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I live in Colorado. The similar Colorado law about posting salaries is probably great for jobs that don't give RSUs, but given how much bonus / RSUs affect tech

I live in Colorado. The similar Colorado law about posting salaries is probably great for jobs that don't give RSUs, but given how much bonus / RSUs affect tech pay, it doesn't really help SWEs much - they give a salary range of ~$30k and then mention that this position is eligible for bonus and equity/incentive plan without giving any details on amount. For remote jobs that hire in CO, there's also some pay discrimination depending on location (one rate for Boulder, another for Denver, and another for "everywhere else"). Lastly, there's a lot of companies that don't follow it if the job is remote across the US, either because they don't know or because the violation is only a couple grand and relies on people reporting the posting in a way that's verifiable or it still being up when enforcement gets around to looking. I will say that I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado, even from companies that originally did (DigitalOcean for one), leading me to believe it was more of a temporary measure to immediately comply than a permanent change.

jchw 5y ago
I have a strong distaste for the emphasis on RSUs—I’d be happy having a company pay me more in fiat without the stock even if it’s potentially less overall. I do get that it’s supposed to be incentivizing, but the incentive doesn’t work for me. I just turn it all into cash as soon as possible, and when I leave, I feel no pain whatsoever for money left on the table. Maybe this is not my absolute best choice option, but it doesn’t matter much to me because I’m not trying to maximize my profits.
- wepple 5y ago
  If you just autosell it, why would you prefer straight salary? Is it concerns over stock fluctuations? I too always sell immediately as I prefer to be diversified (but I also don’t work at an extreme high growth company)
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Vesting is an anti-competitive practice for retaining laborers and we should be shaming all companies that practice it.
    - xboxnolifes 5y ago
      Vesting can happen linearly and be no different from a more volatile salary.
      - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
        To be fair, paying someone a volatile salary (for example, mostly or all commission) should be banned as well.
        xboxnolifes 5y ago
        For what reason?
        Broken_Hippo 5y ago
        Because it creates instability in someone's life and easily causes folks to work for hours just to have no paycheck if they didn't sell a car (for example). Another example is a cleaning service: I knew someone that worked for one. She got paid a percentage of the cost - she had a schedule, but folks cancelled and other such things. It wound up that she was stuck at work in between jobs, couldn't go home, yet wasn't getting paid. In other words, it creates a job environment that easily exploits people. I'm not absolutely offended by bonuses and commissions, mind you, but base pay realistically should make up the majority to most of the salary and be fairly consistent from week to week. Pay based on tips can do the same thing (and you can cause this to happen to tipped employees with scheduling).
    - mgfist 5y ago
      Vesting has upsides. Your company essentially fronts you free capital on the stipulation that you invest it in the company's stock with specific lockups. Essentially it comes down to two choices: do you think cash over the course of your vest cycle will perform better than the company's stock. If you believe cash will do better, then RSUs are worse than cash bonuses. Otherwise the RSUs do better.
  - Arainach 5y ago
    If nothing else, it's more pain when it comes time to file my taxes. With autosell and RSUs vesting monthly, filling out my stock sales takes as long as the rest of my return combined.
    - notJim 5y ago
      This is a problem for your accountant :)
      - jrockway 5y ago
        People learn this the hard way. These companies that pay you in 50% stock should probably have some checkbox on the employment agreement that says "I agree to get a licensed accountant to do my taxes every year, and I realize that I will be paying for this out of pocket." The most complex tax disaster I got into cost $700 to resolve, and that is a tiny tiny fraction of what they pay you in stock, so just do it.
    - coryrc 5y ago
      I don't have to do anything, I get a single form (1099? Don't remember) per source with gains and that's it. Don't even have to send in those forms with the return anymore. Is there some number where you have to fill out stock sales?
    - MarkSweep 5y ago
      I’m not a tax expert. but if I’m understanding the directions on Schedule D and form 8949 correctly, if everything on your 1099-B was reported to the IRS (box A or D checked) and you don’t need to make any adjustment to basis, you can just put the grand total on Schedule D, without reporting each transaction on Form 8949. Turbo Tax seems to take this approach, at least when I filed last year.
      - dmoy 5y ago
        RSU are non-covered shares, so you can't just fill out the total on schedule D (box a or d won't be checked) You can do the above and also send the IRS a copy of your 1099-B too, along with your 1040. I don't know if you can do that and e-file.
  - nsxwolf 5y ago
    Now that I'm more than halfway through my working life, my walls are papered with worthless equity grants. I've never seen a penny and I'm under no illusions that I ever will. I no longer consider them at all when negotiating compensation. I interpret their very mention as a trick to get me to devalue myself.
    - bognition 5y ago
