Ask HN: Why doesn't YC list compensation for their own open positions?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29720803

by andrew_ • 5 years ago

331 332 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

HN, being a rather progressive forum, tends to trend in support of including compensation details for job posts, open positions, recruiter reach-outs, etc. This position [1] was just posted today and has been on the front page all day. Does anyone have any insider information or generally good theory as to why YC's own job posts include none of that information?

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/1x2B...

sillysaurusx4• 5 years ago

Because the compensation is multi millions. They don’t need to.

A 0.01% share of YC is still worth a lot. And I’m assuming that all YC positions come with a share of equity.

Even if they didn’t, you get to help shape the admissions process. Which means you get the opportunity to participate in investment decisions for the startups that will in ten years be worth billions.

EDIT: Do people feel this is mistaken? I’d be happy to source the claims.

MattGaiser9• 5 years ago

Do people get a 0.01% share? I did not see that in the job ad.

sillysaurusx4• 5 years ago

It’s a guess, but an educated one.

Let’s put it this way. If you do well as a YC admissions engineer, and you dedicate the next ten years to growing YC, what are the chances you’ll walk with less than a 0.01% share? It wouldn’t make sense for YC not to offer that. Your work will help make or break YC’s core investment decisions.

And ten years is just the maximum theoretical upper bound that I can think of — e.g. the initial role doesn’t include equity, and then you ask for equity a few years later. (That scenario seems far more implausible than them just including equity vesting in the offer. Yet even in that case, you’d still end up with your 0.01%.)

Here’s something closer to a proof: YC is a startup. Startup jobs come with equity compensation. YC’s portfolio is approaching $1T (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29064559). 1% of $1T is $10B. And 0.01% of $10B is $1M.

That’s the lower bound. YC likely has a higher stake than 1%, especially when you consider the Continuity Fund. And they’ll likely be granting more than 0.01% to a product engineer on the admissions team that can provably grow YC’s portfolio over ten years.

So the absolute lower bound is around $1M over ten years from equity alone. It’s hard to estimate the upper bound — exponential investments are counterintuitive — but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was around $10M, and I wouldn’t rule out $40M. After all, $10M over 10 years is $1m a year, and top engineers at top tech companies make ~$600k in total comp. so $10M is just keeping pace with Google, and $40M is keeping pace with YC’s tremendous growth.

snowmaker• 5 years ago

(I work at YC). We do offer equity-like ownership in YC to all employees. Unfortunately we can't share the details or numbers publicly. But philosophically we think it's very important for all startups to offer generous ownership to their employees, and we follow this philosophy ourselves.

leftpass• 5 years ago

known quantities don’t typically share ownership by percentage. certainly an early startup might offer %x equity, but once a quantity is known — therefore, no risk — you’re getting issued amounts of equity based on their value. I would be exceptionally surprised if YC are giving product engineers multi-million stakes at signing, I’d bet money that does not happen. If there is an equity compensation component (doubtful but not impossible), it’ll be measured in dollars.

As much as “exposure” is worthless, having worked for YC is worth more than a few hundred grand. I’d work for YC as an engineer below market rate.

ascendantlogic• 5 years ago

gonna need citations here. unless you're part of the deal flow I doubt you're getting equity.

sillysaurusx4• 5 years ago

You’re part of the deal flow. It’s in the job description.

adrr• 5 years ago

Let say you work at company that exits for $10b which is very rare even for a YC company. With 1 basis point of equity you’ll get $1m which is $250k per year with the standard 4 year vest. This isn’t factoring dilution from additional raises or the risk company doesn’t exit which I assume half or more arent successful.

zaxbeast• 5 years ago

They don't want dang to know how underpaid he is? (totally made this up)

gjsman-1000• 5 years ago

Open Position: Hacker News Moderator

Minimum Qualification: 100,000 karma

Compensation: $Karma value yearly

Remote work option available

Contact @dang if interested.

vital_beach• 5 years ago

I would apply just to interview with dang

jaredsohn• 5 years ago

only 12 users have that much karma https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

champagnois• 5 years ago

Probably because they have a range they are willing to pay depending on what value the candidate can be assumed to bring to the team.

nerdponx• 5 years ago

So post the range.

deltree72• 5 years ago

$50,000 - $450,000.

Ericson23146• 5 years ago

Do you really want a shit-tier employee number #3 just so you can pay them pennies? I don't think so.

Smaller companies should have narrower bans because they lack the organization capacity to reap the cost savings of hiring cheaper lower-tear workers, and also the cash flow to pay exceptionally higher-tier ones. (I assume the VCs will not be pleased if you say "but they're a 10x engineer!".)

MattGaiser9• 5 years ago

It really still isn't the norm anywhere to list compensation and I suspect that Y Combinator has the same problems of disparate compensation based on when people joined as any other company. Heck, we are all switching jobs constantly because the new guy got more than we did, despite being the same level and having more experience at the company.

Plenty of companies decided to stop hiring from Colorado rather than post compensation in the job postings.

If I had to guess, I suspect it provides no competitive advantage to list compensation except if you pay top tier.

As an anecdote from a friend, the wage differences can be substantial. The friend just recently got a new job and the senior who mentored him in onboarding also got promoted a level too. That senior was talking about how they finally reached six figures (Canada has much lower pay than the USA, so this isn't crazy). My friend made six figures starting, with 3-5 fewer years of experience and just about two years overall.

There are a lot of absurdly underpaid people out there.

netizen-936824• 5 years ago

There are a lot of absurdly underpaid people out there.

