[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
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Ask HN: Why is Pave legal?
If you haven't heard of it, Pave is a YC-backed startup that helps
startups with compensation. I can't actually access the system so
I'm speaking from hearsay and what's information on public parts of
their website. The way I understand it works is that you connect
Pave to your HR and Payroll systems, they take the data about who
you employ and how much you pay them, combine it with all their
other companies, and give companies a collective breakdown of
compensation ranges. My question is, isn't this specifically anti-
competitive wage fixing? This seems exactly like RealPage but for
employee compensation. As far as I know, colluding on wages like
this is illegal. Is there something about the company that I'm
missing?
Author : nowyoudont
Score : 897 points
Date : 2024-09-11 10:50 UTC (12 hours ago)
| numlocked wrote:
| I believe wage-fixing would require companies to agree to...fix
| wages. Having knowledge of average compensation is not inherently
| problematic. Firms are still able to decide to pay more or less
| than the prevailing wage.
| october8140 wrote:
| RealPage also gave recommendations. Giving a salary range seems
| like the same thing.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| By this logic, employees who share their salary publicly also
| contribute to wage fixing.
| Nevermark wrote:
| If it's public there is no information asymmetry. There is
| no fixing.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| How?
|
| Information symmetry doesn't prevent fixing. E.g., rents
| are all public information.
|
| If it is public, won't employers still have access to the
| salary ranges for free? The very thing Pave is giving
| them at a cost?
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| Do you actually believe they will be doing this?
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| "I believe wage-fixing would require companies to agree
| to...fix wages"
|
| They don't need to officially twirl their mustaches and laugh
| evilly while telling each other how they're definitely fixing
| wages. They just need to share data on wages with other
| companies in the same or a similar business with the intent of
| decreasing wages. That is already illegal, because they're
| colluding with competitors to keep wages low.
| cryptonym wrote:
| The whole point of getting such data is to ... fix wages.
| october8140 wrote:
| It's new so the government hasn't caught on yet. They probably
| also need a larger market share to be considered fixing.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| ADP has a product called compensation benchmarking which is
| very similar to how this is described.
|
| They've had that product (with various names) for years.
| jcomis wrote:
| Experian also sells a similar product
| tensor wrote:
| No, this is not new. There are many many many companies selling
| compensation metrics. This is also not salary fixing. These
| companies typically do not offer recommendations. It's up to
| each individual company to decide how to structure their salary
| bands and how they want to stack up to the market.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| I actually run a product in this space in Europe as part of
| my portfolio. To echo your recommendation point; How we do it
| is pretty much the industry works. We give the low, mid, and
| high points in our data set based on what variables you
| input. We get the data from salary surveys and government
| data sets.
|
| It's all very boring and above board.
|
| If companies choose to talk to each other to suppress
| salaries, they're not using our tooling to do it.
|
| There are also firms that will do all this work for you
| especially if you lack enough people in your own offices for
| an internal benchmark. If you're building a CAD tool you can
| tell them (paraphrasing) to pretend you're just like Autodesk
| and ask how much you should pay a UI designer.
| mcntsh wrote:
| Wage fixing is when multiple companies agree to set wages at a
| certain amount.
|
| Sharing compensation data across companies doesn't necessarily
| mean wage fixing. Company A can use the compensation data from
| Company B to try and compete better for talent.
|
| Not saying thats what it will be used for, but it's _technically_
| not wage fixing.
| nowyoudont wrote:
| I'm asking this as someone with 0 legal knowledge: doesn't the
| context matter? If every company takes this data and is like
| "we want to pay at the 95th percentile" (which is what they all
| do), that seems like wage fixing even if they're not all
| agreeing to it together.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| That's how pricing works in a market?
|
| In fact if every company did pay at 95th percentile then I'd
| say it's a good outcome. There's a 5 percentile slack which
| is not too bad?
| aikinai wrote:
| If they're all shooting for the 95th percentile and have up-
| to-date data then you certainly won't have fixing; rather
| you'll get insanely rapid wage inflation!
| wccrawford wrote:
| Yeah, it seems more like they'd all shoot for 45th
| percentile and say "We pay competitive wages" instead,
| slowly driving the wages down.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| That's what my employer does. The head of our HR team got
| in front of the entire company and said that they aim for
| 50th percentile for everyone in every pay band. It
| instantly made me want to job hop, tempered only by the
| million things I have going on in my personal life that
| have a better expected value than a 5 or 10k pay bump.
| hobs wrote:
| That's... hilarious. We all know they are thinking that
| but to say it loudly and proudly to the employees is a
| self own on a level that makes me Cheshire Cat.
| michaelt wrote:
| There's also a more cynical explanation.
|
| It's possible the purpose of wage benchmarking companies is
| to _allow bosses to say_ they pay the 95th percentile -
| which is useful to be able to say, when someone at an all-
| hands Q &A asks about raises and bonuses.
|
| Then the benchmarking company simply has to define
| 'comparable roles' broadly enough to give the customer the
| result they want.
| itronitron wrote:
| Not necessarily, if everyone's wages (except 5%) were set
| at minimum wage then the 95th percentile would be the
| minimum wage.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| Which is... exactly what the software industry has seen
| over the past 30 years?
| mcntsh wrote:
| If you opened up a business selling water bottles, you'd
| probably check what price water sells at across brands, then
| decide in which segment to price it.
|
| "I want to sell my water at the upper end and market it as a
| gourmet brand"
| drw85 wrote:
| But in this case you're not selling, you're buying.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _If every company takes this data and is like "we want to
| pay at the 95th percentile"_
|
| It's thought by some that this is how CEO compensation has
| gone up so much: Corporate boards of directors have
| compensation committees, which are fed survey data about comp
| ranges; a comp committee will say, "We want our CEO's comp to
| be in the top quartile" -- which, as time goes on, leads to
| an inexorable upward ratchet effect.
| tensor wrote:
| I think some basic math knowledge would help more, if every
| company paid at the 95th percentile then it wouldn't be the
| 95th percentile, it would in fact be the average. But no,
| these distributions are not flat like that, there is a large
| spread and "by definition" of the 95th percentile only a few
| companies pay at that rate.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| Stochastic wage fixing is still wage fixing
| sameoldtune wrote:
| Your honor, the algorithm made me do it!
| jskrablin wrote:
| ChatGPT did it!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-
| fix...
| econcon wrote:
| unless you collude with other companies, doesn't seem like it
| is.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| unless disclosed to employees and applicants this seems
| like de facto colluding.
|
| I always ask myself, as to the legality or ethics, would
| this survive review by a jury of my peers...
| fastball wrote:
| You think it is more ethical for wage data to be kept
| secret? Why? Rarely is requiring secrecy the more ethical
| option.
| cryptonym wrote:
| What would be the least ethical would be keeping it
| secret to one party and having the other party sharing
| data... Oh wait!
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Glassdoor exists.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Glassdoor exists.
|
| you are not allowed to tell anyone how much you make so
| you might be in trouble if your found out but the
| companies share this info without your consent. From my
| POV make it all transparent.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I have had a career spanning over 30 years at this point.
| I've worked in businesses with 6 employees and F500
| corporations. No one has ever told me that I can't tell
| anyone else how much I make.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I never said that.
| willseth wrote:
| That is the entire basis for the RealPage lawsuit. The
| point is that if the effect on pricing is indistinguishable
| from price fixing, it doesn't matter if the act of
| colluding is abstracted into and laundered through a 3rd
| party with an algorithmic system responsible for setting
| prices.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Honestly, I think it does still matter. The basis for the
| RealPage lawsuit seems to be that people inside and
| outside the company glibly considered it price-fixing,
| and said it out loud to each other. The didn't really
| seem to make the case that it was "algorithmic price-
| fixing" (Disclaimer: not a lawyer). You can only argue in
| court about existing laws, so until algorithmic price-
| fixing is written in the law books (or settled case law)
| you're gonna have a tough time bringing that up to a
| judge.
| willseth wrote:
| It seems you don't understand the lawsuit. Most of the
| claims are based on the actual mechanics of how
| algorithmic price fixing does violate existing laws.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Wage fixing is when multiple companies agree to set wages at
| a certain amount.
|
| I am not an expert on wage fixing laws in the US, but I came
| across a class action on wage fixing a few days ago (Ron Brown
| et al v JBS USA Food Company et al) where part of what was
| aledged was the illegal exchange of salary data via surveys
| [1].
|
| > The Red Meat Industry Compensation Survey conducted by WMS on
| behalf of the Defendant Processors violated the Safe Harbor
| Guidelines in at least three ways. First, the Defendant
| Processors, not WMS, collectively managed and controlled the
| annual Red Meat Industry Compensation Surveys. Second, those
| Surveys often contained information about the Defendant
| Processors' future compensation plans and practices. Third,
| Defendant Processors had extensive discussions about the Survey
| results, including at in-person meetings, during which they
| disclosed their respective compensation rates, practices, and
| plans
|
| [1]: https://www.classaction.org/media/brown-et-al-v-jbs-usa-
| food...
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Company A can use the compensation data from Company B to try
| and compete better for talent.
|
| My company has done this in the past sorta indirectly, we were
| losing a lot of people to competitors and data like this is how
| they justified paying a bunch of us better so we wouldn't
| leave. I agree that it could be used to fix wages, but
| companies will always have to pay their best talent more if
| they want to retain them, whether that means paying them above
| what the data says or if it means inventing new job titles for
| them to progress into.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Company A can use the compensation data from Company B to
| try and compete better for talent._
|
| Company A could make offers and negotiate with prospective
| hires based on the value they can get out of the hire. Rather
| than secretly leverage surveillance capitalism against the
| prospective hire, to base their offer on what the person is
| currently making (and, hey, if lots of employers do that by
| convention, you pretty much have collusion).
| jiripospisil wrote:
| Huh, looks like they've pivoted (or is that a different Pave?).
|
| > Pave: We turn your Google Analytics data in actionable insights
| + reports with our data science AI algorithm.
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/pave
| giladvdn wrote:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/pave-2
| grues-dinner wrote:
| That proud phrase "HR Tech" in that link, gives me the
| heebie-jeebies.
|
| I'd say "if you work in a company like this you're a bad
| person", but sociopaths, sorry, Wharton graduates won't give
| a shit anyway.
| carlmr wrote:
| It seems like the term Wharton graduates is now a wart on
| graduates' resumes.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| There's an unfortunate lack of fear.
| msy wrote:
| Companies like Radford have been doing this for decades and are
| used by pretty much everyone, Pave is just a more efficient
| version of the same game.
| levi-turner wrote:
| Beyond salary, there is a whole industry of data brokers who
| get transactional data from individual participants in an
| industry vertical (CPG, Health Insurance, Salary, etc),
| aggregate it with their competitors and present it back to
| those participants as benchmarks. Management Consulting
| likewise is a way to launder getting strategic insight into
| your competitors from a third-party.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's a long long history--especially when a lot of
| information was more opaque than today--when companies
| quietly shared a bunch of information with middlemen because
| they needed that information from other companies to function
| and the middlemen skimmed some of the the take.
|
| Even price sheets that we would consider very rudimentary
| today were part of that.
| estebandalelr wrote:
| My guess is that they would argue that most of the data they use
| is public, just go on LinkedIn and look at 10 job listings to
| have a range.
| gwervc wrote:
| Job listings is very different kind of data than compensation
| actually paid to employees.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Pave's data is _incredibly_ revealing. First of all it covers
| historical data for every single employee, secondly it includes
| stock as well. It also relates the compensation to performance.
| sanj wrote:
| It smells awfully close to:
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realp...