      How many of these grants were for RSUs in a publicly traded company?
    - slt2021 5y ago
      startup equity grants are lottery tickets and must be treated as such. Public equity grants are as good as cash
    - philjohn 5y ago
      That's different from a publicly traded company RSU, where on each vest date you are employed you will get a % of your initial grant (+ refreshers) - tax withholding distributed to your brokerage account. It accounts for more than 50% of my total compensation.
- halpert 5y ago
  One benefit of RSUs that you should consider is that you are granted them at your start date even if they vest years out. This gives you a ton of “time in the market” and they generally appreciate quite significantly if you’ve picked a good company. Salary will never match that.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    But if you were just paid more salary, you would perhaps invest that excess in the market, and you would have equal time in the market. Also, you need to pay taxes on the market value of RSUs at vesting time so it isn't like you can get away with some kind of pre-tax investment scheme.
    - somebodythere 5y ago
      It's less about getting away with not paying taxes and more about the fact that RSUs are basically a big negative-interest loan to invest in the company's stock, which can be incredibly lucrative in the growth sector.
      - sanderjd 5y ago
        It is only negative interest if the stock goes up. It is positive interest if the stock goes down. So you could call it a variable rate loan to invest in the company's stock. I would not choose to take out such a loan against the growth rate of the company I also rely on to pay my salary. I would actually like RSUs more if they granted me shares in a basket of stocks of competitor companies. At least then it would hedge my already high exposure to the fortunes of the company I work for.
        somebodythere 5y ago
        If the stock goes down, you can walk away from the arrangement without being on the hook for anything. If it goes up, you collect a salary while having exposure to the company stock without having to put up any of your own capital. I am not seeing where the positive interest is here.
- filoleg 5y ago
  > I’d be happy having a company pay me more in fiat without the stock even if it’s potentially less overall. You should check out Netflix. Their pay is all in cash, and it is very competitive.
  - trustfundbaby 5y ago
    I think you get to choose the proportion of cash and stock for the number you're given or did I get that completely wrong?
    - filoleg 5y ago
      You kinda got it kinda technically right, but also not entirely right overall. You get it all in cash, and then you can decide on your own which proportion of it you want to spend on stock and literally anything else (just like you would with any cash in general). But the bottom line is, you got your entire comp in straight cash, and it is up to you how you want to distribute it.
      - trustfundbaby 5y ago
        Thank you for clarifying!
- bagacrap 5y ago
  as someone whose job is made (much) harder by coworker churn and coworkers slacking off, I'm glad my employer cooks some long term incentives and performance based pay into our compensation structure
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Yeah I agree. It's just an annoyance to have to sell it every time (and pay attention to trading windows and stuff). I'd rather have the cash.
HWR_14 5y ago
> I will say that I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado, even from companies that originally did (DigitalOcean for one), leading me to believe it was more of a temporary measure to immediately comply than a permanent change. Colorado passed a law/clarified the law that writing "we exclude people from Colorado" wasn't sufficient to avoid the salary postings. They can probably only enforce it for companies that have any presence in Colorado, but a single employee is sufficient. It would be worrisome that companies would terminate all Colorado operations (if relocatable), but the addition of NYC makes that unlikely. But that's probably why they stopped using it. It means as much as "NOT MY COPYRIGHT, USED WITH LOVE" in the description on YouTube. Meanwhile, they should definitely fix the law so that bonuses/RSUs are included (RSUs have a known market price that could be listed)
crackercrews 5y ago
> I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado Take a look here. [1] 1: https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/ https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/
unethical_ban 5y ago
I can't find my prior comment, but I have seen multiple job postings saying "remote work is available in..." proceeded by every US state but CO and HI. Rackspace was the company doing it when I posted an example, but I know it happens elsewhere too. Was it SpaceX? I forget.
smachiz 5y ago
Part of the issue is you're in a small (relatively) market. In markets that are large enough that ultimately shift corporate behavior everywhere, you'll actually see this improve as a result of what NYC is doing. Imagine how many companies are HQ'd in NY, or have sizable presences. It's a shocking number. Similar to how California's emissions restrictions are implemented everywhere in the US vs making a separate California-only car, HR will start posting NYC compliant jobs everywhere vs figuring out whether or not they're required. Especially true if LA or SF hop on the bandwagon.
giantg2 5y ago
"...they give a salary range of ~$30k and then mention that this position is eligible for bonus and equity/incentive plan without giving any details on amount." It sounds like they will be incentivized to provide those details or lose candidates to jobs posting higher salaries or detailed numbers.

