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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

#391

Post by gregmac »

wcummings wrote: post #353
gregmac wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these are honestly your answers to these questions and you in fact give lies as answers, you sound like exactly the type of person I absolutely hate working with and actively try to weed out during interviewing. To anyone reading this new to the industry, there are absolutely legitimate ways to answer these questions without lying. > Why do you want to work here? (money, and the desire to pay the bills and feed my…

>The people I know who are like this are what I'd describe as "9-5" employees, don't learn anything outside of work So, you just don't hire people with kids, medical problems or other responsibilities outside of work? If you want people to bone up give them time during the work day, have sr. devs run workshops on new tech you're adopting. Don't create the expectation people should work in their time off. If you want…

> Don't create the expectation people should work in their time off.

I have no such expectation, nor did I say people should work in their time off.

I think people need to keep up their education. Learning doesn't stop when you graduate. Your company should be willing to pay for training/courses/conferences, but I also think people that are passionate about things will naturally grow on their own.

At the least, this might mean staying current with news and/or community, especially within your current toolset/ecosystem. As an example, if you don't usually know within at least a week or so that your main language/framework/database/etc has a new release, you're in this category if people I'm talking about.

And to clarify when I say "9-5" I mean the type of person that always has their stuff packed up and is walking out the door by 5:01pm. This tells me either you've stopped in the middle of something, which means instead of staying for 10 or 30 minutes to finish it you will take two hours tomorrow to regain context, or that when you're done something and it's after say, 4 o'clock, you just don't start anything new.

I don't believe in working crazy (or even just 'extra' hours beyond what you're paid for): that leads to burnout and that is bad for literally everybody. I do think it's better to stay longer to finish and not waste time on the context switch of going home, or other days just leave "early" if you are done and can't finish anything further.

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

#392

Post by pbasista »

My past salary is an irrelevant information for my potential future employer. If they ask about it, my response would be: "Why would you like to know it?" Any answer to this question is bad. If they do not bail out and stop asking at this point, then I bail out.

The point is that if I want, I can completely change my way of life by switching to a job which pays 50 % of my current salary. Or 400 % of my current salary. It does not matter. What matters is that it is solely my decision and none of my potential future employer's business.

If they want to know my current salary, it is a red flag. I do not care about them knowing it, but there is a high risk that they will use that information to try to make an offer which they think that I ought to consider good. They can offer e.g. my current salary + their negotiating margin and think "hey, we have offered you more than you have now, so you ought to be happy". While in reality, the only person who can responsibly decide whether I am happy about it or not is me.

Note that I am not criticizing companies which want to hire for cheap. This is all right. But they need to do it transparently, from the beginning. They should say it clearly and upfront: for this position, our budget is somewhere in this range ... are you interested or not? This is a fair way to go.

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

#393

Post by tbomb »

southphillyman wrote: post #94
josh_fyi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have some leeway. If you say "My compensation was $70K" and your salary was $50K, you may well be telling the truth.

Going forward I'm including calculations for free lunch, the relatively excessive amount of PTO days I get every year (30+), and the relatively affordable insurance I have ($140 per monthly for a family). Locally I think it will be hard to get a similar benefit package so I'm going to quantify those benefits and bake them into my "salary".

At a previous company I found an internal excel document with everyone's salary, from the CEO down to his assistant. On the doc my salary was inflated ~25K to what my actual gross was, I can only assume these perks/benefits were included on top of the salary. But it shows they see that on paper that's how they saw my salary hit. I think it would be wise to include these in your previous "salary".

I never did find any more details on the document though :(

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

#394

Post by nebari »

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…

Your points are valid if we're talking about a neutral salary negotiation, i.e., prospective employer asks, "What salary range are you seeking?"

In this case, however, the disadvantage comes from a fixed number - your previous salary - not what you'd like.

In a situation where you were underpaid, declaring your previous salary will definitely put you at a negotiating disadvantage.

