn't list it
| even after I went to sign up online for the job. So I have to
| guess a lot of employers are disregarding the law. I was also
| disappointed when I found out there wasn't a particularly
| easy way to report the violation to the state. It could just
| be a webform that I fill out that takes 2 minutes, but there
| was so much overhead that I decided I didn't care enough to
| complete it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If I search for job listings for Boulder, CO or Colorado,
| US on Walgreens' website, I get zero results.
|
| It did pop up with New York City job listings, like this
| one:
|
| https://jobs.walgreens.com/en/job/new-york/duane-reade-
| shift...
|
| Which do not list the pay range, but have tiny text at the
| bottom that says
|
| >To see the salary range for this position please click
| here: Pay Transparency Duane Reade Shift Leader .
|
| https://jobs.walgreens.com/en/paydrsfl
|
| And then if you search for similar positions, you get:
|
| https://jobs.walgreens.com/en/paypht
|
| https://jobs.walgreens.com/en/payhsrph
| googlryas wrote:
| Check the site "walgreens.jobs", the listings are still
| there.
|
| Here's a photo I took of the posting:
| https://i.imgur.com/jSl1Rjk.png
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Oh, something must be broken with their search, or my
| Safari content blocker is blocking something which is
| breaking the search.
|
| I found the a job listing in boulder here, which has the
| same pay range link as above:
|
| https://jobs.walgreens.com/en/job/boulder/pharmacy-
| technicia...
|
| But yes, per CO law, the job posting you took a picture
| of should also state the same pay range and benefit info
| (page 4).
|
| https://cdle.colorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/7%20CCR%201103
| -13...
| googlryas wrote:
| I actually think they fixed the online version since the
| last time I checked - when I visited it 3 weeks ago, I
| remember the site staying on the "walgreens.jobs" domain
| for the entire visit - now it redirects to
| jobs.walgreens.com. I wonder if they were using an old
| poster from before the law came into effect, and maybe
| even the listings/website were old before the migration
| to jobs.walgreens.com - now they do include a link to the
| pay information, but I love how they make you copy and
| paste a URL instead of just directly including the info,
| or even making it a hyperlink.
| zacharybk wrote:
| Different companies clearly have different legal teams giving
| differing advice. I found this one fascinating:
|
| "If you are a Colorado or New York City resident and this
| role is a remote role, you can receive additional information
| about the compensation and benefits for this role, which we
| will provide upon request. Requests can be submitted here."
|
| link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOlYgPtpG56uq
| O0O9j...
|
| When I submitted my information I did not hear back, which
| does feel like a blatant violation of the law(s)
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| It amounts to plausible deniability. "We do just enough so
| you are less likely to sue us."
| zacharybk wrote:
| Do they blame this one on the lowest level recruiting
| employee who "must have forgotten to do their job"?
| That's as plausible as what SBF's defense will be.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Very blatant violation. They are just hoping they do not
| get nailed, and if they do, the fines are cheap enough to
| still make it worth hiding the pay range.
|
| See page 4, it is spelled out pretty clearly that the
| posting itself needs to advertise the range.
|
| https://cdle.colorado.gov/sites/cdle/files/7%20CCR%201103-1
| 3...
| brightball wrote:
| It would be interesting to see if remote jobs were posted
| with a qualifier that they weren't available to potential
| employees living in those states. I just always wonder about
| inverse effects for this type of thing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There were or are remote job listings that excluded people
| living in Colorado. Any any new job listing could choose to
| exclude residents of NYC/CO/WA/CA.
|
| Pretty good signal of a less desirable employer though.
| indymike wrote:
| >There are some comments in here that verge on assuming bad
| faith on the part of the companies involved
|
| Not disclosing pay is illegal in three states in the US, and
| has the practical effect of reducing the number of applicants
| to the advertised job by 14%, so it's self-harming for the
| employer anyway. Bonus: a lot of job boards will just plug an
| "estimated salary" in for you to max their CTR and revenue on
| syndication.
|
| > people are figuring out and it's easier to forget about if
| you're in the habit of re-using old listings.
|
| Some companies don't hire very often, so yes. But for startups
| and venture funded, high growth companies to be unaware after
| two years is not cool. We need to do better... and you can see
| from the people posting here, some of them would rather report
| employers to the AG than get a job at that company. I'm not
| sure how productive that is, but I do think it shows why a law
| was required to get a minimal level of disclosure.
| kuboble wrote:
| Are the companies indeed inflicting self harm? They might get
| less applications that way, but posting salary ranges for new
| employees has other downsides - e.g. it might tilt existing
| employees.