jchw 5y ago

I have a strong distaste for the emphasis on RSUs—I’d be happy having a company pay me more in fiat without the stock even if it’s potentially less overall. I do get that it’s supposed to be incentivizing, but the incentive doesn’t work for me. I just turn it all into cash as soon as possible, and when I leave, I feel no pain whatsoever for money left on the table. Maybe this is not my absolute best choice option, but it doesn’t matter much to me because I’m not trying to maximize my profits.

wepple 5y ago
If you just autosell it, why would you prefer straight salary? Is it concerns over stock fluctuations? I too always sell immediately as I prefer to be diversified (but I also don’t work at an extreme high growth company)
- beebmam 5y ago
  Vesting is an anti-competitive practice for retaining laborers and we should be shaming all companies that practice it.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    Vesting can happen linearly and be no different from a more volatile salary.
    - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      To be fair, paying someone a volatile salary (for example, mostly or all commission) should be banned as well.
      - xboxnolifes 5y ago
        For what reason?
        Broken_Hippo 5y ago
        Because it creates instability in someone's life and easily causes folks to work for hours just to have no paycheck if they didn't sell a car (for example). Another example is a cleaning service: I knew someone that worked for one. She got paid a percentage of the cost - she had a schedule, but folks cancelled and other such things. It wound up that she was stuck at work in between jobs, couldn't go home, yet wasn't getting paid. In other words, it creates a job environment that easily exploits people. I'm not absolutely offended by bonuses and commissions, mind you, but base pay realistically should make up the majority to most of the salary and be fairly consistent from week to week. Pay based on tips can do the same thing (and you can cause this to happen to tipped employees with scheduling).
  - mgfist 5y ago
    Vesting has upsides. Your company essentially fronts you free capital on the stipulation that you invest it in the company's stock with specific lockups. Essentially it comes down to two choices: do you think cash over the course of your vest cycle will perform better than the company's stock. If you believe cash will do better, then RSUs are worse than cash bonuses. Otherwise the RSUs do better.
- Arainach 5y ago
  If nothing else, it's more pain when it comes time to file my taxes. With autosell and RSUs vesting monthly, filling out my stock sales takes as long as the rest of my return combined.
  - notJim 5y ago
    This is a problem for your accountant :)
    - jrockway 5y ago
      People learn this the hard way. These companies that pay you in 50% stock should probably have some checkbox on the employment agreement that says "I agree to get a licensed accountant to do my taxes every year, and I realize that I will be paying for this out of pocket." The most complex tax disaster I got into cost $700 to resolve, and that is a tiny tiny fraction of what they pay you in stock, so just do it.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    I don't have to do anything, I get a single form (1099? Don't remember) per source with gains and that's it. Don't even have to send in those forms with the return anymore. Is there some number where you have to fill out stock sales?
  - MarkSweep 5y ago
    I’m not a tax expert. but if I’m understanding the directions on Schedule D and form 8949 correctly, if everything on your 1099-B was reported to the IRS (box A or D checked) and you don’t need to make any adjustment to basis, you can just put the grand total on Schedule D, without reporting each transaction on Form 8949. Turbo Tax seems to take this approach, at least when I filed last year.
    - dmoy 5y ago
      RSU are non-covered shares, so you can't just fill out the total on schedule D (box a or d won't be checked) You can do the above and also send the IRS a copy of your 1099-B too, along with your 1040. I don't know if you can do that and e-file.
- nsxwolf 5y ago
  Now that I'm more than halfway through my working life, my walls are papered with worthless equity grants. I've never seen a penny and I'm under no illusions that I ever will. I no longer consider them at all when negotiating compensation. I interpret their very mention as a trick to get me to devalue myself.
  - bognition 5y ago
    How many of these grants were for RSUs in a publicly traded company?
  - slt2021 5y ago
    startup equity grants are lottery tickets and must be treated as such. Public equity grants are as good as cash
  - philjohn 5y ago
    That's different from a publicly traded company RSU, where on each vest date you are employed you will get a % of your initial grant (+ refreshers) - tax withholding distributed to your brokerage account. It accounts for more than 50% of my total compensation.
halpert 5y ago
One benefit of RSUs that you should consider is that you are granted them at your start date even if they vest years out. This gives you a ton of “time in the market” and they generally appreciate quite significantly if you’ve picked a good company. Salary will never match that.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  But if you were just paid more salary, you would perhaps invest that excess in the market, and you would have equal time in the market. Also, you need to pay taxes on the market value of RSUs at vesting time so it isn't like you can get away with some kind of pre-tax investment scheme.
  - somebodythere 5y ago
    It's less about getting away with not paying taxes and more about the fact that RSUs are basically a big negative-interest loan to invest in the company's stock, which can be incredibly lucrative in the growth sector.
    - sanderjd 5y ago
      It is only negative interest if the stock goes up. It is positive interest if the stock goes down. So you could call it a variable rate loan to invest in the company's stock. I would not choose to take out such a loan against the growth rate of the company I also rely on to pay my salary. I would actually like RSUs more if they granted me shares in a basket of stocks of competitor companies. At least then it would hedge my already high exposure to the fortunes of the company I work for.
      - somebodythere 5y ago
        If the stock goes down, you can walk away from the arrangement without being on the hook for anything. If it goes up, you collect a salary while having exposure to the company stock without having to put up any of your own capital. I am not seeing where the positive interest is here.
filoleg 5y ago
> I’d be happy having a company pay me more in fiat without the stock even if it’s potentially less overall. You should check out Netflix. Their pay is all in cash, and it is very competitive.
- trustfundbaby 5y ago
  I think you get to choose the proportion of cash and stock for the number you're given or did I get that completely wrong?
  - filoleg 5y ago
    You kinda got it kinda technically right, but also not entirely right overall. You get it all in cash, and then you can decide on your own which proportion of it you want to spend on stock and literally anything else (just like you would with any cash in general). But the bottom line is, you got your entire comp in straight cash, and it is up to you how you want to distribute it.
    - trustfundbaby 5y ago
      Thank you for clarifying!
bagacrap 5y ago
as someone whose job is made (much) harder by coworker churn and coworkers slacking off, I'm glad my employer cooks some long term incentives and performance based pay into our compensation structure
sanderjd 5y ago
Yeah I agree. It's just an annoyance to have to sell it every time (and pay attention to trading windows and stuff). I'd rather have the cash.