In my observation, this is literally the backbone of capitalism

lotsofpulp15• 5 years ago

Not really. It is simply a consequence of a market lacking price transparency.

We have the internet. We have laws protecting employees discussing their pay. There is nothing in capitalism stopping anyone from disclosing their pay and creating a transparent market.

And it is happening, albeit slowly (see levels.fyi and glassdoor). CO’s transparency laws also help, and anything to help transparency will assist. The main resistance I sense is actually from people themselves, for various social and emotional reasons.

TOGoS• 5 years ago

In my observation

You win award for understatement[1] of 2021.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

pcthrowaway• 5 years ago

Plenty of companies decided to stop hiring from Colorado rather than post compensation in the job postings.

Do you know if there's any data supporting this?

MattGaiser9• 5 years ago

It is anecdotal from constantly seeing remote job postings saying things like

"this role can be performed from any US state except Colorado." Sometimes Hawaii is included.

Let me try and dig up a few of these.

MattGaiser9• 5 years ago

Here, I found 5 so far.

https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=9e046a56c76ba933&tk=1fo21m...

https://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=d87c517c32a680d3&fccid=2b2d...

https://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=0e1dbdaee064b39b&fccid=c953...

https://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=b1ed6d586890504b&fccid=afbf...

https://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=cd34c725a1fc5766&fccid=2c62...

The 5th link says it openly in the title of the job ad.

Principal Software Engineer – Search (open to remote work, except in Colorado)

Just search "software engineer Colorado" on Indeed, select "Remote" and maybe 1/3 of them are a Colorado exclusion.

https://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=08cf978f51852f65&fccid=ccf1...

Of tech companies doing it, one of them is eBay.

countvonbalzac• 5 years ago

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/remote-...

jsperson• 5 years ago

My previous company posted several openings for our team. All specifically excluded Colorado.

jahlove• 5 years ago

https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/

lettergram2• 5 years ago

I think most people are naive (even on HN) regarding compensation and negotiations.

The first thing I do at the start of every interview conversation is ask comp. I then tell them my total comp and ask for X% over. If equity is discussed, I always require my same base pay or slightly higher.

The reality is that ensures a continued trajectory upward. I also always request 2-4x any equity I’m offered. If they want to keep me, they need to make it worth my while at a higher risk profile (equity isn’t cash on hand).

Equity is always a gamble, for the company and the employee. I personally demand higher because plenty of my work is open source and I offer more references as well. That mitigates the company risk and in return I demand more equity (as I’m reducing said companies risk).

chmod6002• 5 years ago

I am no expert, but it sounds like you are naive when it comes to negotiation as well.

gnopgnip• 5 years ago

The best thing for most people is to delay talking about comp as long as possible into the interview, and not to tell them your current salary or total comp because it isn't relevant or helpful for you. If they have more time invested they are more likely to pay on the higher end of their salary range.

But you should ask the recruiter about the salary range and do research on the company before hand to find out what the range is.

jollybean• 5 years ago

"The first thing I do at the start of every interview conversation is ask comp. I then tell them my total comp and ask for X% over."

First, no good team will hire someone that does this, second, this is not a good negotiation tactic at all.

On the former: definitely it's prudent for both sides to be 'in range' or else it's all pointless, but that should be sorted out before the interview process - just the range.

Anyone wanting to talk about salaries up front is not going to make it past that part of the conversation for any decent group. It's the last part, not the first part, for so many reasons not the least of which is trying to put a number on something wherein fit, value etc. has not been established, and more obviously a concern over motivations etc..

As for the later, i.e. 'why it's a bad negotiating tactic' ... because it's not just about Supply, it's about Demand as well.

You may be overstating or understating your position by quite a lot thereby rending moot a real opportunity for exchange of value.

You may have some kind of special skills they really need, and some advanced insight. They might also be in a very profitable position. They might be happy to pay you much more. Alternatively, you may have little to offer, they might be cash constrained etc..

For equity again, they might be offering you a sweet deal, above industry norms, in which case asking for 2-4x just seems aggressive or uninformed.

But really, both of those things combined are bad: anyone wanting to talk comp details before demonstrating value, commitment, professionalism and the incidentals like curiosity/intelligence ... as an employee that's 'really bad signal'. If you're hiring someone you know to be a competent contractor, the scope of the job is established - fine - but that's rarely the case.

YC doesn't publish comp because it's probably not very helpful, the range would have to be wide, and they probably want people who want to be there, the comp distracts a bit from that. That said, I wonder if there were a sea change on that custom if would all be better off.

ryanmercer3• 5 years ago

I think most people are naive (even on HN) regarding compensation and negotiations.

I think most people on HN are naïve as to how most companies outside of tech startups actually work. They have concrete pay scales, you get the bare minimum of that pay scale when you hire in, anything above that is from your annual merit based increase which is often at or below inflation. You can look at your co-workers and have a very good idea of what they make to the percent based on how long they've been in their role.

