[another_poster]

Individual states’ pay transparency laws are already applying upwards pressure on salaries across the country.

My company has multiple groups in different states including Colorado, and in anticipation of needing to post salary ranges for our open positions in Colorado, my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands to avoid anyone becoming frustrated if they learned they were in the bottom half. Despite the preemptive adjustments, a colleague of mine became angry and quit when they found out their salary wasn’t at the very top of their position’s pay range.

So pay transparency laws are having a big impact—not only in the obvious cases of candidates negotiating salaries in the states that passed the pay transparency laws, but also for average employees in other states who didn’t even need to do anything except learn how much their labor was worth.

[kodah]

I'm leaving my company because it took so much "upwards pressure" to make this happen. Literally hundreds of people screaming in a townhall that the companies wages were so low that housing was eating up most of their paycheck while mandating a return to work from the top. This is in the Bay Area. I do think there's something to be said about a company that does not tend to the needs of its flock proactively.

[moneywoes]

What company?

[jzawodn]

I see what you did there.

[drewcon]

I’m not sure why the company is responsible at an individual level for what’s going on in the Bay Area. They can’t tell you how to manage and interact with the expenses of your life.

If you’re mad at anyone, walk down to city hall and tell them to build more housing.

[cogman10]

You say this as if companies don't chose where to have their offices and their attendance policies.

If a company places it's headquarters in a HCOL area and requires everyone come in 5 days a week, then yes, they have a responsibility to pay a salary high enough that their employees can survive there.

If employers don't like the fact that COL is too high, THEY can go ahead and march on city hall to advocate for political action. Companies have a MUCH larger sway with local politicians than the average employee does. That, or they can increase the salary or change the attendance policies.

[jonas21]

Companies may have more sway than an individual employee, but that sway is still close to zero. Why? Because everyone knows that once enough key employees live nearby, they can't just pick up and move the company somewhere else.

Google, for example, has been trying for over a decade to build some medium-density housing near its campus. This goes beyond just advocating for political action (which they're also doing) -- they're actually offering to finance the project and assume all risk -- all the city has to do is stop saying no.

But every time it comes up for approval, local residents show up to complain, and the city council finds some arbitrary reason to say no.

[cogman10]

Google still has options (which, granted, they've exercised) including adding more remote offices.

They don't want to do that because they've already spent a bunch of money on their fancy HQ and don't want to see it empty out.

There are plenty of employers with < 1000 employees, however, crowding these downtown areas. They have way more flexibility in being able to move out of these city centers and into more affordable locations for everyone. They don't because part of the reason for their offices in these downtown location is rich people showing off to other rich people. You gotta "look" successful.

[aerosmile]

> They don't because part of the reason for their offices in these downtown location is rich people showing off to other rich people. You gotta "look" successful.

If an office is moved to a less densely populated area, the average commute time of all employees collectively ends up increasing.

The way rich people actually show off to other rich people is by doing what's right for their companies, thereby increasing the value of their equity - which then allows them to buy luxury goods and impress other rich people that way.

[phpisthebest]

>>Because everyone knows that once enough key employees live nearby

It is almost like, in any context, centralization is bad. I am not sure why we has a civilization have to keep learning this lesson, over and over and over again

Anytime you centralize anything it results in bad outcomes.

Diversity, Diversification, Distributed Models, etc are ALWAYS preferable, I dont care if you are talking about Stocks, People, Housing, Power, Government, you name, Consolidation and centralization is always bad

[majormajor]

Centralization of people into cities led to many, many, many historical advancements in arts and sciences.

Decentralization of cities - competition - sometimes helps even more, but the societies that never centralized never got as far. (And that decentralization can backfire sometimes too, e.g. military competition instead of economic.)

[closeparen]

Decentralization of people and housing == suburban sprawl, car dependency, tens of thousands of fatal collisions, the climate crisis, etc. Decentralization shifts the difficulty into communication/coordination, which is sometimes more tractable but also sometimes not.

[shrimp_emoji]

Centralization is just a tool (if methods of organization are tools).

Sometimes, it's clearly the right choice (where are program settings settings? `~/.config`).

It's also VERY simple. If all you want is client/server version control, and you don't mind the constraints, SVN's UX and learning curve beats git's by a long shot.

Decentralization buys you flexibility, but entails tons of complexity.

[WalterBright]

> they have a responsibility to pay a salary high enough

No, they don't. The employee gets to decide if the salary is high enough to meet his needs. If it isn't, the employee can negotiate for more, or go elsewhere.

Nobody is obliged to work for a company they find unacceptable.

