CO remote workers need not apply: Companies avoid it due to salary-posting law | Hacker News Reader

CO remote workers need not apply: Companies avoid it due to salary-posting law

denverpost.com

18 pointsmooreds21 comments

If for example the high range is ~200k in the SF bay area, but the low range is ~80k in Denver.... that isn't about gender inequity, it's about geographic cost-of-living inequity.

Let's be for real here, cut the crap.

This is not about gender equity issues as the labor law purports, it's about people wanting to earn that FAT silicon valley salary, but live somewhere cheap(er) like Denver. I totally get it, and to be fair we all probably would like for that to happen to ourselves. My modest home in Dallas area would be worth Millions in the Bay area, so I totally understand why people in that area are paid more, and yet still get less quality of living by comparison.

I dunno, I want to be polite... but honestly I feel like my spidey-senses detect a level or willful ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty with people advocating for this kind of thing. If Colorado actually catches an employer paying women less as a result of this law, that's awesome! But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that press release from CO labor dept. What I think is actually happening is Colorado wants to support it's remote workforce by forcing higher salary jobs from the Coastal cities.

The only issue I have with the law, is the compelled speech. It seems that the idea of this law is that job posting are not normal speech, but I guess "commercial speech" and therefor regulated outside the 1st amendment. ehh

Netflix doesn't cost any less in Colorado than California then an engineer with exact same qualities should be paid exactly the same.

The government doesn't agree with your assessment: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

A couple years ago:

"Its not about [the cost of living, inflation, your personal life circumstances], but the value you bring to the company!"

Today:

"It costs you less to live there so we will pay you less!"

Salaries are weird. If you want to be paid for value delivered, do consulting and charge by the hour. Salaries are a market rate; just like you are probably gonna make more if you apply to Bay Area jobs, you’ll probably make less in Colorado. Negotiating a market rate in one place then moving to another is basically a loophole.

> but the value you bring to the company!

I hear you! But the value brought to the company is still relative to the cost of doing business, and that ultimately becomes calculous on where the business & employee are located.

This is the whole idea with outsourcing. I'm sure cheap labor in less developed places like Mexico, India, or China... provides huge value for the foreign companies. In those other economies the workers can be paid a huge amount of money compared to the local average, and yet still be significantly lower than equivalent people living in the developed world.

The concept is not limited to other counties, it makes perfect sense here in the USA and around Europe. People earning 100k in a place like Alabama or Mississippi are high earners in their area. Take that same person, same amount of pya, but put them in San Jose... now they are effectively in poverty.

What is 100k worth to somebody in China, Mexico, or India? Just because that's the cost of somebody somewhere else, doesn't mean the same applies to people located elsewhere. Likewise, same applies to people in Colorado.

If they can just bar an entire state without any issues...

How long until American workers are barred entirely just for having too high of a salary?

Didn't that kind of already happen with all the outsourcing in the 90s and 00s?

Is it picking up though?

Definitely not, but what's your point?

Outsourcing doesn't seem like it's picking up with the pandemic and the widespread adaptation to remote work?

Right. That's why I said it already happened.

I am saying happening present tense.

No worries I think we're crossing wires. Best of luck to ya.

It’s really funny to see the battle about remote pay equality playing out between US states — it’s like watching a group of rabbits arguing over some carrots right before a lion walks in and eats all of them. The Lion being the world’s 6.8 billion non-Americans who will work remotely for whatever the job pays.

Right, those 6.8 billion workers who speak great English, have the skills needed, understand the culture, can work the same hours..

There aren't 6.8 billion competitors but there are a hell of a lot more than anyone's prepared for

Now that StackOverflow Jobs is shutting down I am building a list of alternatives to the best job board for developers in the word!

Here you go https://stackoverflowjobsalternatives.com/ hope you find a job :)

States need to be wary of leaping out in front of the rest of the country with new regulations. California can kind of do it, it's a big enough state. But things like this and the Washington state long term care "tax" really could only fully succeed if done by the federal government.

On the other hand, sometimes you just need someone to do it first.

Apparently there are other areas with pay transparency requirements. I just learned about NYC: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069784225/pay-transparency

Can California continue to do it? They have lost enough people they are loosing a representative in the House. Companies are bailing out at a record rate. They are bleeding high wage earners at an even more alarming rate.

People assuming CA will always be "big enough" to keep doing brain dead things will one day wake up to find that is no longer true. Nor as far away as they would also like to assume.

> They have lost enough people they are loosing a representative in the House.

No, California gained >2¼ million people between the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census [0] on which the most recent apportionment is based, but because the size of the House is fixed, it is possible to gain population and still lose a seat, e.g., by gaining slower than the average rate of growth across the country, as actually occurred, or, if the population changes across the country are distributed just right, even by gaining faster than the national average. [1] Losing a seat in the House had nothing to do with losing population.

California has had an estimated population loss since the 2020 Census (in part because the pandemic and policy responses to it further reduced international migration, which had been offsetting California’s net internal outmigration.) There's a whole lot of sui generis stuff going on over that short time window that it would be foolish to extrapolate from it.

> They are bleeding high wage earners at an even more alarming rate

No, California, during the “exodus”, has had net domestic inmigration of high earners, it's low and middle earners where there is net domestic outmigration. [2]

[0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA

[1] this could occur require population losses or gains slower average in states that are already only have one 1 rep because you can't have fewer, and then the state losing seats to gains at a rate slower than the average of the remaining states.

[2] https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-m...

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