|
| Another downside is that it's easy to scrap and collect this
| data and companies might not like candidates or employees
| easily accessing historical data.
|
| Sharing salary range basically reduces the knowledge
| advantage of a company in many ways.
|
| It's surely great for candidates and existing employees.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _reduces the knowledge advantage of a company_
|
| Defaulting to an adversarial relationship with its own
| staff is not the sign of a good company.
| indymike wrote:
| > Are the companies indeed inflicting self harm?
|
| They are spending 14% more on recruitment advertising than
| they would have to if they just put a range in the salary
| box. So, yes, financial self harm. 14% is substantial for
| many companies.
|
| > ther downsides - e.g. it might tilt existing employees.
|
| People have access to wage data and job boards in their
| pocket. If they answer that unknown caller, it's as likely
| to be a recruiter as a car warranty hustle. It's amazing
| how many business leaders think that their people are not
| going to look.
| lalopalota wrote:
| > reducing the number of applicants to the advertised job
| by 14%
|
| does not mean
|
| > spending 14% more on recruitment advertising
|
| if a company gets 86 applicants instead of 100, that's
| less screening work which means less $ spent for the
| hire.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >They are spending 14% more on recruitment advertising
| than they would have to if they just put a range in the
| salary box.
|
| Mind you I prefer when companies post salaries, but 14%
| greater/fewer applicants does not directly equate to 14%
| greater/lesser spend on listings. A company only needs
| one qualified applicant. More applicants means you might
| find better candidates faster/more easily, but by itself
| listing salaries isn't necessarily going to save the
| company money.
| robocat wrote:
| > They are spending 14% more on recruitment advertising
|
| Oh boy, huge assumptions there, so bad that I would
| associate that thinking with HR recruiters. What matters
| is what selects/filters for desirable employees. Getting
| 14% more applicants is a terrible metric to be measuring
| - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law which is
| obvious since one can increase applications by
| advertising in irrelevant places to get more irrelevant
| applicants.
|
| Alternatively 14% more could be extremely important, if a
| lack of salary indication filtered for bad candidates,
| and salary indication brought in good candidates.
|
| > A single day of delay in response causes 28% of
| candidates to become unresponsive to recruiters (this is
| from our company's research). It drops to 51% become
| unresponsive 48 hours later. [your top level comment].
|
| That's an interesting metric, since anecdotally the best
| candidates get snapped up extremely quickly.
|
| It is obviously very difficult to find good factual
| correlations: a lack of good data just produces opinions.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > but posting salary ranges for new employees has other
| downsides - e.g. it might tilt existing employees.
|
| Fucking _good_.
|
| It's absolutely scummy to secretly pay new hires more than
| your experienced existing employees.
|
| It's also extremely short-sighted. You'd rather deal with
| attrition costs of losing a trained, experienced employee
| and having to find new candidates and train someone new,
| than to just give your current employees the pay raise they
| obviously deserve?
|
| > Sharing salary range basically reduces the knowledge
| advantage of a company in many ways.
|
| _That 's the fucking point_.
| stemlord wrote:
| >and existing employees.
|
| Oh wow, true. Now I'll know exactly when to negotiate a
| raise or leave.
| jamiequint wrote:
| > It has the effect of reducing the number of applicants by
| 14% (if you believe the study) only if at market rate or
| higher.
|
| Most startups are paying the lower end of market rate to
| below market rate salaries and compensating more with equity,
| so it's not necessarily irrational on the part of the
| startups.
|
| > But for startups and venture funded, high growth companies
| to be unaware after two years is not cool
|
| There are a million more important things to worry about at
| most startups than being in regulatory compliance with every
| silly law. I would venture to guess that the more a startup
| is in regulatory compliance with every little thing the less
| likely it is to succeed.
| breck wrote:
| nnoitra wrote:
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Is it malicious? Maybe... is it stupidity? Certainly.
|
| Just inform the companies when you see it and then report them if
| they refuse to disclose and update the listing.
|
| It actually tells you more about the moral compass of the company
| if they refuse to disclose which I would find valuable.
| conanbatt wrote:
| The real question is why HN is filled with people that have
| values completely orthogonal to the VC space, like people wanting
| to leverage the law to make other people do things.
| paulcole wrote:
| > like people wanting to leverage the law to make other people
| do things.
|
| This is literally everyone in the world, including yourself
| unless you're in favor of a lawless society.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I would hope that 'compliance with the law' is not 'completely
| orthogonal to the VC space' but I've seen an awful lot over the
| years.
| busterarm wrote:
| Because that's where culture is right now...
|
| Nowadays if you're in a professional organization, for example
| if you're a lawyer, people will make professional complaints
| against you for your first amendment speech, irrespective of
| your professional practice. Essentially filing fraudulent
| complaints to silence you. And they do so as an organized
| political activity.
