New York City’s new pay transparency law keeps making news, but for unintended reasons.

The law was first supposed to take effect in May, but was delayed due to complaints from executives and business groups that they were not consulted. Then came the realization that it applied only to base salaries, not bonuses, which is how many New York City workers—particularly in financial services—calculated their compensation. Now comes news that pay ranges can vary by hundreds of thousands of dollars, rendering one of the law’s intentions almost impotent.

Among examples cited by The Wall Street Journal, the Mount Sinai Health Systems advertised for a trauma surgeon whose salary is between $384,000 and $800,000 or more, a principal cloud architect at AT&T could be paid anything from $103,000 to double that, and a tax executive at PwC could make $158,400 up to nearly triple that.

Such variances make job searching “completely useless from a negotiation standpoint,” one job seeker told the Journal.

Another observer agreed. “If the difference is over $100,000 or double, that starts to become wide enough that it’s less useful,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist for Glassdoor, told the Journal,

That was not supposed to be. The law was touted as something of an equalizer, correcting what many claim to be an unfair advantage given to employers, and a disadvantage to certain groups based on factors such as gender or race.

Employers cite many reasons for the discrepancies. Among them are adjustments to the ranges based on responses from applicants and compensation offered by competitors.

Wide ranges appear across the spectrum. A lawyer with 30 years of experience searching for an in-house counsel position was undeterred by ranges that varied by as much as $200,000. Even that proved useful, he said, telling the Journal, “Now I know what I can shoot for.”

At the other end, the New York Post advertised for an online sports reporter and producer with at least a year or two of experience. The pay could range from $15 an hour, the New York state minimum wage that equates to an annual salary of $31,200, to $125,000.

“We post a broad salary range to attract a wide array of potential applicants, in terms of years of experience and skills,” a Post spokeswoman told the Journal. “We do not want to rule out possible great candidates by aiming too high or too low in what we are prepared to offer.”