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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

#321

Have a google for: "can i lie to a employer about past salary" - it really really messes with people - people feel super uncertain about how to approach this situation. Throwing any confidence they have during the negotiation out the window. Even now I hesitate to write this as a million people will come out and say never lie - what if they found out. More than banning. There needs to be acceptance that if someone as…

Not sure what the big deal with this is! Whatever the recruiter wants to think, you are offering what it would take to make the move over. It's not like if they offered less that you would just as likely make the move. You are saving both parties times which is positive overall.

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

#322
post #179
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

>In exchange for...greater responsibility.

So you would be willing to be paid less to do more?

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

#323
post #4

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

Why lie? Just say you don't provide that information. If they don't like it, move on to another company.

Why are people so blase about lying? I don't get it. It's arguably far more helpful to just wait for the company to state their number first - bearing in mind the fact that there's tens of thousands of other companies out there. Eventually one will budge. In my experience, they all do.

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

#324
post #63

The analogy is not perfect, but all the time people like to know how much a house or car sold for in the past, or how much a stock traded for the in past, etc. Seems like useful data. Now, I'm not advocating for or against this particular question, but I sure do hope there is data collected and studied on the effect this has in NY before anyone jumps to conclusions. I feel it's too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction o…

Knowing a candidate's compensation history can save an employer a significant amount of money which they otherwise might've spent on the same candidate. This gives them an unfair advantage, and the way I see it, it's unavoidable to remove this advantage. By restricting employers from asking about previous compensation, we're just shifting this advantage to the employees, for better or worse.

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

#325
throwaway for obv reasons. This is fantastic news. But for those of you wondering what to do if you are asked this - it's pretty simple: you lie. This is a negotiation. If you ask a car salesman how much the dealership paid for a car, you think they're going to tell you the truth?

"What if they find out?" They won't. How could they? There ARE laws, very clear and absolute ones, about what a past employer can share about you. Your salary history is most certainly protected by them.

"What if they ask for a paystub?" Ask yourself if you know what you're getting into here. This is not a company that is going to treat its employees well.

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

#326
This is the #1 rule I always tell people who are interviewing for a new job. Never tell a potential employer your past job salary, especially so if you are unhappy with that salary.

When my girlfriend was interviewing for a new job two years ago we talked about this because the recruiter was very demanding about knowing what her current salary was and I told her to stay firm on it because the salary in her current job was, frankly, shit. In the end she got a 50% pay increase over her previous job and then six months later got promoted with a pay increase that effectively doubled her salary from her previous job. Which brings me to another point- a lot of people will justify disclosing the amount by reasoning that they can always ask for a raise after they get hired and the important thing is to get a foot in the door. The problem is that anchoring is a very real thing. If you start at $50k instead of a $75k, every raise you get at that company for the rest of your career will be based off that first salary. If you stay at a company for 10-15 years, that is an enormous difference that could be well into the six figures.

Bottom line, don't disclose salary history to employers. You'll seldom find an employer who will tell you what your colleagues in the same job make. Why do you want to show your hand?

As for this law, I'm actually mildly opposed to it. I don't think that the government should have a hand in determining salary beyond minimum wage, because that is an agreement made between two consenting parties in private industry. If you are a more experienced negotiator and are willing to ask for more money than your counterparts, why shouldn't you be at an advantage? There's no law that says you have to disclose it and the rest is up to you.

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

#327
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope I never hire someone like you by accident. It's likely employers like you that force employees to lie. It's amazing when employers are handed resumes that are anonymized, such as names, race, and sex information are removed they choose resumes with less bias. Yet you refuse to see that pricing information will cause additional bias on your part.

> Yet you refuse to see that pricing information will cause additional bias on your part. This is why I chose to have my former employers give a different salary figure. If I had told my prospective, new employer I had been making $40k/year, I doubt they would have taken me seriously, and even possibly ended recruitment. "He only makes $40k! He must be bad or stupid!" I don't consider myself bad or stupid, I'm just n…

Or you could simply say, "I prefer not to disclose that information". If a potential employer continues to push you to make the first offer, you can dodge the bullet and walk away with your integrity intact.

Personally, I never ask a candidate what they previously made. I do occasionally ask what their salary expectations are, but only when someone has applied that I perceive as far overqualified for the position they are applying for. e.g. Someone with a PHD and 20 years of experience applying for a Jr - Mid level position.

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

#328

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…

I disagree that it's to your advantage to try to anchor to a high number early on. The reason IMO is that, at the beginning of a negotiation, neither party knows much about the other. They don't know enough about you to know whether it would be worth paying you that much, and you don't know enough about them to know if you'd be willing to work for them for that much. Start naming numbers at the beginning, and both sides will name extreme numbers to play it safe, they'll be far apart, and no deal gets made if they both stick to those numbers.

Let them see what you can do for them, and let them show you what it's like to work for them, then you should find it easier to come to an agreement on a number.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're at the top of employees, it might be time to become the boss...

To fulfill the Peter's Principle?

Nah, I mean OP should start their own venture if they've run out of salary headroom and want more.

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

#330

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…

I think you're confusing two sales concepts - first to talk, and anchoring. Anchoring is a more general marketing concept that works well in advertisements (crossing out a black $280 and putting a red $100 underneath it). Anchoring doesn't work so well for something much more fluid (and with much more at stake) such as a salary negotiation. In-person sales meetings (which is what an interview is, for both sides) are…

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