4 ms·

California passes bill requiring salary range disclosure for job listings

24 points by mikece 4y ago

fckgw 4y ago
California already has a law on the books that salary ranges must be provided "upon request". This would just make it more upfront, similar to Colorado's law. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=432.3.&nodeTreePath=3.1.3.3&lawCode=LAB https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  It's important to note that it's not actually "upon request." It's "upon request after an initial interview": > (c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment. For purposes of this section, “pay scale” means a salary or hourly wage range. For purposes of this section, “reasonable request” means a request made after an applicant has completed an initial interview with the employer. That means a candidate has to waste a significant amount of time just to get an idea of whether the job is actually suitable based on comp under the old law.
dominotw 4y ago
can't you circumvent this by simply posting 50-500k range?
- olliej 4y ago
  I'm sure you'd be fairly immediately opening yourself up to a lawsuit where you have to demonstrate that you have identical jobs where some employees earn 50k and some earn 500k.
  - dominotw 4y ago
    I guess that was an exaggerated example. People with 'software engineer' title in my company make a wide range of salary. Where you fall in that range depends on how well you do in the interview. So what the benefit to job seeker if they post 200k - 500k in salary range.
    - olliej 4y ago
      Every company I've worked at has ranks of engineer so you'd need to collapse those, and then at perf review time your managers would lose the "you're at the top of your rank's salary range". IANAL but I'd also guess it would make discrimination lawsuits easier as if everyone is in one range you can't hide behind "available ranges" for rank as you can currently (despite the promotion between ranks also being discriminatory \o/ ). i.e. imagine your company has rank 1 = 100-150, rank 2 - 150-200, etc. Currently a person of group X is only 50% as likely to be promoted as group Y, but inside each rank salary distribution is equal. So currently if you look at their salary ranges vs ranks it looks fine, but if you remove the rank separation it will immediately pull the various statistics of group X down relative to group Y. Now instead of having to prove that the promotion system is discriminatory they can point to the more directly obvious wage bias. This is not to say that's what happens, and the opacity of employee spread inside the ranges anyway mean that I'm not sure just how much of a difference this will actually make, and as I've said elsewhere tech and finance both having significant non-salary/wage compensation that they aren't required to report.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  If you collapse your entire job titles to "employee" you mean? There's some rules in place that you have to show you use the range.
  - olliej 4y ago
    The bill requires you to provide the labour department with records supporting your claimed ranges upon request - presumably to defeat any nonsense like this, but you'd presumably have to demonstrate that all people were doing the same job which would be a problem for employees vs managers vs execs, etc. The required reporting also means that if you were for example saying that the range for janitors was 50-500k the DoL would be able to turn around and say "none of your janitors are making 500k, why not?".
- t-writescode 4y ago
  As a potential employee, it's our job to refuse positions like that
Manuel_D 4y ago
> It also would require companies to include median and mean hourly rates for each combination of race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category in their pay data reports to the state. This seems difficult to compare. E.g. say one job has a consistent 9:00 to 5:00. Another worker typically works 10:00 to 5:00 but has an oncall rotation where they might get pinged at 2 AM or on weekends to put out fires. Identical hours worked, but the workload is definitely greater for the latter. I predict companies will adjust by making a much wider variety of levels, and then matching level to salary rather than the other way around. Break up a 3-tier junior, standard, senior level system into levels 1-30 where each one corresponds to a narrow salary band.
olliej 4y ago
Ok, so the bill itself[1] talks in terms of pay scale, but the section itself is "salaries and wages". In tech and finance (where compensation disparity is significant) a large part of annual compensation is in non-salary/wage form - it's stock and bonuses, etc [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1162 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
akomtu 4y ago
Instead of requiring to tell the salary range, which is two meaningless numbers, the law should've required 50, 75 and 90 percentiles of total comp (not salary!) of the existing workforce at the given level. This info would be made public, and IRS could easily verify its correctness.
- t-writescode 4y ago
  Please don't let perfect be the enemy of good. This is an improvement.
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: California passes law requiring companies to post salary ranges on job listings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32695199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32695199 - Sept 2022 (108 comments) Also, the law isn't law yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32696131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32696131