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

really still isn't the norm anywhere to list compensation

Jobs posted on remote job forums like weworkremote.com and remoteok.com routinely list salary ranges.

alborzb• 5 years ago

Heads up for anyone else that reads this comment and tries the site in their job searches, first one is a typo for weworkremotely.com :)

JohnTHaller• 5 years ago

Most businesses only seem to when required. California only requires an employer to provide pay scale (salary or hourly wage, not bonuses or equity) upon request after an initial interview. Colorado requires wage/salary in job listings now. NYC will require a salary range in job postings starting in April 2022 for permanent positions (provided the new mayor doesn't veto it after taking office on Jan 1).

calebm• 5 years ago

I'm not affiliated with YC, but people are not commodities - one person might be a $50,000/yr X, and another person might be a $200,000/yr X. You don't know what kind of person you have until you talk with them.

giantg24• 5 years ago

People working the same level job should probably fall within a range for that position. Outside of that range should land them in a different level.

hash872• 5 years ago

The problem here arises that any company that isn't tiny has engineers with the same basic job description, but at multiple levels of seniority. And then multiplies the larger the company gets. I.e. we have a Software Engineer 1, Software Engineer 2, 3, 4 etc. It can be tough to know which specific role someone is going to end up in until they're interviewed (and even then it's a crapshoot....)

Not accusing you (or anyone) of this, but just a general observation- a lot of these 'companies should have salary ranges' discussions seem to come uncomfortably close to an old-school union or government employee system of 'if you have x years, you're at x level'. I think we should celebrate individual accomplishment- some engineers with 4 years of experience are just better & worth more than some engineers with 10 years, and that's OK. My point is- most companies are hiring at multiple levels, and we can't know what level you're at until we interview you. So we can say Software Engineer 1 makes this, Engineer 2 makes that, etc.- but we don't know where you're going to end up

ryanbrunner• 5 years ago

Those people should ideally have different titles as a way of "checking your work" as a manager. It's easy to let personal bias slip into who you judge to be a $50,000/yr X and who's a $200,000/yr X. But if you call one of those people Junior and one of those people Senior, you at least have to justify it under consistent criteria, and your team can call you out on it if it's clearly unjustified.

PragmaticPulp4• 5 years ago

Most startups are flexible with a wide range of compensation and seniority as necessary to bring candidates on board.

It wouldn’t be all that helpful to break the job listing down into 3-6 different job listings if the end result is a wide or open-ended range anyway.

889135273• 5 years ago

By posting the salary, you can let the 200's and 50's self select. Sure: some 50's will aim for 200 roles. But since you're speaking to everyone anyways, you aren't relinquishing the ability to determine a candidate's worth to you.

nickff2• 5 years ago

If you tell someone that they’re in the bottom of a 70-80 band, they will be more offended than if you just offered them 70. This is not a good way to start a working relationship.

I have personally seen people with literally no domain relevant experience (they’d worked in retail & service businesses) say that they expect to be in the top half of the salary range of a mid-level engineering role posting.

lotsofpulp15• 5 years ago

You can always list a minimum.

inetknght4• 5 years ago

You don't know what kind of person you have until you talk with them.

I disagree. I'd say that you don't know what kind of person you have until they've put in a few months of work.

urda• 5 years ago

Even then people can surprise you beyond that.

At one of the earlier startups I was involved with I had worked closely with another developer. When said startup fell apart and the group of us all went our different ways, I got a warning from another colleague about the individual I had grown close with, we will just note them as "E".

She had cautioned that when things were good (and the usually were) "E" was a great individual. However, the moment things did not go 100% perfectly, or there was any type of "advantage" to gain regardless of the cost, they would immediately do that and backstab anyone. I wrote that off as just a disagreement between the two of them, something grudge or who knows.

It took many years later that "E" made his true nature shown. I truly believe it to be a combination of being locked down for COVID, constant job hunting, the fact he had "quit" learning in tech, a weird fascination with crypto currency, getting lost into a hole of IDPOL (us versus them, with us or against us nonsense), and some closet fascism to boot. Not to mention attacking myself and others for "being educated" because the few of us Engineers held specialized degrees and long work histories, whereas "E" was nothing more than a basic bootcamp grad.

All it took was myself not fully agreeing on a trivial point in a matter, and in moments "E" had attempted to turn everything I had privately confided in him in an attempt to hurt me. Of course all that did was confirm the warning of him being what he was, and his opportunist ways.

So even then, people can surprise you.

grzm4• 5 years ago

From the guidelines:

Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

andrew_5• 5 years ago

This question was pointedly directed at the community, not HN moderators, employees, or officers. I do not feel it violates the guidelines.

grzm4• 5 years ago

You can get an authoritative answer from asking them directly rather than encouraging the kind of low-effort speculation that's going on in this thread.

dang2• 5 years ago

That can't be true, because the community is in no position to answer your question. The only people who could would be the people inside YC who actually know why they chose not to list compensation with their job ad. I don't have a clue what the answer is, and certainly nobody outside YC would.

There isn't any particular connection between how YC hires for its teams internally and what the HN community thinks or feels about such things. Both are perfectly valid questions, but they're unrelated.

anigbrowl3• 5 years ago

'X ought to be more public and transparent' is the kind of assertion that it would be ridiculous to confine to a private channel.

grzm4• 5 years ago

Sure. When there's an authoritative or knowledgeable answer, it can be shared. That's not what's happening here.

coolso• 5 years ago

Also from the guidelines:

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

SantalBlush• 5 years ago

Also from the guidelines:

You may quote the guidelines in an attempt to scold other users, but be advised that it's something only losers do.

dehrmann• 5 years ago

The experience range for that position is so wide that the pay range won't be very meaningful.

lotsofpulp15• 5 years ago

Minimum and maximum pay is always useful information.

missedthecue2• 5 years ago

Even when it's "$31,000 - $287,000"?

ryanmercer3• 5 years ago

The low end is always meaningful, it lets you know if you want to apply and potentially waste 3-5 interviews only to find out you'll be taking a pay cut.

giantg24• 5 years ago

I won't even apply to jobs if there's not a range somewhere (ad, glassdoor, levels.fyi).

