Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Philadelphia Poised to Ban Employers from Asking Hires About Salary History

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 244 posts

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

#211

Post by tossaway1 »

shostack wrote: post #187
accountface wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you have to get someone all the way to an offer until you know what their salary expectations are. I think it's a good rule, but it is harder for managers. Especially managers who want to find a cheap hire.

There isn't anything stopping you from asking expectations. Just history, which removes some of your leverage (arguably a good thing). And people looking for "cheap hires" deserve to be hit hard by this the most IMHO. Leveling the playing field with information asymmetry is a good thing.

I'd say that preventing potential employers from asking questions about salary while allowing applicants to ask whatever they want is creating, not removing, assymmetry. In both cases, parties are free to refuse to answer questions.

One could argue that the potential employer is in a position of power and should therefore be constrained but I don't see that as the case at all these days, at least not in the tech industry.

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

#212

Post by kabouseng »

snarf21 wrote: post #206

I understand the goal of this law but don't see how it solves it. I usually ask people what their current salary is now. I want to offer them (at least) a modest raise to come here. I want them to be happy and excited. I also want to not waste a ton of time negotiating salary if they want 50K more then I have available in my budget. You are worth whatever you can get someone to pay you. Some people may come in with a…

If it really wasn't about offering candidates the absolute minimum you have to (low balling them), why not just make your hiring budget known, hell make it part of your advertisement, this way candidates who are more expensive won't waste your time because they won't even apply.

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

#213

Post by philliphaydon »

snarf21 wrote: post #206

I understand the goal of this law but don't see how it solves it. I usually ask people what their current salary is now. I want to offer them (at least) a modest raise to come here. I want them to be happy and excited. I also want to not waste a ton of time negotiating salary if they want 50K more then I have available in my budget. You are worth whatever you can get someone to pay you. Some people may come in with a…

Your example. You don't value the candidate. If you want that candidate then offer them what you believe they are worth to the value they will bring to your company.

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

#214

Post by brianwawok »

kabouseng wrote: post #212
snarf21 wrote: post #206

I understand the goal of this law but don't see how it solves it. I usually ask people what their current salary is now. I want to offer them (at least) a modest raise to come here. I want them to be happy and excited. I also want to not waste a ton of time negotiating salary if they want 50K more then I have available in my budget. You are worth whatever you can get someone to pay you. Some people may come in with a…

If it really wasn't about offering candidates the absolute minimum you have to (low balling them), why not just make your hiring budget known, hell make it part of your advertisement, this way candidates who are more expensive won't waste your time because they won't even apply.

If he just advertises his budget is 100k... The guy he could have hired for 70k gets hired at 100k. That's wasted 30k to the company. Do that for many roles and your company is now out of business.

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

#215

Post by crdoconnor »

brianwawok wrote: post #214
kabouseng wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it really wasn't about offering candidates the absolute minimum you have to (low balling them), why not just make your hiring budget known, hell make it part of your advertisement, this way candidates who are more expensive won't waste your time because they won't even apply.

If he just advertises his budget is 100k... The guy he could have hired for 70k gets hired at 100k. That's wasted 30k to the company. Do that for many roles and your company is now out of business.

You're essentially agreeing that the point is to lowball the candidate.

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

#216

Post by lend000 »

quickben wrote: post #159
lend000 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can not be "legitimate" and "on average". I do believe you just made that up. Nothing is perfect, and yet there have been studies that show Wikipedia is more often factually correct than Encyclopedia Britannica, which was previously considered the gold standard. http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/index.html Is the New York Times legitimate on average? I would say so. Are there mistakes from time to time? Ye…

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/legitimate https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legitimate I have nothing further to add to this thread.

No offense, but neither of your comments here contributed anything to the discussion, nor did they prove even the small, uninteresting point that you think they did.

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

#217

Post by chillwaves »

anon31415927 wrote: post #192

Most people don't realize that companies can get salary history from a number of sources. ADP actually provides this as a service to larger customers.

Are you saying ADP will give my salary information to a company I might apply to? That doesn't seem ethical. Do you have a source on this? I am surprised to hear it.

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

#218

Post by shostack »

user5994461 wrote: post #207
shostack wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually flat out said "that it isn't really relevant, but can you share your range and we'll see if that makes sense once I learn more about the role?" It has worked a few times. Some get surprised when someone tries to flip that on them. The ones that balk get dropped from consideration.

They'll always consider the low end of the range while you'll always consider the end. It's not a practical reply.

That's always a possibility. I usually frame it as something more like "I still need to learn a lot more about this role in order to tell you an amount that would make sense for me, and you still likely need time to learn more about what value I can add. If you can share your range, we can make sure we're at least in the right ballpark, and if it makes sense to move forward I'm confident we can arrive on a comp package that works for everyone."

Very often this question gets asked on initial screener calls. They don't know how to really evaluate you or what you bring to the table, and you know whatever high level thing the recruiter was told about the role. The purpose of the call is to determine in the quickest amount of time whether it makes sense to move forward to a deeper, more formal discussion about the opportunity with the people actually qualified to discuss the role at that level (hiring manager, etc.). Make it clear that you are interested in the entire comp package and not just salary. I haven't really had that much resistance to this.

At the end of the day it is on you to do your research on what they need to pay you for this to make sense, and be happy with that number. If they won't go for it, you tell them what that minimum happy number is, and if they won't get there one way or another (extra vacation, etc.), then you need to pass (assuming that is a realistic option for you).

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

#219

Post by coolgeek »

lend000 wrote: post #59
_m8fo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skipped that step because it leads to the same conclusion. Or do you think a regular person in this country is capable of consulting, contracting, starting a company, etc?

Contracting? Yes... Starting a company? Sure. There sure are a lot of restaurants, food trucks, and dry cleaners out there. Although it's not easy with all the legal barriers to entry created by well-intentioned regulators like yourself :) This is a tangent, but the whole nanny-state ideology advocated by many of the people arguing with me here is the reason people are so dependent on employers instead of having free…

Contracting and consulting is a legal/economic framework for shifting the risk/reward ratio from the entity purchasing services to the entity providing the services.

It does nothing to change the market of service purchasers in any way. As such, if you had problems as an employee with the pool of service purchasers, you're going to have those same problems as a vendor of services.

> Although [starting a business] is not easy with all the legal barriers to entry created by well-intentioned regulators like yourself :)

Because that's the hard part of a successful business?

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

#220

Post by crdoconnor »

lend000 wrote: post #133
stephen_g wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one would have to be extremely far right to view the predominate view of HN as 'socialist'... But as for statist, it depends on how you define the word, but in an economic sense at least, the more I talk to libertarians, the more I associate that word with 'realist'. There are lots of nice ideals in voluntarism and total free-market economics, but I'm less and less convinced that they could work at any signif…

There is a wide range of libertarian perspectives, just like you find on the left (socialist and beyond to moderate). I consider myself and my arguments on this thread to be with a moderate-leaning interpretation of the libertarian-associated non-aggression principle. I think everyone here agrees with the non-aggression principle, but Democrats don't usually recognize it or try to apply it as a logical, almost quanti…

"I think everyone here agrees with the non-aggression principle"

Most people won't agree on a definition of "property" or "aggression" rendering the point moot, however.

Post reply on HN