10 ms·

I don't give a care how much more difficult it is for the employer. It's unambiguously GOOD for the applicant to know the expected compensation before applying.

by rychco 3y ago

I don't give a care how much more difficult it is for the employer. It's unambiguously GOOD for the applicant to know the expected compensation before applying. If you're opposed to wage transparency, I can only assume it's for manipulative & dishonest reasons.

made_this_acct4 3y ago
Feels like this sounds good in principle but - some roles don’t really have a budget, salary will depend on applicant and can range a lot - forcing a range means these ranges will skew lower so higher performing people will lose out and average salaries will go down
- joshuanapoli 3y ago
  If the employer really has a too-wide range, they can just post two job openings that split the range into high and low experience options.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > some roles don’t really have a budget, salary will depend on applicant and can range a lot Not a real problem. That can be expressed as a range. For example, 100k-infinity.
  - l33t7332273 3y ago
    $100k+ isn’t very helpful if you make $180k and only want to apply for jobs paying $200k+. I could see ranges having some issues
    - jamilton 3y ago
      It's better than nothing.
    - deprecative 3y ago
      Employers will always try to get you to undervalue yourself so they can get away with paying you as little as possible. Taking tools away from them that they use to do this is only a good thing.
      - phpisthebest 3y ago
        While I 100% agree with wage transparency, just like I agree with price transparency for any other good... This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me. Everyone wants to get the best price they can for anything, I am sure when you hire a HVAC person, or a plumber you are not looking to hire the most expensive person, you are looking to hire the best value... Why do people believe employment is something different than any other goods exchange, employers buy labor from the market no different you buy a computer monitor, or a plumber. I think everyone should have transparent pricing for everything, if Space X can post pricing to launch something into orbit, then dave the plumber can publish his rates, and Amce Corp can publish what they are paying employees... "Call for pricing" should be a thing of the past for products just like "We pay competitive wages" should be a thing of the past for job ads.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        > This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me. Bruh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... https://goodjobsfirst.org/conspiring-against-competition/ https://goodjobsfirst.org/conspiring-against-competition/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/economy/wages-antitrust-law-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/economy/wages-an... https://archive.ph/2022.03.07-193856/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/business/economy/treasury-competition-report.html https://archive.ph/2022.03.07-193856/https://www.nytimes.com... https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download
        phpisthebest 3y ago
        Bruh.... exceptions do not make a rule
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      Thats from the candidates perspective. Its no less helpful than not publishing the range.
    - maxerickson 3y ago
      The supposed issue there would be missed matches no? If the range really is quite wide, the employer probably isn't really trying very hard to hire at the top end and someone at that price can compare it to their options well enough before spending time on it.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      A bottom limit is always helpful, for all applicants. For those who expect more and do not want to waste time, they can look elsewhere. For prospective labor sellers, such as high school and college students or career changers, the bottom limit (and its trend) can help them project cash flow if they were to pursue that type of work. And it results in a more efficient allocation of labor for the country as a whole. For example, it could more quickly signal to people that we need fewer paper pushers and more trades workers.
  - noku 3y ago
    Or 0k-infinity, which is the current state!
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      Sure, if that’s how the employer wants to do it. I wouldn’t say that’s the current state though.
  - BlackEngineer 3y ago
    It’s not a real problem for people who’s skill set is commoditized. This is a real problem for high value employees. This all really feels like McDonalds employees forcing the rest of us to negotiate the way they have to.
- seanoliver 3y ago
  > - forcing a range means these ranges will skew lower so higher performing people will lose out and average salaries will go down I could easily see this having the opposite effect: Forcing a range causes employers (particularly those with less name recognition) to increase posted salaries in order to get people interested enough to apply. I don't see how posting lower salaries would do anything but discourage top applicants.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    I can see how companies paying their current staff a lower salary would be hesitant to post the new job at a higher salary range. There would be a strong temptation to post at a lower range, despite that not attracting the best new talent, to avoid the demands of pay raises from the existing staff.
    - NoraCodes 3y ago
      Sounds like a good thing. Those companies will either pay their workers what they're worth, or hurt for talent.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  > some roles don’t really have a budget, salary will depend on applicant and can range a lot Of course they all have a budget. You're not going to have a $1m range on pay for the same position that depends on the applicant, except for maybe a few exceptional cases.
  - BlackEngineer 3y ago