HatchedLake7212• 5 years ago

Because for fully remote worldwide jobs, it doesn’t always make sense to pay everyone San Francisco salaries.

E.g. GitLab, a 100% remote company with 1,400+ employees pays local rates, and here’s why: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...

andrew_5• 5 years ago

This would be valuable information to have on the post (e.g. "We pay regionally"). Personally, I avoid companies who adopt this practice.

cole-k• 5 years ago

I'm not so in-the-know w/rt pay: are there a lot of companies that _don't_ do regional pay?

jeffalbertson• 5 years ago

Agreed. At the end of the day you pay X for job Y. Adding a "where you live" variable makes no sense in the context of the work required for job Y.

heavyset_go4• 5 years ago

Personally, I avoid companies who adopt this practice.

As do I. The value of my labor doesn't change because I walked 5 blocks away into another ZIP code with significantly higher/lower costs of living.

The only reason this flies is because most engineers have little to no ability to individually negotiate away such nonsense, while employers are happy to collude with one another to enforce these pay scales.

rapind• 5 years ago

It’s clear from that post that they are really just looking out for their employees…

“Can’t hire as many people”, “they would stay for the money even if they weren’t happy”.

Obviously this isn’t just about profit but about employee happiness guys.

RapperWhoMadeIt• 5 years ago

Check the job openings at duckduckgo [0]. They offer 100% remote jobs, their postings include the offered salary for the position and the salaries are location independent (which is insane, imagine doing 150-180k and living in a super cheap place like Guatemala, Croatia or some parts of Spain). I just mention this as a counter example. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/hiring

forgotmyoldname2• 5 years ago

That sounds like a great policy, honestly. Instead of devaluing workers in other countries, they treat them as equal to local people. It also means they’re looking for talent on a level playing field and not trying to skimp out by hiring “cheap” workers.

Ostrogodsky2• 5 years ago

Does GitLab also price their products regionally?

jedberg3• 5 years ago

I tried to start a trend a few months ago on the month Who's hiring posts to get posters to put the compensation. I automatically upvote any post with compensation, but few have it.

I even posted about it once and got a ton of upvotes but then the mods buried my post.

I would love to see more job posts with compensation in fairness to people who aren't good at negotiating, but it just isn't the norm these days.

agentile• 5 years ago

I put compensation for roles here at Follow Up Boss. We tie our level and step salary ranges to salary data from a company called Radford. We set it to the top 10% nationwide from this data. If it goes up year after year we increase salaries automatically.

I have felt this approach to be a good one overall for our org (currently 75 people).

In many ways, it is simpler. We don't have the distraction/time wasted of having these negotiations and lack of compensation clarity during hiring nor do we have staff making wildly different salaries and having resentment internally.

We set a high bar on performance and our definition of 'Senior' is likely more in line with a 'Lead' in the marketplace (which is a discussion all its own).

I find that a lot of candidates really appreciate our jobs posts due to its clarity.

While there are many candidates that apply that are under qualified, I feel this would be the case either way.

Often times, we find really good people who are being underpaid currently for their value. If we end up paying them much more than what they would've taken, it really doesn't bother me. My aim is not to optimize for this salary tuning, my aim to find people who would be a great fit for us, will provide a lot of value to the business, and will want to stay and grow.

Some may say we are leaving money on the table, where in my opinion, at our size, I feel it is the opposite.

I'm proud to say we have amazing retention here, which is such an enormous advantage when you have a good team, particularly in engineering, which I feel other orgs often overlook. Keeping our staff happy (compensation is only a piece of that), they stay here year upon year providing more value to a growing business. This is well worth it vs playing these compensation games where it can contribute more to this revolving door approach and the huge time + energy suck spent in hiring, onboarding and opportunity cost for the business.

heavyset_go4• 5 years ago

It's not in their interests as investors and owners to decrease information asymmetry in hiring. Maintaining that asymmetry allows for greater opportunities to profit.

Ericson23146• 5 years ago

Finally an honest answer.

sjg0075• 5 years ago

I'd do this job for free if I could afford it. What a fantastic opportunity.

PragmaticPulp4• 5 years ago

Startup hiring is nothing like big company hiring. You’re basically casting a wide net and negotiating compensation on an individual basis. You may get a great junior applicant with 1 year of experience and a great senior tech lead with 15 years of FAANG experience respond to the same post, and you may want to hire them both!

If a company is flexible on compensation then it doesn’t make sense to artificially constrain the job listing before they even know what candidates are applying and how much they need to join.

Source: Previously a hiring manager at early startups.

adjkant3• 5 years ago

If that's the case, why not post some general guides based on experience? It seems like this excuse doesn't hold up if the job posters actually cared about transparency.

Example:

Job: Software Engineer

Description: Lorem ipsum

Range of 125K-300K based on relevant experience level

New Grad / 1YOE: 125-150K

2-5 YOE: 150K-200K

5+ YOE: 200K-300K

You can of course be as specific or vague, but these guides help inform people on both ends while not closing you off to those two disparate candidates.

jcims4• 5 years ago

What happens if someone looking for $450k really likes the company and can easily justify their ask. Is the comoany duty bound to now to refuse an offer that exceeds their stated range?

pydry3• 5 years ago

Probably because it is more about deliberate information asymmetry and this provides a pretext.