| vishnugupta wrote:
| This was the exact thing that popped into my mind when I read
| the poster's description.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| Real pages is such a gross business
| zulban wrote:
| Reading that, seems like RealPage could protect itself from
| similar problems if they simply avoid using the same sales
| rhetoric, and don't do explicit recommendations. "You are
| paying way more for this position than others... hmmmm."
|
| Surely they are aware of the similarities and are strategizing.
| mhx1138 wrote:
| Soon you need to waive your class-action rights when applying
| for a job.
| blast wrote:
| The OP specifically mentions that.
| braden-lk wrote:
| "I'm not punching you in the face, I'm just putting my fist on a
| movement vector that happens to intersect your face." I hope
| these guys get their shit rocked in court. I'm tired of a world
| run by cartels.
| jmkni wrote:
| "Alright, pie, I'm just gonna do this...and if you get eaten,
| it's your own fault!"
| hooli42 wrote:
| It's legal the same way Airbnb and Uber are legal.
| paxys wrote:
| Collecting and sharing data is in itself not illegal. RealPage
| was also using the data to algorithmically generate a rent number
| and encouraging landlords to automatically use that number with
| no room for negotiation. It literally branded itself as a service
| that would prevent landlords from bidding against each other.
| That part is what pushed it into collusion.
|
| And regardless of whether it is legal or not, the problem has to
| go beyond a handful of small startups for the DoJ to get
| involved. RealPage is used in 80%+ of multifamily rental
| buildings in the US. What is Pave's market share? How many
| employees are affected by their practices?
| master_crab wrote:
| No. DoJ is suing RealPage because they used non-public,
| sensitive data to set rental prices in a way that reduces
| competition. Literally what these guys are doing.
|
| Complaint:
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1364976/dl?inline=&utm_med...
|
| more readable Press release for DoJ on RealPage:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdnc/pr/justice-department-sues...
| tazu wrote:
| > Pave is a YC-backed startup
|
| This thread is getting removed from the front-page in 3... 2...
| benterix wrote:
| I really, really hope they don't.
| hoseja wrote:
| Aaaaand it's gone.
| benterix wrote:
| This makes me sad.
|
| @dang, can you comment on that? I appreciate your
| integrity.
| dang wrote:
| We didn't see it or demote it--it set off the flamewar
| detector. I've turned that off now, in keeping with the
| principle described here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41511529.
|
| p.s. @dang is a no-op - I only saw this thread because I
| was doing our standard review of the flamewar detector.
| If you want guaranteed* message delivery,
| hn@ycombinator.com is the only way.
|
| * Well, mostly guaranteed. I assume there are a few that
| fail to get noticed in the spam bin, though we check that
| pretty carefully.
| the_gorilla wrote:
| That's awfully convenient. You don't moderate the
| content, your flame war detector goes off, and the
| algorithm removes it for you.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| [delayed]
| hysan wrote:
| I thought this was a joke comment but I went back after reading
| the comments and it's now on the second page already.
| tazu wrote:
| It was at #3 for me and then suddenly demoted to the second
| page. It's pretty common for these touchy-YC threads.
| maeil wrote:
| Page 3 now.
| mitchbob wrote:
| 211 points in an hour, and now page 4.
| PawgerZ wrote:
| #10 on the front page now
| dang wrote:
| It's less common than it would be for comparable threads on
| other topics. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41511529 for more
| explanation.
| dang wrote:
| I understand why people assume we do that, but actually we do
| the opposite--that is, we moderate _less_ when YC or a YC
| startup is part of a story. There is plenty of past explanation
| at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu
| ....
|
| Note: we still moderate such threads. We just do it less than
| we otherwise would.
| rocqua wrote:
| If this were illegal, so should the KornFerry Hay system be, and
| that system has existed for decades.
| Fokamul wrote:
| Lol try this here in EU.
| cryptonym wrote:
| It exists, many companies are using wage benchmarks to fix
| salary in EU.
|
| Companies assume they don't need your approval to collect data
| on salary range for your position as aggregates are not
| directly pointing at you.
| dsotirovski wrote:
| Gratitude for the expose. I was(and assume most here were as
| well) completely unaware of Pave. I will, and hopefully other
| potentially impacted, look up if I am affected by this and if so
| - share experiences/info here.
| exabrial wrote:
| Wow first we got our rents fixed, now we're getting our wages
| fixed. Awesome
| benoau wrote:
| Using a rent estimate would be a brilliant way to double-check
| if you are overpaying salaries. /s
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Because it's not wage fixing?
|
| To be competitive you need to be paying more than others not the
| same as them. This is why FAANG got themselves into a fix of
| paying 500k for people they would have paid 200k for a year or so
| beforehand.
| elawler24 wrote:
| I got access to Pave through one of my investors. Seeing the data
| made us set salaries and contractor rates higher, not lower. It's
| like salary banding at big companies. It's a framework for how
| much other people are paid at the same level, not a contract. HR
| will make it seem like a rule, but if you do spectacular work -
| you can always negotiate.
|
| Collusion requires an agreement between rivals that negatively
| disrupts market equilibrium. Is this company not actually making
| the market more efficient and transparent? That said - an
| efficient market is good for the collective, not necessarily the
| rogue / outlier individual.
| lantry wrote:
| The market might be more transparent for the people who have
| access to pave, but for those who dont, the information
| asymmetry becomes worse.
| vundercind wrote:
| Ding ding ding. Improving information for _only_ the already-
| more-powerful side of such an asymmetric relationship doesn't
| help the weaker side.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| I agree and as an employee I encourage everyone to take a
| second post their salaries on levels.fyi. We have our own
| compensation tool that is free & likely as good or better
| than Pave as long as people add their info.
| bjourne wrote:
| > Collusion requires an agreement between rivals that
| negatively disrupts market equilibrium. Is this company not
| actually making the market more efficient and transparent? That
| said - an efficient market is good for the collective, not
| necessarily the rogue / outlier individual.
|
| I'm sure you practice what you preach and tell all your
| employees what their coworkers earn?
| ativzzz wrote:
| I'm sure he means transparency in the market where employers
| are competing with each other, not the market where
| individual employees are choosing employers
|
| With a few exceptions, I've found that companies that talk
| about transparency are transparent with everything but
| employee salary
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > HR will make it seem like a rule, but if you do spectacular
| work - you can always negotiate.
|
| Every single developer should take this to heart. The phrase I
| once used at the end of an annual review was, "you can't give
| me a review like that but a raise like this!"
|
| Yes, my manager had to get permission to give me the % increase
| I wanted, but it was to his benefit to do it since he wanted me
| to stay.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > Is this company not actually making the market more efficient
| and transparent
|
| No, not at all. Unless applicants/employees get full access to
| the same information.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Well, I wouldn't mind getting my wage fixed, if that works both
| ways, down _and up_, because then I would be guaranteed to never
| earn less than average for my skill and experience. Assuming,
| that those things of course factor into the averaging. Person X
| with experience Y in position Z. However, something tells me,
| that there is a tendency towards the downwards direction and none
| towards wage increase.
|
| (Background: In Germany not so many companies pay competitive
| wages for their software engineers, especially not, once you
| worked for some years and are no longer a bloody junior. So I
| calculate it would result in a wage increase for me, since
| everyone says I am underpaid for my experience.)
| felurx wrote:
| Genuine question: What makes you believe that an employer would
| decide to pay you more when they notice that they're paying you
| less than other companies would? Why wouldn't they just think
| "Oh, neat, we got such a bargain!"
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That's the reason I wrote, that I wouldn't mind, if (and only
| if) the upwards direction also happens and why I wrote, that
| "something tells me" that that wouldn't be the case ; )
| gosub100 wrote:
| If they cannot fill positions or are shedding talent.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| What stops senior devs in Germany from remote contracting for
| foreign companies that pay better?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Not everyone wants to be self-employed is at least one
| factor.
| smabie wrote:
| If you're truly underpaid for your experience and location then
| you should be able to get a new higher paying job easily. And
| if you can't easily get one well maybe you aren't underpaid.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Yeah this is borderline. It probably won't fly in California. In
| the past big tech companies (like Symantec) used to require you
| to submit your last W2 or tax return for a job offer. Credit card
| companies also sell your salary information etc...
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This sounds very obviously illegal. Where is the local DA on
| this?
| louthy wrote:
| In the UK and EU it would be outright illegal on GDPR grounds
| (unless you consented to it, which would be unlikely without
| coercion -- also illegal)
| Tknl wrote:
| In the EU there are definitely companies providing aggregated
| salary band norms, in fact utilizing them is nearly required by
| upcoming EU directives as salaries must be justified by HR. In
| the Netherlands I know Bureau Baarda is gathering and selling
| data.
| RayVR wrote:
| The fundamental difference between something like Pave or Radford
| is that, AFAIK, they are simply providing companies with
| information.
|
| I am not a lawyer, but I believe the fundamental issue with
| RealPage is that by entering into a service agreement with them,
| you agree not to violate their price "recommendation" and so you
| are centralizing actual pricing power into a single entity.
|
| I believe RealPage has some way to negotiate out of this standard
| deal but it's not common.
|
| Companies likely insist on staying within certain pay bands for a
| whole host of legal and HR reasons but they aren't getting a
| specific salary from Pave that they are contractually obligated
| to use in their offer.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I can recite at least five situations where "simply providing X
| with information" is considered a crime. One of them is company
| A providing planned price to company B in order to agree on it,
| and it is called price fixing. Other are insider trading, pump
| and dump, etc.
| corry wrote:
| 1) Salary surveys for local or national startup scenes have been
| a staple for decades. Here in Waterloo (Canada), there was a
| dominant local survey that all tech companies participated in
| annually with results being shared. Then, as you get bigger, you
| come across larger versions of the same thing.
|
| 2) VCs are often the vector by which this all happens. They ask
| their portfolio companies to pull together the info for their
| employees, presumably submit it into the companies aggregating
| everything, and then the startup gets a copy of the recent data.
|
| 3) Even done the old way (Excel), the data was incredibly
| detailed. You can slice and dice by startup stage (series A vs
| series B vs seed), employee count, region, sector, etc to
| determine if you're paying market rates or not. This is
| particularly useful for growing startups, where the founders have
| no idea what to pay, say, a VP Marketing at their pre-revenue
| mobile gaming startup in Helsinki.
|
| 4) Obviously whether or not this is bad for employees themselves
| is debatable, but I think people are missing the point that these
| surveys are ALWAYS skewed UPWARDS due to the much higher volume
| of data from the large tech companies (because they have far more
| employees and tend to be offering significantly higher comp). So
| in practice, the impact is likely to RAISE wages at earlier stage
| startups who are competing for the same talent as later stage
| tech.
| corry wrote:
| An interesting artifact of the information disparity between
| the startup executives (who have access to this benchmark data)
| and the employees (who don't) is that the employee is often
| wildly off the mark in their expectations, either too low or
| too high.
|
| There are so many variables at play too that it turns into a
| negotiation like everything else. Say an employee wants a big
| raise because they are having their first child are heading
| towards a higher cost base at home. Say the employer simply
| says "the salary data shows that your current pay is at the
| market average".
|
| Well, is the employee truly "average"? Perhaps they're a high
| performer. Does the average number take into account not only
| the company dynamics (stage, domain, funding, revenue level,
| etc)? Not perfectly.
|
| But then on the other side, just because an employee wants a
| higher salary due to a higher cost structure at home doesn't
| mean they are automatically entitled to it, right?
|
| Then on the startup side again, the manager is looking at the
| data and thinking about all the time and cost of replacing this
| person and realizing it's likely more than the cost of just
| granting the raise.
|
| Then the HR person comes in and says the salary grid -- whose
| whole purpose is to provide in theory tight constraints on
| these conversations -- rules this all out, there's no budget or
| wiggle room. When the Manager suggests the grid hasn't been
| updated in a few years, HR takes it personally and tells the
| person to take it up with the CEO.
