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Colorado has passed legislation around this, so we'll have a test case soon. > The Guidance makes clear that employers must disclose compensation and employee

• thebigspacefuck 6y ago
  I found out my company is willing to pay people with the same experience I have more money. Just not me.
  • soared 6y ago
    I found the opposite. I was hired mid-pandemic, but now my team is hiring someone with <20% of my experience for the same title and compensation. My manager has not addressed directly the point when I've brought it up.
    • visarga 6y ago
      Depends also on how desperate was the company to fill the position when you were hired vs now.
      • paulryanrogers 6y ago
        Good point. Still, once it's known it speaks to how desperate they are too keep the talent they have. Turn over usually has significant costs.
    • mtzaldo 6y ago
      I got layoff about a month ago. While looking for jobs, the average pay increased about 20‰. I think it is either a reflection of the inflation, or that the companies are recognizing the need of more qualified employees amid the "great recovery". Update: I was a Lead Software Eng.
      • dominotw 6y ago
        same. i switched jobs last june but now have offers 20-30% more.
      • midasuni 6y ago
        2% over what period? Did you see enough jobs to draw such a conclusion (2%, or 20‰, is pretty insignificant)
      • scsilver 6y ago
        I saw something similar. I wonder if its continuing. You need software engineers to make software, we are the necessary commodity of the future economy, nee grads arent getting in person experience, bootcamps arent doing as great at teaching during the pandemic, the visa program was also reduced. Are we sreing a supply side squeeze and a demand side rush on devs?
    • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      Experience isn’t the only variable in determining compensation. Some companies will simply pay people whatever it takes to convince them to join the company, which results in compensation that’s all over the place. Some companies have surprisingly uniform compensation, some to the extreme that all developers are paid the same compensation in lock-step. This is usually an attempt to make things fair, but it creates a lot of animosity when people feel they deserve more than their coworkers. And some times, it really does make sense to hire less experienced people into high-paying roles of their career trajectory looks promising. Hiring isn’t just about selecting for the height of experience on a bar chart. It’s also about looking at the slope. Less experienced employees who are growing very fast are best hired at high salaries, otherwise they’re just going to leave in a year when they grow even more. Conversely, if they fail to grow into the role they might need to be let go to make room for someone more appropriate for the position. One of the tricky things about teams sharing compensation is that there is almost never a specific ordering of salaries that everyone on the team would agree is appropriate. It’s one of those situations where 80% of people on a team might see themselves as being in the top 20%. As always, it helps to collect competing offers elsewhere. It helps even more to be prepared to take those offers if they pay more and higher salary is your highest priority.
      • extra88 6y ago
        > Conversely, if they fail to grow into the role they might need to be let go to make room for someone more appropriate for the position. How many places fire people because they thought they might be a star performer but turn out to be only average? I thought Netflix was newsworthy for being "ruthless" in that way, that it was rare and that few companies have followed their example.
        • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
          It comes down to your budget. If you have virtually unlimited budget then keeping an over-leveled person in an overpaid position can slide if they’re still adding some value. However, it’s still better to demote them (difficult) or remove them to prevent animosity from brewing in their peers. If you only have the budget to hire a few people, then having an overpaid and underperforming person taking up a valuable slot in your limited budget is a pressing issue. You need to get them off the team to free that budget up for someone who can earn it appropriately.
    • SamBam 6y ago
      Not exactly the opposite... Paying someone else with the same experience more money is very similar to paying someone with less experience the same money. In either case, they are paying other people more for equivalent experience.
      • sokoloff 6y ago
        Experience is multi-faceted and I think often over-valued (I say this as someone who would benefit a lot if experience was highly valued). Plenty of engineers effectively have 1 year of experience 12 times.
        • paulryanrogers 6y ago
          > Plenty of engineers effectively have 1 year of experience 12 times. Do you mean they've been doing the same things year after year? I.e. without growing their skills in breadth or depth?
          • sokoloff 6y ago
            Yes. They’re capable of handling about as complex task now as they were 11 years ago. If that’s the case, their relative value has not increased beyond that of their 1-year experienced peer.
    • mbernstein 6y ago
      If it’s the same role and they can do the role why would they get paid less? Experience alone doesn’t mean much.
    • emodendroket 6y ago
      Why would you expect your manager to “address” the point that you think one of your peers is overpaid?
      • pseudalopex 6y ago
        The strongest plausible interpretation of what they said is they think they're under paid.
        • emodendroket 6y ago
          Well, rule number one of trying to ask for more money is don't make it about how you think you deserve more than so-and-so.