I have very rarely seen a startup actually cast a net this wide if they're truly looking for senior candidates.

donohoe• 5 years ago

For anything in NYC, they will need to as a new law takes effect.

https://www.dwt.com/blogs/employment-labor-and-benefits/2021...

hn_throwaway_992• 5 years ago

To add to what I think have been many other good comments, in my experience the productivity differentials between individuals in the same job can easily be vastly greater than the upper and lower bounds of that job's payscale.

I can recount cases where I've worked with relatively new engineers (a couple years out of college) who were easily 3-4x as productive as some of their peers. Of course, the pay scale for "Software Engineer" usually only has a band width of about 15-20%. Yes, the better programmer would get promoted faster, but still I've nearly always seen that there is more variance in "creative"-type jobs than pay scales will allow.

So for these types of jobs, posting a payscale is nearly always a bad idea, because it can further compress what is already a "too compressed" payscale.

itsgrimetime• 5 years ago

Why not just list that entire “wider” band? How would doing that “compress” the payscale further?

hn_throwaway_992• 5 years ago

Because when you list the entire band, people naturally will demand being at the top of the band, of be insulted if you offer them salary at the bottom of the band, even if it is warranted.

whateveracct• 5 years ago

Because if they don't, they can shave dollars and keep them for themselves?

noasaservice2• 5 years ago

HN, being a rather progressive forum

HN, as in the site ran by a cutthroat venture capitalist firm... and you describe that as progressive?

This is the same VC that funded and financially enabled LendUP, which according to CFPB, was quoted saying "We are shuttering the lending operations of this fintech for repeatedly lying and illegally cheating its customers". https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-shutt...

No. A union is progressive. A worker cooperative ala Mondragon is progressive. These are corporate capitalists doing venture capitalist-y things.

andrew_5• 5 years ago

Take a beat. You're conflating HN with YC. While HN is hosted by YC (moderated and run in some respects by folks who are also YC staff) it is not equal to YC. HN is a forum/news site, and yes, commenters and topics trend towards the progressive. Going off track into anticapitalism is wholly off topic wrt to the OP.

dang2• 5 years ago

Cutthroat? That's definitely neither accurate nor fair.

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

Here's the problem with non-deterministic conversations: everyone has an opinion (fair enough), and is willing to state it with the authority of a highly experienced subject matter expert.

In deterministic conversations, a naive opinion stated with a lot of authority would be shut down quite quickly (eg: many areas in programming where you can quickly prove something to be right or wrong). You can't do that in politics, business, and many other areas. As a result, we have about 8 billion politicians and business experts.

The author is making the assumption that listing a salary is connected to being a progressive business. A bunch of other people take this a step further and state how not listing the salary is a part of some conspiracy (in YC's case, apparently this is an attempt to lower the payroll costs of their portfolio companies).

The reality is that even the most transparent companies out there (eg: Gitlab) do not disclose individual salaries. No, it has nothing to do with some secret plan to underpay anyone or certain groups. It's simply a fact that people become incredibly irrational when it comes to compensation, and the minute you lay it out in the open, you open up a huge surface area for conflict. Last year we learned that encouraging political activism at work has a similar dynamic, and many companies have made that a no go zone as well. It's not because they are racist or don't care - it's because it takes a tiny minority of people to get the entire business derailed, and it's hard enough to keep that from happening in the best of times; once you add a catalyst like salaries or politics, it's like adding fuel to the fire.

But rather than ask ourselves why the leaders at Gitlab and millions of others companies have made the decisions they did, it's a lot easier to just make assumptions - "it must be coming from a bad place, so let me brainstorm what some of those bad places could be."

I'll take it a step further - Colorado State Senator Jessie Danielson would make you believe it's more likely that millions of companies are "bad actors" than that she just doesn't have the relevant experience in business to predict which way her bill was going to work out. Now that she's cost so many of her constituents lucrative remote jobs, it's too late to admit Mea Culpa, and instead it's everyone else's fault. If she was held a bit more accountable, the next time someone tries to bridge the gender pay gap they will hopefully spend some time interviewing and learning from people who have the relevant experience in hiring.

eganist4• 5 years ago

Colorado State Senator Jessie Danielson would make you believe it's more likely that millions of companies are "bad actors" than that she just doesn't have the relevant experience in business to predict which way her bill was going to work out.

I think this misses the point, and I think the idea of a "huge surface area for conflict" also misses the point.

In the end, unless an entity is a public benefit corp or a not-for-profit, the literal sole goal is to profit. "Reducing surface area for conflict" is one of many steps on the way to the goal for profit, and if cutting out Colorado is less painful to profits than disclosing salaries and opening up that conflict surface, then that's naturally what will happen.

Colorado doesn't really need to apologize. They made a bet that their state was relevant to remote work, and they lost that bet for some number of companies (I can think of plenty with no Colorado carve-outs and with specific disclosures due to Colorado despite not having a presence in the state, so clearly some firms think the talent pool is worthwhile), and that's to be expected given Colorado isn't one of the most populous states in the country. That calculus quickly changes for many more companies if it turns out the population of remote talent in Colorado is trending upward and worth tapping into, or if California etc pass similar legislation.

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

the literal sole goal is to profit.

When trying to build an argument from first principles, it's important not to make a mistake early on. In your case, you use the profit seeking as an argument that this automatically leads to minimizing everyone's salaries.