|
| And sadly it's been hilariously effective so far.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| There is no "first amendment speech" unless it's the
| government trying to suppress it.
| busterarm wrote:
| first amendment-protected speech.
|
| You don't give up your rights just because you practice a
| particular profession.
|
| If you say something that some people don't like, the first
| step in response shouldn't be them coming after your
| livelihood.
| solardev wrote:
| Truthfully I wish HN were detached from the VC culture
| altogether. There's plenty of good tech discussion here that
| isn't related to founding companies.
|
| This whole idea that founders and capitalists contribute some
| special sauce to society and therefore shouldn't be regulated
| is some old fart libertarian Randian fantasy silliness and I'm
| glad it's being called out. That sort of thing just doesn't
| work in civilized society.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Yes! This site can be extremely toxic because of the VC bent.
|
| If someone made a competitor that had just-as-good tech
| discussion without the VC "value-add", I'd never come here
| ever again.
|
| I also like seeing so many of the ruling class get angry and
| post about requiring salary ranges, it's been very
| entertaining this morning :)
| ralph84 wrote:
| It's called Hacker News not VC News? There are far more hackers
| than VCs.
|
| And besides, VCs and their portfolio companies leverage the law
| to make other people do (or not do) things all of the time. IP
| law being an obvious example.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Somebody has to keep an eye on you assholes. /grin
|
| However, this community has a lot of intelligent folks who both
| disagree with my understandings of the world and who have a lot
| of insight into domains I never want to touch (finance, bigco
| culture, small-l right libertarian politics).
|
| There are plenty of sane, interesting, well-informed folks here
| who I vehemently disagree with, and that's a necessary
| condition of learning about the world.
| Eumenes wrote:
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| it's called disruption bb
| varispeed wrote:
| Are salary ranges actually meaningful?
|
| To be fair I don't reply to an offer that does not state the pay,
| but I've been a victim of bait and switch many times.
|
| Notably, when going through all the interview stages and being
| told I have been accepted only to find out in the contract that
| the salary is much different from what has been offered.
|
| They were hoping that I would agree given I have invested so much
| time going to interviews and so on.
|
| The excuse? "We have gone over budget with hiring and
| unfortunately now that the maximum we can offer, we are very
| sorry."
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| At the very least, the bottom of the pay range is very
| meaningful to help filter out jobs and save time for everyone.
| indymike wrote:
| I've been in the job board / HR Tech space for a while, and every
| time I see a state pass a law requiring advertising the salary
| range, I'm reminded of a few facts:
|
| * Showing your salary range _as long as it is at market wage or
| higher_ delivers 14% more applicants. It is a good idea to show
| salary on job ads.
|
| * If you don't give the job board a salary range, they will use
| tools like salary.com or their own tools to show an "estimated
| salary range" on your job so they pick up more clicks when they
| syndicate your job to other sources (i.e. email alerts and other
| job boards).
|
| * If you are uncompetitve on wages, fix it. Even though there's a
| lot of doom and gloom out there, the truth is that unemployment
| did not go up in November.
|
| * If you advertise a job respond to applicants quickly - as in
| within minutes of the application. A single day of delay in
| response causes 28% of candidates to become unresponsive to
| recruiters (this is from our company's research). It drops to 51%
| become unresponsive 48 hours later.
| timwaagh wrote:
| This is really besides the point and in this context seems to
| argue it would be fine to break the law if it were beneficial,
| it just happens that it's not the case.
| robomartin wrote:
| > If you advertise a job respond to applicants quickly
|
| A friend of mine is superbly qualified for a job posted by
| Apple. She applied for this job expecting a reasonably quick
| reply. What I mean by "superbly qualified" is that she is a
| recognized expert in the domain, has conducted seminars
| attended by hundreds of engineers and business people and, back
| in the day, was actually invited by Steve Jobs to come to
| Cupertino and help Apple engineers understand issues related to
| this product category.
|
| Her application, last I checked, has gone without response for
| somewhere around 30 to 45 days. This has caused her to have
| lost her interest to work for Apple. She is now considering
| offers from competitors.
|
| Ghosting can happen in many forms. Why is it that tech
| companies don't seem to understand how important is is to treat
| people with respect --customers, suppliers, candidates and
| employees. Once someone forms an opinion about you or your
| company it takes a thousand times more energy and effort to
| change it.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I feel for your friend but this sounds naive.
|
| Public job postings get hundreds or thousands of
| applications, most of which are terrible and need to be
| filtered out. Expecting an immediate response on one is not
| reasonable.
