Are CO salary disclosure laws affecting remote work opportunities?

Sorry to raise an irrelevant point to the question asked, but if you are a United-States American, could you please either not use two-letter state abbreviations, or spell them out on first use.

A lot of people who use this site are located outside of the USA, and for these people, the abbreviations are not commonly known.

This can genuinely cause confusion - in this case I thought `CO` might be the abbreviation for an senior position which is unknown to me (i.e. like CEO, CTO, etc.).

I think it's making it hard for some companies to hire. I don't live in Colorado, but when people reach out to me for roles and they say anywhere but Colorado they get my blanket response-

> Sorry, I have a rule against companies that refuse to hire in Colorado. I feel that sharing a salary band is something that most honest companies are willing to do upfront, and if a company finds sharing that information so reputation damaging that they'll refuse to work with people from an entire state then the odds are their salary bands are low and their culture is not worker friendly.

Does anyone have an opinion of open salaries? Ray Dalio's radical transparency idea is one example, and GitLab is another. Note it's also federally illegal to block employees from discussing salaries on their own.

It seems like salary negotiating -- and the necessary secrecy that goes with it -- benefits only employers who systematically shorting some workers and pocket the difference.

https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2019/10/salaries-brid...

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...

Nobody trying to keep their salary a secret is holding onto good developers, or even mediocre ones.

Coloradoan here, my experience is that this law is pretty loosely enforced and many job postings don't comply, even for local, in-person positions (although it's getting better).

Most "anywhere in the US" job postings don't list a salary range for CO candidates, and I doubt the people posting them are even aware of this law.

My experience is there are roughly three categories of jobs:

1) "Anywhere in the US (or global)" jobs. Very unlikely they'll list a salary range, probably because the person posting a job has no idea about the Colorado law.

2) Companies not HQed in Colorado, but with a Colorado presence (e.g. a company with its HQ in NYC has an office in Boulder). It's maybe 50/50 whether or not they'll list a salary range, especially if the job can be filled in one of many offices in multiple states.

3) Colorado-only companies. Maybe 75%-90% of them will post a salary. Definitely not 100%, but it's better than it was a year ago.

As far as I know there's also no penalty for a company going paying someone outside of the posted salary range, and they also don't have to include any non-salary compensation (e.g. RSUs).

I wouldn't consider this law a major detriment to living here. I have yet to see one actual example of someone being harmed by it.

I live and hire people in Colorado, and a bunch of recruiters contact me about remote roles. Most companies that fear transparency just advertise very broad ranges, e.g. $100-200k. I'm sure some companies refuse Colorado employees, but nobody I've talked to seems concerned.

The market for engineers in Colorado is very hot. What we're seeing is the smaller Boulder/Denver startup scene from the past decade transforming into a larger and more stable market as companies like Ibotta, Guild Education, SendGrid, etc. are hiring a ton of engineers. And you still have lots of smaller startups competing for talent.

https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/

The kinds of companies that oppose transparency do not deserve our assistance. It’s a form of boycott: fuck them

If you're considering moving to Boulder, it'd probably be better to work with a company based there. For one, Colorado companies get the mountain vibe of taking off for bluebird days to go ski, and two it has a really good local network to get plugged into.

There are plenty of companies (mine included) that are moving into Colorado despite all of this. Tech is growing rapidly in Boulder and Denver. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Boulder is an amazing place to live!

Isn't there a similar rule going into effect in NYC?

I was a manager for a 100% remote company. Because of the job listing software they used, all postings had to have a city associated with it (you had to read the body of the posting to see that it was open to anyone in the US). They would change the city occasionally to attract a new crop of applicants.

When they changed the city of one of my openings to Denver, I pointed out that it was illegal to post a job in Colorado without a salary range. I was fired a week later.

Some companies _really_ don't want to post salaries.

Would you want to work for a company that goes out of its way to avoid states with worker-friendly laws like the Colorado's wage disclosure? It seems a pretty clear sign that they will try to screw you over. There are plenty of companies that you can work for, if you're just trying to get a salary.

But on the flip side, have you visited Colorado recently? Large parts of the state are now what I would describe as a "suburban hellscape." There are other states with nature and fewer people.

I have been actively searching and haven't noticed any impact at all.

Colorado is a totally fine state, my brother lives in Denver. I've spent plenty of time there and have a lot of love for it... Denver/Boulder have changed alot in the last 5 years though.

If you're trying to get more nature in your life though Denver won't be quite as good as smaller metros with easier access: Salt Lake City, Provo, Portland, Bend, Flagstaff, Reno, or Boise. New Hampshire/ Vermont also have a lot going on but it seems like a different vibe than I'm picking up from the post, and I would guess Canadian Cities like Calgary are out too.

Why not look at other cities before having to worry about any of the legal stuff?

I spoke with a recruiter who works for a VC firm and hires for many of their portfolio companies yesterday. She mentioned the difficulty here, but framed it as a reasonable + manageable lift a company would make for a sufficiently senior hire. EG Director+, sure, for a single junior sales or CS role, maybe not so much. Don't think there was anything she took issue with here aside from a little extra logistics work.

Stream hires in Co, Amsterdam and remote. I think it's a good trend that jobs show a salary indication. The only thing that makes it tricky is that the range can be quite wide depending on experience. So for some roles, where you are ok with a wide range of experience your low to high range can be 3-4x. So it doesn't solve all problems, but it solves some. Probably a good initiative.

It did for me - it delayed my start by a few weeks.

They had to consult legal. Repost the job w/salaries. Then extend the formal offer.

Norway is going one step further: it is possibly to check the net income of every resident online: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/forms/search-the-tax-lists/

Not really.

The new thing is disclosing only CO salaries or asterisking that the published salary is for CO residents only.

many co listings are showing a range for the position. helpful to know the bottom but there are still caveats. with that said i have applied to listings in other states (often with no salary listed) as a CO resident, and it never came up at any point

What would happen if the Colorado state legislature passed a law that said you can't sell goods or services to people in Colorado if you refuse employment to people in Colorado?

My large company just opened up to hiring remote workers and they specifically state no Colorado workers.

What's keeping a company from posting a salary of $1-$1000000 and then always being compliant?