    Could it be that your experience and skills are common and so you don’t really have experience with salary negotiation in this context. Like, everybody I know that advocates for this couldn’t imagine a world where the skills they’ve developed play a role in negotiation.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  > - forcing a range means these ranges will skew lower so higher performing people will lose out and average salaries will go down Executive comp being disclosed appears, if anything, to have had the opposite effect.
- barry-cotter 3y ago
  That’s what the evidence shows, yeah. Pay transparency benefits employers at the cost of high performers because they can credibly commit to not paying more. > Equilibrium effects of pay transparency in a simple labor market > Public discourse on pay transparency has not focused on equilibrium effects: how greater transparency impacts hiring and bargaining. To study these effects, we combine a dynamic wage-bargaining model with data from online markets for low-skill, temporary jobs that differ in their level of transparency. Wages are more equal, but lower under transparency. Transparency increases hiring and employer profits, rising 27% in an online field experiment. A key intuition is high transparency commits employers to negotiating aggressively, because a highly paid worker's salary affects negotiations with other workers. We discuss implications for the gender wage gap and employers' endogenous transparency choices. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3328526.3329645 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3328526.3329645 > Equilibrium effects of pay transparency > The discourse around pay transparency has focused on partial equilibrium effects: how workers rectify pay inequities through informed renegotiation. We investigate how employers respond in equilibrium. We study a model of bargaining under two‐sided incomplete information. Our model predicts that transparency reduces the individual bargaining power of workers, leading to lower average wages. A key insight is that employers credibly refuse to pay high wages to any one worker to avoid costly renegotiations with others. When workers have low individual bargaining power, pay transparency has a muted effect. We test our model with an event‐study analysis of U.S. state‐level laws protecting the right of private sector workers to communicate salary information with their coworkers. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, transparency laws empirically lead wages to decline by approximately 2%, and wage declines are smallest in magnitude when workers have low individual bargaining power. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28903/w28903.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28903/w289...
- plagiarist 3y ago
  What is this industry where a few people are being paid so far beyond their peers that moving salaries to a market-decided fair range brings the average salary down?
  - made_this_acct4 3y ago
    Engineering
- jahewson 3y ago
  The range is not forced and salaries of existing employees are not disclosed, so this effect does not hold. A talented individual is free to negotiate above the pay range and the range for a new role does not have to reflect the salaries of existing employees in that role.
diego_sandoval 3y ago
> It's unambiguously GOOD for the applicant to know the expected compensation before applying. Only if the expected compensation is referential and doesn't have to be honored. If the expected compensation has to be honored, then you have no way to negotiate a salary higher than the upper bound or lower than the lower bound.
- yCombLinks 3y ago
  Yes, the negotiation happens before you waste your time going through the interview process. If they aren't willing to pay what you want, don't apply.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - diego_sandoval 3y ago
    Which just proves my point: If I (hypothetically) don't do my application process in your expected way, I'm going to be penalized by this law, so it's not unambiguously good for the applicant.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  > If the expected compensation has to be honored, then you have no way to negotiate a salary higher than the upper bound or lower than the lower bound. That's when you see that the upper bound they wish to pay doesn't match your lower bound, close the tab with that job listing and move onto the next one. Negotiation done. No one is twisting your arm forcing you to apply to a job that is below your desired compensation.
  - jahewson 3y ago
    Actually I think that is a bad thing. Employee negotiating power is strictly capped under such a system. If every employer offers the same range, you’re screwed.
    - 3y ago
BlackEngineer 3y ago
People are opposed to being valued the same way that mediocre people are. Like, I don’t talk about money until the interview process is over. That way I have the leverage (concrete examples of performance) that I need to negotiate fairly. Employers now can just race to the bottom with accurate info on their competition. You’ve played yourself.
Sophistifunk 3y ago
You do realise that it's possible to believe both "the world would be better if everybody did X" and also believe that "the government should not have the power to mandate everybody does X"?
- esrauch 3y ago
  I can imagine the argument when X is something that only negative affects the 'defector' (eg: "everyone should wear a helmet but the government shouldnt make you wear a motorcycle helmet") but what's the rationale when the reason that everyone should do X the social good at no costs, rather than personal good?
  - Sophistifunk 3y ago
    Because all government power is itself intrinsically a huge cost to society. We don't serve them, they serve us.
  - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
    ensuring compliance has a non-zero cost. you need to set up a regulations, have people to enforce them and deal with the aftermath of the enforcement (this last one is why the war on drugs was so dumb).