In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover. That's fundamentally not compatible with your original hypothesis.

antonchekhov• 5 years ago

Note that New York City (50% larger population than Colorado, and can be reasonably considered to be much more economically & politically influential) just passed a similar law mandating salary ranges to be posted, to take effect in April 2022:

https://www.inc.com/melissa-angell/new-nyc-law-will-require-...

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-york-city-council-p...

httpz• 5 years ago

Just like how California's auto market is too big for auto manufacturers to give up on, despite the strict environmental laws, NYC talent pool may be too big for most companies to pass on.

nickff2• 5 years ago

It seems unlikely that New York is a haven for remote workers; it’s a place with high pay and correspondingly high income. I think NY laws won’t have a substantial impact on remote-work job postings.

bencollier492• 5 years ago

Couldn't companies just post a low minimum and high maximum salary to comply? (Apologies for the naive question, I assume the law isn't this easily sidestepped).

nefitty2• 5 years ago

You accuse others of rationalizing these collective behaviors and end up sounding like an apologist.

The fact is that companies engage and enable each other to perpetuate information asymmetries. They run me through the ringer of hours of take-home projects, algorithm tests, whiteboarding, phone screens, video calls, panel interviews, all in an effort to widen the information asymmetry. We simply ask for companies to reveal what they are willing to pay before wasting our time with bullshit.

A real answer is for software engineers and other knowledge workers to unionize. It's very clear that these companies are willing and able to approach employment relationships asymmetrically. Historically, the answer has been collective bargaining. It took decades for remote work to be "approved" by these companies, and it's clear that reasoning was that the status quo was to the benefit of the companies.

I relish imagining all of these outspoken techy leftists actually putting up and making moves that align with addressing the true center of inequities: economic relationships. I know it's wishful thinking. It's a lot easier to rail against Netflix content and Facebook algorithms than it is to engage in real radical politics.

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

You accuse others of rationalizing these collective behaviors and end up sounding like an apologist.

Not true - I am not saying that the market cannot be whipped into shape. What I am saying is it cannot be done by someone who doesn't understand the market.

It sounds you have a background in engineering - would you let a PR person tell you how to do your work? Obviously not. Well, Jessie Danielson is about as close to recruiting as a PR person is to coding (look up her bio and ask yourself what she's done outside of politics). Why trust that she knows how recruiting should work?

david38• 5 years ago

And yet unions and public positions have openly posted salaries and it doesn’t seem to hurt them. It’s actually quite easy to do.

You must be joking? You encouraged political activism at work and are surprised it led to problems? Is political activism code for “so long as it follows my politics”? Would you encourage a pro-lifer to be just as active as pro-choices? In any company I’ve worked at, the answer would be no.

People always seem to be surprised that others think differently than they do. I really can’t believe the hubris that goes into that. When talking to people (who suck at discourse) who think they are tolerant, but really aren’t, the conversation almost always devolves to “you’re a Nazi”. When talking to people (who suck at discourse) who think are very right wing, the conversation tends to devolve into something about how God made people/ the world / etc.

The easiest thing is just give people three PTO days that don’t carry that you encourage to use for civic purposes, but don’t enforce, and maybe set up a matching donation up to $X for any org with the valid paperwork.

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

Unions and public positions are not the only ones with public salary info. As I stated in an earlier comment:

Airlines pay just like that (as do taxi companies and most other parts of the transportation industry). Guess what you all have in common? Zero agency. So when you take a job where the ideal output of your labor is 100% deterministic, then it makes sense for your pay to reflect that.

jasonhansel• 5 years ago

the minute you lay it out in the open, you open up a huge surface area for conflict.

In other words: "we can't be transparent, it might make us look bad."

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

Or perhaps:

"John will ask why Sandy is making more. The truth is that Sandy is more productive, and saying that to John will lead to friction. John will either need to make more money (which will piss off Sandy), or Sandy will need to get promoted to the same level as her manager (which will piss off her manager because what is she going to do now?). So who do we piss off? Wait, why do we need to piss off anyone - let's just keep the salaries private."

jcims4• 5 years ago

What about listed salary range is $180-250k and you get an offer for $210k. You hold your ground because you think you’re with the $250k. They disagree and let you walk away.

What has that accomplished?

889135273• 5 years ago

This seems like a bit of a straw argument. OP poses the question of why the salary range isn't listed in the job description. That is not the same thing as having a transparent ledger of each individual employee's salary, available to all within the company. The range listed in the JD is just a starting point for discussions by prospective employees.

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

That's ridiculous. If you list the salary as too low, you're sending out a negative signal and will get less qualified candidates. You obviously cannot list it any higher than you're willing to pay. So you'll end up listing it in such a way that people will figure out what this position is worth to you, and once that person gets hired, their background and experience will get scrutinized to no end by anyone with a comparable salary.

If you've ever been a part of the performance review process, you will know that people will go very far to justify a raise. Looking at the current job listings on your company's career section will be the very first thing that everyone will do if those salaries were to be made public.

frumper3• 5 years ago

https://transparentcalifornia.com/ All of my coworkers, many friends and family members, and I all have detailed salary information easily searchable. It has not caused any conflicts in my life.

aerosmile10• 5 years ago

I mentioned elsewhere that there are many industries where transparency works, and the public sector is one of them. Your employer wants you to deliver deterministic output, and your pay reflects that.