|
| So then the CEO gets involved. She knows the employee has a
| unique view on the technology and market direction and
| considers them Tier 1 can't-lose-them. She knows the grid is
| out of date. She looks at the data and thinks that she can
| justify to herself and the financial plan that it'll be OK to
| do it, with fingers crossed that this doesn't happen across the
| board because then their runway will shorten considerably.
|
| So the raise happens.
|
| My point is just that the salary information asymmetry is just
| one relatively minor aspect to this whole negotiation and in
| the end I'm not sure it advantages the company all that much.
| nowyoudont wrote:
| I guess my issue with all the "it's just info" arguments is this.
| Employers inherently have an information advantage in salary
| negotiations. A tool like Pave drastically increases that
| imbalance.
|
| How am I ever going to realistically negotiate salary vs a
| company that has this level of information (even during
| performance reviews)? And frankly something that worries me is,
| what level of data are they getting? If it's tied to your HR
| system, does it get anonymized performance reviews? If every
| company can perfectly profile me and place me in an expected
| salary, I as the employee give up all my power. That's strictly
| bad for me
| tensor wrote:
| Your salary negotiation point speaks more to a call for open
| salary data, which many people have been arguing for.
|
| You're missing a lot with your second point though. If a
| company has excellent salary data and can put in you a band,
| then it also means that you have better grounds to argue for
| raises when you gain experience, or argue if you are underpaid,
| or even find jobs at companies who intentionally pay a higher
| percentile to market as a way to attract better talent.
|
| In contrast, if we all operate 100% blind with no data, as many
| here seem to want, it would lead to all sorts of unfair wage
| situations with people doing equivalent jobs earning vastly
| different amounts. This sort of environment is biased towards
| more aggressive people who have strong social skills when it
| comes to negotiation. In fact, you see exactly this when
| companies choose not to buy data like this to set their bands.
| nowyoudont wrote:
| I super agree that fully open salary data would be amazing.
|
| On the second point, I would argue that you have very little
| ability to determine when you've gained enough experience as
| an employee to argue for a raise. Whereas an employer with
| access to Pave has a _ton_ of ability to determine whether
| you have or have not. Yours is based entirely on personal
| experience and feel, plus maybe talking to a few coworkers.
| Theirs is based on aggregated data from thousands of
| employees
| tensor wrote:
| In many tech companies there is a skill matrix and
| competency attached to jobs, and these are tied to
| compensation bands. Often these skill matrices are given to
| employees too. When someone complains that they are not
| being paid fairly or that they are working at a higher
| level, these skill matrices are used by management to
| double check that the right hiring/raise decisions were
| made.
|
| Mistakes get made and not all managers are the same, but
| believe it or not there are companies where senior
| management does try for consistency and fairness in how
| they set compensation. These companies also often have
| internal studies run that check for biases or oddities in
| compensation. E.g. which departments are above the
| standards, which are below, which are not progressing
| juniors enough. Without data all this is impossible. You
| can't build a fair, objective, and especially not
| transparent system without data.
| d883kd8 wrote:
| VERY similar to the situation in the rental market where large
| landlords are being investigated for using software to enable
| collusion and price fixing.
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/12/justice-department-...
| grayfaced wrote:
| Hate it in concept (I can't speak to Pave specifically). Metrics
| are useful if the manager doesn't make hard targets, the data is
| good and the model is good. How do you model compensation
| packages? how does 20 days leave compare to unlimited leave? Are
| two companies with unlimited leave equivalent? When the managers
| have targets, they're incentivized to massage the data in their
| favor. So even if you're doing it right, that makes every other
| companies data suspect.
|
| This also sounds like it will reinforce some negative behaviors.
| If the data shows that other companies are paying women 80% of
| their male peers, shouldn't this recommend I also pay women 80%?
| But I doubt the output will spell it out that way, will I even
| know it's influencing me this way?
| tensor wrote:
| No, you don't set salary bands based on race or sex. That
| sounds like it would be illegal. The way that bias creeps in is
| not from data gathering and setting salary ranges, it's from
| managers bias when they choose from the ranges for candidates.
|
| Setting company wide salary bands actually HELPS fairness in
| pay by providing objective ways employees can argue that they
| are underpaid if that's the case.
| t-writescode wrote:
| > it's from managers bias when they choose from the ranges
| for candidates.
|
| It also comes in from how / if they choose to promote. If
| they take too long or if they just don't put you up for
| promotion / reject you, overall earning potential is
| weakened.
|
| Do this enough times and it becomes a substantial reduction
| in life-long earnings, life-long title, respect, etc.
| hiyer wrote:
| > helps startups with compensation
|
| It's not only startups - I know decades-old, listed firms that
| use it too.
| failuser wrote:
| Uber and AirBnb are essentially illegal taxi and illegal hotel
| services. Remember taxi medallions? Remember zoning laws? Being
| illegal is not a showstopper for a startup because they are under
| a radar, being illegal is not a problem for a large business
| because they have enough power to not get prosecuted.
| Havoc wrote:
| Eric Schmidt echoed similar sentiment in his recent interview.
| Basically do it, if startup fails then it doesn't matter. If it
| succeeds then lawyers can sort it out.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Which makes total sense for consumers as well. If the startup
| succeeds is because consumers are finding value in it. Uber
| is the best example. Uber is ilegal only in countries with
| deep corruption where taxi unions can make legislators ignore
| their constituents. Uber (and any other car sharing app) is
| the best solution for me as a consumer compared to the
| traditional old school taxi service.
| Havoc wrote:
| > Which makes total sense for consumers as well.
|
| Kinda. Often this casual law breaking isn't entirely
| victimless even if it benefits both consumer and the
| startup. I think Schmidt was talking about using content to
| train models. So artists getting short end of stick. Or
| Airbnb causing locals getting prices out or whatever.
|
| There is certainly some dodgy protectionism happening of
| the sort you describe but there are also externalities
| borne by society for this break laws startup style.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| As a user of GenAI, I get to create and save drawings in
| the style of any artist I like, without having to pay the
| artist $$$$. This is important to me because I like
| certain styles, but do not care for an original drawing
| nor have the money to pay for such.
|
| And the externalities introduced here are not borne by
| all of society, but only by a small number of people (How
| many important artists are there? 10,000? 100,000?). Just
| like horse-and-buggy drivers were affected by
| automobiles, while the vast majority of people benefited
| from automobiles.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| Totally. I propose we start a brothelBnB next door to your
| home. Home owner wins, customer wins, worker wins, startup
| wins! Score! Market has spoken!
|
| I also recommend HoboSleepinCar Driveway as a service next
| to your home. The consumer has spoken!
| consteval wrote:
| Uber is objectively worse for every single party involved.
| Driver makes less, customer pays more, Uber has to
| coordinate a huge system.
|
| Uber "won" because they cheated. They operated at a loss
| for almost 15 years, on the welfare of investors. Guess
| what, mom and pop running a taxi can't live on a negative
| wage.
| cellis wrote:
| > Uber is objectively worse for every single party
| involved.
|
| Wrong on at least one count. I've _never_ been refused
| service while black from Uber. The taxi industry was
| brought out of the dark ages of discrimination by Uber et
| al. Taxis (around the world) have tried to rip me off
| almost half the time I 've used them, with no
| accountability.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Also in these "gig" type companies, the people who are
| actually breaking the laws are the workers, e.g. the drivers
| or the homeowners in the case of Uber and AirBnB. The startup
| is the enabler, yes, but they will try to throw their workers
| under the bus before they take responsibility themselves.
| They don't own the cars, they don't own the properties, and
| they are most likely in a far-away jurisdiction.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| He would know. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2014/04/24/306592297...
| lisnake wrote:
| Didn't work for Elizabeth Holmes
| rodiger wrote:
| There's a difference between "doing an illegal thing as a
| product" and "lying to investors about your product"
| papercrane wrote:
| This is true, although it's also true that many startups
| lie to, or mislead, investors about the state of their
| products. If things work out, then the investors don't
| care, and if they don't its usually at scale and messy
| enough the government isn't going to prosecute.
| ath3nd wrote:
| SBF and Elizabeth Holmes would like a word.
|
| And hopefully everyone else "successful" having the morals of
| a greedy chimpanzee follows the same fate as those swindlers.
| Whatever happened to doing good by people and society (or at
| least pretending to)?
| atq2119 wrote:
| Should inciting others to commit crimes be in itself a crime?
| Certainly, if somebody influential enough does it, it has the
| potential to destabilize our society with catastrophic
| results.
| yonran wrote:
| Ironically for a question about antitrust price fixing you just
| named two incumbent government-sanctioned cartels (zoning and
| taxi medallions) that restrict supply and keep prices high.
| They would be illegal if private companies made them.
| digging wrote:
| > They would be illegal if private companies made them.
|
| Yes, that's kind of the main difference between government
| functions and private companies. Are you saying the very idea
| of zoning strikes you as a problem? Or are you trying to call
| out the bad _implementations_ which strangle urban prosperity
| in the US?
| yonran wrote:
| > Yes, that's kind of the main difference between
| government functions and private companies
|
| Perhaps that should change. Or at least it's a reason to
| scrutinize and repeal laws that are used for price fixing.
|
| > Are you saying the very idea of zoning strikes you as a
| problem? Or are you trying to call out the bad
| _implementations_ which strangle urban prosperity in the
| US?
|
| _Zoning Rules!_ by William Fischel gives good a history of
| zoning. Zoning was originally for segregation within the
| city but to the question of prices, no it was not
| inherently problematic. It was not until the 1970s that
| zoning was used for growth control to make entire cities
| unaffordable.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Unless it's pollution-based zoning, I agree that the idea
| of zoning is a problem.
| fwip wrote:
| Many things a government does would be illegal if private
| companies did them. For example, prison, the draft, and
| taxes. The government is allowed to do it because we (as a
| society) believe it's better for the government to do these
| things than private individuals or companies.
| rrrix1 wrote:
| You have heard of the Prison Indistrial Complex right? Our
| Prisons have been For-Profit for a _long_ time now. Totally
| legal, government sanctioned privatized penitentiaries.
| fwip wrote:
| Yes, I have. Perhaps I should have made clear that
| putting people in prison was the thing that was illegal
| for private companies, not operating a prison.
| yonran wrote:
| Can you give examples of the topic at hand, price fixing,
| that are justified? There are a handful of progressive
| forms of price fixing (e.g. minimum wage laws), but many
| others should be added to the Niskanen Center's list of bad
| regulations in the Captured Economy.
| __loam wrote:
| Utilities that trend towards natural monopolies due to
| high barriers to entry like water and electricity
| infrastructure are often run by the government or heavily
| regulated because pricing would be extortionate if the
| market were allowed to set prices.
| keerthiko wrote:
| Yep, basic human rights are priceless, and by capitalist
| mechanics, their pricing will always converge at "how
| much can we get away with in the current economy?"
| Government oversight is the only way we currently have to
| manage this somewhat.
|
| As an example in support of this, healthcare is barely
| price-regulated and hardly run by the government in
| America, and is thus extortionate.
| yonran wrote:
| > As an example in support of this, healthcare is barely
| price-regulated and hardly run by the government in
| America, and is thus extortionate.
|
| They are supply-regulated by governments. According to
| Niskanen Center, the high cost of health care is due to
| the American Medical Association limiting new accredited
| medical schools and certificate-of-need laws limiting new
| hospitals. https://www.niskanencenter.org/faster_fairer/l
| iberating_the_...
| __loam wrote:
| "Named after William A. Niskanen, an economic adviser to
| Ronald Reagan, it states that its "main audience is
| Washington insiders", and characterizes itself as
| moderate."
|
| Barf. These seem like very erudite reasons when really
| the issue is running healthcare as a balkanized private
| system with opaque pricing information that patients
| often don't see until after they receive care is
| fundamentally an inefficient system. The government could
| run a single payer system at a loss and it would be
| cheaper than what we have now.
| yonran wrote:
| Fair enough, utility regulations fix prices except in the
| opposite direction. Without zoning, landowners could not
| act as a cartel since that would violate antitrust laws,
| whereas without utility regulation, a natural monopoly
| could set prices as high as the market will bear.
| jmward01 wrote:
| > They would be illegal if private companies made them.
|
| A lot of things governments do would be illegal if private
| companies did them. Are you arguing that governments
| shouldn't have special abilities that companies can't have?
| Should every road be owned by a company? Should the police
| report to Amazon instead of the local municipality where you
| may actually have a say in how they are run?
|
| We give governments additional powers because they, at least
| nominally, answer to citizens and society. Companies have no
| such responsibility.
| yonran wrote:
| I'm saying that government regulations that fix prices
| should be scrutinized and repealed if they reduce
| opportunity for ordinary people. Such as zoning codes that
| price out the poor.
| keerthiko wrote:
| I believe the argument here is that the way to do that
| isn't by establishing a private business that flaunts and
| undermines those government regulations, but by changing
| the policies through government process.
|
| Obviously that's easier said than done, and SV has a
| track record of "ask forgiveness not permission" as a
| successful tactic for effecting policy change. But many
| times it results in indefinite undermining of government
| which leads to selective enforcement and cartels, which
| is worthy of criticism (of both government and VC-powered
| undermining of government).
