This is so needed in California. My past personal experience and my friends' experience in the Bay Area shows how hard the recruiters can push for the current salary. What they are saying is that we will give you a 10% raise from your current salary, but not what you and we can agree on is your market price. This is so against letting the markets figure it out.
This is precisely letting the markets figuring it out. Those who offer at most 10% increase when a person's value is 50% higher will find themselves missing the good employees and ultimately, failing. --- An example: How much do I offer for this house? I have have no friggin' clue. But I can look at previous sale prices to get an rough idea. Naturally, I if trust my decision to that 100%, I'll risk making a poor deci…
I like the example, but wouldn't it be more parallel to ask "How much have you offered for other houses?" or "How much did your previous house sell for?". The seller would love to know that you are capable of offering more, but you are (properly?) reluctant to give this information.
> But the previous sales are a piece of information about the market that I ought not ignore.
I don't think there is any dispute that this is valuable information to the person doing the hiring. The question is whether it is fair to the person being hired to be asked this question.
Despite the theoretical disadvantage to the business, the current result seems to be that those who are historically disadvantaged will remain disadvantaged, while those who started out with an advantage will be disproportionally rewarded.