by rychco 3y ago

made_this_acct4 3y ago

Feels like this sounds good in principle but - some roles don’t really have a budget, salary will depend on applicant and can range a lot - forcing a range means these ranges will skew lower so higher performing people will lose out and average salaries will go down

joshuanapoli 3y ago
If the employer really has a too-wide range, they can just post two job openings that split the range into high and low experience options.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> some roles don’t really have a budget, salary will depend on applicant and can range a lot Not a real problem. That can be expressed as a range. For example, 100k-infinity.
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  $100k+ isn’t very helpful if you make $180k and only want to apply for jobs paying $200k+. I could see ranges having some issues
  - jamilton 3y ago
    It's better than nothing.
  - deprecative 3y ago
    Employers will always try to get you to undervalue yourself so they can get away with paying you as little as possible. Taking tools away from them that they use to do this is only a good thing.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      While I 100% agree with wage transparency, just like I agree with price transparency for any other good... This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me. Everyone wants to get the best price they can for anything, I am sure when you hire a HVAC person, or a plumber you are not looking to hire the most expensive person, you are looking to hire the best value... Why do people believe employment is something different than any other goods exchange, employers buy labor from the market no different you buy a computer monitor, or a plumber. I think everyone should have transparent pricing for everything, if Space X can post pricing to launch something into orbit, then dave the plumber can publish his rates, and Amce Corp can publish what they are paying employees... "Call for pricing" should be a thing of the past for products just like "We pay competitive wages" should be a thing of the past for job ads.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        > This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me. Bruh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... https://goodjobsfirst.org/conspiring-against-competition/ https://goodjobsfirst.org/conspiring-against-competition/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/economy/wages-antitrust-law-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/economy/wages-an... https://archive.ph/2022.03.07-193856/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/business/economy/treasury-competition-report.html https://archive.ph/2022.03.07-193856/https://www.nytimes.com... https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download
        phpisthebest 3y ago
        Bruh.... exceptions do not make a rule
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Thats from the candidates perspective. Its no less helpful than not publishing the range.
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    The supposed issue there would be missed matches no? If the range really is quite wide, the employer probably isn't really trying very hard to hire at the top end and someone at that price can compare it to their options well enough before spending time on it.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    A bottom limit is always helpful, for all applicants. For those who expect more and do not want to waste time, they can look elsewhere. For prospective labor sellers, such as high school and college students or career changers, the bottom limit (and its trend) can help them project cash flow if they were to pursue that type of work. And it results in a more efficient allocation of labor for the country as a whole. For example, it could more quickly signal to people that we need fewer paper pushers and more trades workers.
- noku 3y ago
  Or 0k-infinity, which is the current state!
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Sure, if that’s how the employer wants to do it. I wouldn’t say that’s the current state though.
- BlackEngineer 3y ago
  It’s not a real problem for people who’s skill set is commoditized. This is a real problem for high value employees. This all really feels like McDonalds employees forcing the rest of us to negotiate the way they have to.
seanoliver 3y ago
> - forcing a range means these ranges will skew lower so higher performing people will lose out and average salaries will go down I could easily see this having the opposite effect: Forcing a range causes employers (particularly those with less name recognition) to increase posted salaries in order to get people interested enough to apply. I don't see how posting lower salaries would do anything but discourage top applicants.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  I can see how companies paying their current staff a lower salary would be hesitant to post the new job at a higher salary range. There would be a strong temptation to post at a lower range, despite that not attracting the best new talent, to avoid the demands of pay raises from the existing staff.
  - NoraCodes 3y ago
    Sounds like a good thing. Those companies will either pay their workers what they're worth, or hurt for talent.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> some roles don’t really have a budget, salary will depend on applicant and can range a lot Of course they all have a budget. You're not going to have a $1m range on pay for the same position that depends on the applicant, except for maybe a few exceptional cases.
- BlackEngineer 3y ago
  Could it be that your experience and skills are common and so you don’t really have experience with salary negotiation in this context. Like, everybody I know that advocates for this couldn’t imagine a world where the skills they’ve developed play a role in negotiation.
hotnfresh 3y ago
> - forcing a range means these ranges will skew lower so higher performing people will lose out and average salaries will go down Executive comp being disclosed appears, if anything, to have had the opposite effect.
barry-cotter 3y ago
That’s what the evidence shows, yeah. Pay transparency benefits employers at the cost of high performers because they can credibly commit to not paying more. > Equilibrium effects of pay transparency in a simple labor market > Public discourse on pay transparency has not focused on equilibrium effects: how greater transparency impacts hiring and bargaining. To study these effects, we combine a dynamic wage-bargaining model with data from online markets for low-skill, temporary jobs that differ in their level of transparency. Wages are more equal, but lower under transparency. Transparency increases hiring and employer profits, rising 27% in an online field experiment. A key intuition is high transparency commits employers to negotiating aggressively, because a highly paid worker's salary affects negotiations with other workers. We discuss implications for the gender wage gap and employers' endogenous transparency choices. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3328526.3329645 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3328526.3329645 > Equilibrium effects of pay transparency > The discourse around pay transparency has focused on partial equilibrium effects: how workers rectify pay inequities through informed renegotiation. We investigate how employers respond in equilibrium. We study a model of bargaining under two‐sided incomplete information. Our model predicts that transparency reduces the individual bargaining power of workers, leading to lower average wages. A key insight is that employers credibly refuse to pay high wages to any one worker to avoid costly renegotiations with others. When workers have low individual bargaining power, pay transparency has a muted effect. We test our model with an event‐study analysis of U.S. state‐level laws protecting the right of private sector workers to communicate salary information with their coworkers. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, transparency laws empirically lead wages to decline by approximately 2%, and wage declines are smallest in magnitude when workers have low individual bargaining power. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28903/w28903.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28903/w289...
plagiarist 3y ago
What is this industry where a few people are being paid so far beyond their peers that moving salaries to a market-decided fair range brings the average salary down?
- made_this_acct4 3y ago
  Engineering
jahewson 3y ago
The range is not forced and salaries of existing employees are not disclosed, so this effect does not hold. A talented individual is free to negotiate above the pay range and the range for a new role does not have to reflect the salaries of existing employees in that role.