[tbrownaw]

They don't have a responsibility to the employees, but from what I understand having all your staff walk out is generally seen as bad for business.

[majormajor]

They have a responsibility to their owners to pay enough to be successful - but the thresholds for "mass company-ending resignations" vs "complaining on the internet" are very far apart.

[throw10920]

This is correct. The most "obligation" that an employer might have is to pay the employee for the value of their work, and even that's dubious. (show me the source for your moral argument) They certainly have no obligation to match CoL.

If an employer doesn't pay their employees enough, those employees should leave, their employer will eventually die, and that'll add another data point to tell the shareholders to either elect CEOs that will pay more or to stop backing companies in high-CoL areas.

[kriops]

Supply and demand. COL is a downstream price signal as far as a rational employer is concerned. While they might try to influence it to alter the supply of potential workers in their favor, it is by no means their responsibility to do so.

And saying companies choose where the highest concentration of available talent resides is dishonest.

[connicpu]

They don't have a responsibility to do so, but they shouldn't be surprised when employees are angry at them if they don't do one or the other

[humanrebar]

> While they might try to influence it to alter the supply of potential workers in their favor, it is by no means their responsibility to do so.

I don't see why employers can have efforts to address climate change and social justice problems, but cost of living for their local communities is too much.

[refurb]

Because their efforts for climate change and social justice are just cheap words?

[cogman10]

> Supply and demand.

Yup, there's a low supply of employees and a high demand for them. So guess what the absolute dumbest thing is an employer can do when employees start clamoring for COL adjustments?

[kriops]

There are so many other factors in play than whether "employees start clamoring for COL adjustments" or not, so the correct course of action when that happens might very well be to reduce wages or do nothing.

[chrsig]

Because the company chooses to have a policy that mandates employees live within a viable commute radius of an office located in the city. I don't know why companies can't just take responsibility for their decisions.

Or the company can walk down to city hall and tell them to build more housing, because they're unable or unwilling to pay enough for people to live in a viable radius.

Or the company can relocate or establish a satellite office in a lower cost of living area.

Or the company can pay people commensurately with the cost of living in the area.

Or the company can deal with the inevitable attrition of their workforce as it happens, all the while denying that they have any agency and deflect blame onto individuals.

[RexM]

The last one seems to be the most popular choice.

[alistairSH]

They can’t tell you how to manage and interact with the expenses of your life.

No, but they can move to a lower cost area, allow WFH, or gasp pay a fair wage for the region. Employers don't have a right to cheap labor

[sneak]

It's the employee's job to remind an employer that they don't have the right to cheap labor by leaving. The market is two-sided.

[anigbrowl]

It isn't. Nor should the company expect people to keep showing up if they are not being paid enough to live in the area where their offices are.

This is just suppliers (of labor) advising that their costs are going up, and thus so is the price of their economic input. It's just business.

[pnemonic]

Companies are responsible at an individual level for understanding the state of the environment they chose to do business in. You seem to be implying that people in the Bay Area are just bad with money and if they weren't, this wouldn't be a problem.

Some day soon, hopefully, companies that fail to do this will fail to stay in business.

[kelseyfrog]

Why artificially constrain the action landscape? In the realpolitik world of getting desirable outcomes, if forcing companies gets the results, then it gets the results.

[vkou]

> I’m not sure why the company is responsible at an individual level for what’s going on in the Bay Area.

No, but it's responsible for not paying well, while mandating that everyone working for it must live in the most expensive region in the country.

> If you’re mad at anyone, walk down to city hall and tell them to build more housing.

Or walk across the street to a competitor. It is the Bay area, after all.

[listenallyall]

Mandating? Every employee at the company voluntarily agreed to the terms of their employment, the wage, the location, etc. prior to starting.

[vkou]

It's a mandate. They could have mandated that remote work is acceptable. They didn't. They are now surprised that people are leaving.

Just like how if you don't like the mandates issued by your government, you are free to move to a different country. Or to petition it to change them. They are still mandates, though, despite you choosing out of your own free will to submit to them, by virtue of not leaving.

This website also has mandates about how its posters are expected to behave, that you submit to - despite being here voluntarily.

[listenallyall]

I'm a citizen of the country I was born in, which I did not choose. I can leave the country physically, but that itself doesn't invalidate my citizenship, or my obligation to pay taxes.

You choose the company you work for, and you can leave at any time, and you don't owe them a thing.

So no, it's not at all "just like"

[fugalfervor]

If the people in the company want to be good (and they should, because being good makes you happy), they will ensure the financial success of their workers. If the people in the company want to be bad (and they shouldn't, because being bad makes you unhappy), then they will callously disregard the needs of their workers, and say it's someone else's fault.

