Hacker News Reader

Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

Context: Colorado’s Equal Pay Act requires jobs ads to list a salary range [1], which companies generally don't want to do. Excluding CO residents is one way companies are avoiding the law.

[1] https://www.colorado.edu/hr/colorados-equal-pay-equal-work-a...

View on HN

I'm curious if the other workaround will just be to have Junior Software Engineer I ($60K-$65K), JSE II ($65-70), etc. and post them all via the power of automation and just down qualify candidates from JSE VIII to JSE II because of the lack of 20 years experience in Rust. They still get to low-ball people. I really wish software had some more abstract certifications like other professions do, including things like journey-man drywaller.

I think the trade style apprentice to journeyman process is great. I've seen it deployed in the govt and it worked quite well. I think it could be pretty helpful in a generalization sense, but we would run into issues with so many people doing things outside of one discipline.

Still, you have my vote!

That's what my company does. Well, they don't publish the salaries externally, but I believe they're accessible to managers. I switched BU's inside my company and had to essentially "apply" to this new job -- I tried to negotiate salary and was told "No, they're fixed to a certain amount, +/- a tiny wiggle room, by HR at the corporate level based on job level - best I can do is offer the top of the range for this position". I've been told that they try to accommodate location-cost-of-living; not sure how good or bad a job they do.

I think you mean avoid breaking the law. IANAL, but that ad without "no Colorado" might break the law.

They're avoiding the other elements of the law. It institutes a few other things besides just salary transparency. Companies also have to maintain a record of salaries/wages in order to prove they didn't discriminate based on sex and they have to announce advancement opportunities to existing employees (something many companies shy away from).

> have to announce advancement opportunities to existing employees (something many companies shy away from).

Why? Isn't hiring from within a win for employer and employee? I don't speak HR. Training up on culture and product is a huge deal sometimes.

I'm on Colorado and all our internal promotions are opened on the internal job board (greenhouse) even if we already have a candidate in mind.

1. The candidate has an opportunity to show how interested and qualified they are (or if the person we had in mind doesn't want the job)

2. Other people we didn't think would be interested have the same opportunity to show they do.

3. No one ends up feeling slighted for having been passed over.

It should be, but companies, like people, aren't as rational as we'd like to believe them to be. For whatever reason there is a tendency to keep people who aren't on leadership tracks (which often means getting picked by a leader above you) where they are and with minimal pay raises. But then they hire new people at higher rates (because you have to, to get them in the door). This law makes that much harder to accomplish without creating conflict. You announce a new job paying 20% more than your current employees get in that position, they'll know they're getting screwed.

Doesn't this basically show the stupidity of local regulations? Make these kind of laws federal if you want them to stick or at least coordinate with the big states. Looking at Wikipedia Colorado doesn't have the economic power to dictate anything.

The problem is not with the jurisdiction, but with the regulation in this particular case

Enjoy your race to the bottom.

On the other hand, when done well, this lets individual states experiment with new policies before you make them mandatory everywhere. Would you push a new release to 100% of traffic immediately?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com