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

#395

Post by gregmac »

denzil_correa wrote: post #277
gregmac wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these are honestly your answers to these questions and you in fact give lies as answers, you sound like exactly the type of person I absolutely hate working with and actively try to weed out during interviewing. To anyone reading this new to the industry, there are absolutely legitimate ways to answer these questions without lying. > Why do you want to work here? (money, and the desire to pay the bills and feed my…

> The people I know who are like this are what I'd describe as "9-5" employees, don't learn anything outside of work, and basically do the bare minimum at everything. What's wrong being a 9-5 employee?

If you're a creative person, like a developer, it's inefficient.

Context switching is expensive, and going home for the day is a big context switch.

If it's 5:00 and you have 30 minutes left on something, most likely it'll take something like two hours tomorrow to get back into and finish it.

If you always go home exactly at 5, it means you are either constantly being inefficient and doing the context switch, you are not doing anything late in the afternoon to avoid the context switch, or you are extremely good at both estimating and optimizing your time so all your tasks are quantized within working hours. While things may work out to look like the third case sometimes, I find it hard to believe anyone is that good that it can happen literally every day, which leads me to believe they're often doing one of the other two things.

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

#396

Post by showmethemoney »

komali2 wrote: post #311
showmethemoney wrote: post #200

Once upon a time I interviewed for a role in NYC. An employee that I spoke to said they paid pretty well, and I could expect about 120. The HR person wanted my previous salary, and I refused. Eventually they said their range was 130-150. I said it wasn't gonna work cause I was looking for something more like 220. They said okay we can do that no problem. My previous salary was 110.

Not bad man, although I have to wonder what you'd have made if you never gave your number ;) Luckily they gave 3 numbers first, so you avoided a trap many people fall into on both sides of the table - not negotiating at all. Imagine the first thing a company says after an interview is "what's your number" and you shrug and say "100," and the company reps blink and go "no problem," then pass you an offer. Wouldn't you…

I thought I was throwing out a crazy number. They agreed so quickly that I had no idea what to do. It's interesting to see whether people's first reaction is "that's amazing" or "you messed up." I felt both. I still wonder how high I could have gone.

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

#397

Post by pfarnsworth »

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…

You're absolutely wrong.

You're negotiating from a position of weaker information. You have no idea what the other engineers are being paid, all you know is how much you're being paid, and what you would like to be paid. Meanwhile the recruiter/hiring manager knows exactly how much they are paying all the other engineers.

You are now tasked with trying to get as fair/high a salary as possible, without knowing what their threshold is for simply no longer continuing the negotiations, because as you said "the price is just way too high".

By hearing the other side first, you can then gauge whether or not your desired salary is acceptable, or you can try to negotiate up.

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

#398

Post by OrwellianChild »

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…

The problem I have with this approach is that with many companies, particularly larger established ones like AmaGoogSoft, base salary is just one portion of a compensation package that might have contributions of up to 50% from stock, bonus, incentive pay, benefits/matching, and perks. If you start anchoring on one piece of that puzzle, it limits your ability to move on others. If the goal of negotiation is to maximize your total offer (which it should be), then the only reasonable answer to the question is "depends on total compensation factors".

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

#399

Post by LoSboccacc »

bunnymancer wrote: post #219
pc86 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we publish salary ranges with our job ads but also require a desired salary within that range from candidates.

Thank you for doing that. I try to only ever apply to jobs with salary range posted. Although as a developer is becoming increasingly hard to find those posts

you can find plenty in italy, all sounding like 'in most expensive city x, lead architect, full time, 6yr experience, 30k$ RAL'

rip market.

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

#400

Post by enraged_camel »

sqeaky wrote: post #340
enraged_camel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Whoever names a number first puts themselves at a significant disadvantage.

Why do people, yourself included, insist on taking simple sides on complex issues? There is no one size fits all to negotiations, there are simply too many. I would be hesitant to even apply some kind of 80/20 rule here. There are many kinds of negotiations and not all follow the same pattern, even if all of them in one person's experience have. I have succeeded when demanding they present a number and when presentin…

>>I have succeeded when demanding they present a number and when presenting a number.

You can do this if you have a lot of leverage. But if you don't -- and most job seekers don't -- then giving a number first will put you at a disadvantage because it reveals how much you think you are worth and simply gives the other side a starting point from which to bring down the price.

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