24 points by mikece 4y ago

California already has a law on the books that salary ranges must be provided "upon request". This would just make it more upfront, similar to Colorado's law. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=432.3.&nodeTreePath=3.1.3.3&lawCode=LAB https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

actually_a_dog 4y ago
It's important to note that it's not actually "upon request." It's "upon request after an initial interview": > (c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment. For purposes of this section, “pay scale” means a salary or hourly wage range. For purposes of this section, “reasonable request” means a request made after an applicant has completed an initial interview with the employer. That means a candidate has to waste a significant amount of time just to get an idea of whether the job is actually suitable based on comp under the old law.

dominotw 4y ago

can't you circumvent this by simply posting 50-500k range?

olliej 4y ago
I'm sure you'd be fairly immediately opening yourself up to a lawsuit where you have to demonstrate that you have identical jobs where some employees earn 50k and some earn 500k.
- dominotw 4y ago
  I guess that was an exaggerated example. People with 'software engineer' title in my company make a wide range of salary. Where you fall in that range depends on how well you do in the interview. So what the benefit to job seeker if they post 200k - 500k in salary range.
  - olliej 4y ago
    Every company I've worked at has ranks of engineer so you'd need to collapse those, and then at perf review time your managers would lose the "you're at the top of your rank's salary range". IANAL but I'd also guess it would make discrimination lawsuits easier as if everyone is in one range you can't hide behind "available ranges" for rank as you can currently (despite the promotion between ranks also being discriminatory \o/ ). i.e. imagine your company has rank 1 = 100-150, rank 2 - 150-200, etc. Currently a person of group X is only 50% as likely to be promoted as group Y, but inside each rank salary distribution is equal. So currently if you look at their salary ranges vs ranks it looks fine, but if you remove the rank separation it will immediately pull the various statistics of group X down relative to group Y. Now instead of having to prove that the promotion system is discriminatory they can point to the more directly obvious wage bias. This is not to say that's what happens, and the opacity of employee spread inside the ranges anyway mean that I'm not sure just how much of a difference this will actually make, and as I've said elsewhere tech and finance both having significant non-salary/wage compensation that they aren't required to report.
HWR_14 4y ago
If you collapse your entire job titles to "employee" you mean? There's some rules in place that you have to show you use the range.
- olliej 4y ago
  The bill requires you to provide the labour department with records supporting your claimed ranges upon request - presumably to defeat any nonsense like this, but you'd presumably have to demonstrate that all people were doing the same job which would be a problem for employees vs managers vs execs, etc. The required reporting also means that if you were for example saying that the range for janitors was 50-500k the DoL would be able to turn around and say "none of your janitors are making 500k, why not?".
t-writescode 4y ago
As a potential employee, it's our job to refuse positions like that

Manuel_D 4y ago

> It also would require companies to include median and mean hourly rates for each combination of race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category in their pay data reports to the state. This seems difficult to compare. E.g. say one job has a consistent 9:00 to 5:00. Another worker typically works 10:00 to 5:00 but has an oncall rotation where they might get pinged at 2 AM or on weekends to put out fires. Identical hours worked, but the workload is definitely greater for the latter. I predict companies will adjust by making a much wider variety of levels, and then matching level to salary rather than the other way around. Break up a 3-tier junior, standard, senior level system into levels 1-30 where each one corresponds to a narrow salary band.

olliej 4y ago

Ok, so the bill itself[1] talks in terms of pay scale, but the section itself is "salaries and wages". In tech and finance (where compensation disparity is significant) a large part of annual compensation is in non-salary/wage form - it's stock and bonuses, etc [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1162 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

akomtu 4y ago

Instead of requiring to tell the salary range, which is two meaningless numbers, the law should've required 50, 75 and 90 percentiles of total comp (not salary!) of the existing workforce at the given level. This info would be made public, and IRS could easily verify its correctness.

t-writescode 4y ago
Please don't let perfect be the enemy of good. This is an improvement.

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: California passes law requiring companies to post salary ranges on job listings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32695199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32695199 - Sept 2022 (108 comments) Also, the law isn't law yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32696131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32696131