diego_sandoval 3y ago

> It's unambiguously GOOD for the applicant to know the expected compensation before applying. Only if the expected compensation is referential and doesn't have to be honored. If the expected compensation has to be honored, then you have no way to negotiate a salary higher than the upper bound or lower than the lower bound.

yCombLinks 3y ago
Yes, the negotiation happens before you waste your time going through the interview process. If they aren't willing to pay what you want, don't apply.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- diego_sandoval 3y ago
  Which just proves my point: If I (hypothetically) don't do my application process in your expected way, I'm going to be penalized by this law, so it's not unambiguously good for the applicant.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> If the expected compensation has to be honored, then you have no way to negotiate a salary higher than the upper bound or lower than the lower bound. That's when you see that the upper bound they wish to pay doesn't match your lower bound, close the tab with that job listing and move onto the next one. Negotiation done. No one is twisting your arm forcing you to apply to a job that is below your desired compensation.
- jahewson 3y ago
  Actually I think that is a bad thing. Employee negotiating power is strictly capped under such a system. If every employer offers the same range, you’re screwed.
  - 3y ago

BlackEngineer 3y ago

People are opposed to being valued the same way that mediocre people are. Like, I don’t talk about money until the interview process is over. That way I have the leverage (concrete examples of performance) that I need to negotiate fairly. Employers now can just race to the bottom with accurate info on their competition. You’ve played yourself.

Sophistifunk 3y ago

You do realise that it's possible to believe both "the world would be better if everybody did X" and also believe that "the government should not have the power to mandate everybody does X"?

esrauch 3y ago
I can imagine the argument when X is something that only negative affects the 'defector' (eg: "everyone should wear a helmet but the government shouldnt make you wear a motorcycle helmet") but what's the rationale when the reason that everyone should do X the social good at no costs, rather than personal good?
- Sophistifunk 3y ago
  Because all government power is itself intrinsically a huge cost to society. We don't serve them, they serve us.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
  ensuring compliance has a non-zero cost. you need to set up a regulations, have people to enforce them and deal with the aftermath of the enforcement (this last one is why the war on drugs was so dumb).