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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

#121

Post by shados »

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…

Employers ask for your salary to make sure it makes sense to talk.

Everyone mentions it to be lowballing you. But what do you think happens when you mention a higher number than they expect?

While it sometimes will end the conversation (because they're unwilling to pay), sometimes they'll match that, leading to a higher salary than what the offer would have been.

Of course, often, including in big companies, the background check isn't done by the hiring managers. So you can straight up lie about your salary, get a higher offer, then when they background check they get the real one, and they're none the wiser ::shrugs::

Even without lying, In the couple of occasions where I was underpaid and trying to go up, it's simply what I would say when asked. "My salary was X, but I'm looking for X + Y".

It's just not that hard.

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

#122

Post by scarmig »

pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Has anyone run into issues for sharing a current salary that anchors the discussion too high? I could see how an employer might pass on a candidate who's actually interested in the job, just because they know they can't match what the candidate is currently making and it's likely a waste of time to spend hours evaluating someone who's making 50k more than what you could ever offer.

Or is this purely theoretical and not seen in practice?

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

#123

Post by orange_county »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #27
paulcole wrote: post #4

Good. Not enough people realize the best way to answer this question is with a straight-up lie.

Careful!! There's quite a few ways to verify past salary. Specially some employers report employment information to private databases and your potential employer runs a "employment report," like banks run a credit report, as part of a mandatory background check. To see if you lied. Of course, they can't do that without your permission but agreeing to a background check is a condition of employment. The database i am…

The best way to see if your company is willing to give out salary information to random verifiers, is to ask HR yourself.

In most cases they would not give out that sensitive information unless they have a written consent specifically stating that you allow salary information to be given.

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

#124

Post by jnwatson »

louisswiss wrote: post #82
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

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…

Anchoring only works if the potential employer is ready to buy. Many, many organizations will simply use the number as yet another filter, and you won't even begin discussions.

By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have gotten to by simply not giving the first number.

I do agree with the wasted negotiating time thing.

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

#125

Post by nommm-nommm »

josho wrote: post #118
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Hijacking this for visibility. If the recruiter asks repeatedly, a trick that I learned is to answer that it's in your employee confidentiality agreement not to discuss the terms of your employment. It's arguably a true statement as well (in case you were concerned about telling a white lie)--your employer could be considering your salary as confidential because they obviously haven't disclosed it publicly, so you ar…

Except it's illegal to prevent employees from discussing salary.

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

#126

Post by arunitc »

Here in India, you are not only asked your previous salary, you have to provide your last (sometimes three) payslip while joining. Some companies have a policy of NOT giving more than a 30% hike from your previous salary - you need top management approval for such a hike.

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

#127

Post by jnwatson »

scarmig wrote: post #122
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Has anyone run into issues for sharing a current salary that anchors the discussion too high? I could see how an employer might pass on a candidate who's actually interested in the job, just because they know they can't match what the candidate is currently making and it's likely a waste of time to spend hours evaluating someone who's making 50k more than what you could ever offer. Or is this purely theoretical and n…

For me, all the time. I've negotiated well throughout my career, so I'm above a lot of pay bands.

My concern is I hope to be doing this for another 25 years...

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

#128

Post by adrr »

josho wrote: post #118
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Hijacking this for visibility. If the recruiter asks repeatedly, a trick that I learned is to answer that it's in your employee confidentiality agreement not to discuss the terms of your employment. It's arguably a true statement as well (in case you were concerned about telling a white lie)--your employer could be considering your salary as confidential because they obviously haven't disclosed it publicly, so you ar…

If it was true you couldn't disclose salary it would make lots of things really difficult like getting a loan.

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

#129

Post by VT_Drew »

louisswiss wrote: post #82
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

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…

>Generally, in price negotiations it is advantageous to name a number first.

This is absolutely 100% wrong. In price negotiations you will almost always fair better if you force the other party to bring up a number first.

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

#130

Post by lr4444lr »

A lot of the analogies and reasoning I'm reading here is faulty. Nothing stops HR depts. from sharing information which to a first degree of approximation would give them an idea of the market rate for the positions they're filling. Companies are already free to rescind offers if they find out that you've lied about aspects of your past work history. It's part of what at-will employment is. This is about interfering with the negotiation of the individual job seeker. If I can't ask for your salary history, then I might miss out on the competitive advantage you as a candidate have in that you're willing to work for less over potentially more qualified people as you build your skill-set and expertise. The right way to help those who are taken advantage of is education about how to bargain and what information they need and need not share, not legislation.
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