That's less the case when you're constantly challenged with clean-sheet exercises where every single person will produce a different outcome. It doesn't even have to be a super senior job - think of someone writing newsletters. That channel can easily lead to 5% or more of total revenue, and different people will definitely produce different outcomes (just the subject line alone will have an impact). Why pay different people the same rate if their work leads to vastly different revenue?

ryanmercer3• 5 years ago

My friends and I regularly share how much we make, and even our 401k balances on any given day. We cover a fairly wide spectrum, with me hands down being the lowest of both categories, and it we're all fine with it too.

Aeolun4• 5 years ago

The reality is that even the most transparent companies out there (eg: Gitlab) do not disclose individual salaries.

I don’t think Gitlab is anywhere near the most transparent company. I’ve definitely seen companies proudy list all their employees’ salary in a blog post before, so the most transparent companies do actually do that (or they did when I saw their post a while back anyway).

To be fair I’ve never seen it in companies where it’s impossible for everyone to know everyone.

Ericson23146• 5 years ago

What the hell does this even mean?

Compensation is not "derailing". It is a core function of the business to pay it's employees. It's a core function of employees to make sure they aren't getting ripped off.

It's plainly ridiculous to be told that what ones coworkers get paid is of no relevance to oneself. This is enlightened self-interest, not guilty grandstanding for some abstract cause or whatever.

throwawaylinux4• 5 years ago

What is a non-deterministic conversation?

And contrary to some (such as yourself), there are people who do not state their opinions with the authority of a subject matter expert when they are not, whether the conversation is deterministic or not.

JimDabell• 5 years ago

The reality is that even the most transparent companies out there (eg: Gitlab) do not disclose individual salaries.

This is not the reality. For instance, here are the salaries of everybody who works at Buffer: https://buffer.com/salaries

Once you step outside of the USA, it becomes more common – for instance, everybody’s taxable income is a matter of public record in several European countries.

asimpletune• 5 years ago

I mean, I think having a ballpark range is sort of important and pretty easy to do.

It's also one of the first things I'm going to want to know before interviewing somewhere, so I can make sure that I'm not wasting anyone's time.

onlyrealcuzzo• 5 years ago

It's not because they are racist or don't care - it's because it takes a tiny minority of people to get the entire business derailed, and it's hard enough to keep that from happening in the best of times; once you add a catalyst like salaries or politics, it's like adding fuel to the fire.

It might worth asking laborers if this is worth it for better pay / more pay equality.

If all laborers were happy before and then you introduce transparent pay, and suddenly 90% of people are unhappy - it might seem obvious this is bad.

But that's sort of like saying the truth is bad if it hurts your feelings. Is it?

vladharbuz4• 5 years ago

You seem to be stating, with the authority of a highly experienced subject matter expert ("the reality is…"), that disclosing salaries will cause employees to act "irrationally" and "get the entire business derailed".

It's not immediately clear to me what exactly you think the consequences of publishing salaries are, what bad behaviour you think this promotes, and why you suspect this bad behaviour happens. Could you please go into more detail?

drakonka• 5 years ago

"It's simply a fact that people become incredibly irrational when it comes to compensation, and the minute you lay it out in the open, you open up a huge surface area for conflict."

I have had the opposite experience. It can result in conflict if salaries are by default kept secretive, and then someone finds out they're being paid much less than someone else. People start feeling undervalued or unappreciated. If salary ranges and structure are out in the open for everyone during the application process, there's nothing to get into a conflict over. Applicants know how the salary structure works and what they'll be making, so it avoid conflicts _early_ because those who might not be happy with the salary information can simply not apply for the job.

xtracto• 5 years ago

I dont buy that. I've been in positions high enough at previous companies so that I had access to the detailed P&L sheets.

When doing a monthly/quarterly or yearly plan, there is a budget set for human resources. Theres an allocated budget for each open position, and a plan of when those positions will be opened .

Even at the most chaotic there was something like that.

All companies could easily use that budget as a proxy to provide at least a range for each position.

Most dont do it because they dont want to leave money on the table.

xg15• 5 years ago

And let me guess, unions are also discouraged solely because they'd disturb the workplace culture and nothing else?

yowzadave• 5 years ago

It's simply a fact that people become incredibly irrational when it comes to compensation, and the minute you lay it out in the open, you open up a huge surface area for conflict.

Finland makes every tax-paying citizen’s salary public, and their society hasn’t descended into chaos.

cosmodisk• 5 years ago

I live in a country, where historically there were very little data points on salaries. It was very common to go through 4-6 interview stages and then get told that the salary they offer is 1/3 of what the candidate is willing to join for. Eventually there was enough political will to change the laws and now it's mandatory to publish salaries under the job ads. It goes even further- for each company with more than 3 employees salary information is publicly available ( e.g. average salary paid, more details stats for bigger companies). Suddenly everyone could see the barrel scrapers and top payers. Granted, some still post things like €2000-8000/month, which just shows that a company is trying to hire everyone from a junior to an architect on the same job ad. The serious companies don't do it. The whole thing became 100 times better.

Here's how it looks:

https://rekvizitai.vz.lt/m/en/company/uber_lithuania_softwar...

neximo64• 5 years ago

Startups don't do banding.

jwmoz• 5 years ago

I worked as a contractor where the day rates are stated up front. I wouldn't waste anyones time with a contract where the rate wasn't clearly specified.

nurettin• 5 years ago

Why give away their power to negotiate?

poulsbohemian• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why so many in this thread are so quick to condemn Colorado for this... sure, tech pay has come a long way in the past few years, but it wasn't that long ago that it wasn't very good and there were lawsuits over collusion among the industry's biggest players to keep comp down. Outside FAANG for that matter, overall comp still drops off pretty sharply. Anything that improves on the problem of asynchronous information would seem to be a good thing, and in an environment where there is theoretically a labor shortage one would think companies would be glad to share this information in order to help them attract talent.