[bulatb]

As the Baltimore philosopher Butchie put it: "Conscience do cost."

Feeling good makes people happy. What's measured to produce that feeling is the outcome of the am-I-good thing in your brain's evaluation of whatever you did, and Goodhart's law is always in effect. You can pay the cost of being good and earn a good evaluation—or you can do whatever you want, enjoy the rewards, and trick the am-I-good thing into always saying yes.

Since the latter method makes you feel good cheaper and faster, I'd expect it to be fairly common. In my experience it is.

So it's really option 3: do bad things and don't feel bad, with views on right and wrong aligned suspiciously precisely with your personal interests.

(Hopefully I've made it clear I'm not endorsing this, just describing it.)

[fugalfervor]

Yes, it was clear that you aren't endorsing this. However, people who behave badly usually have to face consequences from other people. The selfish person is rarely just selfish at work. They take it home to their families and live with the consequences of pretty weak relationships. The greedy are never satisfied with what they have, so they're in a constant state of wanting. That's a pretty unpleasant place to be.

[Spooky23]

That’s a pretty cynical and reductionist approach.

[anon291]

Why not just leave the company? I understand in many industries jobs are hard to find, but tech jobs are a dime a dozen.

[kodah]

As another commenter pointed out to you, I already said I'm leaving.

> tech jobs are a dime a dozen

Be that as it may for some, I am a mix of a software engineer and a systems engineer. It's difficult for companies to find a place for me, much less test me. Personally, I'd like this saying to die, because even in a white-hot market like I started my search in it still takes months of rigor to filter out the BS and find a company that isn't going to string me through the ringer just to dump me at final interviews for something entirely arbitrary while giving me glowing feedback along the way.

[lostlogin]

> Why not just leave the company?

The first words were “I'm leaving my company”. Am I missing something?

[TulliusCicero]

> my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands

Uhh, surely I'm not the only one seeing the obvious flaw here, right? Is the inevitable outcome here that pay bands will now cover a range where nobody is actually in the lower half, ever? That lower half of the range will just be there as a sort of psychological buffer?

[marricks]

So the pay bands go up. Everyone gets paid more, board salary go down a bit, and things hopefully become a bit more event. Sounds good? Things have been going the other direction far too long.

[throwaway09223]

Board retainers aren't significant expense anywhere as far as I'm aware. Often their stipends are less than an employee's pay.

For example, Google's board stipend is $100k, which is about half the median total comp of an average employee (less, counting benefits). Walmart I think pays their board $60k.

You may be thinking of executive comp, but even then it is generally not significant amount. You could completely eliminate and redistribute executive compensation at Wal-Mart and it wouldn't really make a measurable difference in employee hourly salaries.

[vlovich123]

That's not accurate. The board meets maybe 4 times a year. Let's be generous and say they work one full calendar month of the year. That means their pro-rated stipend is actually 1.2 M/year. Google employees who only choose to work one month of the year can do so, but the median salary would be 16k dollars. AFAIK board members don't put in a month's worth of work so that 1.2 M/year is an underestimate. They also can sit on multiple boards simultaneously whereas moonlighting in multiple companies is not generally possible in the same way.

[throwaway09223]

We're discussing whether redistributing the board stipends would change individual salaries and the clear answer is it will not, even in the most extreme situations.

But, to your point regarding prorated comp: I've been a salaried employee at a company like Google. I've also been a board member.

First, like many senior tech employees my total comp market rate is in the seven figures. A pro-rated 1.2M stipend would be appropriate to compensate me for my time. The average board retainer for less profitable companies is closer to $30k/yr. These are not entry level positions and the retainers are shockingly low in the vast majority of cases. (In my case, I'm on the board of a non-profit and I actually pay them)

Second, I think you are underestimating how little some salaried workers actually work. I think if you try you can find more than a few Google employees who only work one month a year ;) Conversely: I work far harder in my role as a board member than I used to in my salaried role. It's different for everyone of course, but I assure you no one is seeking out board seat retainers as a way to get rich. It's just not worth it.

[Thorrez]

>but I assure you no one is seeking out board seat retainers as a way to get rich.

Can they be leveraged for networking to get a CEO job in the future?

[TulliusCicero]

The pro-rated version is irrelevant, since the comment was talking about board salaries going down in order to fund higher salaries elsewhere.

[Epa095]

I did not read it as "in order", but rather "and". So both happen, but I did not see a causation in the post.

[showerst]

Walmart is a bad comparison there; they have an enormous headcount of low-paid staff. Many tech companies are far lower headcount, but with high executive pay.