|
| If your friend is such an industry insider, it's surprising
| she didn't have a network that could short circuit this
| process for her.
|
| In general, my experience that if you are cold-applying for a
| job, you are very likely to get lost in a pile of trash. The
| recruiting experience is much better if the company finds out
| about you on their own and goes after you. Having an internal
| referral is a form of that.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Expecting a response to your job application in less than a
| month sounds naive?
| sbrother wrote:
| Expecting any response to dropping your resume into a
| online form sounds naive IMO. Does anyone actually get
| jobs this way?
| xyzelement wrote:
| Month does sound long to me, but "a few weeks" isn't
| crazy given the reality on the ground.
|
| Note, I am not saying this is good or how it ought to be,
| I am just saying how it is.
|
| Let me ask you - if you were the recruiter at Apple and
| let's say you owned 5 roles each of which got 2000
| resumes (I am stabbing at a number but it's Apple, so
| likely tons of people jump on every role) - how long
| would it take you to get through it all?
|
| Back of the envelope: 5 roles x 2k resumes = 10k resumes.
| If it took you just one minute to read a resume and you
| did nothing but read them every day for 10 hours that's
| like 17 working days = so 3+ weeks.
|
| Keep in mind that this pile of resumes is your lowest
| likelihood of success pile - these are not the people
| you'd identified priori as targets, they weren't even
| internally referred, they are just mainly random people
| spamming you or are very weakly qualified. It "doesn't
| matter" if one of them is a diamond in the rough like the
| op was describing - it might take you weeks to get to
| their resume, and that's only if you don't fill the role
| w someone from the higher bandwidth channel.
|
| So like I said, not "great" but - what would you do
| differently if you were HR here?
| baby wrote:
| no opinion about these laws but:
|
| > * Showing your salary range as long as it is at market wage
| or higher delivers 14% more applicants. It is a good idea to
| show salary on job ads.
|
| might not be what you want. You might want the best engineers
| who you will have to make exceptions for in their TC
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| It's a range. If you are hoping to hire someone outside that
| range, you're lying about your range. If you're worried about
| the 1% chance you'll end up hiring outside that range, you
| probably need to just get over it.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| My unsolicited advice (for founders) is to hire the best
| people you can _afford._
|
| I've seen startups blow 2-3 headcount worth of budget to
| secure a FAANG engineer, only to realize that engineer needed
| an SRE to deploy their code, a tools engineer to setup their
| CI/CD, etc. The founders were so excited to add "FAANG
| engineer" to their Series A deck.
|
| Firing this engineer was tough because the startup went to
| the board to get approval for the salary + equity offer
| letter. To make matters worse, this engineer was kept on for
| 6+ months without shipping anything ... because firing
| would've gone into the next board and investor update.
| mywittyname wrote:
| A CEO eventually has to develop the courage to deliver bad
| news to the board.
| tomhallett wrote:
| 100% agreed, but for the CEO's who are making the above
| mistake, if they have other bad news to deliver to the
| board (low revenues, etc), then they might be afraid to
| deliver yet another piece of bad news on the hiring side.
| bin_bash wrote:
| > A single day of delay in response causes 28% of candidates to
| become unresponsive to recruiters (this is from our company's
| research). It drops to 51% become unresponsive 48 hours later.
|
| I've noticed my interest in a job tends to drop consistently
| the longer it takes for a response. This isn't surprising at
| all. I don't think it's because we're fickle, it's more that
| right when you apply you can picture what it might be like to
| start working for the company and start to identify with that
| future. As the days drag on, that picture seems less and less
| likely to happen.
| neilv wrote:
| > _I 've noticed my interest in a job tends to drop
| consistently the longer it takes for a response._
|
| As a software engineer with a long track record, I somehow
| only just realized this about myself within the last couple
| months.
|
| With the two fresh data points I have in mind, it wasn't
| about perceived likelihood of an offer, but about perceived
| likelihood of it being a good situation if I accepted the
| offer.
|
| Delays (especially after a great initial call) can be felt as
| signal about how much they value the role, whether they're
| excited about me specifically for it (both of which can make
| the difference between a great role and an awful one), and
| how well they can execute (e.g., do they have a clout deficit
| or a huge-corporate bureaucracy that would also be a problem
| getting things done there).
|
| And if there's a recruiter, HR middleperson, or other
| communication barrier -- blocking the normal ability to read
| people and pick up on clues, from direct interaction with a
| hiring manager or team member -- this signal can be all we
| have to go on.
