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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

#301

Post by Nadya »

vkou wrote: post #297
mcherm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a trick that I learned is to answer that it's in your employee confidentiality agreement not to discuss the terms of your employment. Except that this is a lie. In the US, it is ILLEGAL to have an employee agreement that states this (at least if you are an employee potentially capable of unionizing). If I wanted to make up an untrue reason for keeping the data confidential, I would make up something more interestin…

> Except that this is a lie. In the US, it is ILLEGAL to have an employee agreement that states this (at least if you are an employee potentially capable of unionizing). Then I signed an illegal agreement when I was working for one of the biggest investment banks in the United States. I should really thank them for that - in future negotiations, once I said that my current employment agreement is confidential, prospe…

Just because you signed it doesn't mean it is enforceable.

You sign a waiver at trampoline parks that says you won't sue if you hurt yourself or if they cause you to be hurt. The first part covers them, the second part doesn't. If they were negligent or failed to maintain the park and you were injured as a result you can sue them, that waiver is meaningless. [0]

[0] IANAL but I've heard of many cases around these sorts of waivers at parks, rock climbing walls, bounce houses, etc where the waiver is meaningless. They only have you sign it so you think you can't sue them because you signed a piece of paper - and that tactic works.

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

#302

Post by mdb333 »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #26
matthewmacleod wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with freedom of speech?

Making a law that says "Employers can't say or ask X" goes directly against freedom of speech.

it has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

This is fitting into the same category of not being able to ask candidates; what's your sexual preference? what's your religion? do you smoke? are you planning on having children? etc. as part of the hiring process. They are rules that help avoid discriminatory hiring practices. At the end of the day they help companies more than the individual. The individuals are already protected from discrimination and could sue if these questions came up during an interview and they didn't get the job. Banning these questions ensures companies and their interviewers avoid situations where they could become legally liable.

Whether salary info helps the company or individual more is debatable since this does not represent a protected class, but obviously the goal is to support the individual.

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

#303

Post by komali2 »

clavalle wrote: post #175
pmoriarty wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never consider interviewing and negotiations a waste of time. It's very valuable practice, no matter what the outcome. Practice is how I get better at both. The more interviews I go on and the more times I negotiate salary, the better I get. Also, even if a company can't hire me at the moment due to real budget constraints, they might be able to do so in the future, or perhaps one of the people I interviewed and im…

>I never consider interviewing and negotiations a waste of time. As an employer, I do. I once made the mistake of spending a lot of time interviewing a candidate assuming that their salary expectations would be around market rates...they weren't. This was years ago and it chaps me a bit to this day that I made such a rookie blunder. I won't make that mistake again. I ask for a range right off and give one in return.…

Companies should name their range first mate, or just interview and accept the fact that the job hunt sucks for everyone. Why do you think external recruiters exist? They work as middleman that have intimate knowledge of a company's range, as well as their candidates' range, without either party knowing. That allows them to find helpful matches without wasting either party's time... at a 20% markup of course ;)

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

#304

Post by komali2 »

clavalle wrote: post #185
pmoriarty wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's such a big deal to employers, and they don't want to waste their time, why don't they name a number first? I won't object.

I didn't at the time. I do now.

Problem is, is every potential employee worth the same to you?

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

#305

Post by run4yourlives2 »

dingdongding wrote: post #266
catshirt wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

care to share your position and some discreet information about the company (size, industry?)

This account was created an hour ago. I doubt he is telling the truth

I don't connect the two really. The account is clearly a throwaway, but that doesn't really bare on whether the story is accurate or not. It very well might be.

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

#306

Post by komali2 »

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…

Why lie? Don't lie, there's no need.

Hop on linkedin and search "software engineering, bay area, posted last 24 hours." Typically I see 800-1000 jobs. My experience is that those are mostly unique. 1000 nearly unique jobs a day.

Just send your resumes, state politely that you don't give your number, and the companies that can't deal with that don't hire you. Everyone is spending eachother's time but that's the nature of the job search / recruiting beast.

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

#307

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by emh68 »

paulcole wrote: post #4

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

Rather than lie about your salary, which can be verified, lie about something that can't be verified. Just say that your current employer is awesome, amazing, has a great culture, coworkers you consider close friends, and you're sad to leave, but you realize that you can't afford to keep living in $bigCity on your current salary...

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

#309

Post by mdb333 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #18
xyzzy4 wrote: post #5

This is bad for the free market and freedom of speech. I hope it gets challenged on First Amendment grounds.

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

...yeah but imagine you're trying to hire a contractor to do some job. Of course you're going to ask, "how much does it cost?" Generally you will shop this job around to get an idea of the range of prices for similar work from qualified contractors and then make an informed decision. If you go at it the opposite, "I'm willing to pay X for this job Y" then you've skewed your capability to make an informed decision unless you already have an accurate basis for what the job should cost.

In the employment world, folks use Radford and similar as guidance which of course can steer them of course from where the local talent market actually is.

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

#310

Post by komali2 »

mdb333 wrote: post #289

It will be interesting to see how this affects the hiring markets. Out in SF/etc it came up in just about every discussion I had last time I was looking for work usually as part of the first phase. No point interviewing candidates that wouldn't accept the job. It's pretty much a risk mgmt exercise from the hiring side. Similarly, I always asked what the compensation range they're targeting is as I don't want to waste…

In my experience (external contract recruitment) the background check usually happens after an offer has been negotiated and accepted. I've also never seen a background check request for actual salary information. I'm not even sure how that would work... we would just send the candidates' information to this company that churns through court docs to see if they have a criminal history, send them to Quest to get drug tested, donesies bananas. Maybe in the employment verification stage? Even then though, I highly doubt a previous employer would offer that information up - oftentimes they weren't even allowed to comment on the quality of the candidates' work. Nightmare for reference checks to the big EPCs and operators like BP or Jacobs.
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