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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

#421

Post by foldr »

riboflava wrote: post #318
dvt wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so maybe I'm just bad at math. I know that if you make 200k as an engineer in NYC (which is STILL high[1]), you make around 10k a month after taxes. 10k - 2k for rent - 1k for expenses = 7k saved if you don't go on vacation, and literally do nothing that costs money for ten years. Even saving 7k a month, you won't save 100k a year. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-software-en...

$1k for other 'expenses' is huge. You can drive that down at least by half with wiser spending.

It's not huge. That's bills together with all of your everyday spending. It's certainly possible to get that down to less than $1000 a month but you can easily spend $1000 a month without doing anything extravagant.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#422

Post by jimcsharp »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #416

I applied and soon after worked as an engineer for a large company that not only asked for my previous compensation but part of the application process involved my employer validating that I actually made what I told them. They worked with a third party to match my figures with W2 statements and/or pay stubs. It was really intrusive. Pay should equate to value, not some silly ladder climb

Yeesh. That's when you go along and let them pay for the audit before bailing.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#423

Post by wavefunction »

aianus wrote: post #292
wavefunction wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of salary data available for people through services offered by the credit bureaus. If they want to find out, they will.

> There is a lot of salary data available for people through services offered by the credit bureaus. This is based on self-reported data to creditors. I've never had a creditor verify my stated income in any way, they always waive in because my score is good enough.

I posted a link in one of the siblings to your comments, but this data results from employers giving/selling the data to Equifax for their The Work Number service.

I have to say I'm surprised at the number of HN readers who are unaware about the availability of this data.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#424

Post by damptowel »

DicksenZuider wrote: post #70
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.

Prices for goods and services are determined by supply and demand, not by what, "in your opinion", is "fair".

Yes... but only on paper!

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#425

Post by jrockway »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #416

I applied and soon after worked as an engineer for a large company that not only asked for my previous compensation but part of the application process involved my employer validating that I actually made what I told them. They worked with a third party to match my figures with W2 statements and/or pay stubs. It was really intrusive. Pay should equate to value, not some silly ladder climb

The problem is that they must have too many qualified engineers applying, and they need an arbitrary way to filter people out.

I almost managed to write that with a straight face.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#426

Post by gozur88 »

st3v3r wrote: post #407
gozur88 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 much value are you assigning to the risk the founder and investors are taking?" Absolutely 0, because they're not the ones doing the work.

Really? You think people should risk their money without compensation? Where can I find such people?

And what makes showing up at the office and typing on a keyboard such a holy use of time that it alone deserves compensation?

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#427

Post by tn13 »

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…

Because Salary has nothing to do with value they create but what someone else is willing to accept to create the same value.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#428

Post by matthewowen »

hinkley wrote: post #412
matthewowen wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In college I spent a couple summers doing repair work in the shop of a family friend. I got stuck with a boondoggle repair and when it got into day 2 that I was still working on it, and the manager got pissed off and tried to take over for half an hour before he figured out why it was taking me so long. Then we had a shocking conversation about the fact that while he was paying me $x/hr, I needed to be booking at lea…

I don't disagree with any of this. I'm not saying that if an engineer writes software that increases profits by $1MM then they have realized $1MM in value: it's a team sport. But I don't think that prevents us talking at all about the value of the work that is done in a job.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#429

Post by tn13 »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #416

I applied and soon after worked as an engineer for a large company that not only asked for my previous compensation but part of the application process involved my employer validating that I actually made what I told them. They worked with a third party to match my figures with W2 statements and/or pay stubs. It was really intrusive. Pay should equate to value, not some silly ladder climb

Sounds really really weird. My previous employer flat out refused to tell my new employer my salary claiming it was confidential. In fact the job agreement always mentions that salary is confidential.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#430

Post by dvt »

riboflava wrote: post #318
dvt wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so maybe I'm just bad at math. I know that if you make 200k as an engineer in NYC (which is STILL high[1]), you make around 10k a month after taxes. 10k - 2k for rent - 1k for expenses = 7k saved if you don't go on vacation, and literally do nothing that costs money for ten years. Even saving 7k a month, you won't save 100k a year. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-software-en...

$1k for other 'expenses' is huge. You can drive that down at least by half with wiser spending.

Food, insurance, gas, water, electricity, student debt, etc. At least by half? Come on. Let's be real.
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