I got to a point in my career where this was one of the first conversations - either when I was hiring or had someone reach out to see if I wanted a new gig. It wastes everyone's time if we're not in the same approximate range. At many companies, it really isn't a surprise anyway - sure maybe you are coming from far away and need some relocation help and I'm remote and don't need that, but we both get the same vesting schedule, etc. Frankly, if a company is coy about the approximate structure of their comp packages all it really does is tell me that they see me as expendable. Why would I want to go someplace where we are trying to screw each other over from the very beginning of the relationship?

Ericson23146• 5 years ago

Yeah it's plainly ridiculous to advocate maintaining the information asymmetry. Aren't we supposed to be believe in efficiency and more information is better around here?

pydry3• 5 years ago

There are a lot of employers here.

Ostrogodsky2• 5 years ago

Because they want to extract as much as value as possible from their employees while paying as low as possible, and listing compensation is against that. In this I am with Žižek.Capitalism is a religious movement, not an economic one. Many people find perfectly rational for any company to this, but find highly offensive if a person decides to work as less as possible while still getting paid.

zuhayeer• 5 years ago

Calling YC employees, submit your data anonymously at https://levels.fyi/addcomp.html so folks can see!

reducesuffering• 5 years ago

Disclaimer that this is from the creator of that levels.fyi site.

motohagiography• 5 years ago

No insider anything, but personally, I think posting salaries is a bad idea, so if I went to a company that posted salaries, I would know for sure I wasn't making a fair deal as it is a ploy to reduce my bargaining leverage as a candidate. It also allows for collusion to drive salaries down between companies, and on the other side, it exclusively enables leverage for people who don't negotiate, but in fact bully with histrionic public accusations of unfairness instead of making a case for what their skills are worth. If you reward that, you only get more of it.

I would recommend resisting every and all suggestions that companies should post salary levels for jobs, don't be fooled, it's just a trap.

poisonborz• 5 years ago

Most companies want highest effort for lowest salary, most employees seek highest salary for acceptable effort. This is just the logic of the market, and affects every entity, regardless how ethical they otherwise are. Not following this you are easily outcompeted on both ends.

There are some leveraging efforts, but I see them as vainty projects, often enabled by the fact the company/employee is already successful. As long as it remains, capitalism dictates some basic rules - it does not make every participant automatically a greedy bastard.

hankchinaski• 5 years ago

there is a greater movement towards open salary policy, i started my job board[0] back in 2018 with this same premise.

Since then, I did not go through one interview without knowing salary band before-hand. Exception made for FAANGs which work on their own terms. Hopefully once the industry start moving into that direction everyone will conform. I think will happen sooner or later due to the very vocal minority[1] in play.

[0] https://golang.cafe

[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

eins12342• 5 years ago

The dirty secret here is that well-funded early stage startups usually want to pay candidates as little as they're willing to accept, and not a cent more, though that doesn't mean they're not willing/able to compete with FAANG-level comp for a really good candidate (we're talking about the well funded ones, remember?). So usually early stage hires end up having a wildly varying range of offers depending on factors like experience, previous comp, negotiation skills, etc.

They can't discriminate on comp very effectively if they stated their ranges up front, and if they were truthful about it, it would look ridiculous enough that it wouldn't be useful to anybody anyways (think ranges like 100k-500k).

Source: I was burnt by this (fell on the very low end of the range) and later learned about it when I got a 50%+ raise when the company matured and implemented comp bands.

chii• 5 years ago

fell on the very low end of the range

did you ever work out what reason the comp was on the low end? Any advice to someone who might want to negotiate for the higher end?

eins12342• 5 years ago

I was just coming from a position with even lower comp, told them what the comp was, and basically just said yes to their first number that was reasonably higher than the old comp. Yes I was young and naive at the time.

Basically if you just follow the conventional wisdom of not disclosing your number and just keep saying no and asking for higher until they tell you it's their final offer, you should end up in a better spot than I did.

If you want to do even better than that, you should really be interviewing at multiple places and have multiple offers lined up and pit them against each other in a bidding war, all while still not disclosing actual numbers to any of them, i.e. just keep telling them their offer is not good enough and you have better offers elsewhere, and then just say yes to the last one standing.

The key technique here as you might have noticed is to not give them a number no matter how hard they try to push for it. Any number you give will give them an idea of where to stop with a reasonable chance of you accepting, and basically put a soft limit on your potential upside with no real benefit to you. You want them to be the ones having to tell you where their limits are.

Even if you know about this technique it can be hard to stick to it in practice in sync conversations where you're under pressure and have to think on your feet, so it can be helpful to direct most of your negotiations towards async channels like email/text where you have ample time to think about and compose your responses and avoid making mistakes.

Best of luck with your negotiations!

enigmatic02• 5 years ago

I've been using this tool to benchmark startup and equity: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

browningstreet• 5 years ago

Listing salary ranges in job postings will solve inequity issues as well as skipping Starbucks will solve one's savings issue.

faangiq• 5 years ago

Just assume they’re lowballing and move on.

Ask HN: Why doesn't YC list compensation for their own open positions?

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