alt Hacker NewsBritain to make salary disclosure in job ads mandatory
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I understand the frustration this is born from, but find it hard to imagine a practical rule set that will actually do more good than harm.
1. To be meaningful at all, the legislation must only allow narrow ranges, e.g. 10%, so that employers can't put 30-90K in the description.
2. In addition, you would have to make the application very specific to a given position. If the employer can say "you don't qualify for L7 that you applied for, buuut... we could transfer your application to the L5 track", then we are back to where we started.
3. On the other hand, any super-rigid rule like this will hurt both employers and employees who are actually trying to fill a real position. It will hurt even more the few remaining companies that are looking for people and not just labeled cogs in the machine.
I want this to work, but it has the smell of compliance theater.
I have always felt that job ads should include salary information. The main reason is not to waste anyone's time. Often a narrow salary range or a clear link between requirements and salary are much more informative than a job description. I have experienced to apply to a job opening and go through one or more interviews only to find out that the company is actually hiring for a more junior position than the ad copy implied.
A second reason is to avoid discrimination. Applicants that feel disadvantaged, even if they are actually qualified, may hesitate to negotiate for a higher salary in the same way that a other applicants would. The consequence is that they start with a lower salary. This applies specially to women. Plenty of research shows that they are less likely to negotiate their salary.
Research[1] suggests that pay transparency leads to lower average salaries because employers avoid paying higher wages to any one employee to avoid costly negotiations with others. The effect is small, around 2%, and it disappears with increasing degree of unionization. In my opinion this is an acceptable price to pay to reduce pay inequality, which often is much more than 2%. It is also a good argument for joining a union.
Cautiously pleased about this. Some companies in UK pay senior devs £30-35k. And some companies won't discuss that until v late in the process, while importing US-style multiround interviews. It's pretty silly when people get 3 rounds in, take time off work for the interviews, then find out their expectations are so far apart.
I agree this is overall great, and will work for most companies and jobs. I'm wondering how it will work for companies where bonuses and RSUs / stock is a large part of their compensation. Or companies where their compensation legitimately has incredibly wide ranges. FAANG, big tech companies, banks, etc. can plausibly say "£100k up to [insert absurdly large number]" when talking about engineers, especially if they're hiring specialty roles like PhDs.
Besides ‘salary disclosure’, one other law that really helps improve salary is to ban potential employers from asking candidates’ current/previous salary. This avoids potential employers from offering just marginally better than candidates previous roles…
> The European Union adopted pay transparency rules the following year, giving member states until June 2026 to implement them in national law.
That's the first I've heard of it, and I've seen plenty of job postings the past year for European companies where there was no salary indication. See for example the recent HN Who's Hiring? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50338728
This is the only market where people think this is a reasonable thing to do, mostly because it's the only market in which most people are sellers not buyers.
Imagine if the government passed a law saying that when you got to a restaurant (or car wash, or bookstore, etc) you had to declare to the business what you're willing to pay before we see the menu so that the business could adjust their prices accordingly.
The only real reason companies don’t want to put salary ranges on job adverts is that it triggers difficult conversations with staff they have been taking advantage of.
Do they say something about the min and max in the range being no more than X% apart? To prevent scenarios like "between £20,000 and £100,000".
I am not sure this will do what I think it is designed to do. The current problem is, for example, people who are not confident enough to ask for more money being paid consistently less than others who are doing the same job. These people are likely to be female and/or from a minority group.
The problem is, if you haven't noticed yet, that it might work for a low/semi-skilled job like e.g an estate agent "£25-30K + £10K OTE bonus depending on experience". But it doesn't work for artistic or highly bespoke jobs like doctors, lawyers, some types of engineers etc. where the salary range can be much larger. Does it really help anyone to say, "Wanted: Software Engineers. Salary £25-100K depending on experience and skill"? Lots of ads already show that, people might think they are worth near the top end and get low-balled with an offer (fairly or unfairly) whereas the people who are not confident are still likely to get paid less money.
As for telling everyone what everyone is paid, that opens even more cans of worms. It is not always easy to describe that the other person gets paid £10K more than you because they have e.g. "a better attitude" (says who?), "is more productive" (based on what?) etc. and tbh, it is not usually completely objective.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. If you are all about money, then ask for what you think you are worth and if you don't get it, move jobs. I think what other people get paid should be nothing to do with you.
