Is Your Colleague Earning More Than $200,000 a Year? Now You Can Find Out
As a salary transparency law takes effect in New York City, postings show pay ranges for jobs at companies from Amazon to PwC
As a salary transparency law takes effect in New York City, postings show pay ranges for jobs at companies from Amazon to PwC
Want to make more than $200,000 a year in New York? The options may be more plentiful than you think.
From content director at Colgate-Palmolive Co. to the diversity, equity and inclusion business manager at Macy’s Inc., the list of jobs offering the chance to make over $200,000 includes careers in a wide a range of industries, one of the early revelations from New York City’s new salary transparency law.
The measure, which takes effect Tuesday, requires nearly all New York employers to list pay on job postings, along with internal transfer or promotion opportunities. Companies hiring for remote positions that could conceivably be done from New York must also comply with the law and list minimum and maximum salary ranges, city officials have said.
The result is a trove of updated job listings at some of the nation’s most prominent employers, providing job seekers, existing employees and the merely curious with a rare glimpse at the pay practices of major companies.
Some employers, like Amazon.com Inc., have dozens of jobs with maximum pay of more than $200,000, according to listings. An opening for principal product manager in the company’s Amazon Music division lists a base salary of $197,900 to $267,800 a year in New York. A head of leadership and organisational development can make a salary of as much as $321,700.
An Amazon spokesman, August Aldebot-Green, said the company is committed to pay equity and lists the pay for some roles even when not required.
The listed ranges, which companies had to post as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, can help shed light on how companies set pay, a process that has long baffled both job seekers and employees. The salary data also are likely to raise questions among workers about why some jobs pay so much more than others, compensation specialists say.
Pay “is going to be all over the map,” said Susan Schroeder, a partner at Compensation Advisory Partners LLC and a longtime compensation consultant. “All of this has been done behind the scenes for years.”
How pay is determined has also become more complex, executives and advisers say. Many large companies have roughly 15 salary grades, or broad pay bands internally; human-resources staffers then try to match similar roles across departments to each of those levels, Ms. Schroeder said. Companies often then buy data sets listing salaries at rivals or in an industry as a whole in an attempt to benchmark pay to others.
New York’s law doesn’t require companies to include information on benefits, bonuses or additional stock-based compensation. Many employers note on listings that base pay can vary by location, skills and other factors. Though the law requires employers to post “good-faith” ranges, what that means in reality is up to some interpretation, executives say.
Among the listings posted so far, lower-level jobs tend to have fairly narrow ranges. By contrast, some companies list salaries for senior positions that vary by more than $200,000. An assistant vice president position involving machine learning platforms at CVS Health Corp., for example, has a posted range of $189,400 to $416,700. A CVS Health spokeswoman declined to comment.
Some ranges can be so broad they are essentially meaningless for workers, some employment attorneys say. Employers posting wide ranges may be aiming to reflect that a broad array of candidates could potentially fill the role, including those who are very senior, said Nancy Boston, director of compensation at payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc.
“You want to ensure if a company needs to recruit somebody who’s really highly an expert in that area, they’re able to attract that level of talent,” she said.
The position of global content director at Colgate, which seeks 10 years of experience, includes a range of $172,000 to $253,050. The position focuses on content “through the entire marketing funnel,” a posting notes. A research and innovation director position in skin health and personal care comes with a top salary of $225,750.
Some companies are also spelling out the differences in pay between locations on job listings. A position for a tax director at accounting and consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP says that the base pay ranges between $144,000 and $368,000 in Colorado; in New York, that salary is listed at between $158,400 and $434,000. A PwC spokeswoman didn’t immediately comment.
Cost-of-living differences can account for variations in pay between states, compensation specialists say. Colorado’s salary transparency law took effect last year, while salary ranges will be required in states such as California and Washington beginning in January. Companies that fail to comply with New York City’s law could face fines or other penalties.
Pay matters have become so complex that those who advise on it typically earn six-figure salaries, too, postings show. A position for a job architecture manager, advising clients on compensation strategies, at Deloitte has a posted salary range of $145,000 to $268,000. The posting notes that at Deloitte, “it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range.” A compensation consultant at Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of CNN and HBO, can earn as much as $187,460.
