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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

#491

Post by eric-hu »

s73ver wrote: post #455
gregmac wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or, I consider time with my family worth more than the context switch I'd have.

And just to take this further: there's a massive context switch for the dev team when a burned out developer leaves after 1-2 years, compared to the 9-5 dev who's still there and happy.

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

#492

Post by product50 »

vkou wrote: post #432
vidarh wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My first job paid me $25,000 CAD a year. My next job paid me $90,000 CAD a year. (Investment bank) My next job paid me $160,000 USD a year. (Google) All numbers are all-in comp. All junior dev roles. Should the bank, and Google have offered me $33,000 and $40,000, so that the new salary isn't too much higher then the old one? Would that satisfy your notion of fairness? When new grads hired by the latter are getting p…

What if you are current job pays you $400k? In that doesn't it advantage you to talk about your current salary to set an anchor? Also, it helps you avoid jobs/positions who are way below that number.

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

#493

Post by coredog64 »

spydum wrote: post #67
nommm-nommm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Correct: a service called The Work Number by Equifax. http://www.theworknumber.com

My current employer uses that, so I checked my report. It has a 13 year gap. It also neglected the RSU grants that vested at a previous employer.

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

#494

Post by curun1r »

infinite8s wrote: post #477
curun1r wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anchoring might work if there wasn't an information asymmetry dynamic at play. But companies have way more data on salaries than applicants do. If you anchor too high, they'll just pass since they know what others are paying and know you won't get that elsewhere. If you anchor too low, the negotiations will be win-win for them. When I was hiring and someone came in too low, I'd often offer well above their anchor sin…

Are you sure companies know how much other similar companies are paying?

Yes. I managed a team and had to hire many people. My company provided me with a mountain of data that was broken down by location, job title and years of experience. The data was pretty accurate, at least for San Francisco, but I have no way of knowing if the other locations were correct.

Two stupid things on their part...I got headcount, not a budget. So when negotiating salary, it wasn't in my best interest to haggle. I'd rather have happy relationships with my direct reports than know that I screwed them out of a few dollars on behalf of the company. Had they made it my duty to make the numbers add up, I might have been a bit more frugal. Oh, and they didn't filter the data to only show me positions below my title. So I went into my reviews armed with the exact market salary data that the company used to negotiate with me.

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

#495

Post by papabrown »

flyinglizard wrote: post #384
komali2 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From my experience, naming your price works in your favor if you are aggressive. People having similar positions are paid at 20% difference all dependent on their negotiation skills. Also, companies usually don't have set budgets for positions. It's quite fluid depending on the person being recruited and their other offers and expectations. You need to make it work in your favor. If you send up leaving money on the t…

I would disagree with what you're saying about companies not having set budgets. They may have a range but it's certainly a set range. The larger the organization the more hard the range likely is due to the fact that the hiring manager doesn't even set the range, HR does based on salary comps.

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

#496

Post by papabrown »

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.…

Well, it wasn't a waste of time if you gained some experience, which I think was the point. As a manager I've made tons of mistakes. Much of my management style today is based on "Well, I won't do that again." Every mistake I've made has made me a better manager.

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

#497

Post by Scea91 »

hamandcheese wrote: post #263
davemel37 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I ever tried this, the candidates hover around the top of the range regardless of qualification and experience.

Maybe try posting a minimum salary only? "Roles for this position start at $x for qualified candidates, negotiable based on experience" or something like that.

I don't think thats a viable strategy. I get lots of semi-spam offers. I usually just skim through them in 5 seconds and if I see salary figure way below what I would expect then it's 100 % I will not be replying.

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

#498

Post by papabrown »

morgante wrote: post #469
komali2 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

> They work as middleman that have intimate knowledge of a company's range, as well as their candidates' range, without either party knowing. That's comically naive. External recruiters routinely share candidate ranges with employers.

They also routinely share the employers range with candidates.

Believe me, if I told an external recruiter I was looking to make X and they sent me on an interview and I got a job offer at 0.5X, not only would that be the last time we ever spoke but wherever I eventually landed would not be using that recruiter or their firm ever again.

I can't think of a job I've been contacted about in the last 15+ years where I didn't know what the salary range was before I even agreed to have my resume submitted.

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

#500

Post by papabrown »

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.

I would rather talk what my salary expectations are rather than my current salary. Not because I'm underpaid but because salary is a very specific term and doesn't take into account many other factors.

For instance, I think the worst bonus I've ever received with my current employer is 15%. Best was 30% or so.

That's not salary. But it's fairly reliable. With the new employer the bonus might not be reliable even if it's comparable percentage-wise. Every company has different criteria they use to fund the bonus pool and it's unheard of for a potential employer to ever disclose that. Everyone at my current employer gets paid out of the same bonus pool as the CEO so I know we're getting paid :-)

Also, equity (at least in my case) plays a huge role. The last few years I've made as much or more in selling vested stock options as I did in salary.

So if someone were to ask me what my current salary is in a employment negotiation I would tell them that I don't think it's relevant and give them a few examples why. I would however, tell them what I thought I was worth and justify it by explaining what value I could bring AND-OR I would tell them what salary range I've already been offered elsewhere recently and ask if they were prepared to make an offer in that range. If they insisted my current salary, I pretty much know that's not the right place for me.

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