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > I believe the argument here is that the way to do that
| isn't by establishing a private business that flaunts and
| undermines those government regulations, but by changing
| the policies through government process.
|
| And to make those who interfaced with the prior system in
| good faith whole again; eg: drivers who bought taxi
| medallions for six figures USD, only to have the value of
| the medallion plummet with the arrive of "rideshare"
| services.
| yonran wrote:
| To make beneficiaries whole is perhaps the worst reason
| to keep a monopolistic system. In the case of taxi
| medallions in San Francisco, they are technically still
| owned by the city and the medallion should never have had
| any private value to begin with; Mayor Gavin Newsom
| should have leased them to the drivers instead of
| creating a $250,000 transfer program to give windfalls to
| retirees. In the case of zoning, ideally we would tax
| much of the land rent to reduce the incentive to exclude
| and increase the incentive to create capital. Rents from
| a government-created monopoly should not be anyone's
| ticket to retirement.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That's not ironic. Governments and private companies are not
| the same kind of entities. They have different roles,
| different roots of legitimacy, different forms of
| accountability, different operational objectives, and carry
| different expectations.
| yonran wrote:
| It's ironic that in response to a question about price
| fixing, failuser brought up other companies that were
| formed to _circumvent_ government price fixing, and in his
| examples the governments doing the price fixing were
| supposedly the good guys!
|
| In the case of Uber, they successfully broke up the taxi
| cartel since the state PUC ruled that ride hail is a
| separate category.
|
| In the case of Airbnb, according to their founding story
| they were created to help economize on space because rents
| were high in San Francisco due to zoning. Although they
| made a useful service, they did not succeed in reducing
| rents because the underlying zoning is still the constraint
| that keeps rents high.
| ein0p wrote:
| Zoning, ok, but yellow cabs are now often cheaper than Uber.
| Last time I took a ride from the airport the difference was
| not small, like 50%.
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| compete or die
| ein0p wrote:
| The problem with that is thanks to many years of below
| cost pricing Uber has become synonymous with taxi now,
| and most people don't even realize (or care) that taxis
| are often cheaper.
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| Uber is not seen as synonymous to taxi, its seen as
| better; more convenient (one app for any city), less
| fraudulent, and more safe. Uber more readily kicks
| drivers off the platform (for better or for worse)
| teraflop wrote:
| Anybody else remember that time YC funded an international
| smuggling operation?
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/backpack
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8199286
| calgoo wrote:
| Looks like they are still active!
| darby_nine wrote:
| Hell you could write off all of web3 with that sentence
| naikrovek wrote:
| because web3 was a smuggling/laundering operation and those
| are illegal. basically, all cryptocurrency activity is
| immediately a suspicious activity.
| bitcoin_anon wrote:
| Reminder that until recently, most cannabis patients
| relied on smugglers to treat their illnesses.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Reminder that a minority of cases does not justify
| smuggling for recreational use.
| timdiggerm wrote:
| You say that like writing them off would be a bad thing
| oldgregg wrote:
| Anyone else remember when HackerNews had an adventurous
| libertarian ethos before the school marms infested the place
| with irrelevant and low vibrational commentary?
| consteval wrote:
| > adventurous libertarian ethos
|
| Libertarian is when smuggle drugs and oppress the working
| class through secret surveillance
|
| When people say that libertarians are just right-wingers
| kidding themselves, I think they mean this kind of stuff. I
| don't think it's in a "libertarian ethos" to do wildly
| unethical and immoral things on a large scale, with the
| intention of exploiting people for profit.
|
| If that actually is libertarian ethos, then it sucks.
| gperkins978 wrote:
| No, it is simply an idea to live and let live. Sane
| people escape California or New York where one must be
| insanely wealthy to live a decent life. In most of the
| US, you can do your thing and no one will bother you.
| Most hellishly expensive places would become affordable
| and fun if they implemented Texas-style zoning.
|
| Now, obnoxious white people in Silicon Valley would be
| upset that multifamily housing had allowed displeasing
| minorities in, but man would that make life better for
| everyone. I lived in East Asia, and it is really nice
| when cities are not too expensive for regular people to
| live in. Furthermore, I have no sympathy for rich @holes
| who complain about losing their expensive view.
|
| Freedom helps all, but especially the poor. The leftists
| have tricked people in California and NYC into thinking
| the system fails the poor, when in reality it is their
| stupid regulations that made these places expensive.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Yeah, this is why all the homeless people in Cali and New
| York move to Texas and Mississippi. It's all those darn
| regulations hurting poor people. Not the rich people who
| are always whining about regulation and taxes. No, the
| poor people.
|
| Btw anyone else seen that bear rummaging around? Any idea
| how to get rid of it?
| Geee wrote:
| I think the critique was directed towards the attitude of
| being overtly scared of doing something illegal or
| breaking rules (which does not equal being unethical!).
| Backbag is simply a way to transport stuff in a backbag,
| which isn't illegal.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > When people say that libertarians are just right-
| wingers kidding themselves
|
| I thought libertarians are right-wingers kidding with us
| /s
|
| > I don't think it's in a "libertarian ethos" to do
| wildly unethical and immoral things on a large scale
|
| I personally conflate libertarianism with wanting all
| regulations removed and whining about Big-Government, and
| then crying to Big-Government to bail you out when you
| crashed the economy with less-than-informed gambling.
|
| > If that actually is libertarian ethos, then it sucks.
|
| Astute observation!
| romwell wrote:
| _> If that actually is libertarian ethos, then it sucks._
|
| It is.
|
| Also, when I asked whether they would have the same
| libertarian attitude regarding a crowd-sourced app to
| keep tabs on people with net worth over $1B, my modest
| proposal[1] got flagged and hidden -
|
| - unlike the insulting comment that called the users who
| have an issue with Pave "schoolmarms" that "infest" the
| place, like pests to be exterminated.
|
| Go figure.
|
| Hypocrisy is OK on HN, calling it out is not.
|
| [1] as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Their website is "backpack bang"? What a strange name, the
| last thing I want is for my backpack to "bang" when moving
| unknown goods across international borders!
| whimsicalism wrote:
| uber: mostly not technically because the key thing is that they
| are not soliciting rides from the street, was my understanding.
|
| airbnb had a much more legally tenuous start
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Taxi medallions were (and AFAIK still are) required to respond
| to people hailing a taxi from the street. It is not required to
| book a ride via phone or internet. Uber and Lyft drivers never
| needed taxi medallions.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > essentially illegal taxi and illegal hotel services
|
| I don't know about Uber, but Airbnb deflects this by saying
| they are not in fact a hotel service. Rather hosts are hotel
| services, and Airbnb is simply a discovery platform matching
| buyers and sellers. It's up to an individual host to make sure
| they are complying with local laws including whether their city
| or district allows an individual to rent out their house or a
| room in it without a hotel license (this varies from city to
| city). In this way Airbnb (fairly or unfairly) pushes the
| burden and liability onto the hosts.
|
| I believe this is also a huge reason why Uber doesn't want to
| classify drivers as employees because then it is the taxi
| service, whereas it could argue that the drivers are each
| operating their own taxi service and Uber is just a discovery
| and payment platform.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Carta has a similar product, and Radford is a popular one as
| well. These things have been around for decades. Nothing new.
| hungie wrote:
| It's almost certainly illegal, but it benefits the capital class,
| so it's going to get a pass for a long time.
|
| That said, it's exactly the same thing that landlords were doing
| with that pricing software and the government is coming after
| them, so maybe pave will get hit with a big lawsuit sometime
| soon.
|
| Here's hoping this sort of thing gets regulated down into the
| earth.
| napolux wrote:
| I had the same concern where I work. They told me data are
| aggregated anonymously, so no risks, in any case it's useful to
| compare yourself with others when your salary is below average,
| so you can ask for a raise (which I will do next salary-review
| cycle) :)
| altdataseller wrote:
| "data are aggregated anonymously".. that's what almost every
| data broker with a security breach also said at one point in
| the past.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Realpage does the same thing with rental market data but they
| are clearly at risk.
| yonran wrote:
| The FTC Guidelines for Collaborations Among Competitors
| https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/dealings...
| says it's illegal to share "competitively sensitive variables",
| not just any data. Some forms of data sharing such as industry
| averages may not be illegal, but more detailed data such as
| numbers of applicants or price elasticity that enable the
| companies to act together as if they were a monopoly probably
| are. RealPage crossed the line by sharing an optimization
| algorithm and encouraging collective action. I'm not sure what
| Pave does.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| > Under the Sherman Act, agreements among competitors to fix
| prices or wages, rig bids, or allocate customers, workers, or
| markets, are criminal violations. Other agreements such as
| exclusive contracts that reduce competition may also violate
| the Sherman Antitrust Act and are subject to civil
| enforcement.Dec 20, 2023
|
| A good US.A. could probably argue this meets that bar. Didn't
| they just do something similar with the rent fixing from that
| similar SaaS product?
| ecshafer wrote:
| Op mentioned realpage, which is the company that does rent
| fixing as a service (RFAAS)
| uoaei wrote:
| How sure are you that the incentives in place don't encourage
| inching toward this behavior as they begin to establish
| themselves?
| nla wrote:
| This is exactly what Pixar/Disney and Ed Catmull got sued for.
| Apple, Google and FB as well.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Didn't they agree not to hire each other's employees? Which
| would serve to suppress salaries, even without sharing what
| anyone was getting paid.
| ipv6ipv4 wrote:
| Legal or not, Pave is unethical.
| jmull wrote:
| Sharing compensation ranges may not be enough to qualify as wage
| fixing.
|
| It seems like there would have to be an agreement or at least a
| collective incentive to lower wages.
|
| While companies could use the data to ensure their offers are
| always below average (pushing wages down), they could also use
| the data to ensure their offers are above average, pushing wages
| up.
|
| Think about it: prices are transparent in most markets and that
| doesn't seem to generally lead to anti-competitive prices. In
| fact, it seems to encourage companies to compete.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| "at least a collective incentive to lower wages."
|
| ???