HWR_14 5y ago

> I will say that I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado, even from companies that originally did (DigitalOcean for one), leading me to believe it was more of a temporary measure to immediately comply than a permanent change. Colorado passed a law/clarified the law that writing "we exclude people from Colorado" wasn't sufficient to avoid the salary postings. They can probably only enforce it for companies that have any presence in Colorado, but a single employee is sufficient. It would be worrisome that companies would terminate all Colorado operations (if relocatable), but the addition of NYC makes that unlikely. But that's probably why they stopped using it. It means as much as "NOT MY COPYRIGHT, USED WITH LOVE" in the description on YouTube. Meanwhile, they should definitely fix the law so that bonuses/RSUs are included (RSUs have a known market price that could be listed)

crackercrews 5y ago

> I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado Take a look here. [1] 1: https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/ https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/

unethical_ban 5y ago

I can't find my prior comment, but I have seen multiple job postings saying "remote work is available in..." proceeded by every US state but CO and HI. Rackspace was the company doing it when I posted an example, but I know it happens elsewhere too. Was it SpaceX? I forget.

smachiz 5y ago

Part of the issue is you're in a small (relatively) market. In markets that are large enough that ultimately shift corporate behavior everywhere, you'll actually see this improve as a result of what NYC is doing. Imagine how many companies are HQ'd in NY, or have sizable presences. It's a shocking number. Similar to how California's emissions restrictions are implemented everywhere in the US vs making a separate California-only car, HR will start posting NYC compliant jobs everywhere vs figuring out whether or not they're required. Especially true if LA or SF hop on the bandwagon.

giantg2 5y ago

"...they give a salary range of ~$30k and then mention that this position is eligible for bonus and equity/incentive plan without giving any details on amount." It sounds like they will be incentivized to provide those details or lose candidates to jobs posting higher salaries or detailed numbers.