> It can't be that hard to follow this law in specific places.
Directly from the article:
"Pay experts have long predicted companies would not want to mess with different practices in different states. Doing so not only complicates hiring practices for human resources departments, ..."
There is probably a lot more nuance and qualifications of when it's necessary to disclose and from a company that employs more than 150k employees (according to a quick google) there's probably even more complexity and chaos.
> It can't be that hard to follow this law in specific places
The problem is that 'specific places' very dynamic, and is hard to pin down when it comes to employment. A candidate/employee may move to/from jurisdictions where this is a requirement, and job postings may or may not be shown across different jurisdictions.
Does Microsoft want to invest time wrangling in court concerning a Colorado resident not seeing the pay range when they are using a VPN? Or when a candidate becomes a Colorado resident some time between the phone-screen and the first interview? Should Microsoft recruiters stop using external job-boards, and instead wait for a salary geo-fencing feature to be implemented in their internal jobs tool? What is the case law for out-of-staters who will be moving into a state with such a law for employment? How about remote candidate in Texas, working for a team based in Washington - and the reverse? There are dozens of edge cases, and for a company the size of Microsoft, can easily result in hundreds to thousands of infractions per year - the juice may not be worth the squeeze.
There will be an army of lawyers
trying to monetize any errors by companies, since the WA bill 5761 allows a job applicant to sue for potential lost wages plus interest. Microsoft is just getting ahead of the lawsuit curve.
I think you'd be surprised. Though the problem isn't that it's hard to follow in the general case, but that things could potentially slip through the cracks.
Corporations are risk averse, they don't want to have to deal with potentially getting sued if a job opening starts out in one area and then moves to another one where suddenly the way the opening is described is illegal.
It's just easier to do it the same everywhere if the advantage they're giving up is small.
Directly from the article: "Pay experts have long predicted companies would not want to mess with different practices in different states. Doing so not only complicates hiring practices for human resources departments, ..."
There is probably a lot more nuance and qualifications of when it's necessary to disclose and from a company that employs more than 150k employees (according to a quick google) there's probably even more complexity and chaos.