|
| In accordance with HN guidelines I am going to resist giving a
| snarky answer and will instead clearly articulate: Companies
| clearly have a strong collective incentive to lower wages.
|
| "While companies could use the data to ensure their offers are
| always below average (pushing wages down), they could also use
| the data to ensure their offers are above average, pushing
| wages up."
|
| They may do both. Collude to keep average wages low, so that
| when they offer outliers "above-average" it is still cheaper to
| cross that many standard deviations.
|
| "Think about it: prices are transparent in most markets and
| that doesn't seem to generally lead to anti-competitive prices.
| In fact, it seems to encourage companies to compete."
|
| The problem imo is less about transparency and more about
| information asymmetry. It's asymmetrical that companies have
| access to literally what every other company is offering, while
| the employee is sitting there trying to guess based on
| glassdoor (which is utter shit information) and levels.fyi
| (marginally less shit?).
| jmull wrote:
| > Companies clearly have a strong collective incentive to
| lower wages.
|
| Of course they all have an incentive to pay the lowest wages
| they can. I did not think we needed to state that.
|
| But what I don't see here is a synchronizing mechanism. That
| is, what here will push companies to *collectively offer
| below average salaries on average* vs above average salaries
| on average?
|
| > ...Collude to keep average wages low, so that when they
| offer outliers "above-average" it is still cheaper to cross
| that many standard deviations.
|
| Yes, companies _could_ collude. CEOs and HR managers of a
| range of companies in an area or industry _could_ start an
| email chain, or conference call, or slack channel and commit
| to keeping their average offers at 45th percentile or lower.
| That 's collusion, and illegal.
|
| But is that what Pave is offering? What's the communication
| channel or other synchronization signal they are providing? A
| chat channel? Bonuses for companies that keep their average
| offers below average? Penalties for companies don't? IDK,
| perhaps there is some collusion mechanism they provide, but
| we should not just imagine there's one without a reason.
|
| > The problem imo is less about transparency and more about
| information asymmetry.
|
| Sure, yes. But that's something different than collusion to
| fix wages. That's an argument that we want organizations like
| Pave, but ones that will provide the same data to job
| seekers.
| bsilvereagle wrote:
| You may also be interested in the Work Number product:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753
| atrettel wrote:
| I have never heard of Pave before, but this just sounds like yet
| another copy of Equifax's "The Work Number" [1]. Basically, HR at
| many companies gives your salary and employment history data to
| Equifax, who then sells access to the information to certain
| parties with supposed need to access it, including potential and
| current employers and creditors. This report is likely one of the
| most invasive consumer files out there for many people.
|
| I cannot comment on the legality of this kind of data sharing,
| but as I and others have pointed out, it has existed for a while.
| I do agree that it is concerning. You can freeze your Equifax The
| Work Number report at least, just like other credit reports.
|
| [1] https://theworknumber.com/
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I downloaded a personal report from the work number website and
| found to my horror that my employer was reporting _every.
| single. paystub._ gross and net, to equifax.
|
| That felt like a huge breach of privacy. Given that equifax had
| already proven incompetent at keeping my data secure, I
| immediately sent HR a request to stop sending my supposedly
| 'confidential' pay info. They politely told me to kick rocks,
| so I went on TWN's website and froze that report so _no one_
| would be able to request it, and it will be a cold day in hell
| before I thaw it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Don't ever work in the public sector then. Your salary is
| public record, open to anyone who is curious enough to look.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I think that's widely understood and part of the job
| description of being a public servant. What's not widely
| understood is HR secretly selling your data while working
| at a private company.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Yeah I used to work for the navy. Pay was standardized
| under the GS pay schedule and anybody could have looked
| that up. I was fine with that.
|
| In the private sector, your comp is determined by a
| negotiation undermined by an asymmetric information
| disparity. HR at a hiring company has way more
| information around market comp _as it is_ without having
| your _exact_ current comp when they make an offer.
|
| What I find particularly egregious about this is that
| management at this company had admonished me that my comp
| was 'confidential' and that I shouldn't discuss it, while
| simultaneously selling it to equifax.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Some jobs fall under this "public sector" transparency
| but work much more like a private employer when it comes
| to salary negotiation. For example a state university
| recruits staff and negotiates compensation much like a
| private employer (no equity options of course) but your
| salary will be public if you are hired.
| samus wrote:
| There are countries (Sweden IIRC) where the salary record
| is public, probably to eliminate this information
| asymmetry.
| worstspotgain wrote:
| Finland has National Jealousy Day:
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/finland-has-just-
| publ...
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > your data
|
| Is it yours though? The employer could probably argue
| that it's theirs. Devil's advocate: I think it's widely
| understood that entities can be transparent with their
| data if they choose, other than NDA scenarios.
| Retric wrote:
| Most companies request people not share pay information.
| Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.
| dcrazy wrote:
| Such a "requirement" is illegal.
| https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-
| right...
| skyyler wrote:
| And pot was illegal in the 70s.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| It still is.
| ghaff wrote:
| At the US federal level. It may or may not be illegal at
| the state level--and is regulated in any case.
| vkou wrote:
| They can request it, but can't stop you if you do.
|
| You can also request them to do likewise, with similar
| recourse.
|
| A request is nothing without teeth behind it.
| klingoff wrote:
| Teeth like employment at-will?
| vkou wrote:
| It's generally quite _unlikely_ that sharing your salary
| is going to result in getting bitten by that. You 'd need
| to do labour organization (or be completely surrounded by
| rats and snitches and other vermin at your workplace, who
| already have an axe to grind) to actually get blowback
| for this stuff.
|
| Most of the taboo around it is cultural, because people
| here attach their self-worth to their paycheck.
|
| You could also always do it anonymously or
| pseudonymously. You'd have almost no chances of
| retaliation in that case.
| klingoff wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32216332
| vkou wrote:
| The singular of anecdote is not data. Getting hit by
| lightning is also unlikely, but it happens to thousands
| of people every year.
|
| That doesn't mean I'll be flying a kite in a
| thunderstorm, but it also doesn't mean that you should
| lock yourself in a bunker the moment the sky turns grey.
|
| Most of the taboo around this is cultural, not
| retributive.
| klingoff wrote:
| Firing people at will includes firing them because you
| got the feeling they may be behaving in any way in any
| situation perhaps in conflict to any request you made.
| Odds are someone won't get fired for stealing office
| supplies and in at will place they may be more often
| fired for misunderstandings related to a misperception
| where they don't come clean on something they never did.
|
| That there was no way to sue the company in that example
| is a demonstration that the employee lacked any right to
| break any taboo.
|
| As such there are teeth anywhere that is at will for any
| request whether it is reasonable or not and whether it
| relates to a taboo the employee may be expected to have
| or not.
| qwytw wrote:
| Isn't being dismissed because of something like that and
| being able to prove it is a bit like winning a lottery?
| yencabulator wrote:
| Basically the _only_ advantage an employee can have in
| this sort of negotiation is not needing to be employed by
| that company.
| mcherm wrote:
| But in the US, federal labor law makes it illegal for
| employers to prevent employees from sharing pay
| information (at least for employees who are entitled to
| unionize).
| ghaff wrote:
| I never have but I have never been told I couldn't share
| pay information. Certainly I have with my accountant and
| financial advisor. I've also been asked when applying for
| a new job whether or not I've been 100% forthcoming.
| GTP wrote:
| Well, if we're discussing whose data it is the
| information about how much _I_ pay _you_ , even from a
| devi's advocate perspective, you can't do better than
| arguing that this data pertains to both of us. So we
| should share the property of that data somehow. I don't
| see how you could argue that that data would be solely
| the employer's data.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| If I administer a survey, collect responses, and put them
| into a spreadsheet, is the data in that spreadsheet not
| mine despite the fact that it consists of things that
| other people told me? I can't share it without the
| permission of those surveyed, assuming I didn't promise
| not to?
| willcipriano wrote:
| Technically sure, but the sort of people who live that
| way don't get invited out anywhere.
| GTP wrote:
| It really depends on which kind of data you're
| collecting. If you're collecting health related data that
| is linkable to the people it pertains to, the GDPR would
| prevent you from sharing that data with third parties
| without one of the admissible legal basis, the most
| common of which is the consent of the people whose data
| you collected. In the case of health data, maybe even USA
| laws would prevent you from sharing it.
|
| Edit: it is now some time since I studied the GDPR, so
| I'm actually unsure if, for healt-related data, it can be
| used any legal basis other than consent. The reason being
| that health, together with a few other categories, has
| special protections.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| These are answered questions. If you are talking about
| the raw data, you have to get the respondents to agree
| that their answers become your property (either
| implicitly or explicitly, there are rules around both),
| or no, you do not own the data in the spreadsheet.
| wavemode wrote:
| A key distinction is that people need employment. People
| don't need to fill out surveys. That's why there are many
| things companies aren't allowed to require of their
| employees, that they are allowed to require of other
| parties.
|
| So while, in many jurisdictions, it's fine for companies
| to sell data collected on their employees, and it could
| be argued that those employees consented to this data
| sharing by working there, one could also easily argue for
| an employee protection law that prevents companies from
| requiring their employees to consent to this.
| abeppu wrote:
| ... should companies be nervous about this also though?
| Is the decision for their payroll info to be visible to
| unknown buyers an intentional, well-considered one? Is
| this effectively leaking potentially strategically
| important info?
|
| Like, I haven't seen this happen, but could a recruiting
| team buy the compensation data on staff at a competing
| firm, identify those that look like a good deal, and
| poach them starting with a "we'll offer you k% more than
| your current employer"?
|
| Could market analysts use this data to notice when a
| company starts firing more people, or starts giving
| fewer/smaller raises? What if the next time your company
| showed up in a Gartner or Forrester report, it came along
| with a caveat "however given decreased investment in
| staff, their pace of product development or quality of
| client services may be at risk."
| samus wrote:
| The employer requires this data to do payroll correctly.
| Apart from that, it sound only be used for expressly
| authorized purposes. But maybe that's a european GDPR-
| influenced way of seeing this issue.
| mapt wrote:
| In a market-first values system, where we rely on the
| labor market to largely self-regulate given the promises
| that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us,
| colluding on wages like this should lead to scorched-
| earth retribution from the FTC.
|
| Not "Oh hey there, you're not allowed to do that, stop
| that", but "We are diluting your stock by a quarter and
| distributing it to your workers" type shit.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I find it amusing/ annoying how there's this flip-flop
| between:
|
| 1. "Regulation is bad, because a free market will be
| optimally efficient once everybody knows all the prices
| and deals."
|
| 2. "Regulation is bad, because cartels and collusion are
| not a threat since defectors will bring them down through
| their freedom to make secret prices and deals."
|
| Can't have it both ways simultaneously.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Does my personal health information belong to my doctor?
| Not according to HIPAA, at least not in a way that gives
| the doctor control over selling it. While my pay is
| currently not protected by similar regulation, it seems
| like the kind of protection regulation similar to HIPAA
| could defensibly target.
| xenocratus wrote:
| Your personal health information is information that
| pertains to you and you only. Your compensation is part
| of a contract between yourself and your employer, hence
| why both parties have to sign it, and why both parties
| have ownership over it.
|
| Not arguing that payroll information can't be protected,
| my only point was that your comparison was off.
| treypitt wrote:
| Because hospitals and clinics don't care or record the
| treatment they provide?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm not saying it is currently the case that I own my
| compensation number, I'm saying it's not impossible to
| imagine creating regulation to make that happen.
| tptacek wrote:
| Why would that be a widely understood part of the job
| description? Almost every American teacher, firefighter,
| planner, street engineer, health inspector, police
| officer, train conductor, bus driver, along with the
| managers, office administrative staff, janitors, and
| groundskeepers that support those activities are public
| sector employees. What do they have in common that would
| suggest they deserve less privacy than you do?