| thwayunion wrote:
| More importantly, as I remind my mentees, it's is an
| excellent signal for true interest. Nothing burns more than
| getting your hopes up and investing hours/days into a job
| interview process only to find out you were not the preferred
| candidate. This stings a bit if you don't get the job,
| becomes seriously annoying when it surfaces during
| compensation negotiation, and can be disastrous for your
| career and personal life if it surfaces post-hiring.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| This, to me, is a really good signal of how well run a
| company is. After all, a company is merely a collection of
| people on whom its outcomes are entirely dependent. Thus, the
| single most important function a company can perform is
| hiring. If a company fails to recognize this or just does it
| incompetently, its probably a crappy company. Thus, slow
| responses == crappy company.
| ido wrote:
| I would postulate the single most important thing a company
| can do is make money. Hiring is also important though.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Making money is a downstream output of the activities of
| your people. So, if making money is your goal, the most
| important thing you can do to reach your goal is to hire
| the right people.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If you want to hire the right people, you need to be
| making enough money to pay them.
| ornornor wrote:
| Making money at all costs usually implies a shitty
| culture that I personally seek to avoid.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| But whatever the goal of your organization, achieving
| that goal is going to depend on the people you hire.
| ornornor wrote:
| I wish every organization had read that memo :)
| ido wrote:
| Nobody said at all costs.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| "Making money" is the result of doing everything else
| well.
|
| It's not difficult to find companies that cut costs in
| order to increase profits only for it to backfire and
| result in less money or even bankruptcy.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Companies with poor hiring likely don't make money. There
| maybe a select few that have such a desirable product
| that they cannot help themselves. Usually that is short
| lived as competition eats your lunch because your crappy
| employees cannot adapt.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Definitely noticed this effect when applying now too.
|
| Additionally a responsive and clearly communicating company
| is always a good sign that they really need to fill the role.
| It is always a plus if I go from hiring manager/recruiter
| straight upper management interviews in a matter of days.
|
| Additionally the quicker the employer response the more
| likely the applicant is mentally primed for the responder and
| does not yet have their mental/time bandwidth taken by
| competitors.
| warrenm wrote:
| >* If you advertise a job respond to applicants quickly - as in
| within minutes of the application. A single day of delay in
| response causes 28% of candidates to become unresponsive to
| recruiters (this is from our company's research). It drops to
| 51% become unresponsive 48 hours later.
|
| Related: apply to jobs _during [earlyish] business hours_
| whenever possible - you 're a _lot_ more likely to hear back in
| a timely manner
|
| Don't apply at 9pm on Friday night if you can avoid it
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > * If you advertise a job respond to applicants quickly - as
| in within minutes of the application. A single day of delay in
| response causes 28% of candidates to become unresponsive to
| recruiters (this is from our company's research). It drops to
| 51% become unresponsive 48 hours later.
|
| My experience with being hired at non-FAANG places over a
| career of more than two decades is that I'm usually through a
| process and hired _within a week_. Often, like three days, from
| first contact to offer. I think my single longest job search
| was maybe a month, _total_. Companies that have these weeks- or
| months-long processes but don 't pay FAANG-tier wages to make
| it worth the wait, I have no idea how the hell they manage to
| hire anyone at all. You've got to _move_ or I 'll already be
| looking at two other offers before you set the date for your
| second round or WTF ever.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Even FAANGs can pull this off. Amazon was routinely hiring
| folks in single-day loop with offer letter the following
| morning, back when I joined.
| xpe wrote:
| Likely you had a very particular set of (in-demand) skills.
| Right? What year was this?
| anon7725 wrote:
| Not the person you responded to, but same story for me in
| 2007. Loop and verbal offer the same day. I was/am not a
| big get, just a regular engineer.
| hoosieree wrote:
| By the time a previous employer got around to making an
| offer, I had already interviewed and accepted a different job
| and been working there for 2 months. Still, I took the job
| for the 1.5x salary increase and better benefits.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| It would help things immensely if people were more honest.
| Sometimes it takes more than a week to verify everything on
| their resume. References often don't get back ASAP. It's not
| like we won't ever find out that they were lying about their
| previous job. There are always some applicants who talk a
| lot, take credit for others' work, but can't actually
| anything.
| ollien wrote:
| I have been through a process that took 4 months, from start
| to end, with almost two months of silence between. The only
| reason I knew I wasn't rejected was I had a friend on the
| inside.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I've been on the other side of a hiring process like that.
|
| It literally went like this:
|
| "Oh shit, didn't we interview so and so for that like 3
| weeks ago? Oops! Are they still available?"
| JackFr wrote:
| I had a 4 month hiring process - but in fairness they were
| very transparent. Early on in the process I was warned it
| would take a long time, and at each step along the way it
| was made clear what was happening. There was never a
| feeling of being half ghosted.