Looking at some other companies, Activision-Blizzard's CEO alone makes enough to pay every employee a $15,000 bonus. Reed Hastings at Netflix makes enough to pay every employee $3800. And that's not counting any of the rest of the executive staff, or all the other ways money flows out of a company to non-employees, like dividends and stock buybacks.

https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-...

I think there's certainly a lot of room for wages to go up, though i'm skeptical that it will come at the expense of things like executive pay or share buybacks.

[throwaway09223]

Activision-Blizzard's board get 350k. If they earned $0 instead, this would only give each employee an extra $35 per year. That's including their stock compensation.

As you say, most goes to investors. Which makes sense as they actually own the company.

[jeromegv]

OP was talking about executives (CEO, VPs), not board.

[TulliusCicero]

The comment referred to specifically said "board salaries", not executive pay more broadly.

[lmkg]

I read somewhere that this is exactly what happened when (publicly-traded?) companies were required to publicize executive compensation. And it's a major reason why exec salaries have increased while regular salaries have not over the past few decades.

So... seems fair to me. Maybe salaries will actually increase enough that people won't have to switch jobs every three years to get a raise.

[TulliusCicero]

> So the pay bands go up.

They can't, though; if you do that, now there are people in the bottom half, and they're upset that they're 'below average'.

You basically need a vanity range for pay.

[sangnoir]

It's not a vanity range if it's leading to real-life salary adjustments.

[TulliusCicero]

Vanity clothing sizing leads to real life changes in clothes measurements too.

[shmatt]

More like: Pay bands go up. Company cuts 15% of workforce "to achieve better numbers"

Every time you read that headline, the company could have just cut pay by 15% and gotten the same profitability. Higher pay will force medium-small companies to hire less people

Some SV companies make Billions in profits per quarter. Some don't. I've seen far too many employees try to justify why they should be making Meta compensation elsewhere. It doesn't and shouldn't work that way

[jeremyjh]

How does that follow? They will just lower the bottom of the pay bands, and now people who in the bottom third are at the midpoint without another dollar being spent.

[eropple]

And then, because law is not code and being technically correct is frequently not the best kind of correct, the question becomes "OK, are there actually any employees at that point in the pay band?" and folks start tugging their collars and going "well..." until that activity becomes disallowed, either via judicial interpretation or legislative amendment.

[bombcar]

That's very common in anything that has a range. The pay bands will shift to compensate for it.

[collegeburner]

We all now work at Lake Wobegon. Which means salaries will be set to average value of the position and lazy people will be subsidized by hard workers and better contributors. Not everybody contributes the same value.

[AmericanChopper]

All existing remuneration levelling mechanisms (such as salary bands) contribute towards the creation of two classes of workers, and pay transparency laws do the same. You end up with people who are happy to be in their salary band, and people who become contractors.

Every place I’ve worked for the past 10 years has had salary bands, and I’ve always been paid far more than the highest band offered. Because I’ve never been an employee, it’s simply never applied to me. I don’t get counted in the diversity statistics either, which is also great.

I guess transparency regulations take the feeling of pressure off those who aren’t competent negotiators, but if the goal is to decrease inequalities, they won’t accomplish that.

[itronitron]

>> quit when they found out their salary wasn’t at the very top

Such an elegant implementation of the 'no assholes' policy.

[foobiekr]

The noncompete thing is actually a much, much bigger deal than the pay transparency thing. I have a friend who is waiting out a 2Y noncompete that he foolishly agreed to in Texas.

[snicker7]

So he’s getting paid full salary for two years and doing nothing? Sounds like a dream!

[biztos]

I sort of doubt that's how it works in Texas, but in Germany that's the law! A company can only prevent you from working for a competitor by A) keeping you employed by them; or, B) paying what the competitor would pay you.

When I was an employee in Germany I always thought it would be fun to get stuck in B) and get an "offer" for like 5x my current salary and see what happens.

[social_quotient]

It’s a right to work state, so maybe there is more to it than a vanilla NC?

[lthornberry]

I don't know anything about Texas non-compete law, but "right to work state" refers to restrictions on unionizing. It has nothing to do with non-compete clauses.

[shkkmo]

The "right to work" is about restrictions on making unions mandatory, so you are correct but glossing over an important details. In practice it generally means that forming an effective union is much harder and thus harms workers, but theoretically it could be paired with other laws that supported unions but that didn't centralizing their power and removing worker choice.

[zdragnar]

I think your example might be more of an exception than a rule; the last company I was in that introduced pay bands only bumped up people who were below the bottom of the band.

The only people who were upset were those who found out some people were way over the new pay band and generated a bit of gossip over how those people were way overpaid for the quality of their work