Ask HN: Why doesn't YC list compensation for their own open positions?
Here&#x27;s the problem with non-deterministic conversations: everyone has an opinion (fair enough), and is willing to state it with the authority of a highly experienced subject matter expert.<p>In deterministic conversations, a naive opinion stated with a lot of authority would be shut down quite quickly (eg: many areas in programming where you can quickly prove something to be right or wrong). You can&#x27;t do that in politics, business, and many other areas. As a result, we have about 8 billion politicians and business experts.<p>The author is making the assumption that listing a salary is connected to being a progressive business. A bunch of other people take this a step further and state how not listing the salary is a part of some conspiracy (in YC&#x27;s case, apparently this is an attempt to lower the payroll costs of their portfolio companies).<p>The reality is that even the most transparent companies out there (eg: Gitlab) do not disclose individual salaries. No, it has nothing to do with some secret plan to underpay anyone or certain groups. It&#x27;s simply a fact that people become incredibly irrational when it comes to compensation, and the minute you lay it out in the open, you open up a huge surface area for conflict. Last year we learned that encouraging political activism at work has a similar dynamic, and many companies have made that a no go zone as well. It&#x27;s not because they are racist or don&#x27;t care - it&#x27;s because it takes a tiny minority of people to get the entire business derailed, and it&#x27;s hard enough to keep that from happening in the best of times; once you add a catalyst like salaries or politics, it&#x27;s like adding fuel to the fire.<p>But rather than ask ourselves why the leaders at Gitlab and millions of others companies have made the decisions they did, it&#x27;s a lot easier to just make assumptions - &quot;it must be coming from a bad place, so let me brainstorm what some of those bad places could be.&quot;<p>I&#x27;ll take it a step further - Colorado State Senator Jessie Danielson would make you believe it&#x27;s more likely that millions of companies are &quot;bad actors&quot; than that she just doesn&#x27;t have the relevant experience in business to predict which way her bill was going to work out. Now that she&#x27;s cost so many of her constituents lucrative remote jobs, it&#x27;s too late to admit Mea Culpa, and instead it&#x27;s everyone else&#x27;s fault. If she was held a bit more accountable, the next time someone tries to bridge the gender pay gap they will hopefully spend some time interviewing and learning from people who have the relevant experience in hiring.