|
| Most of these jobs are not special or meaningfully
| "public". They're just normal jobs for firms that happen
| to be public bodies. I don't think it's at all obvious
| that people are knowingly and deliberately making these
| tradeoffs by working there.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >What do they have in common that would suggest they
| deserve less privacy than you do?
|
| That they receive their salary from the tax payer, the
| public _is their employer_ , and it'd be pretty odd if
| your employer didn't know what they paid you. They're
| executive organs of the state, police and firefighters,
| unlike private workers, also don't get to choose what
| laws they enforce or what fires they put out. If you're a
| civil servant you obviously forego most of the rights of
| private sector workers in exchange for usually lifetime
| employment and set pay rates.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think it's odd that we get to know what bus
| drivers get paid, but I don't think there's any special
| grand bargain to these jobs that make the privacy
| implications less significant. If we get to know what the
| janitor at my village hall makes, I have a lot less of a
| problem with Equifax knowing how much more Python
| developers make.
| qwytw wrote:
| Usually they all get paid more or less the same since
| compensation is directly tied to the job title/rank and
| other public criteria. This information (in aggregate)
| shouldn't ever be non-public (under any circumstances)
| due to obvious reason. So even if your specific
| salary/wage is not published anyone who knows what's your
| specific title/job would be able to estimate it somewhat
| accurately.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| or live in Sweden (where your earnings as well as your
| address and property, car or pet ownership are public
| record)
| f1shy wrote:
| I've read about that. Is ipen to ANYbody? Is there a
| link?
|
| Thanks
| Wytwwww wrote:
| IIRC in Norway at least everyone (who lives there) can
| check it but your name will be recorded and visible to
| that person.
| zdp7 wrote:
| The information available via the public record is not as
| detailed (typically annual salary)and not definitively tied
| to any person. The Work Number is tied to your SSN and is
| much more detailed than the public record (each paycheck
| and a breakdown of different compensation).
| gperkins978 wrote:
| In the US, most municipalities will publish each
| employee's compensation every year. You can literally
| look them up by name.
| zdp7 wrote:
| I think this is a little off, in that the data isn't
| coming from the various government entities or at least
| isn't required to be provided. I know at least in
| California most of the info is gathered by third parties
| using FOIA requests. It's also not associated with a SSN
| and just typically gives the annual compensation with
| limited categories. The Work Number on the other hand
| gets paycheck level details. Considering the data would
| be useless without a unique identifier, SSN is sent with
| it. Using The Work Number data, you could see pay period
| granularity changes to their compensation.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Here is what Washington State does:
|
| https://fiscal.wa.gov/Staffing/Salaries
|
| Literally every single State employee's salary is listed
| here.
| gperkins978 wrote:
| Public servants do not make enough money to be useful
| targets. The meaningful threat comes from large
| compensation tied to other asset information (tying an
| online person to that income, not difficult). You can buy
| lists of these already tied up and ready to download for
| your scheming pleasure. From English Rolex robbers to
| Florida kidnappers, they all enjoy the data.
|
| I do not think it can be stopped, but the days when a
| wealthy person could safely live in a suburb and have the
| kids imagine that they are middle class is long gone. It is
| terrifying. The best thing for a wealthy discrete person to
| do is move to Singapore or Australia, or somewhere with a
| sufficiently low crime rate to feel comfortable, or get
| quality security, which sucks.
| fragmede wrote:
| The security minded can move to a gated community, which
| are all over the place and have existed for a very long
| time, and don't require moving to Singapore or Australia
| to live in one.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I can't see a gated community being much of a deterrent
| to a gang of kidnappers sophisticated enough to use these
| services to find potential victims. Maybe if the gate has
| armed guards and a strict "no tailgating" policy with ID
| checks etc.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| There's a whole industry for protection of high net worth
| individuals. The financially minded ex military special
| forces folks can often find lucrative jobs on places like
| silent professionals earning on the order of 500-1500$ a
| DAY for close protection of the kinds of folks who would
| be targeted for this stuff.
|
| Example: https://silentprofessionals.org/jobs/protection-
| agents-liais...
| qwytw wrote:
| Which is fine. The problem is the imbalance of information
| and therefore bargaining power between workers and
| employers. With this information salary negotiation is like
| playing poker with your cards open so only thing it does is
| depress wages.
|
| That's not a problem for the public sector because both
| sides can see it and there is no real negotiation (you
| still save time/money by not having to go thought the
| interview process to figure out your potential
| compensation).
| Yizahi wrote:
| The problem is not public salary. In EU multiple countries
| have it public with noe issues to anyone. I'm outside of EU
| and also have my data public due to owning an LLC.
|
| The problem is identity fraud, and evil corpos like equifax
| plus some weird laws facilitate it way too much on a giant
| scale. This is what's infuriating.
| iav wrote:
| I am an investor in equifax. Let me clear up a misconception
| on where the data comes from. Half the data comes from large
| enterprise customers, who "sell" the data in exchange for
| Equifax doing I-9 verification for free. The other half comes
| from 39 payroll companies. Every single payroll company
| except for Rippling and Gusto sell paystub data to Euifax.
| (Rippling will start next year). Those are exclusive revenue
| share deals. You cannot be a competitive payroll provider
| without the revenue share from Equifax. So before you blame
| your employer, they might not be selling it directly and even
| if they opted out, your payroll company will sell it anyway.
| dsr_ wrote:
| You make an excellent argument here for tight regulation of
| the industry.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| ... and the usage?
|
| Most highly-paid people have no idea how much privilege
| this affords them.
|
| You wonder why so many businesses are nice to you? It's
| because they've already looked you up and know you've got
| a high income and are a millionaire.
|
| Write a personal check for your next automobile? Sure
| thing, you can drive it off the lot a few minutes later.
| They won't even bother cashing the check for a week or
| two.
|
| Try doing something like that as an hourly worker, even
| if you've got the money in the bank.
| Guvante wrote:
| The finance companies are nice enough that it doesn't
| really matter.
|
| Bought mine with cash but realized it was Sunday and I
| didn't have a way to get a cashier's check from a savings
| account.
|
| They offered to put the down payment on a credit card and
| finance. Paid it off once I had access to the account.
|
| Ended up being a wash, the points were worth a little
| more than the percentage charge.
| dsr_ wrote:
| This is the view from a bubble I am not familiar with,
| and really don't care about.
| fragmede wrote:
| Personal check? You can buy a car in full with a credit
| card if you pass the vibe check.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| A personal check is much less secure because it's not
| linked up to the network anti fraud systems.
| gperkins978 wrote:
| This is also why certain homes get hit in high-end
| burglary crews. There are multiple crews hitting those
| who purchase precious metals with physical delivery (like
| gold American Eagle coins). It is not all positive.
| Considering how few victims even bother to report such
| crimes, it is terrifying.
|
| From what I understand from my cousin, a career criminal,
| there are entire theft rings working off of databases
| such as these. He knew mostly of car-related theft rings,
| but I hear about safe-cracking burglaries quite often,
| usually stealing Rolex watches or precious metals.
| richardw wrote:
| That feels like it should be its own post. But be safe
| out there.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Why? They could also target wealthy neighborhoods with
| pretty much the same outcome.
| theendisney wrote:
| And if they dont have the data they can monitor behavior
| towards you from those who do have it. Those who get to
| drive of with their new car vs those who may not.
| soared wrote:
| What? Criminal gangs have access to databases of
| purchasers of jewelry and precious metals? Then they B+E,
| safecrack, and rob them? That's an insane claim to make
| without any source besides your cousin.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| No thank you. I value my privacy and my negotiating
| ability more than I value a 'service' I didn't even ask
| for.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Nobody asked for it. But it's part of the world we live
| in. And we're all walking around oblivious to the
| advantages and disadvantages it gives us.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| We shouldn't be oblivious to those advantages and
| disadvantages, since then we can't decide as a society
| whether those advantages and disadvantages should remain
| or be altered. That alone is a good reason to regulate
| this away.
|
| Or at the very least, require Equifax to send free
| physical mail notifications to everyone when their data
| is accessed, stating when, by whom, why, and what answer
| was given. (Physical mail because there's no other
| predictable way for the general population.) Yes, I
| realize this would be financially unsustainable for
| Equifax as they currently operate, but that's their
| problem to solve. Even as someone who myself has
| excellent credit and many years of high income in my
| file, they're creepy and shouldn't be catered to at the
| expense of our privacy.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| True, but when do you even have it explained. Last time I
| was purchasing a car for wife, the clerk simply made a
| crack about how my information is now all theirs ( I
| forgot the exact phrasing ). And those are people who are
| motivated to make sure you buy so thus incentivized to
| make sure you are not put off.
|
| And don't even get me started on an average person. I get
| blank stares when I go on a privacy rant. At best, they
| simply do not have time to care.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| That sounds like the most unappealing exchange
| imaginable. Yes, let me lose both bargaining power with
| new jobs while simultaneously painting a target on my
| back, all in exchange for companies being more willing to
| take my money.
| oblio wrote:
| > Write a personal check for your next automobile?
|
| Personal check? What year is this?!? :-)
| duderific wrote:
| I did this for my recent automobile purchase. It's very
| convenient from my perspective to simply write a check
| and hand it to them.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| But why not just pay by card, that must be even easier?
| MatthewMcDonald wrote:
| Many (most?) dealerships have a policy of not accepting
| more than a few thousand dollars on a credit card, they
| don't want to pay the fee
| ghaff wrote:
| My regular dealership even has a card surcharge for
| service these days. Given the rebate I get it's pretty
| much a no-care for smallish bills. But when I bought the
| car from another dealer was a bit surprised I didn't need
| to run to the bank to get a certified check.
| ac29 wrote:
| I recently bought a car and they were happy to let me put
| up to 100% of the purchase on a card so long as I paid
| the card processing fee (something like 2 or 3%).
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think they can just run it as debit. That's what they
| did for my down payment when I bought a new vehicle this
| past June.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I'm not going to pay by card for a huge purchase, and
| have the card company take 3% off the top. That's just a
| dick move when you can just write a check that does the
| same thing.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why would I care if I'm not paying for the surcharge and
| I get a rebate from it? I've had a few large purchases
| recently where a credit card was the norm. If the
| business prefers a check that's fine too. I'm not going
| to push it. It's just business. A lot of businesses want
| my money and are happy to take a credit card number which
| is often simpler for them. I don't know their costs
| associated with handling checks and it's not really my
| concern.
| ghaff wrote:
| I did this 2 years ago. I write personal checks all the
| time (although many are actually "written" by my bank in
| the US).
| yencabulator wrote:
| It's USA and the context is banking, so the current year
| is still somewhere in the 1970s.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Now _this_ is some remarkable gymnastics. Are you also an
| investor in Equifax or have some other financial interest
| in similar services? If not, I 'm very curious to hear
| how you tied yourself into this knot.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I find that I have struck a nerve with some folks.
|
| I have no connection with the industry at all. But that
| doesn't prevent me from understanding the implications.
|
| Equifax does this stuff because it is profitable. It is
| profitable because companies buy it. Companies buy it
| because they can put the information to use for their
| benefit. In doing so, some consumers are harmed and
| others benefit.
|
| Also, for the record: I don't often buy cars, but when I
| do I choose the best financial option. Sometimes that
| would be financing, other time it would be writing a
| check. One factor that everyone should consider it that
| your free time has a higher dollar-per-hour value than
| your work time.
| codingdave wrote:
| If you get your personal data report, you'll see that it
| tells you who looked you up. It is not every business
| you've worked with. It is not even every background check
| that has been done on you.
