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

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#571

Post by PhilWright » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:11 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #568

PostOnce wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the linesmen who provide the power for your computers? What about the road workers who make it possible for you to get to work? What about the African miners who dig up the rare earths for your components to run your computer? What about the guys soldering all this crap together? I bet you'd say the road worker creates hardly any value, but in reality the economy just ceases to function without roads. Or s…

Major difference is trainable skills versus innate talent. The number of people who can be trained/educated to perform the tasks you described above are pretty large. The number of people who can write elegant, concise code is a pretty small pool. It's also important to distinguish between day-day coders who write CRUD apps (trainable skill), and developers who develop platforms that others build on. Another way of l…

There is nothing unique or special about being a programmer.

Programmers think they are undervalued and should get more. But guess what, nurses think they should get more as well because they are saving lives. Soldiers think they should get more for making us all safe. Police think they should get more for reducing the level of crime in society which benefits us all. Teachers think they should get more because they are educating the next generation of wealth creators. Everyone thinks they should get a little more of the pie.

How do you resolve this? (Hint: supply and demand)

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#572

Post by learc83 » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

aianus wrote: post #454

learc83 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was really a shortage of engineers, then engineer salary would be very close to the value the engineer adds to the company, because the competition to hire would drive the price as high as it could possibly go. Salary is nowhere near close to the value an engineer adds to the company, so most likely there is no shortage. The shortage is a manufactured problem to justify an attempt to depress wages. >How do y…

> Salary is nowhere near close to the value an engineer adds to the company, so most likely there is no shortage. I think it is more likely that the marginal value added by an engineer to a company is much less than you think it is. If Google currently earns an average of ~$2m per engineer that does not imply that they will earn an additional $2m upon hiring another engineer. In fact I'm confident they could fire at…

>In fact I'm confident they could fire at least 500 engineers tomorrow without negatively impacting their profit at all

That makes no sense. If they can lose a significant chunk of their engineering team "without negatively impacting their profit at all" then why did they hire them in the first place.

If your assertion is true, they must have significantly overestimated their staffing needs. If they did, it's likely everyone did, so the engineering shortage crisis doesn't really exist after all.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#573

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:14 AM UTC

gozur88 wrote: post #426

st3v3r wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

I do not believe that you shouldn't get any compensation, but the idea that simply having money entitles you to the lion's share of the compensation, above and beyond those that actually do the damn work, is idiotic.

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

The fact that it actually makes the damn product.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#574

Post by chug » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:15 AM UTC

throwaway201607 wrote: post #376

I love the new law, sad to see it based on a false premise: http://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-...

I think at most it's an exaggerated premise, not false. There's tons of evidence that it does exist, though there is much debate over what exactly the percentage of the gap is. It's hard to find "the gap doesn't exist at all" evidence outside of certain think tanks or opinion pieces.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#575

Post by bschwindHN » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #568

PostOnce wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the linesmen who provide the power for your computers? What about the road workers who make it possible for you to get to work? What about the African miners who dig up the rare earths for your components to run your computer? What about the guys soldering all this crap together? I bet you'd say the road worker creates hardly any value, but in reality the economy just ceases to function without roads. Or s…

Major difference is trainable skills versus innate talent. The number of people who can be trained/educated to perform the tasks you described above are pretty large. The number of people who can write elegant, concise code is a pretty small pool. It's also important to distinguish between day-day coders who write CRUD apps (trainable skill), and developers who develop platforms that others build on. Another way of l…

> The number of people who can write elegant, concise code is a pretty small pool

Ah yes, those people are making the world a better place by constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#576

Post by xiaoma » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:21 AM UTC

The part of this that looks more important than forbidding recruiters from asking about previous pay is this:

>"And the law will require equal pay not just for workers whose jobs are alike, but also for those whose work is of “comparable character” or who work in “comparable operations.” Workers with more seniority will still be permitted to earn higher pay, but the law effectively broadens the definition of what is equal work."

I suspect the result will be to flatten wages everywhere except the most easily quantifiable, thus legally defensible, cases. Sales people will still make a commission on what they sell and have a huge gap in their earnings, but it will become much harder to reward rare engineering talents or even people who work on their craft recreationally.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#577

Post by ghshephard » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

PhilWright wrote: post #571

ghshephard wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major difference is trainable skills versus innate talent. The number of people who can be trained/educated to perform the tasks you described above are pretty large. The number of people who can write elegant, concise code is a pretty small pool. It's also important to distinguish between day-day coders who write CRUD apps (trainable skill), and developers who develop platforms that others build on. Another way of l…

There is nothing unique or special about being a programmer. Programmers think they are undervalued and should get more. But guess what, nurses think they should get more as well because they are saving lives. Soldiers think they should get more for making us all safe. Police think they should get more for reducing the level of crime in society which benefits us all. Teachers think they should get more because they a…

Couple points - I didn't say there is anything unique or special about being a programmer from a skill perspective. Almost everyone who can graduate from high school can be taught to program, and put together useful applications. I tried to call that out when describing the difference between a day-day CRUD developer and platform developer.

But there is a distinct hierarchy of developers who can, for example, instinctively comprehend pointer-to-pointer data structures, or have walked through and mostly understand AoCP, or heck, can (quickly) write concise elegant code like this: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr09/cos333/bea....

One key difference between programming and teaching/soldiering/policing, is leverage. A single 100x teacher/soldier/police officer is limited in the impact they can have on the world, whereas a single 100x developer can write a platform/system that is used by 100s of millions of people.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#578

Post by eggy » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #501

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…

What about the linesmen who provide the power for your computers? What about the road workers who make it possible for you to get to work? What about the African miners who dig up the rare earths for your components to run your computer? What about the guys soldering all this crap together? I bet you'd say the road worker creates hardly any value, but in reality the economy just ceases to function without roads. Or s…

Try building a road system with just road workers, and no civil engineers or systems and operations analysts, and all this entails.

Or pay the house painter what you pay a software engineer, and see how many people paint their house themselves, or with less frequency. House painters would be priced out of the market, and more homeowners would fall, and/or have crappier paint jobs.

That is supply and demand in a nutshell, and how markets value a skill or talent you have to offer with obvious exceptions.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#579

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

ktRolster wrote: post #336

logfromblammo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irresponsible coding follows naturally from irresponsible management.

Take responsibility for your own code. Be a man, or be a woman. Stop blaming other people. Your life becomes better when you take control.

I take responsibility for my own code.

Code that belongs to the company is ultimately the responsibility of the stockholders and their board. As an at will employee with no equity, I will give them exactly what they ask for in their code.

At each job, I will go above and beyond the call of duty once, to gauge the reaction. At some jobs, I get a cash bonus. At others, I just get a pat on the back. The last two jobs in a row, I was told to not do that again. So I didn't.

Don't be an apologist for bad management. I'm not going to do the right thing if I could get fired for it.

Re: Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

#580

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Aug 03, 2016, 4:31 AM UTC

I suspect this law may backfire. It's hard enough determining what a prospective employee may be worth to a company, and the salary history is used as a proxy. Take that out of play, and the risk is higher in hiring the candidate. Higher risk means lower pay offers, not higher.