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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

#371

Post by ThePawnBreak »

aianus wrote: post #309
learc83 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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.

There is not set number of "positions", the number depends on the number of developer willing to work for the wage offered. If you would consider an employer who is willing to pay $50 per month for a developer to have an open "position", then the number of positions would be an order of magnitude higher.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#372

Post by vacri »

aianus wrote: post #281
llamataboot wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trained in something because you love it. You really want to do it, and you went to school for it, have experience in it. Someone gives you a choice -- you can do this for $XX/year or you can starve. The labor market is not as "free" as free-marketers make it out to be. I made a mid-career switch from social work to coding in part because of compensation, but it wasn't a friction-free switch. Also, my point wa…

If you're doing it because you love it, then you should consider that joy/satisfaction as part of the comp package. A lot (most?) high-paying jobs are high-paying because people don't love doing them and they involve a lot of sacrifice. That's why they call it 'compensation'.

> A lot (most?) high-paying jobs are high-paying because people don't love doing them

That must be why call-center workers are all on six figures?

Seriously, the people who least like their jobs are not the high-wagers, but the minimum-wagers.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#373

Post by new_hackers »

morgante wrote: post #177
ap22213 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, got it - it's probably semantics then. When I say 'work', I mean doing something other than what you enjoy. If you love it, it's not work, in common vernacular.

If I'm getting paid to do it, I consider it work.

If it is a force acting through a distance, I consider it work.

(I figured I'd toss that one out there for the engineers in the room ;-) )

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#374

Post by jdhawk »

cheald wrote: post #104
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.

Assuming that you can tolerate the commensurate risk, absolutely. Many people forget that the rank-and-file employee isn't exposed to the financial and legal risk that their employers were/are.

This is what they're trading, decreased risk for decreased reward.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#375

Post by vacri »

mcbits wrote: post #134
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.

Working as an employee is not without risk. There is the risk that you'll invest 10% or 50% of your productive lifespan in an employer who squanders it all and leaves you jobless without notice instead of an employer who puts your abilities to good use and recognizes the value that you create. The risk is partially mitigated by receiving a paycheck during those wasted years regardless of the employer's competence.

And software developers are different from literally any other kind of employee in this regard... how?

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#378

Post by throwaway201607 »

nsedlet wrote: post #289
siculars wrote: post #12

This. Negotiating a compensation package, in general, is asymmetric information warfare. Having to reveal your salary history you may as well not even negotiate. I know so many women who are constantly bit by this and negotiating in general. Here's an idea: compensation agents who negotiate the compensation package on your behalf. Athletes and actors have them, why not everyone else?

I agree with this: employees are at a huge information disadvantage. However, I think a better (& admittedly more radical) solution to this problem would be to force employers to publicly post anonymized salaries by job title. That way prospective and current employees know exactly how much they ought to be paid. It makes salary negotiation almost trivial. Preventing employers from asking about previous salary does n…

Except that its not unfairly pegged to gender: http://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-...

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#379

Post by mbreese »

justinlardinois wrote: post #37
siculars wrote: post #12

This. Negotiating a compensation package, in general, is asymmetric information warfare. Having to reveal your salary history you may as well not even negotiate. I know so many women who are constantly bit by this and negotiating in general. Here's an idea: compensation agents who negotiate the compensation package on your behalf. Athletes and actors have them, why not everyone else?

> Here's an idea: compensation agents who negotiate the compensation package on your behalf. Athletes and actors have them, why not everyone else? Because in your typical job you're trying to negotiate over a few thousand dollars in your annual salary. If you actually paid an agent enough for it to be worth it to them, you may as well have not negotiated at all because the money they won for you is just going in thei…

They could make up for it in volume. There's only so many athletes and actors around. And their contracts will be a hell of a lot more complicated than an engineer, so it should be quicker to negotiate.

Then again, in a different form, those compensation agents were simply known as unions.

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