  • input_sh 6y ago
    In my experience, the easiest way to get a substantial raise is to switch companies. Your existing one will bump your salary by like 5-10%. A new one won't have that baseline, making it easy to go above that. My salary increased by like 45% in the last year. I've seen posts of people claiming they've doubled their salary with this one simple trick.
    • DistressedDrone 6y ago
      This is largely because managers don't understand just how in demand people are in tech. They think you are replaceable, until you quit, then they realize the market is insane and they have to increase their offer significantly. At least here in Montreal software engineers are almost as high in demand as doctors.
      • qeternity 6y ago
        I’m not sure that’s true. Anyone who has had any attrition knows the cost of turnover.
        • MattGaiser 6y ago
          Has it actually been established to matter all that much? As attrition rates are surging throughout society. People are quitting faster. More and more people are on temp contracts. I find it kinda nuts that the sign that it is time to leave a company for a raise is hitting a productive stride. It is common knowledge that the best way to get a raise is to switch employers. Yet absolutely nothing is being done with this information by employers. It isn't secret. So they seemingly have determined that preventing attrition isn't worth it.
          • ipaddr 6y ago
            No one wants to pay more for what you already have even though it is offering more. We see this with cable bills. Everyone expects more channel but static prices. Companies expect more out of a developer who has been with them 5 years over someone who has been there a year. But they want to continue to pay them the same as they did 5 years ago so they never give them raises.
  • tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
    Same here. When I found out, I asked my manager for a raise but didn't get it so I resigned. When I did, he offered to raise my salary with 30%. Left anyway and was hired again at same company a few years later for 50% above my original salary. Still felt like I was originally tricked into a low salary.
  • emodendroket 6y ago
    Sounds like information that you could act on by finding a new job.
  • vbtemp 6y ago
    Probably because they were hired after you. Normally newer hires have much higher salaries than old timers for equivalent role/experience, it's like that everywhere
• dan-robertson 6y ago
  Is part of the lesson here that software engineers (or maybe just typical HN readers) are bad at negotiating?
  • soared 6y ago
    I'm outside of the typical hn-crowd, but was hired mid pandemic and was stonewalled when negotiating. I do plan on trying to re-negotiate rather than just talking about the issue when the hire is made though. But if nothing comes of it, I end up just frustrated knowing I'm either under-payed or more likely just under-employed.
  • strken 6y ago
    I'd be more likely to point the finger at human nature: if there are five engineers in a given role at a company, and they're paid different salaries, four of them are going to feel cheated.
    • HWR_14 6y ago
      All five of them may feel cheated. The best compensated one may consider themselves as more than that much better than the other four. But, abstractly, maybe four of them are getting cheated. Shouldn't they be told?
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • sokoloff 6y ago
        Why is it person A’s business what anyone else is paid? IMO, they’re only getting cheated if they’re being paid worse than as agreed.
        • joshuamorton 6y ago
          It's possible to tell the four being cheated without telling them the fifths salary.
• tyingq 6y ago
  "the hourly or salary compensation, or a range thereof" That's something of a loophole, though it often ends in an awkward standoff where the company has to explain why it offered you something other than the top of the range.
  • mitchdoogle 6y ago
    Situations aren't awkward - people are. Some people can handle being told they aren't the best possible candidate. If they don't want the compensation, they can say no and walk away.
    • tyingq 6y ago
      I'd venture that it's usually awkward for at least one of the people in the discussion.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    There are plenty of cases where a factor of two or more difference could be reasonable depending on the candidate and their fit for the position. If someone sees a role posted as $200K-$400K and balks if offered less than $400K, I hope they have other $375K+ offers in their back pocket.
• edgyquant 6y ago
  Is this not a good thing? It lets you see that you are being underpaid and allows you to negotiate from that position (or accept that you don’t think you’re worth what newer hires are.) I honestly don’t see a downside.
• catlifeonmars 6y ago
  To me, this sounds like a net negative in the same way that going to the dentist for a checkup reveals you have cavities. The root cause ( sorry) seems to be that your employer plays favorites, not that they reveal the fact they play favorites by being transparent.
  • hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    This isn't about publicizing salaries of existing employees, it's about publicizing salary ranges in job postings. How does one "play favorites" with a generic job posting?
    • catlifeonmars 6y ago
      “Play favorites” is probably a poor choice of phrases. I meant that OP can tell if they are being treated unfairly.
      • ivalm 6y ago
        First step in preventing unfair treatment is to know you are being treated unfairly.
• jka 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing that, it does seem like a large risk for companies with open salary structure. Do you see any benefits in being able to compare your own salary and work output with those of your colleagues?
