Ask HN: Why are YC companies breaking hiring laws?

To those who think it's not YC / HN's problem, you're missing that HN literally has a Job Board: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

This is a core part of their offering, it's not just user generated content, it's YC companies posting on YC's job board.

There are some comments in here that verge on assuming bad faith on the part of the companies involved, so I think it's worth pointing out that this is a new law which has been in effect for just over a month. It's been on the way for a while, so it's not “sudden”, but it’s still a new thing that people are figuring out and it’s easier to overlook. (Not about OP, whose reminder is helpful and in good faith!)

14 minutes later, it now has a salary range:

> $175K-210K base compensation

'Post about the problem on HN' shows its power once again.

Hey sorry about that this is our job posting - we duplicated a another one and missed adding that information, thanks for catching that! We added in the salary range. Feel free to email us if you have any other questions!

Didn't mean to call you out specifically, just wanted to see if OP was correct. Thanks for being so responsive, it's a good sign for applicants!

To be fair, this law should be enforced on the platforms as well where if selected location = NYC, salary range field must be filled out. Seems like they just added the salary range as text in the description. I would put some more burden on these hiring platforms as well.

Well done for acknowledging it and correcting it so quickly. Mistakes happen, especially at startups.

> Why not add it by default?

IIUC, it's generally held that in a price negotiation, the first party that posts a number is at a disadvantage. Starting salary is one kind of price negotiation. So I can understand why employers would be reluctant to do that.

A friend of mine asked about one of these recently and they wouldn't give him a salary range, so he reported them to the attorney general and they immediately put one on their website. Can't hurt to ask (although in that case they may only give it to you, if they do, move on to step 2 anyways), then if they don't update it report them and you'll be doing everyone else a favor too.

Contact the company, and tell them they need to publish their salary range. Or else you'll report them to the NYC Attorney General (or whoever is in charge of this thing). Maybe they're ignorant. Or they're hoping noone calls them out on this. Either way, make sure they know the consequences if they don't publish it

This will certainly move you to the top of the list for hiring consideration. /s

The user in question sells alt data. If they’re remotely competent at doing so, they have zero need to work at a startup much less a YC-funded one.

What's alt data? I've never heard that term before.

That's not the point. YC lends credibility to these companies by funding them, so allowing them to post illegal job ads on a platform controlled by YC strongly implies that YC has no problem with that practice.

This is the appropriate venue to talk about it and make YC aware of it.

It's not YC's job to monitor global regulatory compliance for every company they fund.

We're not talking global compliance here though, this is a US-based fund, these are US-based startups, and the regulations involved are by some US states. One would hope national regulatory compliance does fall at least partially under the things they monitor.

I agree it's unrealistic to expect them to monitor compliance across the globe, of course.

Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City. The law has some exceptions, perhaps those apply. Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary range?

I agree with the sentiment but maybe you can see this post as them doing that very thing but aimed at YC. While I agree normal HN posts don’t need to be policed, the ads for hiring at YC companies aren’t normal posts.

Sure. But if someone wants YC to enforce posting salary ranges in job posts they might want to take that up privately with YC management rather than starting with public criticism. In other contexts people usually advocate "praise publicly, criticize privately." If the OP thinks YC job posts break the law or fall short of ethical rules then I suggest asking YC about it rather than accusing YC companies of "breaking hiring laws" on a public forum.

> Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City.

True, but irrelevant, as that's not the only reason to do it. YC has a brand whose value they surely wish to maintain. Presumably that gives them an interest in not directly aiding companies in breaking the law.

I'm not sure why you want me to politely ask a company to stop breaking the law?

That wouldn't count as polite. I suggested asking the company for the salary range. If they decline to answer then you make your own decision about that.

Maybe HN could require salary range in order to be promoted here (regardless of location or laws)?

You mean do the ethical thing, not just the legal thing?

> You mean do the ethical thing, not just the legal thing?

