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Comment by JCM9 | Hacker News Reader

These laws don’t have the effect people think they will in tech given that “salary” is often a small part of someone’s overall compensation.

A role might say it has a $150,000 “salary” but if someone has say $300,000 in RSUs on top of that then they’re really making $450,000 with a $150,000 “salary”.

Eg in the US employers must publish the “salary” for certain visa applicants, but those numbers are often only a small fraction of total comp because they exclude equity-based compensation. Given that different companies give different cash/equity mix in their comp plans this leads to a lot of misleading data points about the pay of various companies. One company many look like it it’s more (because it does in cash salary) but actually the total pay relative to others is much less (eg because they give out less stock).

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I'm sorry by Europe is not USA. We have no RSU and little to zera extra compensations. Salary is just salary. Please don't undervaluate this law proposal if you don't know what you are talking about

Speak for yourself, I've had both RSU-like arrangements and bonus payouts on a similar order to my annual salary working in Europe.

While lot of forms "paying by with stock" or "bonus based on partial profit margin" and similar a not quite legal in many parts of the EU it's not that bonus payments and similar don't exist they are just less common and more constraint.

Working in Ireland RSUs are very much a thing here same as in US

Maybe it would be useful to remember that the "options-based tech payment" is more a US thing, more a certain US area thing and even more with a certain type of employers. Not saying that it doesn't happen in Europe, but we're talking a small minority possibly overrepresented on HN.

I'm from EU and in my country, RSUs are considered a kind of salary and taxed in the same manner so perhaps they will have to be mentioned as well? The idea is that you can get paid for your work by different means, money being only one of them.

RSU value at vesting is taxed like salary in the US too (gains post vesting would be taxed less at capital gains rates if one doesn’t immediately sell).

It’s a change for all job postings, across all industries and roles across the EW. Not just the privileges few who work in the western North American technology bubble

We don't really have startups in Europe. We're only paid money.

I work at one in a building filled with them in Europe. N=1 though but it refutes your claim.

That's such a ludicrous statement I can only assume you meant to say something else

When you take a look at the job market in totality, hardly anybody is paid in anything other than salary.

Sounds like that creates two incentives, one the one hand to mention directly in the job posting whether salary will be a small part of someone's overall compensation, on the other hand this might also incentive companies to push the salary/stock ratio up to appear more competitive.

Given the wide availability of more complete data points on total comp packages from other sources (eg levels.fyi) it’s unlikely a “government mandated salary database” will add any net new information in many cases, and per above that government salary data will likely be misleading at best.

I do get that the optics look good though and it makes politicians feel like they’re doing something.

Barely published and the US tech sector is looking for ways to minimize its effect or bypass it completely.

levels.fyi is dependent on people willing disclosing, and is of course for very limited sectors of the job market.

You do understand that there is more to the workforce than engineers at SV startups and big tech, right?

RSUs aren't much of a thing in most of the EU.

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