Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay • Hacker News Board

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#261

Post by intrasight » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

Are you a star? If not, then you have very little leverage in negotiating compensation. That is true across professions: Rock Star, Sports Star, Sales Star, Surgical Star, you name it. Next ask if stars are made or born. If born, then you're out of luck again - until you are reincarnate. If made, then learn from how others made themselves stars. Like many things in life, it helps to start young, and it often comes down to luck.

If your plan is not to achieve fame and fortune via stardom, then pursue it through more accessible means like being a doctor or lawyer or banker or businessperson. Being an engineer or scientist can be a stepping-stone, but if you stay on that stone then there is a slim chance of achieving star power.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#262

Post by chronic81 » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #191

dvt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200k-$300k in places like San Francisco and Menlo Park. Clearly, you don't understand how cost of living works. Also, to make that much, you need to be at around a level of SDE3/tech lead, which is by no means easy (a decade of making low six-figures & some political panache). See this top answer on Quora, for a pretty detailed analysis: https://www.quora.com/Will-I-be-able-to-become-a-millionaire... You might be ab…

You can argue all you want, but I understand how cost of living works plenty well. SV is expensive but not so expensive that it wipes out $200k in income. If you're careful about expenses you can easily put away tens of thousands annually. This is backed up by own personal experience as a developer in NYC (hardly a low cost area). I expect to have a million dollars saved up within a decade and I certainly haven't rel…

> I expect to have a million dollars saved up within a decade and I certainly haven't relied on political panache to get there.

In 10 years, your "million" will be worth 800K now. Not everyone wants to sit around for decades to become a millionaire.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#263

Post by jsprogrammer » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #193

jazzyk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are exposed! In case of financial trouble (very common at startups), who gets to be laid off first, the CEO or the developer? Also, rank-and-file employees are typically scape-goated in legal proceedings, example: finance people going to jail for rogue/insider trading, even though upper management at least encouraged such behavior.

Financially they don't generally risk anything. Yes, your compensation could end at any time due to termination of your employment, but the risk of not getting paid at some point in the future is unavoidable regardless of whether or not you're an employee. The major difference is that as an employee you're very unlikely to have to put any of your own capital at risk.

Most employers post-pay, meaning a portion of your earned capital is nearly always at risk as an employee.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#264

Post by fizx » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #74

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…

Nail on the head right here. The price of an employee isn't their MPL, it's no greater than their MPL and is set by how little the next guy is willing to take to do the job. Competitive pressures work to drive down labor prices, too! 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 g…

> 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.

No, the reason you don't get that salary is because you need to discount for the risk that you don't deliver $1.5m.

Realistically, you just could be full of shit, you could get bogged down in politics, your wife could get cancer, and any number of other things could happen. So the price trends down sharply.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#265

Post by serge2k » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #121

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…

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.

> other fields have solved this issue by unionizing

careful with the "U word" around here. We don't need no stinkin unions, or any sort of professional association.

I mean sure we don't get OT and too frequently get asked to be in a hellish oncall rotation or some 80 hour a week death march. We like it that way and we don't want to do anything to change it!

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#266

Post by jazzyk » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #245

jazzyk wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of downvoting, please check the median salary for a PRINCIPAL software engineer on Glassdoor (it is self-reported, I believe) - it is 140K, nationally. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/principal-software-engine...

Glassdoor skews heavily downwards. Even for companies I've worked at, where I knew what everyone made, its data was roughly 25-40% below reality. Also, why look at median salary? We're arguing over whether it's "possible" to become affluent as a mere employee—even if only the top 20% of engineers are capable of it, it's certainly possible.

Maybe I am a total loser, but I am not aware of any companies which "routinely" pay $300K for technical positions, not even at the Director level, in the Boston area.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#267

Post by tacostakohashi » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

Kliment wrote: post #157

tacostakohashi wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things are true. However, there is another input into supply side, and that's alternatives to employment like starting a company. Any employees that really create much more value than their salary can and will just leave and start their own company, where they get to set their own salary. By doing so, they'll also be leaving the pool of employees, and potentially hiring others too (reducing supply, incre…

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…

If you can only really create value inside an existing player in an industry with large barriers to entry... then it's actually being an incumbent in that industry that's valuable, and not the employee.

It's like a person making minimum wage working at a hotel in Times Square, charging $800 / night, saying they're getting a raw deal because they're creating so much value.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#268

Post by Frondo » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

athenot wrote: post #89

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…

An illustation of that is found in high-end hotels. Beyond the building, it's the value that the cleaning and groundskeeping staff provide which makes the stay great. And yet their pay is not that much higher than their counterparts working for a budget hotel. (As a side-note, that's why I always smile and engage with the staff whenever I can: it's a thankless job, despite being one of the most important.)

That's great! I dig how you treat them with respect and human dignity, that they're not beneath you but working hard, too. I hope you also support their right to unionize wherever that is possible.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#269

Post by fecak » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #200

fecak wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see these things too. Most developers believe they are much smarter than the average recruiter (which is certainly true) and probably think they can negotiate at least as well with even minimal training or reading. It's a matter of convincing a smart developer that the negotiation will likely provide a better result than would have happened without the assistance, and for a price that seems both fair and reasonable…

You should align fee structures. I tell you what I think I can get out of an employer. If you think you can get more, you take me on as a client and receive x% of the additional amount.

I like that idea, and I definitely would like to see an element of incentive like your model includes, but I imagine I'd also spend a fair amount of time either (a) saying no to people with unrealistic expectations or (b) trying to manage expectations down for those I'd consider overly optimistic, which could be perceived as opportunistic. It's tricky.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#270

Post by morgante » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #258

morgante wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can argue all you want, but I understand how cost of living works plenty well. SV is expensive but not so expensive that it wipes out $200k in income. If you're careful about expenses you can easily put away tens of thousands annually. This is backed up by own personal experience as a developer in NYC (hardly a low cost area). I expect to have a million dollars saved up within a decade and I certainly haven't rel…

Sorry for seeming incredulous, but if you're saying that you're saving 100k a year in NYC, then you must be making like 400k or living in a cardboard box. Even with a 300k salary, you could only save 10k a month if you only had 5k worth of monthly expenses (3-4k is easily rent in NYC). And keep in mind that making 300k-400k is not typical.

I make substantially less than 400k and I assure you that I do not live in a cardboard box.

$5k is high for monthly expenses. I rented a single bedroom in Manhattan for $1850 and you can save even more if you're willing to live with roommates.

I'm not sure what I can do to convince you I'm not lying, but consider that median household income is less than $100k in both SV and NY. If the average person can get by on Of course, it's not going to buy you a luxury lifestyle. But personally I'd rather maintain a high savings rate than live in a glitzy apartment and spend thousands on bottle service.