Meet the Big Tech Companies Flouting NYC’s New Pay Transparency Law
Just days in, Casper, DoorDash, Stripe, and others were still listing jobs with no salary ranges. After being found out, some rushed to cover their tracks.
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Update (Nov. 11, 2022): Days after we published this story, Casper quietly added salary ranges to all of the company’s open roles, and a senior member of the company’s people team viewed the author’s profile on LinkedIn. Salary ranges on some positions are rendered in a different font, and appear to have been copied and pasted in a rush. The company also removed every one of its 150 corporate and retail positions across North America from Google’s search index. Casper still has not replied to our requests for comment or acknowledged our reporting.
Asana and Calendly have not yet updated their listings with salary ranges. DoorDash has added salary ranges to some roles, but has yet to update the most recent ones.
As New York City’s pay transparency law takes effect this week, straggling employers are responding in a range of ways. Some are listing absurdly wide salary ranges in an attempt to dodge the requirements. But others, including one who fought to delay the law from taking effect, are taking a simpler approach to the new laws: ignoring them.
A review of Google search results for jobs published via Greenhouse and Lever on November 3 uncovered over 20 new roles by major companies that failed to comply with the new law.
The list includes household names backed by prominent investors, including Casper, DoorDash, Stripe, Calendly, Asana, Wayfair, and BarkBox.
The roles were posted on or after October 27, just days before they became illegal under the new regulations. All are either based in New York City or could be performed remotely for an employer with at least one employee in the city, according to LinkedIn data.
After being contacted for this story, Wayfair and Barkbox both quietly updated the listings in question to include salary ranges.
Casper seems to have tried to hide its New York listings by removing location metadata, but failed to remove the listings from their associated team pages. All are still live. The company is a member of the Partnership for New York City, which fought successfully to delay the law from taking effect by arguing transparent salaries would make it harder to hire diverse candidates. Casper did not respond to multiple emails last week requesting comment for this story.
An Asana spokesperson asked for proof of the listings’ publication dates in the form of screenshots, but did not respond after being provided with archived links showing the Google index dates. A subsequent analysis of metadata found in the HTML source code showed two of three posts were published on October 31, one day before the deadline. A third post was removed after Asana was contacted for this story.
A DoorDash spokesperson responded, saying, “DoorDash always aims to provide clarity to all prospective applicants and employees. As companies do periodically, we are currently reviewing and updating salary bands to ensure we are sharing the most accurate information with candidates, and will be actively updating all New York City job listings in accordance with the new Salary Transparency Law in the coming weeks.” DoorDash has continued to publish new jobs without salary ranges, with the most recent one posted on November 3, according to metadata in the page source.
A BarkBox spokesperson also responded, saying, “BARK has not posted any new job listings since November 1st, but Greenhouse syndications of listings to other sites are typically delayed. All of our job postings, regardless of when they were posted, have been updated to include salary ranges as BARK is supportive of this level of transparency.” Barkbox’s job listings were published on October 27 and 28.
Casper, Stripe, Calendly, and Wayfair all declined to respond to multiple emails last week requesting comment for this story.
Casper’s corporate jobs page currently shows no jobs when filtering by “New York,” but switching the filter to “All offices” reveals six positions based in NYC. The positions were listed under the Commercial Planning, Product Development, Ops Tech, and Customer Technology teams, and include roles for an Industrial Designer, Ergonomics Engineer, Sales Operations Analyst, and IT Support Specialist.
Casper did not respond to multiple emails last week with detailed questions about why roles are still listed as being New York-based on the page, but not under the New York office filter; when the company last posted a role; or when it planned to update the roles to comply with the new law.
Casper was one of 18 companies called out on LinkedIn for posting jobs with ranges greater than 15% after lobbying to delay the law. That list, which was posted to the site on Wednesday, includes established brands like Capital One and Disney along with tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Etsy.
Any salaried or hourly position that can be performed at least partly in New York City is covered by the new law, whether the worker is in an office or working remotely, with few exceptions. Violations can be reported anonymously to the New York City Commission on Human Rights by employees or members of the public.
Employers face civil penalties of up to $250,000 for each violation. Lawmakers added a 30-day grace period to fix the first offense, in addition to delaying the law, after facing pressure from industry groups including the Partnership for New York City.
Even with over a year to prepare, many employers are still struggling to commit to salary bands, with one HR leader describing their team’s approach to determining pay as “finger in the air.” (They requested anonymity to avoid upsetting their employer.) But when it comes to compensation data, they don’t have to guess: companies like Radford, Croner, and Robert Half sell detailed reports on compensation trends.
With a massive tranche of salary data now public, those reports may soon be competing with open-source projects that scrape the web for job listings.