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New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

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Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#101

Post by nommm-nommm »

southphillyman wrote: post #80
literallycancer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a recruiter, nor a hiring manager, but personally, I'd be more concerned about the competence of someone who answered truthfully. Yes, engineers probably aren't hired for being good at salary negotiation, but still.. it isn't hard to figure out that telling the truth isn't beneficial.

I'm probably making $30k less than I could be making right now because I tell the truth! Had no idea so many people lied. Makes sense to do so but didn't seem to be worth the risk to me. I wish I had a way to quanitfy how many companies actually check for this. My last two times out I used the same recruiter so couldn't really lie to him, I think going forward I won't work with his agency and just make up my number.

A rule of thumb is most big companies will utilize big data in employment decisions. I currently work for a mid-size company and I had to go through a whole third party background check.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#102

Post by vidarh »

alistairSH wrote: post #96
louisswiss wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with you in principle (your previous deal with company A is absolutely none of company B's business) but I would like to challenge you on one point: > I'm placed at a disadvantage in negotiations if I name a number first. ... This is unlikely to be true. Generally, in price negotiations it is advantageous to name a number first. This is known as anchoring and basically the theory is that the end result is bette…

The parent is discussing prior salaries. You are discussing requested salaries. If specifically asked "What is your current salary?" you would typically respond with the actual current salary, not your ideal new salary.

In this case the prior salary is used for anchoring purposes, by the expectation that the new salary should not be too much higher than the old salary.

They're basically using it as a means to sanity check and calibrate their own assessment.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#103

Post by nommm-nommm »

karrotwaltz wrote: post #88
comicjk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This points to an interesting method of poverty reduction - identify the little tricks which knowledgeable people use to get ahead in the system, and tweak the system to make the tricks less necessary.

Also, I think salary negotiation is partially responsible for the man / woman wage gap. I think men are more inclined to agressive negotiate their salaries, and women might be less prone to lie or hide their current salary too.

Yes, there's a whole book about this, Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation.

https://www.amazon.com/Women-Dont-Ask-Negotiation-Strategies...

> Yet, as research reveals, men are four times more likely to ask for higher pay than are women with the same qualifications. From career promotions to help with child care, studies show time and again that women don’t ask–and frequently don’t even realize that they can.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#104

Post by kelukelugames »

I dislike employers who take advantage of employees.

I dislike New York City's solution too. There are other ways to empower employees and not asking about past salaries won't eliminate the pay gap. But I'm not an expert so maybe this is a step in the right direction and can result in lasting changes.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#105

Post by Bartweiss »

ransom1538 wrote: post #71

So people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. I must be missing something here. I personally believe your salary is your business. Period. Getting salary information bad, forcing employees to divulge salaries from a position of power is disgusting. Here is me being publicly quartered on HN for pushing back on forcing empl…

Here's one argument: the logic changes if the data is universal.

The usual complaint about asking for salaries is that it's a trick to underpay new hires - you can give them the lower of your normal salaries or a 10% raise. That's because they don't know what they're worth, but you know what they got before.

If everyone publishes salaries (and they already do in practice, thanks to Glassdoor), that trick goes away. No matter what your previous salary was, you have leverage to say "look, you pay everyone else double that, cough up". So the primary objection to asking for salary is negated.

I'm not sure the logic is totally sound - some people will end up moving from published to unpublished employers - but I think there is a distinction.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#106

Post by sprafa »

vidarh wrote: post #102
alistairSH wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is discussing prior salaries. You are discussing requested salaries. If specifically asked "What is your current salary?" you would typically respond with the actual current salary, not your ideal new salary.

In this case the prior salary is used for anchoring purposes, by the expectation that the new salary should not be too much higher than the old salary. They're basically using it as a means to sanity check and calibrate their own assessment.

The thing you might leave a job because you really, really disagree with that assesment!

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#107

Post by maxxxxx »

eru wrote: post #84
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see my past salaries as trade secret of my business. So it's good that I can protect this secret.

People can ask about trade secrets just fine. It's just that you don't have to answer.

The balance of power during an interview is often very much on the side of the employer. So I am happy if that balance gets shifted the other way a little.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#108

Post by dpark »

mbillie1 wrote: post #54
xyzzy4 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most companies already prohibit employees from discussing salaries, under penalty of termination. This is actually illegal in many states. Workers have a legal right to discuss salaries. >Freedom of speech pertains to legislation from congress preventing political speech. Not correct. Free speech is about any freedom of expression, not just political speech. There is endless amounts of case law to back this up.

Please document some of this case law!

Come on. It's not even difficult to find examples of non-political speech being protected.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._Black

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coal...

You can find a big list of free speech cases here. Many cover non-political speech.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Suprem...

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#109

Post by notahacker »

kesselvon wrote: post #91
ransom1538 wrote: post #71

So people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. I must be missing something here. I personally believe your salary is your business. Period. Getting salary information bad, forcing employees to divulge salaries from a position of power is disgusting. Here is me being publicly quartered on HN for pushing back on forcing empl…

Companies asking for your previous salary means theyre going to try to pay you with your past salary being a benchmark to work with, not necessarily what the position is worth. Companies posting employee salaries publicly aims for employees at said company to be paid at the same level (with similar experience). There's a subtle difference. Every time I've been asked about salary its been an obvious ploy to lowball my…

The obvious consequence of a company publicly posting salaries (or even having clear salary ranges that nearly all the employees at the level of experience fall into) is that a thorough recruiter doesn't even need to ask your previous salary to be able to use it as a benchmark to work with though.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#110

Post by kesselvon »

Bartweiss wrote: post #99
kesselvon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies asking for your previous salary means theyre going to try to pay you with your past salary being a benchmark to work with, not necessarily what the position is worth. Companies posting employee salaries publicly aims for employees at said company to be paid at the same level (with similar experience). There's a subtle difference. Every time I've been asked about salary its been an obvious ploy to lowball my…

It's also worth recognizing that things are very different if this becomes universal. If one company asks for your salary at another, they get a chance to underpay. But if every company publishes salaries, they don't get to low-ball no matter what you were getting before.

Yep. I find that in the US people are very reluctant to discuss salary amongst themselves, which makes it super hard to figure out if you're getting screwed or not. Europeans tend to be much more open about their earnings.
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