|
| Wasn't a bad experience at all.
| ghaff wrote:
| I got a new job long before COVID--so mostly in-person
| process--and it was about a 3 month process. But a lot of
| it was I was interviewing with people who traveled a lot
| and getting on calendars even with flexibility on my part
| (I was very local) just took time.
| vsareto wrote:
| They hire closer to average talent, who will typically wait
| because they don't have offers swarming in. The places that
| hire fast and choose good talent often screen those folks
| out.
| indymike wrote:
| I routinely hire developers in 24 hours from initial contact.
| It's fun watching them get random recruiter calls two or
| three weeks later. "I'm not interested, I STARTED my new job
| three weeks ago. No, I'm not willing to leave for that. Have
| a nice day." Except the "Have a nice day" part is usually
| less friendly and polite.
| endtime wrote:
| I started a new job in April. The hiring process was quite
| slow and disorganized, but included in that were three
| separate "interviews" with my now-manager.
|
| I thought this was great - I felt like I really understood
| who I'd be working for and what I was getting into. And now
| that I've joined I understand that he was simply doing the
| same thing: getting to know me; making sure I wasn't
| someone good at technical interviews but with misaligned
| values. Hiring the wrong person can be very expensive.
|
| I wish the whole process had taken 2 weeks rather than 6,
| but I'd view an offer in 24h as a huge red flag.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 3 times with the same person? Yikes.. this is a much
| bigger red flag than getting hired in 24 hours. That
| tells me they are unsure of me or themselves getting an
| offer on the spot is a sign they actually need to fill
| the position and they believe you can
| xyzelement wrote:
| To me it just sounds like a small scale operation and the
| manager is being careful which is great.
|
| Perhaps what happened after the first two meetings, the
| manager sat down and analyzed his list of reasons he's
| excited about the candidate as well as any potential
| concerns that he saw.
|
| The subsequent rounds may have in part been structured to
| dig into the areas of concerns to assure themselves they
| aren't real issues or can be lived with.
|
| This wouldn't scale at a FAANG but for a smaller shop
| it's probably close to optimal.
|
| I didn't marry my wife after our first date :)
| hellweaver666 wrote:
| In most small companies you send in your CV, they bring you
| in for an interview, chat for an hour or so and get an
| offer the next day. The only reason big companies do these
| massive complex multi-hour interview processes that require
| ten plus people is because nobody wants to take
| responsibility for a shitty hire so they make sure everyone
| gets involved so it can't be blamed on a single person.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| This is true, but I'd still rather come in for an entire
| day and interview with 6 different people and get a
| thumbs up/down the same or next day versus come in for a
| single 1 hr interview then get called back for a second
| interview a few days later and then a third interview a
| week after that and then not get a decision for a week or
| two after the final interview. The latter used to be way
| more common with non-tech companies in the late 1990s and
| early 2000s.
| id00 wrote:
| > The only reason big companies do these massive complex
| multi-hour interview processes that require ten plus
| people is because nobody wants to take responsibility for
| a shitty hire so they make sure everyone gets involved so
| it can't be blamed on a single person.
|
| This is a very detached view from the reality. The only
| reason for the company to spend that much time on the
| interview process is to reduce the rate of "false
| positives" as it's deemed very expensive at the big tech.
| Avoiding individual accountability is not the reason
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| How do you deal with people lying on their resume? I'm
| curious what your hiring process looks like.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| How can either side get an accurate assessment of the other
| in such a short time? I was hired by my current employer in
| less than 2 weeks from initial conversation and it was a
| bit of a smell that they weren't more thorough. Now I'm a
| hiring manager and am a little concerned with what I feel
| are "loose" practices that let too many marginal candidates
| through because otherwise "it's too hard to source talent".
|
| For me a clear understanding of the process steps and how
| long it will take start to finish is more important than
| absolute speed. Example: "These are the N phases, we aim to
| be completed in X days/weeks and you will always know
| what's next and when it will occur." My last employeer was
| really good at communicating promptly with those that were
| not progressing, which is also very important.
|
| I think we should all agree that limbo/ghosting is totally
| unacceptable and these companies (or people) should be
| called out by name.
| tester756 wrote:
| >How can either side get an accurate assessment of the
| other in such a short time?
|
| Hmm? you just perform 1-2h interview and decide?
|
| >These are the N phases, we aim to be completed in X
| days/weeks and you will always know what's next and when
| it will occur."
|
| Why would you need N technical interviews to decide
| whether somebody is worth their money?
| _tom_ wrote:
| > How can either side get an accurate assessment of the
| other in such a short time?
|
| There is little evidence that longer interview cycles
| produce better results.
|
| "Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at
| Google is particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens
| of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the
| interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how
| that person ultimately performed in their job. We found
| zero relationship."
