The law affects every company with more than 15 employees looking to fill a job that could be performed from the state of California. It covers hourly and temporary work, all the way up to openings for highly paid technology executives.
That means it’s now possible to know the salaries top tech companies pay their workers. For example:
- A program manager in Apple
- ’s augmented reality group will receive base pay between $121,000 and $230,000 per year, according to an Apple posting Wednesday.
- A midcareer software engineer at Google
- Health can expect to make between $126,000 and $190,000 per year.
- A director of software engineering at Meta
- leading teams building network infrastructure will make at least $253,000 and as much as $327,000 in salary per year.
Notably, these salary listings do not include any bonuses or equity grants, which many tech companies use to attract and retain employees.
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In the U.S., there are now 13 cities and states that require employers to share salary information, covering about 1 in 4 workers, according to Payscale, a software firm focusing on salary comparison.
California’s pay transparency law is intended to reduce gender and race pay gaps and help minorities and women better compete in the labor market. For example, people can compare their current pay with job listings with the same job title and see if they’re being underpaid.
Women earn about 83 cents for every dollar a man earns, according to the U.S. Census.
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There are two primary components to California Senate Bill No. 1162, which was passed in September and went into effect Jan. 1.
First is the pay transparency component on job listings, which applies to any company with more than 15 employees if the job could be done in California.
The second part requires companies with more than 100 employees to submit a pay data report to the state of California with detailed salary information broken down by race, sex and job category. Companies have to provide a similar report on the federal level, but California now requires more details.
Employers are required to maintain detailed records of each job title and its wage history, and California’s labor commissioner can inspect those records. California can enforce the law through fines and can investigate violations. The reports won’t be published publicly under the new law.
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The new law doesn’t require employers to post total compensation, meaning that companies can leave out information about stock grants and bonuses, offering an incomplete picture for some highly paid jobs.
For high-paying jobs in the technology industry, equity compensation in the form of restricted stock units can make up a large percentage of an employee’s take-home pay. In industries such as finance, bonuses make up a big portion of annual pay.
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The new law also allows companies to provide wide ranges for pay, sometimes ranging over $100,000 or more between the lowest salary and the highest salary for a position. That seemingly violates the spirit of the law, but companies say the ranges are realistic because base pay can vary widely depending on skills, qualifications, experience and location.
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Some California companies are not listing salaries for jobs clearly intended to be performed in other states, but advocates hope California’s new law could spark more salary disclosures around the country. After all, a job listing with an explicit starting salary or range is likely to attract more candidates than one with unclear pay.
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Source: Here’s how much top tech jobs in California pay, according to job ads
Robin Edgar
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