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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

#301

Post by matthewowen »

gozur88 wrote: post #277
matthewowen wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your answer also shows a common misunderstanding about economics, because it takes too narrow a focus. If there exist jobs that produce $1MM in value but that have a going rate of 200k, then there should be more of those jobs: either the company doing the work should expand, or it should have competitors. This will lead to increased competition to hire, which means higher wages. The increased number of jobs might gen…

>If there exist jobs that produce $1MM in value but that have a going rate of 200k, then there should be more of those jobs: either the company doing the work should expand, or it should have competitors. How could you possibly determine how much value your efforts are producing? How much value are you assigning to the risk the founder and investors are taking? Maybe your $200k job is producing $200k in value. Or eve…

> How could you possibly determine how much value your efforts are producing? How much value are you assigning to the risk the founder and investors are taking? Maybe your $200k job is producing $200k in value. Or even less.

I'm not disputing that there's difficulty, and that it might not always be possible (although we can often estimate and assign a confidence level). But the parent comment claimed that even if we did know, value shouldn't pull salaries up: that's what I'm responding to (side note: the parent also implied that we can know what values are, since he acknowledged their use as a floor for salaries).

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#302

Post by morgante »

fecak wrote: post #298
morgante wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think most people's expectations aren't reasonable, then maybe your service isn't needed. Isn't your whole thesis that lots of engineers are getting less than their worth due to their inferior negotiation skills?

By "fair amount" of time, I wasn't trying to imply "most". I think at least a slight majority of the population have fairly reasonable expectations based on my years of experience. For them to be a client though (based on your pricing model), their expectations have to be reasonable and a bit lower than market or unreasonably low. Reasonable and a bit high doesn't work. A small percentage tend to have expectations fa…

Fair enough. Maybe you could have an automated screening process to calibrate expectations?

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#303

Post by dragonwriter »

exhilaration wrote: post #296
lsllc wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the MA house & senate couldn't reconcile their two versions of the non-compete bill and it died in committee: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/07/31/noncompete-c... These reform attempts have been going on for years in MA and never make it into law.

California's Chamber of Commerce should buy billboard space outside of MIT and Harvard highlighting this, it's a huge incentive for new grads to move to California instead of taking jobs in Massachusetts.

> California's Chamber of Commerce should buy billboard space outside of MIT and Harvard highlighting this

Since employers (who make up the CoC) in California often try to get people to sign non-competes that are unenforceable in California, and to restrain their behavior after having signed them based on the misperception that the agreement is enforceable, its unlikely that the CoC would trumpet publicly the fact that such agremeents are not enforceable in CA as a positive thing.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#304

Post by ghaff »

jbooth wrote: post #22
mackal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also wrong since MA still has one of the tech centers in the US... I do agree that banning non-competes would be good.

There's probably something to the fact that it's biotech first, government contractor tech second and software startups third, though. Those employer-friendly and IP-friendly laws work a lot better for biotech's long product cycles and government contractors.. whatever it is about them.

Although EMC is the company name that comes up repeatedly in its support for non-competes.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#306

Post by riboflava »

sbov wrote: post #166
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…

This isn't exactly correct either. It's a combination of barriers to entry (e.g. startup costs) and how much value the developer can make vs what they're paid. If a developer makes $100k/year and can create $1 million in value, then certainly I can poach them by offering them $200k/year and still make a profit on top of that. In many fields what prevents this is startup capital. It's expensive to get a supply chain f…

You don't even need much startup capital if you're starting up not in an expensive location like SV. The reason so many of us 100kers don't up and leave when we realize we're generating millions in value is because we're only generating that value as part of a larger organism telling us what to focus on. Given individual autonomy most of us couldn't produce the same value, maybe not even our salary value. Ability to autonomously produce value seems independent from coding ability, business acumen, and connections and I would argue is far more important in building a lasting business.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#307

Post by reinhardt »

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…

> if there are companies so desperate to hire engineers that they're turning to immigration law to try to increase the supply, why aren't they simply offering large enough compensation packages to attract the existing pool?

I don't get this argument. If there are 100 open positions and 80 eligible candidates, 20 (at least) positions will remain vacant, regardless of compensation. Not saying that this example reflects the real world, just that the argument is not sound from a logical/mathematical standpoint.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#308

Post by hnal943 »

jonknee wrote: post #230
hnal943 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those that still have jobs. Employers commonly reduce the number of jobs available when those jobs become more expensive.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#309

Post by aianus »

learc83 wrote: post #288
aianus wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why aren't they simply offering large enough compensation packages to attract the existing pool? Well, they are. Compensation packages at the big tech companies are ridiculous. I know someone that got $100k signing bonus (cash, not stock) without a degree at 21 years old. He's not a genius either. At a certain point, don't you think it's better to share some of that opportunity with smart foreigners? How many Tesla…

>Well, they are. Clearly they aren't. Say an engineer can make a company $1 million per year. They are only willing to pay $200k per year in total compensation, but they complain that they can't hire enough engineers. Obviously they aren't paying enough per engineer. >At a certain point, don't you think it's better to share some of that opportunity with smart foreigners? How many Teslas does an American twenty-someth…

> They are only willing to pay $200k per year in total compensation, but they complain that they can't hire enough engineers. Obviously they aren't paying enough per engineer.

Engineers are not created from money. You might be able to fill your positions by paying more, but not all of the positions in the entire country. Not without immigration or higher graduation rates.

> Companies want to import foreign workers to depress wages so that they can save money, and your instinct is to blame the workers who don't want lower wages?

How do you justify that the location of birth should be the main determinant in whether an engineer earns $150k a year or $30k a year? That line of reasoning is a lot more disgusting to me than corporate profit-maximizing.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#310

Post by hnal943 »

hx87 wrote: post #235
hnal943 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

High level executives at large corporations are a small enough group with enough common interests that they might as well constitute a union, and they have an exemplary record of preserving value for themselves.

It's silly to point to a cohort of high-skilled non-union workers that are highly paid and claim that is an argument for the unionization of high-skilled workers.
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