I totally agree.
When I’ve raised this to a CEO that was bragging that he gives competitive salaries but can’t disclose it, he said that a person that asks for the range before the interview it’s in it for the money.
Used to work in a company where every salary was disclosed for all employees. There was a constant stream of people going to their boss "why aren't I getting what [$EMPLOYEE] is getting?". Most of them didn't like the answer, and the answer was not "[$EMPLOYEE] negotiated better". There were in fact clear milestones, competencies, responsibilities, and most significantly... for want of a better word... "campaign ribbons" that [$EMPLOYEE] had earned, that the eager junior would need to earn in order to get to that salary. Many of these decided they didn't want to acquire them.
Feels like a law requiring prices on shop shelves. Isn't it self interest to put the salary in the ad? So much saved time. And probably more suitable applicants. I don't apply for a job without knowing the salary. Or via recruiters that tell you upfront (they usually do).
This is great news and an easy win. Not disclosing salary information disproportionately affects people from a lower socio-economic background.
My issue with mandated ranges is how to require the range to be narrow enough, without preventing the candidate from negotiating?
If you don't have any narrowness requirements, you can have a job where the range is $50k-500k, which is useless. If you narrow it to — let's say — 10% of the midpoint, you can say $180k-220k, but then you're not allowed to hire the perfect candidate who won't accept less than $250k, even though you would actually want to pay this much given that person's skills. If the candidate is allowed to negotiate upwards, ranges may gradually, over the course of years, drift downwards, with an implicit understanding that they are unrepresentative of the actual salary you are likely to earn.
With an infinite number of employers and an infinite number of candidates, you would always be able to find the perfect candidate for your mix of requirements and pay them the exact salary that matches those requirements. The real world isn't like that, though, and if you, as an employer, have an offer available, you will get candidates who are under and over qualified for the specific offer you had in mind, and you might nevertheless be able to find a spot for them at some salary that both of you are willing to accept.
That's already the case where I live, but some companies use the trick that they advertise a job with high salary, and once you apply they says "sadly this job is no longer available, but we have this similar one we haven't advertised yet", which of course comes with lower salary.
Could they potentially just choose to pay more than the disclosure?
>The government will soon introduce legislation to parliament making salary disclosures mandatory, Burnham's office said, although it did not provide a timeline.
won't happen
In UK, in my experience, companies always do release this (at least in tech). They might give a range, but it si there.
European companies on the other hand, have made me jump thru hoops and the nlow ball me
In Italy this feature has become mandatory this summer and we've been observing some good patterns (companies that do not find anyone because the salary is too low compared to responsibilities). We have also seen interesting hacks, companies reporting from 20k to 150k for an intership position.
There are all kinds of reforms needed in that space; like whether a position is eligible for internal hire or not, requiring that a job posting must lead to someone being hired, making it illegal for jobs to be posted on fake foreign job sites in order to claim no native job demand exists as justification to import foreign labor, requiring a 100% visa employment tax on the fully burdened rate, making all executive bonuses taxable at 100% for any company that hires Visa/foreign labor, etc.
I hope this will a real law, not the phony one passed here. They should literally exile from country the person responsible for that mockery. It goes something like this: The salary range has to be included in job add or provided to job seeker at the latest upon signing the contract.
That entire sentence could be stricken out and nothing would change.
I just ignore entirely any job that doesn’t have a range listed in the job description, because unfortunately they try to make it a business deal rather than a compensation for someone’s experience or knowledge at the end.
As a small employer, I don't mind to provide a number. I'll always provide a number if I have one in mind.
But anything intellectual, me providing a number is not as useful as you think. Often, I just don't know. Especially hiring outside my expertise.
I assume every applicant is worth $0 and it's up to them to convince me otherwise. I'm willing to go as high as you can convince me. .
Make companies post anonymized salary lists next
Whilst we're at it can we also have job adverts that say upfront what the employer does rather than just providing a generic job description please?
Ha in the European Union, the workarounds are vast and came fast, now it doesn't have to be in the job listing but upon first real interaction or something along the lines, and then I've seen job ads saying 1-5000 euro per month.
Ghost jobs and such practices should demand mandatory time in the slammer and business foreclosure
I suspect the devil will be in the details here. How will it be enforced? Can companies get away with silly wide ranges?