Other workplace-related roles also come with salaries topping $100,000. At Macy’s, the diversity and inclusion role, supporting the company’s chief diversity officer, lists a base salary of $142,080 to $237,000.
ADP’s Ms. Boston advised workers browsing career sites to remember that total compensation may be different than the base salary, and said she encouraged employers to be prepared to clearly articulate how pay decisions are made.
“I can assume that there will be a lot of confusion,” she said.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Nothing stays these brokers from the swift completion of their appointed showings
In the summer of 2011, I was driving some buyers—a mother from out of town with her two young daughters, each under 6—to look at homes. The first two showings were uneventful, but as we headed to the third, we encountered a giant wall cloud on the road. I see wall clouds all the time, but for those not familiar with them, it’s a giant tower of clouds, and it’s very dark and ominous-looking, so it can be scary. My buyer, who claimed to have been some sort of weather watcher, started freaking out, saying things like, “That’s a wall cloud! It’s dangerous! We’re going to have a tornado!” That in turn caused the daughters to start screaming and crying hysterically. They were kicking so much in the back that they caused the threading of my leather seat to come loose. I did my best to calm them down, but then the torrential rain and thunder started, and that led to more screaming from the kids. Thank God we made it to the next house within 10 minutes. I pulled my car into the garage to avoid the hail, and we sheltered in the basement for 25 minutes until it lightened up outside. Then we went on with our showings like nothing ever happened.
I wouldn’t say this was the worst weather, but it was definitely the weirdest. On June 7, 2023, I had three private showings lined up at 2:30 p.m., 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. to show my listing on the Upper East Side, which was a duplex penthouse with three terraces listed for $3.3 million. That morning, Canadian wildfire smoke was blowing through the sky of Manhattan. They were telling everyone on TV and radio to stay home all day, and I kept watching my emails and texts, hoping that all three groups of buyers would cancel their showings, but no one did. By 1:30 p.m., the sky was really dark. There was almost no visibility, but, still, there were no cancellations. At 2 p.m., I searched for an old Covid mask, put it on and walked out like a hero to go on the combat field. I could barely see anything a half block away, but I walked 11 blocks and two avenues and managed to get to the building. Well, all three groups of buyers and their brokers showed up on time. We all chatted about how strange the weather was. We put our masks back on when we stood on the living room terrace, which overlooks Billionaires’ Row, but we had no visibility. The sky was red and black, and all we could see was a small circle of light in the sky. It looked like the moon behind heavy clouds. It was like a scene from a movie.
Living in upstate New York, I have experienced all kinds of bad weather—snow so deep it was up to my thighs and rain so hard that I wished my shower had that much pressure. However, the worst took place in April 2017, when I was showing a home in Waterford, N.Y., a suburb of Albany. It was during a late-season blizzard that came on fast, and there had to be about 2 feet of snow. The home had a normal-size driveway, but it was a foreclosure and was not shoveled. So, my client and I trekked up the crunchy, snowy driveway and eventually got into the house. As we were walking around, complaining about the Arctic blast and blizzard, I heard the sound of babbling water. I thought it was a fountain, so my buyer and I continued to walk around the house. As we moved toward the garage and family room, the babbling got louder, and as we headed for the basement, we saw that the pipes had frozen. The basement ceiling had fallen, and water was pouring in from the ceiling and the walls. The floor had about 3 inches of water and ice. I called the listing agent and left a message, but I couldn’t just leave the water running, so I waded through the freezing cold water in the basement and turned the water off. I didn’t really think that through, because I was drenched and then had to make my way back through the house and out into the blizzard again. When I opened the front door, I nearly froze immediately, and by the time I got to the end of the porch, I was crunchy and icy. When I got to my car, parked at the end of the driveway, my hair was frozen to my face, and I could barely bend my legs or feel my hands. I was walking like the Tin Man. It took me several hours to thaw out.
——Edited from interviews
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’