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

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#341

Post by mfringel » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

jxramos wrote: post #248

Does this sort of information get revealed in background checks for previous places of employment or is that a privacy thing? Also is it really necessary for a state to dictate such things? Is it too much pressure for someone to respectfully decline to answer such a question and practice some negotiation skills? What exactly is the state's interest in this sort of thing precisely?

Having it stipulated by the state means that people who have less leverage to decline to answer such questions have the power of the state behind them.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#342

Post by arvinds » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

matthewowen wrote: post #237

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…

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…

Unfortunately we have network effect monopolists who can get away with huge margins. See Google, Facebook

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by jonknee » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #312

jonknee wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for athletes, the MLB Players Union has been extraordinary in preserving value for its members (guaranteed contracts!).

How's the UAW doing? Is it possible that there are factors outside of unionization that affect how these workers are paid?

You'd have to poll their members, but I would suspect they are pretty happy. They are well paid, are not allowed to be worked around the clock like Silicon Valley programmers and have a known career path. For blue collar work it's about as good as it gets.

> Is it possible that there are factors outside of unionization that affect how these workers are paid?

Of course, there are tons of variables. But it's a fact that unionized workers make more than non-unionized workers in the same jobs, that unionized workers are much more likely to have health insurance, that unionized workers are much more likely to have paid vacation and sick time, etc etc.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by dopamean » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

skolos wrote: post #167

up_and_up wrote: post #62

Feel free to tell them what you make just add 15-40% to that number. This has worked well for me. Employers seem happy as well. Example: Assuming your current salary is X. "So I currently make (X * 1.20), but in order to make the jump I need at least (X * 1.40)." That way they get to feel out immediately whether they can afford you, you get the salary that would motivate you, and no one is wasting time in the hiring…

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

I've never had a company ask for proof of income and I wouldn't work at one that did. That's an insane requirement that should have nothing to do with whether or not I'm fit for the job and they're willing to pay what I ask for someone to do the job.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by walshemj » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #154

blahi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is straight up proletariat bull. You get hired, you get paid. If it doesn't pan out, you go somewhere else. You have 0 risk and a guaranteed career. And sorry, but 100k for a javascript "engineer" is more than the "fair share" in my opinion, but it's a market, so it is what it is.

Yes, I find it quite ironic that one of the most privileged groups on the planet is suddenly supporting an essentially communist argument of wage theft, as soon as there's even a slight possibility of them being underpaid. Apparently they are also entitled to unprecedented upward mobility. I sincerely doubt many software developers here spend any sleepless nights wondering what it would have been like had they been i…

Compared to say being a surgeon? or a lawer some one on here mentioned that a transplant surgeon can make over $15M.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by walshemj » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

markonthewall wrote: post #90

wildmusings wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're unfairly discounting the essential work done by other people in any business. While we engineer-types are tempted to look down upon sales, marketing, legal, HR, and leadership as do-nothing fluff, those roles can be just as crucial to a business's success as an engineer's. Pay is determined by the supply and demand of labor in the market.

Most professions you are referring to are unionized and defend their interests as a group, if you wait for C-execs to increase salaries of its information workers you might wait a long... long time. They have a board of shareholders to respond to and that is just not in their interest. I am actually quite surprised at the devotion of some people here for their masters. It does provide a beautiful illustration of La B…

yep the ragged trousered philanthropists lives on.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by samsonradu » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #201

samsonradu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it ok for competition to kill the value of developers work (in the benefit of managers/founders and whomever else)? The actual point I think is to get developers to understand they need to lift the bar higher because it's now set too far from the value they actually create.

Competition drives down prices. Everyone likes that fact except for when it is applied to their own price.

Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival. So why do people believe that competition is healthy? The answer is that competition is not just an economic concept or a simple inconvenience that individuals and companies must deal with in the marketplace. More than anything else, competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking. We preach competition, internalize its necessity, and enact its commandments; and as a result, we trap ourselves within it—even though the more we compete, the less we gain. - Zero To One, The ideology of competition

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by branchless » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

markonthewall wrote: post #11

I love the US and California, the tech scene is amazing and I was lucky to met such talented and friendly people in about every place I worked... from very large tech cos to "garage" startups. Which is why it pains me to see that so many engineers get stuck with such ridiculous salaries (relative to the value and wealth they provide and create). Problem is that some salaries are seemingly high compared to what the av…

Your problem is you are labouring (if you pardon the pun) under the assumption that wages are set by a function of the value created. This is not how pricing works.

Western economies largely operate by attempting to establish monopolies and by not passing on value created by employees. This is essentially the foundation of profits, otherwise they would be cooperatives.

If you want to get into the true middle class (who should not have to work as they do not need the money, not the faux middle class we have now who have a reasonable car and a holiday for 2 weeks), you need to stop creating wealth and capture wealth creation by:

1. land monopoly to capture wages (like money moustache man who as 3 properties and write blogs about grain being cheap)

2. run a business that does not pass on as much as possible of the value your employees create, ideally by choosing an industry without organised labour

This is not to dismiss all companies as terrible capitalists, of course!

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

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Post by dbingham » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #122

dbingham wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reality provides one of the best arguments for a switch from a capitalist economy, in which it is shareholders who have little to do with the creation of value in the economy who ultimately benefit the most from it, to a free market socialist economy (one based on democratically owned worker cooperatives). In an economy based on worker cooperatives, the distinction between "employee" and "owner" is eliminated. I…

Consider that practically every company begins as a democratic worker-owned cooperative, and those worker-owners generally can't wait to diversify themselves out of that position. Risk exposure is a lot higher when you're a worker-owner, and most people are horribly risk-adverse. Ignoring the risk factor in the equation leads to some rather wrong conclusions.

What do stock holders actually risk when they buy stock? Only the money they put into the stock. What does an employee risk when he joins a company? Potentially his livelihood if the company goes under with out warning.

I would argue that the employee's current risk is greater than the stockholder's risk, since the stockholder generally has much more information about exactly what he is risking than the employee does -- and a greater legal right to that information. The average employee has no legal right to information about the health of the company where he's employed. He has to take the risk that the company isn't simply going to collapse out from under him leaving him with no income and a, best case, several week or month job search.

So what about the case of a worker cooperative economy? Where would the risk come from in a worker cooperative (beyond the normal risk an employee assumes)? Capital financing, which could still be done by debt or by crowd sourcing. In the case of debt, the risk depends on how we structure the companies. If they are structured as limited liability corporations, where only the property of the company can stand as collateral for debt, then the employee owner doesn't risk anymore than he does joining any other corporation. The difference is he has a legal right to complete information about the company's health and a voice in picking its direction.

He actually take substantially less risk in a worker cooperative (where employment means ownership is granted as a part of salary as opposed to being required to buy shares) than with a normal corporation. And he stands to reap the full benefits.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#350

Post by cmdrfred » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

fizx wrote: post #264

cheald wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How did you come to that conclusion? All thing being equal why shouldn't you pick the 100k guy?