• sorokod 6y ago
  On the positive side you can make a better informed decision if it is time to move on.
• fishywang 6y ago
  > remote positions that could be performed in Colorado. This will be interesting. So if a company doesn't explicitly exclude Colorado from their remote job description this applies to them.
  • barlo 6y ago
    Oracle has this in some (all?) of their new postings: > This is a remote/office based position which may be performed anywhere in the United States except for within the state of Colorado.
    • blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Man, fuck Oracle. For a lot of reasons, but this one too.
• hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  I'd just point out that this is largely a cultural phenomenon. In some countries it is normal to post everyone's salary (similarly, student grades are posted on the wall after exams). A lack of transparency really only aids the employer (after all, the employer knows what everyone makes, and with salary comparison services they know exactly how competitive their salaries are).
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Price transparency is a basic requirement of functioning markets. It’s funny that it’s so taboo in the US, with such a significant voting population espousing pro “free” market, pro business sentiments.
    • gigatexal 6y ago
      Yup. By keeping salaries secret it’s how companies create inefficient markets to screw over candidates from making true market rates.
    • pottertheotter 6y ago
      This bothers me all the time. Several of the assumptions required to have a "free market" aren't met in the United States. If you try to have a conversation around that, you're a "communist", even though you're literally discussing how to have a free market.
      • pasabagi 6y ago
        Communism is basically orthogonal to the whole free market thing, though. Capitalism is defined as a system in which you can pay somebody a wage that's less than what you get from selling the products of their labour. Other than some basically technocratic stuff (how do you make sure workers are properly compensated) there's no specific communist problem with free markets I can think of. There's also no shortage of capitalist nations that were extremely anti free markets. It's at least somewhat coincidence that communists have typically gone for high state involvement - Russia was, before it was communist, basically an entirely non-free market, and most industry happened at the behest of the Tsarist bureacracy, which was massive. So the USSR was big on state planning kind of as a continuation of that.
• zelon88 6y ago
  While it is interesting that your experience has been negative, I would be curious to know how many people in your company look at this information in a positive light and have put it to work to their advantage. I don't mean to minimize your struggles, but perhaps this is a case where the exception should not be the rule? Do the benefits to the people positively impacted outweigh the loss to the people negatively impacted?
• iandanforth 6y ago
  Very interesting thank you. This seems to have only partial compliance so far. If I do a search on a random location specific job board I'm seeing some companies with salary bands and some without. Datadog, for example, does not have the band listed where Xero and Snapdocs do. https://www.builtincolorado.com/jobs/dev-engineering https://www.builtincolorado.com/jobs/dev-engineering
• bmn__ 6y ago
  > we'll have a test case soon. It already exists and is called Austria. The effect is that every job advertisement since 2011 says: "The minimum salary amounts to xxxx € according to law/ordinance/collective labour agreement. According to candidate's skill set a recompense higher than that is possible." The first sentence is mandatory. The second is not, but has become a stable trope. Question for HN readers: do you think this is useful? Why/why not?
  • tharkun__ 6y ago
    The second sentence actually even goes more like 'We will pay higher than that based on experience". As in they know that the collective bargaining agreement minimums will not get them anyone and they know this and will obviously pay more. Please apply! ;) The system is basically an automatically fully unionized labour market. I think it's valuable. Very much so actually. Not necessarily for software engineering jobs at the moment, because companies will have to pay above that to get someone anyway. In general though I think this helps people be paid more fairly overall. It might not result SV salaries anytime soon. I'd say it helps newcomers to the job market a lot (both career start wise as well as moving to Austria from somewhere else. Again don't just think SWE here. This kind of system also goes with other social stability benefits that might be strange to North Americans. Overall it should result in better care for everyone (health care, pensions etc) while it also equalizes the top towards the bottom more. Germany isn't Austria but close. I know there for example, state pension and health care were top notch. You didn't have to have a 401k or an RRSP or an expensive extra health insurance/a good employer. The state took care of it (you paid higher taxes overall though). Then the system broke and they told people in their 50s: oh btw the pension system is broken and broke. You have to start saving up for yourself. Oh and we will also tax your pensions now! (which they didn't before). Oh and btw this and this and this will no longer be covered by your health insurance. You better get extra insurance. Screwed a good many people over that believed they were taken care of. Never mind the people that just can't start saving for themselves or buy the extra insurance. But there's also no 401k/RRSP system. The "Riester Rente" and the current 401k/RRSP "equivalent" basically just funnels your money into insurance companies. No way to invest yourself while being tax sheltered.
  • Balgair 6y ago