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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

#511

Post by zenlikethat »

eru wrote: post #500
zenlikethat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for this to happen programmers have to: (1) Stop shaming each other for being "greedy" when they actually ask for what they merit. I can't tell you how many times on HN and elsewhere I've run into extremely defeatist attitude about this implying that we should be happy just to have jobs in the field. As long as these folks are around shaming fellow engineers for asking for more money they will drag everyone…

The chasers will only drag your salary down, if the business can't distinguish you from them when hiring. Luckily, it's pretty easy for you to signal that you are not a chaser. Getting paid more than other folks mostly means you are better at interviewing and negotiations. (Or, if you are a lifer, that you are good at your company's promotion process. If your company is sane, that might even imply something about how…

It's not just the Internet, it's real life too. If salaries are low across the board at $COMPANY it's an easy wedge for the management to use. "We couldn't give you more because then you would be making more than your coworkers. Do you feel like you really deserve more? You should be happy to have what you do already." If your coworkers are also too meek to ask for raises it's bad news for all the engineers. Pressure matters.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#512

Post by zenlikethat »

rozap wrote: post #323
zenlikethat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for this to happen programmers have to: (1) Stop shaming each other for being "greedy" when they actually ask for what they merit. I can't tell you how many times on HN and elsewhere I've run into extremely defeatist attitude about this implying that we should be happy just to have jobs in the field. As long as these folks are around shaming fellow engineers for asking for more money they will drag everyone…

These things aren't mutually exclusive. If it takes 10 devs 3 months to ship a Java EE app that requires 2 full time SREs to keep running, vs. 2 devs, 3 months and a part time SRE to ship something built with ShinyNewTech, then you better believe that's delivering business value. ShinyNewTech bites people when they aren't intentional about introducing it and haven't done an accurate cost/benefit analysis. If you've d…

A good engineer certainly should know when to bite on new technology if it will deliver legitimate value but a FAR more common story in this industry is that whole stacks get rewritten for the new hotness with very little actual tangible gain to show for it. Opportunity cost of jumping at new tech when you shouldn't is much higher than the opportunity cost of the opposite.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#513

Post by jghn »

eru wrote: post #503
jghn wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find in these conversations that some people are talking about salary and others are talking about salary + bonus + stock options. In particular, the stock option portion to me (but YMMV) seems disingenuous. As an example, I'm in the Boston area and ~2 rungs away from a "director" type title, working at a company known to not pay top dollar and without things like stock. It wouldn't take much stock for me to enter…

Google and Facebook etc often give 'restricted stock units', ie stock that vests over time. That's almost as good as cash, since you can sell them anytime after they are vesting. Stock in startups and options in general are a gamble, of course.

They're way better than startup-y options, definitely. However if for some reason I don't stay there long enough, it's not at all the same as cash.

They're still plenty valuable, as opposed to startup options which I consider worthless, but my point was that IMO this is one of the sources of all of these debates as to how much people make. Some people will count them and others won't

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#516

Post by zenlikethat »

ktRolster wrote: post #93
zenlikethat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever worked on a project where management considered developers as pretty much interchangeable and added folks to the team that did more damage than good? If so, do you want to repeat that experience?

I'll say this: if you aren't writing code in a way that someone else can pick up the project when you leave, then you are being an irresponsible coder.

That's exactly the point. Developers aren't "mostly interchangeable". Some are much better bets than others.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#518

Post by zenlikethat »

slg wrote: post #125
zenlikethat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever worked on a project where management considered developers as pretty much interchangeable and added folks to the team that did more damage than good? If so, do you want to repeat that experience?

My post had the condition of "competent developer". There are certainly some developers that aren't competent. In my experience those developers get weeded out of the industry relatively quickly. This cuts off the bottom of the bell curve leaving most most developers with something close to an average skill set or above. I also won't discount the frictional costs of changing teams. If you take two identical developer…

They don't get weeded out. They might even sit in one place for years at a time before management catches on and does something, if they even catch on at all. Or, they will bounce from job to job infecting various roles with their poor work until the immune system of each company slowly wakes up and does something about them. Sadly, this gives them more "experience" and industry credibility, making it even easier to trick future victims.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#519

Post by aianus »

nradov wrote: post #505
aianus wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, the pool of candidates basically only changes via immigration and as people retrain or teenagers choose different college majors (very slow). > For example there are plenty of people qualified to do engineering work who aren't working in that field right now for whatever reason, but could be enticed to take an engineering job for enough money. Like whom? How can you be qualified to do software engineering…

That's just flat out wrong. I know people who were formerly software developers and who stopped their careers to become stay-at-home parents. If you offered a salary of, let's say, $300K they would be happy to reenter the workforce. It's not that hard to catch back up. As for past investments in different careers, those are sunk costs and irrelevant to decisions made now .

> I know people who were formerly software developers and who stopped their careers to become stay-at-home parents.

The population of people who consider $150k a year not to be sufficient incentive to get a job is vanishingly small.

> As for past investments in different careers, those are sunk costs and irrelevant to decisions made now.

It's not irrelevant if they did those things instead of learning/doing software engineering. You can't study medicine or law or banking for 8 years and just become an engineer at Google overnight because the Google starting salary had (hypothetically) risen to $300k and it's now a better deal.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#520

Post by toomuchtodo »

eru wrote: post #479
nikatwork wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...except if all the competitors ask how much the employee was paid at their last gig, so bid $12. Price fixing is an actual thing, that's why we have labor laws. Also see: non-compete agreements.

If you get bitten by that, you are just a bad negotiator.

64k Bay Area tech workers were bad negotiators?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

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