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-
| hunting-...
| detaro wrote:
| So you spend significantly more than a day on assessment
| for each individual candidate? Because if you don't,
| quick turnaround times are _mostly_ a scheduling problem.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| You read the candidates CV, you ask them what they last
| worked on, ask them why they want to work at your
| company, if they are okay with the posted salary range.
| Maybe have them write a short bit of code to make sure
| they aren't totally bullshitting you.
|
| That takes about one or two hours.
|
| Then you think about it, and if you want to hire them
| send them an offer the next day.
|
| First 3 months of the contract is trial period (you can
| fire them without severance in the trial period if it
| doesn't work out).
|
| Not sure why you need weeks to evaluate a candidate,
| either they are a fit or not.
| neon_electro wrote:
| To add anecdata to your post here, in the height of the
| hiring craze last year, I accepted an "above-market"
| (from my perspective) offer from a company called Provi.
| They took less than a week from initial recruiter call to
| offer.
|
| Fast forward to this past February, and I'm being let go
| for "performance reasons", but it's a lot clearer in
| retrospect that I should've been failed out of their
| interview process if it was any good, and that seeking to
| hire someone within a week is now sort of a yellow flag
| for me.
|
| I want to move fast, but I also want my counter-party to
| do proper due diligence.
| runako wrote:
| Consider the number of hours you actually spend
| interacting with a candidate during the interview
| process. If it's 40(!), bring them in for a full week and
| decide at the end of Friday. If it's closer to 10, bring
| them in Monday morning and decide by close of business
| Tuesday.
|
| All the delays are materially the fault of glitches in
| the hiring organization.
| anon7725 wrote:
| This is a good process to ensure you don't hire anyone
| who is currently employed. I would not sign up for this
| even if I was between jobs unless I was desperate. I
| don't mind coding challenges, etc, but the first few
| weeks at any job is mostly scut work getting things set
| up, meeting people, etc.
| runako wrote:
| I was sort of being facetious with the 40 hours thing.
| Nobody really gets 40 hours of interaction of a candidate
| before hiring. More typical is closer to 5-8, which means
| they can make a decision in a single day.
|
| Edit: even an intense 6-interview loop including a "sell"
| dinner can be done in a day if scheduled properly. The
| multiple weeks thing is entirely poor scheduling on the
| part of the company.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 5-8 still seems like a lot t me. 1-3 has been more
| typical of my experience.
| runako wrote:
| 3 tech interviews, lunch with team or other colleague,
| followed by general corporate HR interview and a "sell"
| session all fit neatly into a single business day.
| cm2012 wrote:
| How often do you actually learn something material after
| the first hour of interviewing? In my experience almost
| never.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm starting to come around to the TikTok suggestion for
| those tense closers. "Have the day you deserve."
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > Showing your salary range as long as it is at market wage or
| higher delivers 14% more applicants. It is a good idea to show
| salary on job ads.
|
| This is one number, which even if it is true doesn't matter.
| There are so many easy way to increase the number of applicants
| like posting it in linkedin, decreasing number of years of
| experience in posting(which are more often than not, not a hard
| limit for job) etc. They want to decrease the applicants if at
| all while keeping the number of new hires same.
| alexiaa wrote:
| > if you advertise a job respond to applicants quickly - as in
| within minutes of the application
|
| i mean it's nice to get a response as soon as possible but this
| seems completely unrealistic... it seems perfectly normal to
| expect a wait of a few days or weeks to me
| badcppdev wrote:
| If a customer rang would you pick up the phone right away?
|
| Why not treat your potential staff as more important than any
| of your customers?
|
| Which is harder to acquire? Customers or Staff?
| mdorazio wrote:
| > Which is harder to acquire? Customers or Staff?
|
| Customers. By far.
| indymike wrote:
| > i mean it's nice to get a response as soon as possible but
| this seems completely unrealistic
|
| If you run recruiting like it is important, making sure
| recruiters and hiring managers have the tools and time to
| talk to candidates quickly is really easy to do. A lot of
| companies run recruiting like it's a surprise when they have
| to hire or view it as less important than other functions...
| and then put lines like "our people are our greatest assets"
| on their careers page.
| bosie wrote:
| weeks would drag the application out for months though
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| > the truth is that unemployment did not go up in November.
|
| Do you have a source on this that breaks out unemployment by
| sector? 100k tech sector layoffs could be easily overshadowed
| by holiday season retail hiring.