|
| I'm not saying that rich people do not have privilege -
| they do. But it isn't because your local car dealer
| looked up your earnings data.
| akira2501 wrote:
| You wonder why so many businesses are mean to you? It's
| because they've already looked you up and believe from
| the data that you won't be a good customer.
|
| The dealership can also just call the bank to verify
| funds. Which would be reasonable and non-discriminatory
| all without needing a third party and wouldn't involve
| your salary at any level. Aside from this it's the
| financing company that cares, not the dealership, who
| only wants the car off their floor credit plan.
|
| So what you're saying is it _shouldn't_ matter if you
| have money, because if you're a low income earner, you
| should be treated poorly, and you're happy to be
| personally invested in a system which creates this
| outcome.
|
| It not only should be regulated but you should feel a
| little gross for saying any of this outloud.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Fuck that.
|
| "Oh, aren't you _happy_ we live in a world where the rich
| are explicitly treated better because they carry around a
| big sign saying 'I am rich' when interacting with
| corporations?" No. I am not.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| When has that world never existed and when will it cease
| to exist?
| Arelius wrote:
| Do you have a sense of why, according to you Gusto will
| remain the only company that doesn't sell payroll data to
| Equifax?
| jnwatson wrote:
| Gusto is still pre-revenue?
| drwl wrote:
| Gusto is not pre-revenue, it has $500M+ in arr
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/27/gusto-remote-
| deal-500m-rev...
| dawnerd wrote:
| Seems like something gusto can turn into a marketing
| point. Surely there's a desire for a privacy respecting
| payroll/hr platform.
| anomaly_ wrote:
| The actual buyers of payroll software don't care and if
| you think people are going to evaluate their potential
| employer based on what payroll solution they use, you are
| wrong.
| zo1 wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something... If the data doesn't come
| from the employer, then how does the "payroll" company get
| it?
| maxwell wrote:
| Sounds like Gusto is the only acceptable option then.
| Thanks for the info!
| hammock wrote:
| Can I opt out thru the payroll company?
| lxgr wrote:
| > even if they opted out, your payroll company will sell it
| anyway
|
| Surely that can't be legal?
| uriah wrote:
| Many if not most companies outsource employment verification
| to The Work Number. When you get a new job, a frozen report
| will complicate your background check.
|
| They don't give out salary info in employment checks though.
| AFAIK they require your explicit permission except for
| government agencies who use it to verify your eligibility for
| benefits. I would be surprised if they are not selling
| aggregate salary data though
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| If they want my info, they can ask me. I would rather them
| not have this info before an offer is made.
| uriah wrote:
| That's normally how it goes. At least, I've always had
| the background check happen after an offer is signed.
| It's usually a separate company and they just report back
| whether your job titles/employment dates match your
| resume
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know how common it actually is. I've always
| provided references and probably OKd a background check
| but post-school my few jobs have always been through
| people I knew and there was really no reason to run a
| check except fr pro-forma reasons.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| 22 states currently have salary history bans. You can save
| the trouble of jumping through Equifax's hoops if you have
| that protection.
| Panini_Jones wrote:
| As a datapoint for how I've seen this used in the real world,
| I've spoken to startups who will defer to Pave regarding how
| much they'll offer to pay. The startup I spoke to said 'We pay
| you the 85th percentile for your YOE and role based on Pave
| data'.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Then I want 99th.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Considering the median tech startup employee is already
| above average, I think the 99th percentile, and above,
| really only belongs to literal, bonafide, geniuses...
| azemetre wrote:
| Is this true? I look at jobs on well found and most
| startups pay worse salaries than what I was making at
| insurance companies. Not too mention the worse benefits
| that they appear to offer as well.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| *Tech startups in the SF Bay Area, who have employees
| physically located in the same.
| abhisharma2 wrote:
| In case folks want to quickly know how to start a freeze, heres
| the info from the website:
|
| To communicate a freeze request, send an email to the address
| below requesting a Freeze Placement Form: TWNFreeze@equifax.com
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Pave is a company that has been snapping up other existing
| companies that performed this kind of aggregation of
| compensation data. Basically companies look at this
| benchmarking data to figure out what they should pay for
| different jobs and levels. Just some extent companies genuinely
| need this kind of data to figure out what to do. But I also
| think it breaks supply and demand. Companies are not
| discovering price of labor but just using each other's signals
| to decide what to pay collectively
|
| https://www.pave.com/blog-posts/announcing-paves-series-c-an...
| jnwatson wrote:
| I froze the report, and I also told my employer not to report
| anything to Equifax (which luckily my employer allows).
|
| This made getting approved for a mortgage more difficult. These
| days, loan officers just expect to be able to hit a button and
| get all your info.
|
| We're losing the privacy battle.
| p1esk wrote:
| Loan officers typically want to see bank account balance,
| paystubs, and tax records.
| no_wizard wrote:
| These services feel not dissimilar to the Realpagr case that is
| ongoing now with rent price fixing.
|
| How does this ultimately not end up having a depressing impact
| on salaries?
| immibis wrote:
| It does depress salaries, which is the point.
| idbehold wrote:
| The freeze is mostly ineffective for when you actually want it
| to work. From what I remember (even for the credit freezes) is
| that if you provide written consent to, say, a background
| check, then that overrides your freeze. So if you're applying
| for a job (basically the major instance where you'd want your
| salary information private) they're going to ask for your
| consent to do a background check and bingo they'll know how
| much money you make.
|
| IMO this type of information should be illegal to sell or
| request.
| briffle wrote:
| I just signed up to see what they have on me.
|
| I love that they have ALL my personal info, but I can't create
| an account with a password longer than 16 characters.. Why the
| heck are they not storing the hash?
|
| Great security.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| "I'm an employee looking for my data". Links to
| https://employees.theworknumber.com/
|
| Spits out 403 error forbidden
|
| Gosh, that's awful.
| jasode wrote:
| Competitors making similar price adjustments _or salary
| adjustments_ based on seeing each other 's _public announcements
| or sharing data_ is legal:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion
|
| That's why it's "legal tacit collusion" when one leading law firm
| announces salary increases _and other law firms immediately match
| it_ : https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/large-law-
| firms-...
|
| That type of salary matching has been happening for decades.
|
| What's illegal is _competitors making agreements with each other
| to set wages_ -- via secret emails, etc.
| nowyoudont wrote:
| Huh, this tacit collusion being legal thing is mind boggling.
|
| The law firm example seems imperfect though. Publicly
| announcing that you're raising salaries isn't really the same
| as internally sharing that data and choosing to set the same
| salary based on that.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Huh, this tacit collusion being legal thing is mind
| boggling.
|
| Not really ... If you're looking to hire workers in a
| particular region, how do you know what a competitive wage
| is? Well ... you look at what similar firms are paying their
| workers. How do you know what similar firms are paying their
| workers? You read surveys, industry reports, public
| statements, etc.
|
| Nothing about any of that means you cannot offer a higher or
| lower salary for the same position.
| ghaff wrote:
| Information is either internally confidential or it's not. If
| the latter then it's very reasonable to expect other firms to
| take actions based on that information.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but the information here is not public, since it's being
| sold as a service.
|
| If it were public, employees and job seekers would also have
| the information.
| qwytw wrote:
| > when one leading law firm announces salary increases and
| other law firms immediately match it
|
| Because it's public so doesn't reduce the amount of bargaining
| power employes have and therefore distort the market. Which is
| the main problem here.
| darby_nine wrote:
| There's a lot of technically legal anti-competitive behavior. We
| need our legislators to get off their asses and legislate.
| billjings wrote:
| As described, it is a fair ways away from what RealPage is doing.
| Specifically:
|
| * RealPage sells raising rents, not just market info.
|
| * RealPage pressures clients into taking their higher rents.
|
| * RealPage also pressure clients to refuse to rent at lower rates
| for their own narrow economic interest - in other words, they
| actively seek to circumvent competitive pressure to keep rents
| high. (edit: to clarify, I mean they discourage lowering rent to
| attract a renter)
|
| Pave does sound like it gives businesses a leg up over employees
| in wage negotiations, but until it e.g. starts promising clients
| that they will be able to pay lower salaries, the critical
| element of coordination won't be in the mix. Pave gives you the
| data, but you can still choose to pay above market to attract
| talent.
| __loam wrote:
| What's the point of getting this data if it's not to pay less
| money? What is the value add?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| To pay more money.
| Retric wrote:
| The limit on pay is the amount of money they can budget to
| the position not what other people are paying.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| And how do they arrive at the budgeted number? Lots of
| companies want to ensure they are paying a sufficiently
| high number to get sufficiently capable employees in a
| competitive market. While many (including me) find things
| like Pave gross, it's not a one way street, they can push
| wages up.
| Retric wrote:
| You're thinking of the actual budget for a position not
| what a company could in theory budget.
|
| A small businesses owner who pays themselves whatever is
| left over after expenses doesn't care about what other
| companies pay, the company only has so much money. Apple
| could increase salaries up to the point where they make
| zero profit, but the goal is profit maximization not
| salary maximization.
|
| It's fundamentally the attempt to limit salaries that
| causes companies to look at the overall market.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Small business owners aren't the target market and are
| likely to not use such a product.
|
| Hiring well is hard - it's not super obvious if you
| aren't paying enough or your company isn't desirable or
| what else is the cause of not seeing good candidates.
| While in theory you could solve that by wildly
| overpaying, in practice you have to be able to justify
| your decision to higher ups in most cases, and pointing
| to a tool that shows what you really need to pay to get
| good people can be very helpful. I still find it gross,
| but, there are practical situations where it will drive
| salaries higher.
| Retric wrote:
| > justify your decision to higher ups
|
| What you just described is speeding up a process not
| increasing wages.
|
| If a company simply isn't offering enough money they
| aren't going to get the workers they want. Which then
| forces the company to either go without or increase their
| compensation, just like how every other market works.
|
| > your company isn't desirable or what else is the cause
|
| The clearest example of this principle is companies
| eventually learn they need to pay the asshole tax. Market
| research may suggest X is a reasonable number, but they
| simply don't get enough people without paying
| appropriately.
|
| > will drive salaries higher
|
| It will drive some offers higher and get workers sooner,
| but an offer not accepted is a salary that doesn't exist.
| dmattia wrote:
| It's almost certainly for the companies to pay less money,
| but with a more generous reading, I think it could be argued
| that that doesn't necessarily have to come out of employee
| salaries. That data could be used to:
|
| - Set reasonable ranges to find the right candidates they are
| looking for faster and minimize hiring friction
|
| - Standardize payment levels in a way that reduces legal
| liability in certain states like Colorado/California. Or the
| most generous reading of "reduces legal liability" would be
| "promoting fairness".
|
| - Reduce the time spent by HR/other teams of negotiating or
| setting salaries, as they can simply target some target like
| "we want to pay more than 60% of companies like us"
|
| - For budgeting/forecasting with new hires, this allows
| companies to have more confidence in their estimates as they
| plan hiring.
|
| - Some companies now offer calculators even before you're
| hired with what your salary/compensation might look like,
| such as https://posthog.com/handbook/people/compensation
|
| But yes, overall I do believe that most companies also expect
| a general reduction in salaries when they use these tools.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I routinely get emails like "we'd like to hire you as our
| CTO, and because we just got a bunch of VC money, we're
| prepared to offer you a generous comp package of up to
| $90,000 salary plus .05% equity! Must be onsite in San
| Francisco."
|
| If they were aware of market rates, they could avoid making
| potential candidates laugh at them.
| __loam wrote:
| Founding engineer is the biggest ripoff in tech.
| kstrauser wrote:
| But... but... they already did the hard part of coming up
| with the _idea!_ All you have to do is code it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > plus .05% equity!
