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Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

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Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#81

Post by _m8fo »

jimnotgym wrote: post #75
abduhl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only illegal if they can prove that you discriminated based on their age. This is why companies never tell a prospective hire why they've declined to hire them, instead they just tell them that it's a poor culture fit. Poor culture fits aren't illegal, so you can feel safe not hiring based on culture. Especially if the part of their culture that doesn't fit is a protected class.

Again, its only an issue for bad companies, with bad employment practices. The rest of us will be unaffected by the restriction

> Again, its only an issue for bad companies, with bad employment practices. The rest of us will be unaffected by the restriction

Don't you feel that this attitude is dismissive?

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#82

Post by jimnotgym »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #77
abduhl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only illegal if they can prove that you discriminated based on their age. This is why companies never tell a prospective hire why they've declined to hire them, instead they just tell them that it's a poor culture fit. Poor culture fits aren't illegal, so you can feel safe not hiring based on culture. Especially if the part of their culture that doesn't fit is a protected class.

> It's only illegal if they can prove that you discriminated based on their age. If at any time during the interview the employer asks the candidate's age (or any other protected information), the candidate will have a much easier time making a case for that.

On the other hand candidates in the UK (at least) are in the habit of putting dates on their CV for the major events in their life, like school leaving and Uni graduation...so age is kinda obvious.

It is of course OK to seek candidates that are 'early in their careers', as long as you wouldn't turn away an inexperienced older person (and I have employed career changers who were evidently much older than other candidates). Again it is no issue for good employers

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#83

Post by pmiller2 »

gambiting wrote: post #76
jimnotgym wrote: post #61

Interesting that various people here are horrified by restrictions on what you can ask in an interview. In the UK there are various restrictions on what you are allowed to ask, such as a candidates age. Actually the main risk to a business from this is a careless interviewer asking by mistake. An enlightened employer should not find any of this restricting at all. All of the worst interviewers I have faced have alway…

I personally know of a case where someone got rejected because they asked for too much compared to his previous salary, even though the person who got hired was offered more money(but it was a smaller increase percentage wise over his previous job). Basically guy was brilliant in the interview, engineering team said they want him, but HR rejected him because he said he wants 80k, while he was making 60k previously(he…

> HR instead hired....

Well, there's the problem right there. HR should only have relatively minimal input into the hiring process, unless it's hiring someone in HR. Fail a background check, and I can understand HR vetoing a hire; asking for too much salary should be between the candidate, the hiring manager and their available budget.

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#84

Post by pmiller2 »

lend000 wrote: post #57
phkahler wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies have multiple employees, where most employees only have one employer. You are 1/n to them and they are everything to you. The power differential is staggering particularly for a cable company.

> You are 1/n to them and they are everything to you This is false! You are 1/n to them and they are 1/m to you. Where n=number of job seekers and m=number of employers. Both numbers are very high. EDIT: You can have many employers over your lifetime, and you are not bound to any one during your job search. m does not equal 1.

No, m=1, typically, because most people only have/can have one employer.

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#85

Post by prostoalex »

logicallee wrote: post #72

[Edit: if a potential employer asked my previous salary] I would have zero qualms (zero) saying any number I wanted. If I was asked for paystubs I would say I'll get them later and add that the number may not have been exact, it could be off substantially I want to be upfront about that. If I have to put a number in a form and sign that I swear it is accurate, I would put an asterisk and explain that it is indicative…

> and add that the number may not have been exact, it could be off substantially

Beyond pure monetary compensation, there are various non-monetary parameters - quality of health plan, quality and employee cost of dental plan, parental leave policy, 401(k) matching, mobile phone or Internet reimbursement, employer stock purchase plan - that any random number feels like a good ballpark estimate.

E.g. how does one value a health PPO with monthly premium $298 per family vs Kaiser HMO at $152 a month? A 5-day vs 3-week parental leave? The answer is highly dependent on personal circumstances, such as distance from home to the nearest Kaiser facility and whether or not someone in the family is expecting. The value of either might be $0 if interviewee plans to stay covered by spousal health plan and does not plan to have children.

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#86

Post by jimnotgym »

_m8fo wrote: post #81
jimnotgym wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, its only an issue for bad companies, with bad employment practices. The rest of us will be unaffected by the restriction

> Again, its only an issue for bad companies, with bad employment practices. The rest of us will be unaffected by the restriction Don't you feel that this attitude is dismissive?

I'm hiring right now, into a critical role for me. I have lots of questions for new candidates about what they were doing before at previous employers. However I will not feel the need to ask what they are paid. I have been asked it on several occasions and every time it was an attempt to pay me less than the company had advertised for the role. I can think of so many reasons why someone's pay may have been out of step with their role in the past, and none of it is relevant to how I wish to inventivise them now. So no I don't think it is dismissive

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#88

Post by jnordwick »

lend000 wrote: post #41
ch4s3 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because there is a very large disparity in power and information. A few points: 1. You will always need the job more than Comcast will need you (unless you're unusually skilled, most workers aren't) 2. Comcast knows how much the pay every one of their employees, you the job seeker do not. 3. Comcast is only asking so they can figure out the lowest pay you'll accept. You have no way to figure out how high the…

> You will always need the job more than Comcast will need you Where is the evidence for this? This is by no means an obvious claim. No one in the world needs "the job," even though most people need "a job." Do companies exist that are more moral/popular/friendly than others? Of course. And some of them are successful in part because people want them to succeed due to their aforementioned characteristics. That is fre…

Please stop voting this guy down. While I don't agree with all post, he at least made a well argued post that contributed to civil discourse.

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#89

Post by pmiller2 »

rhizome wrote: post #35
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech already has well known limits. Copywrite is an obvious one. Anyway, salary history's are discriminatory which seems like something that probably already has case law.

Economic status is not a protected class.

Look up "disparate impact" sometime.

Re: Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

#90

Post by tn13 »

general_ai wrote: post #87

Can we go a little further than this? Can we require employers to post the details of the compensation package that comes with each job? That would save a lot of time for all involved and obviate the need to even ask this question.

No. It will stop us from bargaining and pushing for biding wars.
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