Companies with more than 15 employees must include salary ranges in their job postings and make that information available to existing employees under a new California law. But some big-name companies, like Netflix and Riot Games, appear to have found a loophole. And in some industries, the ranges are especially wide — one posted was $330,000-$1.8 million.
“Activision Blizzard, which is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft, thought that the ranges could be explained by geography. If a position was in the middle of America, the wages needed to live there could be lower … versus if you live on the coasts, it might be higher,” says Washington Post Video Games Reporter Shannon Liao.
She adds, “The idea behind those laws is to make everything more transparent because historically, there's been a gender wage gap. There's also been a gap between different races. And with the laws now in place … then they have more information to empower them during those negotiations. But … the data itself maybe doesn't give everyone the information they are looking for.”