|
| "Dilution? What? Stop worrying about made-up words and
| let's go _change the world!_ "
| kstrauser wrote:
| That actually made me shudder.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Because it's just as much to pay _more_ money and get the
| employees you want.
|
| When you don't know what the market is paying, you're liable
| to lowball offers and refuse to raise them, and not get the
| employees you want.
|
| If you know market rates, you can provide reasonable first
| offers, or have a more accurate idea of how high you should
| go.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Which would be perfectly fine if you made this completely
| transparent and made the same information available to your
| applicants. Them not knowing the market rates (at least not
| even remotely as accurately) puts them at a significant
| disadvantage and you can't expect that most company won't
| exploit because it would be irrational to do that.
| ars wrote:
| Yah, that's the main difference: RealPage pressured landlords
| (i.e. tracked then) if they did not raise rents based on its
| recommendations.
|
| If they had limited themselves to simply reporting the numbers,
| and letting landlords make their own decisions they would
| probably be legal.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _RealPage pressures clients_
|
| To be clear, they're not "pressuring" them, they simply drop
| clients as a rule who don't use their suggested rent prices at
| least 80% of the time.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Now that is interesting. I personally find the difference
| almost without meaning, BUT I am very curious. What is the
| incentive for them to do this? To they get a point off of the
| increase?
| swampthing wrote:
| I have to say I am pretty surprised to see the negative
| sentiments toward Pave and salary benchmarking data in general
| here. Why is the assumption that salaries would always be lower
| given this data? It seems just as likely to inform companies that
| what they had in mind is below market or that they are under-
| compensating someone in light of market changes.
| stray wrote:
| Obviously, this sort of information would always be used for
| good.
| swampthing wrote:
| Because information has to be used for good or bad and never
| both?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I've never run a company and probably have a chip on my
| shoulder, but I also think that it's a reasonable assumption
| that most employers want to pay as little as possible.
| swampthing wrote:
| I guess my point is that without some sort of sense of the
| market, whether through Pave or something else, the
| motivation to pay as little as possible may lead some
| employers to have lower salary ranges than they would
| otherwise.
| vasco wrote:
| A company doesn't need to know they are under compensating for
| a role from a third party. They'll find out by the quality and
| number of applicants pretty fast. I've seen this in practice
| directly when we couldn't hire for certain roles, raised the
| range, filled the spots.
|
| On the other hand, to know that other companies are paying
| lower and still able to deliver roughly the same work is harder
| unless you know how much they are paying.
| swampthing wrote:
| I have to disagree. If you're not getting quality applicants,
| how do you know if that's because of your salary range, the
| default applicant pool, or something idiosyncratic to your
| company?
|
| If you're a new startup founder, you don't always have a good
| sense of what the default applicant pool should look like.
| You might have a sense of what quality looks like but how
| would you know without recruiting experience what the mix of
| quality to non-quality applicants is supposed to be? There
| are many reasons why you might not be getting the number of
| quality applicants you want, and compensation is just one of
| them. Salary benchmarking data helps eliminate that as a
| possible cause.
| vasco wrote:
| Because when we raised the range it fixed the problem.
| swampthing wrote:
| I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about people in
| general.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| I think it's a pretty safe assumption that a company paying to
| gain information that gives them an advantage in negotiation
| isn't going to freely give up that advantage.
| swampthing wrote:
| You're assuming that the only reason to pay for Pave is to
| get a negotiation advantage. My point is that there are other
| reasons, for example, to make sure that you're not below
| market.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Sounds very illegal.
| flerchin wrote:
| It shouldn't be, and neither should The Work Number.
| dboreham wrote:
| This already existed for decades. It's called "Radford".
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Sharing data about wages, I think, is not wage-fixing. Agreeing
| not to go higher than a particular wage is. What got RealPage
| into trouble was the fact that, in order to use the system, you
| HAD to use their algorithm for selecting rental prices. You
| entered into a legal agreement not to compete on the prices that
| RealPage provided.
| greenthrow wrote:
| IANAL so i don't know the actual legality, but it certainly seems
| like it should be. Definitely immoral.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| The overwhelming question I have when reading these responses is
| "don't you guys read salary survey data when you're looking for a
| new job, or at annual review time?"
| amelius wrote:
| But then we're not sharing other people's personal information.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Isn't levels.fyi or similar just the employee side of the
| coin?
| blast wrote:
| Are they actually sharing personal information? From the OP
| it sounds like they're sharing aggregate data. (I've never
| heard of Pave.)
| nowyoudont wrote:
| But the salary data that's available online to me as an
| employee is imperfect and extremely limited. This would be like
| if every employee of a major company sent their exact salary
| and demographic information to levels.fyi, which would never
| happen because it's an insane sacrifice of privacy
| cess11 wrote:
| I'm not sure about the legal aspects in your jurisdiction but in
| many others it is common for unions to aggregate this information
| and there are usually companies that do this or hook into the
| books and compare what different companies are paying for
| services and material they use that then sell back information
| about whether they could cut costs.
| znpy wrote:
| The "funny" thing really is the fact that most company forbid you
| from discussing your wages with your coworkers, but this seems
| like an automated way for companies to discuss the salaries they
| pay with other companies.
| toolslive wrote:
| > most companies forbid you from discussing your wages ....
|
| Yes, but this interdiction might not be legal. Companies
| typically add such clauses to achieve a chilling effect. (Ie,
| you abide because you fear running a risk if you don't).
| Consult your legal representative.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| From a US perspective, if Pave existed in a market where salaries
| weren't transparent, I would say yes, it's veering into being an
| anti-competitive/wage-fixing tool.
|
| However, more and more states every year are introducing laws
| that require salary ranges on job listings. What that means is
| that Pave is basically just organizing the data that's already
| becoming public for job applicants and employers alike.
| evtothedev wrote:
| FWIW, I believe that Pave works to raise engineering salaries.
| Every company wants to say, "We pay above the 50% mark", thereby
| steadily raising it over time.
| mydogcanpurr wrote:
| FWIW, I believe RealPage works to lower rent. Every landlord
| wants to say, "We charge below the 50% mark", thereby steadily
| lowering it over time.
| Fargren wrote:
| > Every company wants to say, "We pay above the 50% mark"
|
| This is a true thing I've heard several company
| representatives say.
|
| > Every landlord wants to say, "We charge below the 50% mark"
|
| This is not a thing I have ever heard any landlord say.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Yep all of these compensation intermediary are basically
| supporting illegal collusion
| mcculley wrote:
| I found that salary data for some of my employees was being
| leaked and very accurately reported by a now defunct company
| called Paysa. We determined that the employees who had their data
| leaked had recently applied for mortgages and auto loans. Your
| bank could be selling your data.
| lulznews wrote:
| Anything that keeps the code monkeys in line is legal.
| eximius wrote:
| Hm, sounds like the recent rent fixing collusion. Which was ruled
| illegal.
| a123b456c wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but this document seems highly relevant.
|
| DOJ Withdraws "Safety Zones" for Information Sharing and Other
| Collaborations https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-
| alerts/doj-withdr...
| w10-1 wrote:
| I hear the complaint but it's a bit of a trap to just seek
| protection.
|
| Yes, the law on point is permissive. That goes with the evolution
| of law.
|
| But assuming for the moment that we want not just avoid injury to
| ourselves but to create the world now and to come, what are we
| called to do?
|
| - What exactly do you, or employees, want in this situation?
|
| - What would Pave do if they wanted to take the high ground?
| Could that be a business differentiator?
|
| - What law could you write and enforce, to protect what interest,
| without also damaging other interests that are socially
| beneficial?
|
| I think the organizational evolution towards having loose laws
| with tightening enforcement, or tight laws with lax enforcement,
| give way too much latitude to policing/enforcement and create a
| corrupting political franchise of affected stakeholders taxed
| with managing regulators.
|
| My hope would be that internet-scalable transactions have
| similarly scalable regulatory solutions: dead-simple to detect
| and assess, finely-tuned to the balance of interests, and so
| patent as to be indisputable. Then people can get stuff done
| without dealing with the shadows and forces of ambiguity.
|
| Is something like that possible here? Could Pave be a champion of
| it?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, I'm sure the format and medium is different, but companies HR
| depts have been sharing notes and checking on what the market
| compensation is (for any given job and experience level) since
| forever. IANAL, but this is not a new thing.
|
| I've even known co-workers who said "I deserve more $$, I'm
| underpaid for my experience and job" and supervisor repeats this
| to HR, then HR checks on it, and a few days later says "true,
| here's a raise". This was in the 90's, btw. Not a new thing.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > My question is, isn't this specifically anti-competitive wage
| fixing? This seems exactly like RealPage but for employee
| compensation. As far as I know, colluding on wages like this is
| illegal.
|
| As long as Pave just helps employers look backward in time so to
| speak I'm not sure I'd call it collusion. But if they enable some
| kind of coordination between future potential employers, then
| yes, maybe it is.
|
| In the RealPage case the coordination aspect consisted of
| providing a recommended rent for the property if I understand it
| correctly. I guess the equivalent for Pave would be if they gave
| a recommendation on what compensation to offer.
| ghaff wrote:
| Companies compare pricing _all the time_ even if it doesn 't
| involve smoke-filled rooms with execs doing tit-for-tat. You
| don't think your local grocery store knows what the other local
| chain is charging (or what they're paying their employees)?
| bjornsing wrote:
| Sure. And as I said there's nothing illegal about that, as
| long as it's about historical and current prices. But if your
| local grocer walks over to their competitor and has a
| conversation about what the prices (or salaries) should be
| _tomorrow_ , then that's illegal in many jurisdictions. The
| same rules should apply if they use software.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't actually know what the letter of the law is in US,
| much less other countries and depending on public sector
| vs. private. But, yeah, there's a lot of information
| sharing both direct and (often) indirect on existing and
| past pricing on at least the aggregate level and sometimes
| at a more specific level.
|
| As you say, the boundary is often about what pricing should
| be next year. But there's often a lot of nudge-nudge-wink-
| wink given good information about what prices and salaries
| are today.
| gaivota wrote:
| I've been hired to a startup that uses Pave - they mentioned that
| they paid at the 75% percentile, and my offer ended up being more
| competitive than others I was getting. I think that while
| obviously some companies can use this data to pay less, the more
| likely outcome is that they pay MORE. You forget that companies
| are competing with each other for talent, they are not in the
| business of colluding together. So if I can see that other
| companies are paying X, I am more inclined to pay X + Y
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| They already expect people to work for next to nothing simply
| because they're "startups". Instead, maybe they should focus on
| hiring decent people AND paying them industry-fair wages.
| zoogeny wrote:
| This sounds like levels.fyi for companies? As long as they are
| selling aggregate data and not data specific to an individual
| (e.g. for determining an offer for a particular person) it seems
| reasonable.
| dyeje wrote:
| They provide benchmarks, before them was Radford. They're just
| taking a tech-first approach of an age old product.
| tonymet wrote:
| Probably not, but it doesn't matter until there is a complaint
| (lawsuit)
| JohnPrine wrote:
| if y'all think that being in the dark about market wages is going
| to result in employers offering higher salaries then I don't know
| what to tell you
| laxk wrote:
| The funniest thing about all this is that everyone around knows
| about the employees' salaries, except the employees themselves,
| and at the policy level it is often written that you do not have
| the right to disclose this information.
| dzonga wrote:
| a lot of companies already do this - in the UK they call it
| benchmarking. they get data from companies they compete with for
| talent, from data-brockers i.e people who buy compensation data
| from companies. then set your pay based on what those companies
| are paying.
|
| collusion in another name if you ask me.
| silexia wrote:
| All tax data should be public. Then we would know exactly what
| everyone makes.
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