| indymike wrote:
| You can dive through US DOL JOLTS report if you want to
| understand this. Big tech did layoffs. IT departments still
| need people.
| hosh wrote:
| While both IT and engineering jobs in Big Tech involve
| computer technology, IT tends to be a cost center while Big
| Tech's engineering groups are profit centers. (Or supposed
| to be).
|
| It would be interesting to compare the unemployment numbers
| to comp.
| twelve40 wrote:
| you'd think it's on the person making the statement about
| IT hiring numbers to do the diving.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's a pain to link to the BLS data, since you have to
| generate a report which needs POST data in order to
| display properly.
|
| I went and found the data and it maps with what indymike
| is saying. Layoffs are up, but not abnormally so (in line
| with previous years), while hiring is down compared to
| last year, it remains _well above_ pre-2020 figure.
|
| Overall, it looks like the IT job market is the best its
| ever been by a 20% margin, aside from 2021, which was
| slightly better than this year.
| tinco wrote:
| He did the diving, he told you the statement and the
| properties of it and he told you where he gets his data.
| Retric wrote:
| Unemployment is tracked on a seasonally adjusted basis to
| account for such things.
| godelski wrote:
| It's kinda nice to hear that things that sound obvious actually
| are. All these seem like they can be summed up with: treat your
| potential hire like you'd want to be treated when you're
| looking for a job. Would it be naive to assume that similar
| rules apply for retaining workers?
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Thanks for posting those recruiting stats, they certainly seem
| to hold true from what I've seen.
| jcims wrote:
| It's acceptable to me.
|
| Is there an obligation in the law to list salary range at every
| recruiting reference?
|
| If not, is HN now obligated to monitor every official posting for
| salary range?
|
| If you have a problem with the company, report the company.
| mbrubeck wrote:
| > Is there an obligation in the law to list salary range at
| every recruiting reference?
|
| "Any advertisement for a job, promotion, or transfer
| opportunity that would be performed in New York City is covered
| by the new law. An 'advertisement' is a written description of
| an available job, promotion, or transfer opportunity that is
| publicized to a pool of potential applicants. Such
| advertisements are covered regardless of the medium in which
| they are disseminated. Covered listings include postings on
| internal bulletin boards, internet advertisements, printed
| flyers distributed at job fairs, and newspaper advertisements."
|
| --
| https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...
| jcims wrote:
| First, thank you for the reference.
|
| Second, who implements this part?
|
| " _Does this new law apply to my job postings?_
|
| All employers that have four or more employees or one or more
| domestic workers are covered by the NYCHRL, including this
| new provision of the law. As with other provisions of the
| NYCHRL, owners and individual employers count towards the
| four employees. The four employees do not need to work in the
| same location, and they do not need to all work in New York
| City. As long as one of the employees works in New York City,
| the workplace is covered.
|
| Employment Agencies are also covered by the new law,
| regardless of their size. As such, employment agencies must
| ensure that any job listings they promote or seek to fill
| comply with the new salary transparency requirements.
|
| Temporary Help Firm Exception: The new law does not apply to
| temporary help firms seeking applicants to join their pool of
| available workers. Temporary help firms are businesses that
| recruit, hire, and assign their own employees to perform work
| or services for other organizations, to support or supplement
| the other organization's workforce, or to provide assistance
| in special work situations. However, employers who work with
| temporary help firms must follow the new salary transparency
| law"
| purpleblue wrote:
| A lot of people are acting out of anger, as if the companies are
| conspiring to keep the salary secret.
|
| Could it just be they made an innocent mistake?
| nmjohn wrote:
| Keep in mind many of the salary transparency laws have minimum
| employee counts before they come into effect, and iirc, the new
| york one requires an existing employee being located there before
| it comes into effect.
|
| I'm firmly on the side of salary transparency, even if a company
| technically doesn't have to because of its size - but I suspect
| many of the YC companies in question here are small enough to not
| be affected by some of these laws.
| roflyear wrote:
| Great answer to my question thank you
| medellin wrote:
| Same thing for anyone posting Colorado jobs
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Regional laws differ, and the exact same text can have completely
| different implications in another jurisdiction.
|
| For example, Employee-at-will contracts popular in the US are
| illegal in other zones, and not worth the paper they are printed
| on in places like Canada.
|
| This is a good reason to always hire a local law firm to review
| your paperwork, and immigration lawyers to check the intended
| working arrangements.
|
| Trust that no matter how you personally think things should be
| done, the law becomes rather expensive if you assume local laws
| apply internationally.
|
| This lesson is expensive if you learn it the hard way. Also, one
| may find most firms are allergic to legal posturing, and
| candidates with an aggressive lack of impulse control. =)
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