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Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

nytimes.com

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Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#221

Post by duaneb »

dudul wrote: post #130
duaneb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise all dev work could just be outsourced. The value of American engineers is their ability to a) speak english well, b) show up at the office, and c) swallow large amounts of debt for college to ease hiring. So I'm not sure how outsourcing plays into this at all. I have never before heard of someone expressing a desire to hire a product manager/marketer/sales/brand strategist/designer because they're a good…

"I have never before heard of someone expressing a desire to hire a product manager/marketer/sales/brand strategist/designer because they're a good engineer." I have. They don't have to be amazing engineers, but a background with some engineer knowledge is always a big plus.

Well, sure. But it's not their engineering talent alone that got them the job—hopefully that is not sufficient. The main reason it helps is to understand obstacles, time management, and communication, not because their job is engineering. Regardless, coding is certainly not a directly useful skill.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#222

Post by JustSomeNobody »

ubernostrum wrote: post #155
slg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a developer, so I am all for higher developer salaries, but your posts shows a common misunderstanding about economics. The value someone creates has nothing to do with their salary. Their salary is dictated by how many people need to hire developers and how many developers exist to fill those jobs or in simple terms, supply and demand. I might create millions of dollars in value with my code, but there might be…

So, this supply and demand thing. We keep hearing from large tech companies that there's a crisis -- a massive shortage of qualified software engineers, to such a degree that they won't be able to operate at all if they can't raise the H1-B quotas and import more people to fill all the jobs currently going unfilled. If that truly is the case, then supply and demand would tell us that currently engineers are underpaid…

Exactly. If a company were to announce they were going to bump dev salaries up by 75K/year, they'd be flooded with people wanting to interview.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#223

Post by hx87 »

crdoconnor wrote: post #133
toomuchtodo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is stopping engineers from saying "I'm going to contribute $1.5m to your bottom line this next year, I want you to pay me $1.4m", but they'll be shown the door because there's a guy that's willing to contribute the same $1.5m in exchange for $100k in compensation. Which is why you should be an owner/competitor versus an employee if you know the business well enough.

>Which is why you should be an owner/competitor versus an employee if you know the business well enough. Uber just lost a war of attrition with Didi Chuxing after throwing a billion dollars at China's taxi market How much attrition can you afford?

The reason is simple: Uber did not know the business well enough, at least not in China.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#224

Post by chipperyman573 »

mandlar wrote: post #185
skolos wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works well until an employer does due diligence (ask for proof of your number). In my experience many (not all) do due diligence.

How are they going to verify your current salary? Do companies really go out of their way to do that?

They can just ask for a paystub.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#225

Post by hx87 »

ubernostrum wrote: post #155
slg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a developer, so I am all for higher developer salaries, but your posts shows a common misunderstanding about economics. The value someone creates has nothing to do with their salary. Their salary is dictated by how many people need to hire developers and how many developers exist to fill those jobs or in simple terms, supply and demand. I might create millions of dollars in value with my code, but there might be…

So, this supply and demand thing. We keep hearing from large tech companies that there's a crisis -- a massive shortage of qualified software engineers, to such a degree that they won't be able to operate at all if they can't raise the H1-B quotas and import more people to fill all the jobs currently going unfilled. If that truly is the case, then supply and demand would tell us that currently engineers are underpaid…

A similar issue exists with respect to illegal immigration and low-pay, low-status jobs such as crop picking, meat-packing, and janitorial services: if there aren't enough Americans willing to do the job at prevailing wages, then aren't prevailing wages too low? Sure, my tomatoes would cost more and cleaning services might be 200% more expensive, but that's just the cost of doing business.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#226

Post by blahi »

jazzyk wrote: post #188
morgante wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 7 figure annual income is setting the affluent definition very high. You can work at Google for a decade and end up a multi-millionaire, with enough money to retire to most places in the US. From your other comment, it seems like you haven't done the analysis on this. Top companies are routinely paying $200k-300k these days. That's enough to save a million dollars over a decade even if you have a family.

>Top companies are routinely paying $200k-300k these days Yup, all four of them - Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix.

There a lot of jobs that pay that much in other comapnies in and outside of tech, although you will be expected to do more than just excel at a profession (read go to management).

There are also many more tech companies which will give such salaries to distinguished engineers.

edit: Reading your other comment, median is not the right parameter to compare in this situation.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#227

Post by VladKovac »

What are the chances that in this particular case, enforcing noise in the data actually leads to better economic results?

Technically less information can lead imperfect human reasoners to more rational allocation of resources, but you'd have to do a lot more work to prove that to me than some policymaker's "feeling".

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#228

Post by akshatpradhan »

swalsh wrote: post #4
fdsaaf wrote: post #3

LOL. Massachusetts lawmakers passed this stupid, empty gesture but didn't ban noncompetes. Enjoy your technology non-industry, Massachusetts.

You seem like a nice guy

It feels like we may need a site-wide HN reminder about avoiding gratuitous negativity. Especially in our current heated climate.

https://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#229

Post by Kliment »

hnal943 wrote: post #186
Kliment wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter is not necessarily true - you might be creating tremendous value, but have barriers to market entry that are enormous such that you can only really create that value from within one of the existing players on the market. See aerospace, telecommunications, medicine, government contracting for examples of such industries. If I'm making a huge amount of added value for a large telecom, it's unlikely I can sta…

You're a component in a value creating engine which includes the ability to hurdle those barriers to entry, which means you don't get credit (on your own) for the total value that you are able to produce within that system.

More likely, you're a resource being extracted by a monopolist that set up those barriers to entry.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#230

Post by jonknee »

hnal943 wrote: post #194
jonknee wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Silicon Valley it seems popular to just start your own company and capture the value that way, but other fields have solved this issue by unionizing.

Unions do not have a good history of preserving value, at least not in the USA.

There are certainly problems with unions, but they have definitely succeeded in raising pay for their members.
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