I saw that almost all Netflix dev jobs, regardless of level, advertise as something like $120,000-$720,000. Which… okay, that’s a range but it’s not a useful one.
Maybe one of the hiring managers lurking here can make an exception and admit their true rationale.
For now, I suspect the main issue is: you don't want the fallout of advertising the job at current market rate of £60k when all your existing employees are on £40k for the same position.
The worst is when you apply and they ask for a range which you give.. then you get rejected because you demanded too much. Bitch, negotiate.
The pay range for this position will be between £20,000 and £400,000 per year based on the candidate’s experience
Hiring managers will be surprised when they set a price they’re willing to pay and qualified candidates start rolling in
Pro tip. When a recruiter contacts you with a position, the literal first message you send should be a request for salary range. In my experience they will tell you ~80% of the time and then you proceed normally. This saves untold hours on both ends.
Can we also make it mandatory to reply to a job application, even just an automated "sorry, your application has been rejected", so you know whether to keep considering that job?
Back in the 1970's, it was common to do this in Canada... well, Nova Scotia..., well, Halifax... maybe.
People will make out hiding salaries is some grand conspiracy, but if you've ever been on the other side of hiring, people just don't know.
Would you like to have to pin your salary on your CV? Probably you are hopeful you can get as much as possible. And employers look for a deal. It works both ways.
I agree that personally I'd prefer to see the salary on the job advert. But state meddling generally leads to unexpected outcomes.
Even better than salary disclosure is collective bargaining. Then its doesn't matter if they disclose anything, you'll get the industry agreed salary matching your seniority - and then you can negotiate from there.
No! Think of the children!
How will they be motivated to finish school if they can see what the starting salaries really are ?!?!?
In America companies love to play games, maybe it’ll work in Britain though.
I firmly believe the salary should be fixed, non negotiable and public information.
Cash > equity. But in America workers have no real rights, even with proof your boss lied to you to deny your right to equal pay not many options exist.
Wage theft is the number one form of theft in the US.
as with anything, use it as a signal upon which to filter or rank opportunities. its wise to invest our time on those who demonstrate they value us the most. simply reciprocate back. why? life short, time precious.
meaningless legislation if it means, employer can just publish range somewhere between legal minimum wage and let's say double of what they will pay you, so you will gain absolutely zero knowledge what is the actual range
if the law wasn't toothless they should make it mandatory to publish median salary for this position in specific advertising company, then you would know median of your future colleagues (and so would they)
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Such laws do not really help in practice. Does a 60-90k range in EU, commonly given to engineering roles, offer any real guidance? A better system would be publishing the average salary for a similar role, but that would be a privacy problem for a low headcount team, or if the role doesn't exist yet... This is a really hard problem.
Would that actually be a good thing? When a company publishes the salary range, that means the job seeker agrees to that range, including maybe getting the lower part of the range. Companies know that, and now they have the advantage to put lower ranges.
How is that going to work if you interview Bob for X task at Y pay, but discover Bob would be much better suited for A task that is worth more salary? What if Bob didn't meet the requirements for X, but would be a perfect fit for B task that is not worth as much salary?
Isn't it a shithole anyway? Outside London, I've seen senior engineer ads for 39K GBP per annum :) I'm pretty sure delivery chaps make much more...
I will repost a comment I made here a while ago on a similar discussion. Salary non-disclosure is a dealbreaker for me since being through the situation described below:
A few years back I wanted to get out of the work situation I was in. I looked around, had some interviews, had some offers. None of the postings had salary ranges, as is common where I live.
My eyes, however, were set on a specific small company because I liked their product. The process was long and involved multiple meetings, a take-home problem, and stretched over 2 or so months. I was upfront about what my salary expectations were (wasn't looking for a raise, just a lateral move). They said we discuss salary when you meet the founders, i.e. the last step before getting hired, but they also didn't tell me that my range was way off.
Turns out I had played this 9 week game and turned down other offers just to be severely low-balled by them. Maybe they saw that I really wanted the position and thought they could get away with a low offer.
Obviously, I rejected their offer on the spot. I also promised myself to never, _ever_, be fooled like that again. We talk money before I invest any significant amount of time or I walk.
EDIT: fixed wording.