Can you clarify what you mean by "ethical" in this case? It's not obvious to me which ethic / whose interests deserve priority in a case like this.

>Probably because HN is not a law enforcement agency for New York City.

Okay? But this law exists in other places too.

>Why not contact the company and politely ask for the salary range?

Because its not their responsibility to make sure some random corp is following the law? They're just getting burned by the effect.

Not sure how someone gets burned by not seeing the salary range. That would come up in the first five minutes of talks with the potential employer.

HN does not enforce NYC laws. Nor does it enforce Colorado laws, or any laws regarding jobs including salary ranges. Whether YC/HN have an ethical responsibility or not comes down to one's ethical position. Laws do not necessarily equal ethics.

Personally I would ignore job postings that leave out crucial information, including salary ranges. If we all did that (i.e. behaved according to our professed ethics) companies would post salary ranges just to get applicants. Compelling companies to post salary ranges by law may have some underlying logic I agree with, I don't know for sure. Compelling HN or any other public forum to enforce those laws (which vary and change by jurisdiction, with numerous exceptions) seems a stretch to me -- I would rather see the job posts and decide which to ignore and which to respond to rather than have HN try to enforce the patchwork of local laws by hiding postings. Once you get into the moderation business you have to invest a lot of effort in that and still you will piss off a lot of people.

HN is being payed by these companies for these posts. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard for HN devs to have a running list of states that require salary ranges to be posted, and check against that when the customer submits a request.

Then it will make it easier as more and more states require the bare-minimum worker right of public salaries.

If it's so easy then why not set up a site that enforces the patchwork of local laws and exceptions to filter out non-compliant job postings?

If that existed today I would still choose to see the unfiltered job listings, because if I was looking for a job my goal would come down to "find a job" rather than "make sure all job postings comply with every regulation."

> HN is being payed by these companies for these posts.

that's not true afaik.

Right, I thought this site's whole purpose was to be a relatively high-value and free (to the company posting the ad) place to display certain ads for the companies YC invests in.

HN is not payed for these posts. Who’s Hiring posts are like all others: anyone can comment, and no one on HN ever pays the site operator for the right to post.

This isn't Whos's Hiring posts. These are the job ads you see in the middle of your frontpage. Like now, on spot 14 I see a special post like this:

> Rutter (YC S19) Is Hiring a Senior Software Engineer in NYC (ashbyhq.com)

> https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rutter/7b222f5f-cd46-4592-9cf8-6cd1...

Which I can't comment on, it's just an ad for a YC company.

Maybe they are fishing for a willing plaintiff in a planned test case to challenge the law on a constitutional basis.

Because Internet? Because disrupt? Don't you know that human laws do not apply to the cloud? /s

You should stop making YC responsible for what any single portfolio company is doing. That's straight out hilarious. After the firms are out of batch they are independent and autonomous organizations.

As long as these companies keep bragging about being related to YC, anything they do will also reflect on YC. You can't ask people not to associate these things.

And in this case, these ads are given special treatment here on HN. So of course YC owns some part of the responsibility.

They’re advertising here on their platform, so the tie-in is strong.

The firms are using special YC post types that are not available to regular users.

Surely, you’ve never done business before. It’s quite common when a new law is adopted, there is a grace period given.

Your accusations without examples makes me wonder if YC did you dirty. Come down from your high horse imagining you are a messenger/savior for those suffering indentured servitude.

People looking for work make their own observations and requests to friendly employers. Those that stall are clearly self filtering.

Why do you accuse OP of being on a "high horse" just for asking this? You're reading quite a lot into this.

And what's wrong with shedding some light on this behaviour so that it changes and starts complying with the law?

Also: "Your jumping to defend YC companies make me wonder if you're not just a fan boy. Maybe come down form your high horse thinking that you need to defend these YC companies breaking the law?" See where I took it from & how bad it looks?

The law did have a grace period of nearly a year. It was passed on early December 2021 and only took ever in November 2022.